Balt4: “Take aim, the angels are waiting for me”: 51 Martyrs’ Portraits

      This continues from Part 3 (Table of Contents in Part 1), a short series on the Communist persecution of the Baltic Lutheran pastors and teachers. — I showed pictures of a small sampling of the martyrs in Part 2, but I wanted to learn more of the martyrs mentioned in Bente's book review. I found another of Schabert's books online that presented a brief "portrait" of 47 martyrs.  Most of these were pastors – a few of which include their martyred wives – and a deaconess is included. It was a great treasure for me to translate this because there were so many Bible verses and sayings that spoke of a beautiful Christian faith, especially in the face of death.  For example:

Some quotes of Baltic Martyrs:

Pastor Hesse, p. 10: "Better to suffer injustice than do injustice!"
Prof. Hahn, p. 12: "May the original Christian sense of martyrdom revive in us, which never presses for martyrdom, but which, when it comes, bravely approaches it. God, who is the Lord of martyrs, needs the death of His own ever and ever as the most precious sowing of His kingdom."
Pastor Fromhold-Treu, p. 25: "You can take my body from me, but you cannot harm my soul." [cp. J. G. Rösner here]
Pastor Wühner, p. 28: "How can I flee now, when danger threatens. What was all my preaching worth? If the Lord wants me to suffer, even to die, then I am ready."

Pastor Uhder, p. 37: "Take aim, the angels are waiting for me."

Some faces of the 51 Baltic Martyrs:

         Gruehn         —          Paucker            ————             Rutkowskis            ————                   Bosse       ——        Fromhold-Treu

Translation by BackToLuther, highlighting, hyperlinks, and red text in square brackets [ ] are mine, German original document PDF file here.

"The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church." — Tertullian

Schabert's testimony became far too compelling for me to end this series with just these portraits.  In the next Part 5, we present an English translation of his 203 page book that gives much more detail on these "Greatest Heroes of World War I".