Life Together の Introduction から、ボンヘッファーの人柄がわかる部分を抜き出しておきます。
これは、ある英国人が報告したものです。
今回は英語でそのまま引用しておきます。
次回以降、訳と解説を載せたいと思います。
Bonhoeffer always seemed to me to spread an atmosphere of happiness and joy over the least incident and profound gratitude for the mere fact that he was alive ....
He was one of the very few persons I have ever met for whom God was real and always near ....
On Sunday, April 8, 1945, Pastor Bonhoeffer conducted a little service of worship and spoke to us in a way that went to the heart of all of us.
He found just the right words to express the spirit of our imprisonment, the throughts and the resolutions it had brought us.
He had hardly ended his last prayer when the door opened and two civilians entered.
They said, "Prisoner Bonhoeffer, come with us."
That had only one meaning for all prisoners - the gallows.
We said good-by to him.
He took me aside: "This is the end, but for me it is the beginning of life."
The next day he was hanged in Flossenburg.