Two Years in Prison

American friends invited Bonhoeffer to New York in the summer of 1939 and arranged for him to be one of the many German refugees in this country. But he stayed only briefly. He explained to one of his hosts, Reinhold Niebuhr, that he did not believe he would have the right “to take part in the restoration of Christian life Germany after the war unless I share the trials of this time with my people.”

On the way home he stopped in London, England, to visit his sister and brother-in-law, Sabine and Gerhard Leibholz, who because of his Jewish background, had fled Germany the previous year. Dietrich and his twin sister then were 33 years old. He was about to return to Germany, to the church struggle and — in a year’s time—to join the Conspiracy.

Bottom photo
Dietrich Bonhoeffer with a prison guard and three captured officers of the Italian air force in the courtyard of the Tegel Prison during the early summer of 1944.