The Masons

My grandfather, the son of a German immigrant, joined a Masonic Lodge as a young man.  If his family had remained in Germany his membership in a Masonic organization would have been fraught with danger.

Many people do not realize that when the Nazis came to power in Germany in the early 1930s they persecuted Masons and the Lodges where they gathered. In early 1933 Hermann Goering called on Masonic Lodges to dissolve voluntarily. Civil servants were forced to choose between their jobs and their membership in a Masonic Lodge.

By 1934 the Gestapo was closing lodges and confiscating their libraries and archives. Lodges were deemed to be “hostile to the state.” Nazi propaganda linked Jews and Freemasons. Chief of the Security Police Reinhard Heydrich created a special unit of the SS to deal with Masonry.  As the Nazis conquered Europe from 1939 on, they carried their anti-Mason campaign into the occupied territories. Nazi propaganda linked the start of WWII to provocation by Jews and Masons. Because of this persecution, former lodge members became active in the German resistance movement.

Fortunately, the libraries and archives seized by the Nazis were rescued as the Allied and Soviet forces crushed the German Army. Most were returned but some are still held in foreign collections.

To hear more about the Masonic Lodge in our own community, please join us at the Masonic Temple on South State Street on Friday, May 20th at 7pm for a presentation on that Lodge’s history and a tour of the building.

The information for this blog post came from the Holocaust website.