Dachau Memorial: A Way of the Cross commemorating the fate of French prisoners at the Concentration Camp Dachau

MUNICH, GERMANY - On Friday, 27 March 2026, a Way of the Cross comprising five stations will take place at the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site to commemorate the fate of French prisoners. Two of them are Father Victor Dillard SJ and Jean Bernier, who were beatified at the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in December 2025. The Way of the Cross is organised by the Catholic Chaplaincy at the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site in cooperation with the District Catholic Council and Dachauer Forum - Catholic Adult Education.

Of the approximately 100,000 French people who were deported to German concentration camps during the Second World War, almost 15,000 were imprisoned at Dachau Concentration Camp. Their fates varied greatly: men and women of the Resistance such as Imam Abdelkader Mesli or the Renée Lacoude, French people of Jewish origin, and around 150 clergymen, including the Jesuit Father Victor Dillard SJ. There were also young Catholics – Scouts, members of the Christian Workers’ Youth or Catholic Action – who voluntarily travelled to Germany as chaplains to secretly accompany French forced labourers. One of them was Jean Bernier, who died shortly before his 25th birthday as a result of his imprisonment following the liberation and was beatified in December 2025.

The individual stations of the Way of the Cross lead to locations within the grounds of the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site that are closely linked to the fate of the French prisoners: the railway tracks, the gate to the prisoner camp, the International Memorial, Barrack 21 and Barrack 26. The Way of the Cross wants to honour the memory of these men and women and to link their experiences with meditations and passages from the Holy Scriptures.

Brief Biographies

Renée Lacoude (1917–2018) was born on 12 April 1917 in Bordeaux. Her involvement in the Resistance led to her arrest in 1944 and her eventual deportation to Dachau on the ‘ghost train’, the Train Fantôme. After a few days’ stay, she was transferred to Ravensbrück, where she experienced liberation. From 1998 to 2001, she was president of the Amicale du train fantôme. She died at the age of 101.

Abdelkader Mesli (1902–1961), Imam of the Grand Mosque of Paris, was born in Oran, Algeria, in 1902. In 1942, Mesli was appointed Imam of the Grand Mosque of Paris and was sent to Bordeaux in 1943, where he was almost exclusively tasked with caring for the sick and conducting funerals. It was there, at the latest, that he joined the Resistance and became a member of the ORA, a resistance group led by former French soldiers. Mesli looked after North African forced labourers who had fled. He forged identity papers for them. Arrested by the Gestapo in July 1944, he was deported to Dachau on the ‘Train Fantôme’. He survived and returned to France as an imam. Since 2023, a square in Paris has borne his name.

Father Victor Dillard SJ (1897–1945), a Jesuit from Blois, travelled to Wuppertal in the autumn of 1943 under a false name and with forged papers, posing as an electrician, in order to secretly provide pastoral care to French forced labourers there. Following his arrest in April 1944, he was deported to Dachau concentration camp on 28 November 1944, where he died on 12 January 1945 as a result of the conditions of his imprisonment. In December 2025, he was beatified at Notre-Dame de Paris.

Jean Bernier (1920–1945), born in Haironville near Verdun, organised the religious life of French prisoners whilst in German captivity and secretly smuggled letters back to France. Following his arrest in August 1944, he was deported via Buchenwald to Dachau, where he lived to see the liberation. He died on 16 June 1945 in Emmendingen Hospital. He too was beatified in December 2025.