The Gates of Dachau Concentration Camp, Germany
On Wednesday 3rd June 2026 W. Bro Stan Marut PPrJGD SLGR gave a presentation to Temple of Athene Lodge No 9541 which met at Harrow Masonic Centre. W. Bro Stan was also Installed as Worshipful Master.
Stan’s talk centred around the oppression of Freemasons in Europe in the 20th Century. This not only included the Nazi regime in Germany but also extended to Spain, Italy and the former Soviet Union. Once Hitler came to power in 1933, he made his first moves against the masons in Germany. However, many men who were freemasons were in professional occupations which were vital to the State. Some left their Lodges to ensure that they were able to pursue their careers whilst others did not. Freemasonry was finally outlawed by the Nazis in 1935 and over a period freemasons were persecuted which included incarceration in Concentration Camps. This oppression was also manifest in the regimes of Franco, Mussolini and Lenin in the former Soviet Union and the talk also included a description of the persecution of freemasons in Vichy France by the organisation Milice Francaise which had close ties to the Gestapo and German authorities.
One sinister aspect of Nazi plans was the invasion of the United Kingdom in 1940. We are aware that the Luftwaffe was defeated and the invasion plans sidelined. But if the Nazis had won the Battle of Britain there was a secret list of organisations to be investigated and eradicated which included the freemasons in UGLE, the Grand Lodge of Scotland and also the Grand Lodge of Ireland. The secret list also included a complete list of Provincial Secretaries and the Provincial Grand Secretary of Middlesex, W. Bro Norman Moore, was included on that list.
A LODGE IN CAPTIVITY.
W Bro Stan then described a secret freemasons’ Lodge which held meetings under the nose of the Nazis in a German prison camp during 1943/1944. The story recounted is one which would resonate amongst freemasons worldwide regardless of Constitution. Wikipedia gives the following description of Esterwegen,” The Esterwegen concentration camp was an early Nazi concentration camp within a series of camps first established in the Emsland district of Germany. It was established in the summer of 1933 as a concentration camp for 2000 so-called political Schutzhäftlinge (protective custody prisoners) and was for a time the second largest concentration camp after Dachau. The camp was closed in summer of 1936. Thereafter, until 1945 it was used as a prison camp. Freemasons could be imprisoned, executed or simply made to disappear whilst in this camp. If you happened to be a resistance fighter and a Freemason your fate would have been sealed.
Bro Stan continued and described a special masonic event. In the Esterwegen camp there were some Belgian freemasons who had been incarcerated. For a brief moment in time, they formed a “Lodge”, Loge Liberté Chérie in the camp and were able to conduct a form of masonic meeting. There were seven of them at the outset of which one “Brother Luc Somerhausen”, a member of Loge Action et Solidarité, was the Deputy Grand Secretary of the Grand Orient of Belgium, Of course, there would not have been a Warrant, albeit they did write a Charter for the Lodge and on the 28th November 1943 held their first meeting and elected Officers of the Lodge. The WM was a Bro Paul Hanson, a member of Lodge Hirom, the Senior Warden was Bro Luc Somerhausen, Bro Franz Rochat, a member of Loge les Amisphilanthropes, as Secretary and Bro Dr Amedee Miclotte as Orator. At subsequent meetings within their camp accommodations, they discussed matters of philosophy and the future of Belgium after the war. The first initiate came in on the 20th February 1944 a Fernand Erauw. In the meantime, a Bro Jean Baptiste de Scrijver, a member of Loge La Liberte and former high ranking Cabinet Officer in the Belgium Ministry of Defence, arrived at the camp after being arrested for espionage and carrying weapons. Strange but true there were several catholic priests in the barrack where the Lodge met and they in taking turns would act as a Tyler and keep a look out for the camp guards. This is an amazing story and the memory of those who were incarcerated and subsequently lost their lives deserves to be preserved.
The Lodge came to an abrupt end when many of those involved, ten in number, were dispersed to other concentration camps and Esterwegen was closed in May 1944. There had been ten members during that brief moment in time when these freemasons came together in adversity. The story is ultimately a tragic one and many of those who formed the Lodge died before the end of the war under dire circumstances.
CLANDESTINE FREEMASONRY
W Bro Stan reported that he had come across a short book which had the title “Nazi Clandestine Freemasonry”. The author of the book is an Australian Freemason with a German background, Henning A. Kloverkorn. Needless to say, this intrigued him, and he bought it straight away. The existence of a “Nazi” freemasonry was perhaps a misnomer and meant to catch the eye. Nevertheless, there did exist for a time what we might call a form of freemasonry in the early 20th Century, 1912, with its own particular ethos which had an appeal to a narrow group of people and was intended as a competitive alternative to “British Freemasonry”. This Order was called Germanenordern or Thule Society. Kloverkorn was able to access much of the information about the ritual of the Thule Society/Germanordern from the secret archives of the Nazis in the German Historical Museum in Berlin and his revelation has been called a groundbreaking exposition of the secret initiation ritual of the Thule Society (Germanenorden), a pre-cursor of the National Socialist German Workers Party – Nationalsozialistiche Deutsche Arbeiter Partei. This is the author’s claim, but history books relating to the early 20th century politics mention the Thule Society, but Stan’s interest was in the ritual aspect. Important to say that there was absolutely no amity with UGLE and strictly there was nothing about the Thule Society that was in any way masonic in how freemasonry is understand and practiced today.
“The Thule Society (Thule-Gesellschaft), originally the Studiengruppe für Germanisches Altertum (‘Study Group for Germanic Antiquity’), was a German occultist and Völkisch group founded in Munich shortly after World War I, named after a mythical northern country in Greek legend. The society was notable chiefly as the organization that sponsored the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (DAP; German Workers’ Party), which was later reorganized by Adolf Hitler into the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP or Nazi Party). According to Hitler’s biographer Ian Kershaw, the organization’s “membership list … reads like a Who’s Who of early Nazi sympathizers and leading figures in Munich”, including Rudolf Hess (Deputy Fuhrer, Alfred Rosenberg (Head of the NSDAP Office of Foreign Affairs), Hans Frank (Governor of Auschwitz), This showed that the Germanenordern or Thule Society had an appeal to a so called intelligentsia. The critical thing is that this did not make reference to any Abrahamic theology and there was no Kings Solomon‘s Temple, nor Hiram King of Tyre nor Hiram Abif. Its ethos was entirely derived on the notions of tribalism, nationalism and endogamy; this being the practice of forming close relationships with others of the same ethnicity or caste. This in itself would not have been peculiar to this group. However, this organisation used masonic attributes, customs and even nomenclature, including the blindfolding of candidates. This also extended to knocks using a gavel, secret words and grips and also the forming of a chain used in some masonic degrees which we may be familiar with. The knocks given by the Thule “masons” are ..-
W Bro Stan the gave an illustration of the ritual used stating that this had been found in a secret archive after the war in Berlin. Shown below is an extract of the ritual of this sinister organisation:
W Bro Stan Marut concluded by stating that there was a lot more information available but already it was apparent that there was a sinister aspect to the ritual which later manifested itself into the horrors of the Third Reich. Also, there was nothing remotely masonic about these sentiments. Later this mind set would become evident in persecution, the sacking and closing of Lodges and interment in concentration camps of freemasons.
Could this happen again? Never say never and the signs are already there when freemasons who are policemen in the Metropolitan Police Force must declare their membership. The question is why? Not only that but with the hatred being expressed by some radical groups against Israel and Jewish people in this country it is a short step to an association of Jews and freemasons and what that might mean in terms of a radical perception of who and what we are.
