05 — Dachau and the War

Nikolai’s ordeal under German occupation: arrest in 1941, years of confinement in Serbian monasteries at Ljubostinja and Vojlovica, and deportation with the Serbian Patriarch to the Dachau concentration camp in 1944 — the facts of which are partly documented and partly, and heatedly, disputed.

This section pins what can be established about the darkest period of Nikolai’s life and flags precisely where the sources diverge. The bare facts — that he was arrested by the German occupation authorities, held under guard at Ljubostinja and then Vojlovica, deported to Dachau in 1944 with Patriarch Gavrilo, and liberated by the Western Allies in 1945 — are secure. The conditions and status of the Dachau imprisonment (the “honorary prisoner” question) are genuinely contested, and that dispute bears directly on the controversy of Section 06.

Files

File	Description
arrest-and-vojlovica.md	The 1941 German occupation, the arrest, and the years of monastic confinement at Ljubostinja and Vojlovica
imprisonment-in-dachau.md	The 1944 deportation to Dachau; the documented facts; the disputed conditions and the “honorary prisoner” (Ehrenhäftling) question

See Also

• 06 — The Controversy — where the Dachau period, and the text written in it, become contested
• 02 — The Scholar-Bishop — the bishop the war made a prisoner