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Margarete (Grete) Sommer (July 21, 1893 – June 30, 1965) was a Catholic social worker. During the Holocaust, she helped persecuted Jewish citizens, keeping many of them from deportation to death camps.〔(Margarete Sommer ); German Resistance Memorial Centre, Index of Persons; retrieved at 4 September 2013〕 ==Biography== Sommer studied philosophy and economics in Berlin, gaining a doctorate in 1924 and worked as an instructor at various welfare colleges, including the Social Welfare Institute of Pestalozzi-Fröbel House in Berlin, from 1927 until in 1934 she was forced to resign for refusing to teach the Nazi sterilization law in her classes. In 1935, on Sommer took up a position at the Episcopal Diocesan Authority in Berlin, counseling victims of racial persecution with the Catholic aid agency, Caritas Emergency Relief. In 1939 she became diocesan instructor for the ministry for women. In 1941 she became managing director of the Welfare Office of the Berlin Diocesan Authority, under the Cathedral Provost Bernhard Lichtenberg.〔(Margarete Sommer ); German Resistance Memorial Centre, Index of Persons; retrieved at 4 September 2013〕 Lichtenbrg was a noted anti-Nazi resistor, who was under the watch of the Gestapo for his courageous support of prisoners and Jews, and who was arrested in 1941 and died en route to Dachau in 1943.〔(Bernhard Lichtenberg ); German Resistance Memorial Centre, Index of Persons; retrieved at 4 September 2013〕 After this, Sommer reported to Bishop Konrad von Preysing.〔(Margarete Sommer ); German Resistance Memorial Centre, Index of Persons; retrieved at 4 September 2013〕 Presying was one of the leading Catholic voices against Nazism in Germany.〔(Konrad Graf von Preysing ); German Resistance Memorial Centre, Index of Persons; retrieved at 4 September 2013〕 While working for the Welfare Office of the Berlin Diocesan Authority, Sommer coordinated Catholic aid for victims of racial persecution, giving them spiritual comfort, food, clothing, and money. She gathered intelligence on the deportations of the Jews, and living conditions in concentration camps, as well as on SS firing squads, writing several reports on these topics from 1942, including an August 1942 report which reached Rome under the title “Report on the Exodus of the Jews”.〔(Margarete Sommer ); German Resistance Memorial Centre, Index of Persons; retrieved at 4 September 2013〕 In 1943 Sommer and Preysing drafted a statement for the German Bishops which would have actually rebuked Hitler for human rights abuses and mass murder. The draft began, "With deepest sorrow--yes even with holy indignation--have we German bishops learned of the deportation of non-Aryans in a manner that is scornful of all human rights. It is our holy duty to defend the unalienable rights of all men guaranteed by natural law." The end of the draft chided Hitler on the very issue of genocide: "We would not want to omit to say that meeting these previously mentioned stipulations would be the most certain way to deflate the crescendo of rumors regarding the mass death of the deported non-Aryans." The statement was not issued on the basis that it had already been asserted in 1942. Following the war, Sommer continued her work at the Episcopal Diocesan Authority in Berlin, assisting survivors of Nazi persecution.〔(Margarete Sommer ); German Resistance Memorial Centre, Index of Persons; retrieved at 4 September 2013〕 In 2003 she was posthumously awarded the honorary title of Righteous Among the Nations. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Margarete Sommer」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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