– Get out of here immediately – heard Rev. Stefan Wyszyński in autumn 1939 from his bishop. – And that’s an order you must carry out with the rigor of obedience. Wyszyński’s name had already been entered on German proscription lists, but bishop Kozal was still hoping he would obtain the occupier’s permission for the seminarians to return to Włocławek. But was the same as before: Włocławek became a “German city”, Kuyavia and Greater Poland as Warthegau – Reich District of Warta River – were incorporated into the III Reich.

Although it’s not about a bragging match about Polish suffering, casualties, destruction and displacement, the situation of Poles in the territories incorporated to the Reich was much more dramatic, not to say tragic, than in the General Governorate. Mass executions in these territories began almost immediately, in accordance with proscription lists. SIGN UP TO OUR PAGE

A surprisingly little-known example is Piaśnica in Pomerania, where the remains of several thousand Polish intellectuals, priests, teachers, social activists, doctors, judges, foresters, engineers, nuns, such as the Blessed Alicja Kotowska of Wejherowo, often of Kashubian origin, lie in graves deliberately unmarked by the Germans and still not fully identified. Their executions began already by the end of October 1939.

But let us return to Włocławek, to the autumn of 1939. A few days later, Bishop Michał Kozal was arrested with clergymen and seminarians. He died in the German concentration camp at Dachau in January 1943, killed by an injection of phenol.

After the war, his autumn coat, kept by his sister, was given to Stefan Wyszyński (his wartime vicissitudes under a pseudonym – as the Germans never gave up the hunt – are recounted in the film “Wyszyński – zemsta, czy przebaczenie?”). And it was in that very coat that he left Warsaw in 1953, arrested by the secret police for three years of what they called “internship”. On his return, during a meeting with priests having survived concentration camps in Kalisz, he said he was the only priest of his age, ordained in 1924 who hadn’t been arrested and incarcerated by the Germans. The only one! Now, he, as well as Bp Kozal are beatified, but that’s already another story.

During WW II the diocese of Wrocław lost over 50% of its clergy, the most of all Polish dioceses, a total of 225 priests, 8 seminarians and one suffragan bishop, Michał Kozal. 211 diocesan priests from the Wrocław diocese passed through the KL Dachau, of whom 144 lost their lives there.

You are humus

Years ago, on August 20, 1972, on the outer wall of the chapel of “The Mortal Fear of Jesus”, located in the KL Dachau Museum, Polish priests, former prisoners of this place with Abp Kazimierz Majdański and Bp Ignacy Jeż, placed a plaque with a four-language inscription, including in Polish: “Here, in Dachau, every third martyr was a Pole. Every second of the Polish priests imprisoned here made a sacrifice of life. Their holy memory is venerated by Polish priests – their inmates”.

To this day, it is the only plaque in Polish in this camp, which – however terrible it sounds – was the “model from Sevres” for the next German concentration camps, because it was the first to operate, exactly 90 years ago. The solutions used in it were replicated in other places of execution. Very quickly, it became the “main” camp for the clergy, although they were not the only ones who died there, because Saint Maximilian Maria Kolbe or numerous blessed from the list of 108 martyrs of World War II were murdered in the Auschwitz concentration camp, often shot or tortured. The Bishop of Płock Antoni Julian Nowowiejski, and the Suffragan Leon Wetmański, perished in the German KL Soldau in today’s Działdowo. The first was probably shot on May 28, 1941, the second in October of the same year after an epidemic of typhus.

As a result – because it is difficult to write “thanks to” in this case – the negotiations of the Vatican, in KL Dachau German priests had the right to celebrate mass in the camp chapel. Polish prisoner priests also had such privileges for a while, but when they refused to recognize their German nationality – and none of the more than a thousand priests standing on the roll-call square volunteered – they were deprived of all rights.

Representatives of 37 nationalities were imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp, including a substantial number of clergymen; among them 95% were Catholic priests. Poles were the largest group – 1777, followed by German over 400 and French – over 50. And only Poles were not allowed to celebrate the Holy Mass.

Of course, they tried to deal with it, celebrating it before waking up thanks to hosts smuggled into the camp or a bit of wine, in vessels secretly made of camp metal or even wood. There are moving – and shocking – testimonies of such a hidden priestly life, as well as beautiful stories about secret service for the sick or dying carried out by priests threatened with death.

Suffice it to say that among the surviving prisoners of KL Dachau, written memoirs were left by Cardinal Adam Kozłowiecki, SJ, Archbishop Ignacy Jeż (nominated cardinal on the day of his death, which took him away in Rome), Archbishop Kazimierz Majdański (additionally, a victim of cruel pseudo-medical experiments, which caused him to suffer for the rest of his life) or Rev. Marian Żelazek SVD, an outstanding missionary in India, called the father of lepers. Much more numerous, however, are those who died or were killed in KL Dachau, although it is not known to what extent by death from exhaustion and to what extent by killing.

Dr Anna Jagodzińska of the Institute of National Remembrance, an eminent researcher on the vicissitudes of priests in concentration camps, is a niece of Rev. Leon Stępniak, KL Dachau prisoner number 22036. Bishop Michał Kozal admitted him to the seminary in Włocławek, and the young priest witnessed his death in the camp.

Dr. Jagodzińska found camp documents showing the fate of priests so destroyed by monstrous work on the plantation (they were the driving force for carts, plows, harrows, for the roller compacting the avenues) that they were directed to the so-called block of invalids, from where they were transported for “treatment”, i.e. to death, often inflicted on the bus by fumes, from which they suffocated, and to which they boarded intoxicated with some drugs. This is how they died, among others Rev. Franciszek Drzewiecki, camp number 22666 and Rev. Edward Detkens, number 27931 – today the patron saint of the capital parish in Bielański Forest, known for its great pastoral activities.

Dr Anna Jagodzińska often says that Rev. Leon Stępniak was until the end of his life – he died in 2013 at the age of 100 – the “custodian of memory” of former prisoners. In 2015, the researcher, faithful to her uncle’s spiritual testament, led the shocking conference “KL Dachau – the German concentration camp as a place of martyrdom of the Polish clergy (1939-1945)”, organized by the Institute of National Remembrance. She recalled that after crossing the gate of the Dachau camp with the inscription “Arbeit macht frei”, Polish priests were told: “There is no exit from here. The only way out is the crematorium chimney” and that “a Jew is permitted to live a month, a Polish priest – two months”. Each of them had heard many times: “You are not animals, you are not even a thing, because a thing has its own value, a thing is saved and preserved. You are just a number, it can be torn out and changed at any time. You are humus [i.e. soil – trans. note]” – For the Germans, the Catholic Church was an or even the enemy. They still remembered from the time of the Prussian partition that it was the Church that prevented them from germanizing the Poles – said dr. Jagodzińska.

A miracle at Dachau Since 2002, on April 29, on the anniversary of the liberation of KL Dachau, the Church in our country has been celebrating the Day of the Martyrdom of the Polish Clergy. In 2015, a great pilgrimage of clergy went to Dachau. Archbishop Stanisław Gądecki, chairman of the Polish Episcopal Conference, said then that among the 2,794 clergymen of various Christian denominations, the largest group were Poles. Out of 1,780 Polish clergymen, 868 were murdered.

– It was the Priestly Golgotha of the West. A real school of martyrs – said the hierarch, recalling the term of Archbishop Kazimierz Majdański. He also reminded that during World War II, 2801 clergy from our country died (including 6 bishops, 1863 priests and 63 diocesan seminarians, 289 priests, 86 seminarians as well 205 friars and 289 nuns, which constituted 28 percent of the Polish clergy at that time. – There is no knowledge in the Polish collective consciousness that it was the Polish clergy that suffered the greatest percentage losses among all “professional” groups in the country during World War II – said Archbishop Gądecki.

KL Dachau was liberated relatively late and, according to the prisoners, by a miracle. The prisoners had already been sentenced to death, and in addition there were piles of 7,500 corpses in the camp. Prisoners reiterated the news that in connection with Heinrich Himmler’s order of April 14, 1945, the entire camp was to be destroyed and the prisoners murdered. Priests said prayers – a novena for the intercession of St. Joseph from the Miraculous Image in Kalisz, and on April 22 they vowed to make a pilgrimage to Kalisz in gratitude for the liberation they had been praying for. There was a rumor that on April 29 in the evening the camp was to be destroyed and the prisoners murdered.

And on Sunday, April 29, at 5:25 p.m., a small detachment of General George Patton’s 7th Army arrived at the camp.

Caution

In 1970, on the 25th anniversary of the liberation of the camp, priests who were former Dachau prisoners founded the Chapel of Gratitude and Martyrdom in the Kalisz sanctuary and established the Museum and Archives, where documents and objects from their camp years were collected. The last witnesses are no longer alive, but in the sanctuary of St. Joseph in Kalisz, their vows are still remembered.

– As every year, on April 29, we will gather in the Basilica of St. Joseph, to commemorate the extraordinary liberation of priests from the Dachau camp through the intercession of St. Joseph. We want to take up their commitment made by St. Joseph. We want to remember the martyred priests and ask the patron saint that the priests be ready to profess their faith bravely, just like their predecessors – Bishop of Kalisz Damian Bryl told the Polish Catholic Information Agency.

This year, the celebrations will be preceded by a two-day, third edition of the Congress of the 108 Blessed Martyrs of World War II, organized for the first time in the Diocese of Kalisz, after Gdańsk and Frombork – the organizer is the Pomorskie Stowarzyszenie Wspólna Europa [Pomeranian Association “Common Europe”] from Gdańsk.

Is the Congress of the 108 Blessed Martyrs of World War II the right forum to raise the issue of commemorating all Poles at the KL Dachau Museum with a plaque in Polish, like those commemorating the martyrdom of representatives of other nations in five languages? Efforts have been made for years, but strangely enough, the International Dachau Committee does not have “ the time” to deal with it – although apparently the management of the KL Dachau Museum would not mind such a plaque. The matter is too serious to be reduced to a simple question: “what is this about again?”. Will some kind of diplomatic “banging the table with one’s fist” be sufficient, or is a different kind of pressure needed? Perhaps the International Auschwitz Committee should intervene, since other activities are ignored?

Last year, the case of an entry in the guest book by prof. Piotr Gliński, who was denied the possibility of such an entry by the management of the KL Dachau Museum – and yet, it has appeared. The Polish minister wrote on April 29, 2022:

“The experience of KL Dachau was to be a warning to all of us that the atrocities committed here by the Germans would never be repeated. It is especially painful today, when bombs are exploding again in Europe and the Russian aggressor is killing defenseless civilians in Ukraine”.

And that’s precisely what it’s all about: that the experience of KL Dachau or KL Auschwitz-Birkenau and other memorial sites were and are to be a warning to us all. If such places are not a warning, then what will be? And with whose consent?

– Barbara Sulek-Kowalska
– Translated by Dominik Szczęsny-Kostanecki

TVP WEEKLY. Editorial team and jornalists