Jakob Gapp was born on 26 July 1897 in
Wattens as the seventh child to Martin Gapp and Antonia Wach; he received his
baptism on 27 July in the local parish church of Saint Lawrence. His niece was Marianne Oberauer. He received a basic education in his hometown and in 1910 entered the high school that the
Order of Friars Minor ran at Hall. He served as a soldier on the Italian front from May 1915 until 1916 when he was wounded during a battle; he received the Silver Medal of Courage Second Class as a result of his actions on the battlefield. On 4 November 1918 he became a
prisoner of war in
Riva del Garda and was later released from his internment on 18 August 1919, but became a prisoner of war due to a miscommunication on the ceasefire agreement that was to commence 5 November but never did. Gapp later entered the
Marianists at Greisinghof on 13 August 1920 for a formation program and began his
novitiate on 26 September before being assigned to
Graz as a teacher and
sacristan from 1921 until 1925. He joined that order after learning about them from a relative. He made his profession in
Antony in
France on 27 August 1925. He began his studies for the priesthood in September 1925 at
Fribourg in
Switzerland and was
ordained a priest by Bishop Marius Besson at the Saint Nicholas Cathedral in Fribourg on 5 April 1930. The new priest served as a teacher and chaplain at several Marianist schools until 1938. He often gave up his own heating coal to the poor and collected food and other necessities for them. He preached against the errors of
Nazism and how it was incompatible with fundamental Christian ethics; he called it "irreconcilable with the Catholic faith". Gapp was forced to flee Graz in March 1938 when German troops entered into Austria. Gapp's superiors sent him to
Tyrol in September 1938 and served as an assistant pastor at Breitenwang-Reutte until October 1938 when the
Gestapo ordered him not to teach religion. He refused to wear a
swastika badge and to greet people with the "
Heil Hitler" out of conscience, and once in public rebuked a fellow teacher who told students to "hate and kill Czechs and Jews". Gapp also taught his students that love for all people irrespective of race or religion was crucial and taught that people ought to be worshipping
God and not
Adolf Hitler; this got him suspended. On 11 December 1938 he gave a sermon in which he defended
Pope Pius XI from Nazi smears and directed the faithful to read Christian literature and not that which the Nazis propagated; one such document he directed others to and spoke about was
Mit brennender Sorge that Pius XI issued in 1937. In January 1939 he was advised to flee Austria, and travelled to
Bordeaux in France where he worked as both a chaplain and librarian. In May 1939 he headed for
Spain and served at Marianist communities in
Valencia as well as
Cádiz and
San Sebastian. While in Valencia in 1942 he went to the British consulate hoping to gain a visa to go to
England but this attempt failed. He settled for reading British newspapers like
The Tablet in order to find uncensored news that would tell him the truth about
World War II, and he learned of the
Holocaust genocide. But Gapp was never free from the Nazis. The Gestapo followed his movements and in 1942 devised a plot to draw Gapp out from Spain into their arms along the French border. He received word of two Jewish males who fled from Berlin and were at the French border desiring his assistance after learning of him. Gapp further learned these two were brothers who wanted baptism, and so he left Spain to retrieve them. The three went on a picnic close to the border where he found that the two were not Jews but disguised Nazis who abducted him and arrested him in
Hendaye on 9 November 1942; he was then sent to Berlin for incarceration. It was decided that he would not be sent to the
Dachau concentration camp because Gapp was seen to be dangerous to the extent where he needed special surveillance. His resolve while being interrogated prompted
Heinrich Himmler to review all interrogation transcripts and even comment on his steadfast dedication to Catholicism. Himmler said if the Nazis had one Gapp dedicated to the cause as the priest was to the faith the Nazis would have won the war at that stage. On 2 July 1943 he was condemned to death for speaking out against the
Third Reich in a two-hour court session and was remanded pending his formal execution – the judgment was condemning: "He will forever be without honor". The burial of his remains was also denied during those proceedings for the Nazis feared that he would be venerated and his grave site would become the site of rebellion and silent demonstration. In the afternoon on 13 August 1943 at 1:00 pm he was advised that he would be executed that evening, so in preparation he wrote two farewell letters. He was beheaded at 7:08 pm and his remains were used for research at the Anatomical-Biological Institute at the
Berlin college. In 1996 the death sentence against him was lifted in a Berlin court on a posthumous level. His surviving remains were moved to
Innsbruck in 2002. ==Beatification==