Wartime Rescue of Jews by the Polish Catholic Clergy
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The Treatment of the Polish Catholic ClergyAlready in the first months of the occupation, the Catholic Church in Poland, and especially its clergy in the western territories incorporated into the Reich, was subjected to systematic persecution on a scale unheard of in other countries that were to be occupied by the Germans. Elsewhere, the Germans did not interfere much in the functioning of Christian religions and the day-to-day affairs of the clergy. Reports from 1939 and 1940 provide vivid descriptions of the cruel treatment meted out to hundreds of members of the Polish clergy including bishops.6 Although these atrocities were often perpetrated in the open and witnessed by the population at large, including the Jews, there are no known reports of how the Jews reacted to the mistreatment of the Catholic clergy. Until the German invasion of the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, rabbis—although occasionally abused—were not sent to concentration camps or executed publicly the way that Polish Catholic priests were. Yet there is no record of any concern, let alone protest, on the part of rabbis regarding the treatment of Polish priests by the Germans. In the archdiocese of Gniezno:
The Metropolitan Chapter has been dispersed. The Vicar-General and Mgr. [Stanisław] Krzeszkiewicz remain in their houses. The others were ejected from their homes, and Canon [Aleksy] Brasse has been deported to Central Poland [the General Government]. … The archiespiscopal seminary of philosophy at Gniezno was taken over by the soldiers. A German general has taken the archiespiscopal palace as his quarters. The homes of the expelled Canons, as likewise the dwelling-places of the lower clergy of the Basilica, have been occupied by the Germans. … The Conventual Fathers of Gniezno were thrust out of their parish and convent, the latter being used as a place of detention for Jews. The principal parish church, that of the Holy Trinity, was profaned, the parish house invaded, and the entire belongings were stolen. The German authorities, especially the Gestapo, rage against the Catholic clergy, who live under a rule of terror, constantly harassed by provocations, with no possibility of recourse or legitimate defence. The following priests were shot by the Germans: Rev. Anthony [Antoni] Lewicki, rural dean and parish priest of Goscieszyn [Gościeszyn]. Rev. Michael [Michał] Rolski, rural dean and parish priest of Szczepanowo. Rev. Matthew Zablocki [Mateusz Zabłocki], rural dean and parish priest of Gniezno. Rev. Wenceslaus [Wacław] Janke, parish priest of Jaktorowo. Rev. Zeno Niziolkiewicz [Zenon Niziołkiewicz], parish priest of Slaboszewo [Słaboszewo]. Rev. John [Jan] Jakubowski, curate of Bydgoszcz. Rev. Casimir [Kazimierz] Nowicki, curate of Janowiec. Rev. Ladislaus [Władysław] Nowicki, curate of Szczepanowo. Rev. Peter [Piotr] Szarek, a Lazarist Father, curate of Bydgoszcz. Rev. [Stanisław] Wiorek, a Lazarist [Vincentian] Father, curate of Bydgoszcz.
Rev. Marian Skrzypczak, curate of Plonkowo [Płonkowo]. Due to forced labour: Rev. Joseph [Józef] Domeracki, rural dean and parish priest of Gromadno. Died in prison: Rev. Canon Boleslaus [Bolesław] Jaskowski, parish priest of Inowroclaw [Inowrocław]. Rev. Romoald Soltysinski [Romuald Sołtysiński], parish priest of Rzadkwin. Killed by a German bomb: Rev. Leo [Leon] Breczewski, parish priest of Sosnica [Sośnica].
At Bydgoszcz, in September [1939], about 5,000 men were imprisoned in a stable, in which there was not even room to sit on the ground. A corner of the stable had been designated as the place for the necessities of nature. The Canon Casimir Stepczynski [Kazimierz Stępczyński], rural dean and parish priest of the place, was obliged, in company with a Jew, to carry away in his hands the human excrement, a nauseating task, considering the great number of prisoners. The curate, Adam Musial [Musiał], who wished to take the place of the venerable priest, was brutally beaten with a rifle-butt. … From an authoritative source it is stated: “Between Bydgoszcz (Bromberg) and Gniezno the churches have been closed, with very few exceptions.” … This situation (in the total 261 parishes almost half are without any priest) is growing worse … Those churches which still have the ministrations of priests are permitted to be open only on Sunday, and then only from nine to eleven o’clock in the morning. … Sermons are allowed to be preached only in German … Church hymns in Polish have been forbidden. … The crucifixes were removed from the schools. No religious instruction is being imparted. It is forbidden to collect offerings in the churches for the purposes of worship. … In such conditions pious and religious associations are not functioning. … From the time of the entrance of the German troops into those regions, numerous crucifixes, busts, and statues of Our Lord, of the Blessed Virgin and of the Saints that adorned the streets were battered to the ground. … The oppression being exerted against the houses and apostolate of Religious houses has as its purpose and end their total extinction. … The Minorites were expelled from their new and large college at Jarocin. The same fate fell to the lot of the Congregation at the Holy Ghost at Bydgoszcz, to the novitiate of the Congregation of the Missionaries of the Holy Family at Górka Klasztorna, to the novitiate of the Pallottine Fathers of Suchary, to the novitiate of the Oblates of the Immaculate Conception of Markowice, and to the Mother-House along with the novitiate of the Society of Christ for Emigrants at Potulice. Much more serious were the losses suffered by the religious institutes of women. The Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul lost fourteen houses, among these hospitals, orphanages, asylums. The Congregation of the Sacred Heart witnessed the occupation of its new High School and College and Boarding-School at Polska Wies [Wieś]. The Sisters of St. Elizabeth [Grey Sisters] were expelled from nineteen houses. The Daughters of the Immaculata, whose mother-house is at Pleszew, were forced to close their house for aspirants to the congregation, their novitiate, and in addition lost seventeen other houses. Two houses were taken from the Congregation of St. Dominic of the Third Order, and likewise from the Daughters of the Mother of Sorrows. A repugnant scene took place at the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration of Bydgoszcz. The Gestapo invaded the papal cloister, and summoned the nuns to the chapel, where the Blessed Sacrament was exposed. One of the police ascended the pulpit and cried that the nuns were wasting their time praying, because “God does not exist, for if there were a God, we would not be here.” The nuns, with the exception of the Mother Superior, who was gravely ill, were conducted outside the cloister, and shut up for twenty-four hours in the cellars of the Passtelle (passport office). Meanwhile the Gestapo searched the convent, and one of the policemen carried to the Mother Superior, confined to bed in her cell, the ciborium that had been taken out of the tabernacle. He commanded her to consume the consecrated hosts, crying: Auffressen! (Eat them up.) The unfortunate nun carried out the command, but at one point asked for water, which was refused. With an effort the nun managed to consume all the sacred element, and thus save them from further profanation. The Church is in the hands of the Gestapo also with regard to its possessions. The funds of the archdiocesan Curia have been sequestrated. … Funds for the maintenance of the churches have begun to fail, and the priests are living solely on the charity of the faithful. If this state of affairs continues for any length of time, a complete spoliation of the Church will be the consequence …
Of the Metropolitan Chapter the Canons Rucinski [Franciszek Ruciński], [Henryk] Zborowski and [Kazimierz] Szreybrowski have been imprisoned. Mgr. Pradzynski [Józef Prądzyński], who is seriously ill, is under military guard in his home. … The Cathedral of Poznan [Poznań], which is at the same time a parish church for 14,000 souls, was closed by the police …The Vicar Forane and the pastors of the city, with the exception of a few from the suburbs, are in prison. A good number of the assistants, too, were deported, so that just about 25 per cent. Of the parish clergy of twenty-one parishes are at their posts. The Theological Seminary, which numbered 120 students in the four-year course, was closed by the German authorities in October [1939] and the buildings given over to a school for policemen. The clergy is subjected to the same treatment as the priests of the archdiocese of Gniezno. They are maltreated, arrested, held in prison or concentration camps, deported to Germany, expelled to Central Poland. At present about fifty are in prison and in concentration camps. The pastors Rev. John Jadrzyk [Jan Jądrzyk] of Lechlin, Rev. Anthony Kozlowicz [Antoni Kozłowicz], Rev. Adam Schmidt of Roznowo [Różnowo], and Rev. Anthony [Antoni] Rzadki, professor of religion at Srem [Śrem], have been shot. … The Polish Episcopate had made Poznan the national centre for organization and direction of religious activity and especially of the Catholic Action for the entire Republic. Unfortunately, all these centres of tremendous activity, charitable works, organizations, and publications, have been destroyed by German authorities. … Besides these organizations and publications of national scope, all the organizations and publications in Poznan belonging to the archdiocese of Gniezno and Poznan were suppressed. … The losses suffered by Religious Institutes are likewise very painful. … The Jesuits of Poznan are in prison and their church has been closed by the police. … The Mother-House of the Ursulines [of the Agonizing Heart of Jesus] of the lately deceased Mother Ledochowska [Urszula Ledóchowska] at Pniewy is in the hands of a German Treuhaenderin, who makes the Sisters work like servants. The Vincentian Sisters were removed from their large hospital of the Transfiguration in Poznan, lost four other important hospitals and about twenty of their prosperous centres of activity. The Sisters of St. Elisabeth (Grey Sisters) have lost about twenty houses … Other Religious Institutes, both those for men as well as those for women, are meeting with the same fate … Conditions in the diocese of Chełmno in Pomerania were even worse: The episcopal Curia at Pelplin was closed and its archives confiscated; the ecclesiastical court suffered the same fate. All the members of the Curia without exception were deported. The Cathedral Canons, with the exception of H.E. Mgr. [Konstanty] Dominik and Mgr. [Franciszek] Sawicki, were thrown into prison, and some were sent to forced labour. The others likewise had much to suffer. The head of the Chapter, Mgr. [Juliusz] Bartkowski, apostolic protonotary, despite his advanced age and precarious health, was forced to perform hard labour. The ancient Cathedral, a veritable jewel of Gothic art, was first closed and then made into a garage, and it is now proposed to turn it into a market-hall. … The bishop’s palace was entered and despoiled of all its treasures, works of art and furniture. The valuable library, containing about twenty thousand volumes, was pillaged. … Of the 650 priests devoted to the cure of souls in the schools and in the Catholic Action, only some twenty have been left. The others were imprisoned or deported, or forced to perform exhausting and humiliating labour, at which time some died of fatigue. … It is not known where the majority of the clergy are detained, as the German authorities keep it a secret. It seems likely, however, that a large number are imprisoned in the concentration camp at Gorna [Górna] Grupa, and the rest in that of Kazimierz Biskupi, or at Stuthof [Stutthof] near Danzig, if not in other concentration camps in Germany … It is stated that a large number of priests have been shot [this was later confirmed to be true—M.P.], but neither the number nor the details are as yet known, as the occupation authorities maintain an obstinate silence on the subject. In any case it seems certain that nine priests … have been executed. … Religious institutions have been ruthlessly suppressed. … All the crosses and sacred emblems by the roadsides have been destroyed. … It goes without saying that the Nazi aim is to dechristianize as rapidly as possible these countries which are attached to the Catholic faith, and the results are as follows: 95 per cent. Of the priests have been imprisoned, expelled, or humiliated before the eyes of the faithful. The Curia no longer exists; the Cathedral has been made into a garage … Hundreds of churches have been closed. The whole patrimony of the Church has been confiscated, and the most eminent Catholics executed. …
The terrorism to which the clergy and the 500 civilians interned in the concentration camp at Opava (Troppau) in the Sudenten were exposed during September and October, 1939, was particularly frightful. On their arrival they were received with a hail of blows from sticks. Priests were deliberately confined together with Jews in wooden huts, without chairs or tables. Their bedding consisted of rotten and verminous straw. The Germans forced the priests to take off their cassocks, and their breviaries and rosaries were taken from them. They were set to the most degrading labours. For any infraction of the regulations, even involuntary, the prisoners were beaten; sometimes, merely in order to terrorize them or perhaps from caprice, they were beaten until the blood ran. Many died, among them Fr. [Stanisław] Kukla [the pastor of Kończyce Wielkie] ... and it seems, also, Fr. Galuszka [Józef Gałuszka], curate of Jablonkow [Jabłonków or Jablunkov in Cieszyn Silesia], of whom no news has been received since it was learned that he was suffering harsh treatment in the camp in question. [Rev. Gałuszka was later transferred to Auschwitz but survived the war.] In the diocese of Włocławek: H.E. Mgr. [Michał] Kozal, suffragan bishop and Vicar-General, devoted himself most zealously to the service of the people of Wloclawek [Włocławek] during the hostilities. On the arrival of the Gestapo he was arrested and subject to painful examinations; and after two months passed in the prison at Wloclawek he was interned in the concentration camp at Lad [Ląd] … Of the forty-two clergy resident at Wloclawek, either as members of the Chapter, or attached to the Curia or the Catholic Action, or engaged in the cure of souls, only one sick canon and one young priest were left; the rest were imprisoned and sent to concentration camps. … The clergy are suffering the same fate as those of the other dioceses incorporated in the Reich. Both secular and regular priests are maltreated, injured, and beaten. Half of the clergy have been arrested. After weeks in various prisons where they suffered as has been described, these priests were collected, together with those of the contiguous dioceses, in three concentration camps: at Gorna [Górna] Grupa, at Kazimierz Biskupi, and at Lad. In the last camp Mgr. Kozal and about eighty priests are detained … At Kalisz Fr. Pawlowski [Roman Pawłowski], vicar of Chocz, was publicly shot. He was led to the place of execution barefoot and without his cassock. The police compelled the Jews to fasten him to the execution post, to unbind him after he had been shot, to kiss his feet, and to bury him in their ritual cemetery. In the diocese of Lublin, in the so-called General Government (Generalgouvernement, i.e. the central part of Poland administered by Germany), In the middle of October [1939], on the anniversary of the consecration of Bishop [Marian Leon] Fulman, when the local clergy was gathered in the bishop’s residence to give their pastor their good wishes, agents of the Gestapo made their way in and arrested the bishop, his suffragan, Bishop [Władysław] Goral, and all the assembled clergy … After some weeks’ detention in Lublin, Bishop Fulman and his companions were in November [1939] brought before a court-martial (Sondergericht), and at a secret hearing at which they had no defending lawyer were sentenced to death. The Governor-General exercised his prerogative of mercy by commuting the death sentence to one of imprisonment for life. After sentence Bishops Fulman and Goral and a number of other clerics were taken to Berlin, and thence to the [concentration] camp situated near Oranienburg … After their arrival their clerical dress was taken from them, their heads were shaved, and they were led under a shower-bath, where streams of cold, almost icy water were discharged upon them, after which, shivering with cold, they were filmed from all sides before the eyes of the warders and of Hitler youth. … Since October [1939] about 150 priests have been held in prison in the diocese of Lublin—that is to say, more than half the clergy—and many others have to live in hiding, among them Fr. Surdecki [Zygmunt Surdacki], the administrator of the diocese.
At Radom four priests were severely knocked about during their examination by the Gestapo, their teeth being broken and their jaws dislocated. The following question, among others, was put to them …: “Do you believe in God? If you do you are an idiot, and if you don’t you’re an impostor.” When the person questioned pointed out that the question itself was insulting, he was struck in the face. In Częstochowa, On … September 4th, [1939], the Germans drove into the space round the Cathedral of the Most Holy Family from seven to eight hundred men and women, Polish and Jewish. They were all made to stand with their hands up for two hours; and those who fainted or lowered their hands were beaten and kicked by the soldiers. Towards evening they were all driven into the Cathedral and shut up without food for two days and two nights. Dozens fainted. The Cathedral was shockingly befouled. Appeals to the German authorities were fruitless. … In the evening about 600 persons, including three priests, were arrested in their houses, taken in front of the municipal building, and threatened with death. By March 1941, it was reported that: some seven hundred Polish priests have been shot or have died in concentration camps, throughout the German-occupied area. Some 3,000 Polish priests are held in concentration camps … According to the New Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967), “Poland—The Church in Poland, 1939–1945,” volume 11, at pages 481–83: In all, 13 Polish bishops were exiled or arrested and put in concentration camps. Of these the following died: Auxiliary Bishop Leon Wetmański of Płock on May 10, 1941, and Archbishop Antoni Nowowiejski of Płock on June 20, 1941, in Soldau (Działdowo); Auxiliary Bishop Michał Kozal of Włocławek on Jan. 26, 1943, in Dachau; Auxiliary Bishop Władysław Goral of Lublin at the beginning of 1945 in a hospital bunker in Berlin. There were 3,647 priests, 389 clerics, 341 brothers, and 1,117 sisters put in concentration camps, in which 1,996 priests, 113 clerics, and 238 sisters perished … The diocesan clergy of the Polish Church, who at the beginning of World War II numbered 10,017, lost 25 per cent (2,647). The Dioceses of Włocławek (220, or 49.2 per cent), Gniezno (Gnesen, 137, or 48.8 per cent), and Chełmno (Kulm, 344, or 47.8 per cent) suffered a loss of almost half their clergy. The losses for the Dioceses of Łódź (132, or 36.8 per cent) and Poznań (Posen, 212, or 31.1 per cent) were also very heavy. Zenon Fijałkowski, Kościół katolicki na ziemiach polskich w latach okupacji hitlerowskiej (Warsaw: Książka i Wiedza, 1983), provides the following synopsis at page 375: During the Nazi occupation, the Catholic Church in Poland experienced enormous clerical and material losses. According to the latest research by W. Jacewicz and J. Woś, in the years 1939–1945, 2,801 members of the clergy lost their lives; they were either murdered during the occupation or killed in military manoeuvres. Among them were 6 bishops, 1,926 diocesan priests and clerics, 375 priests and clerics from monastic orders, 205 brothers, and 289 sisters. 599 diocesan priests and clerics were killed in executions, as well as 281 members of the monastic clergy (priests, brothers and sisters). Of the 1,345 members of the clergy murdered in death camps, 798 perished in Dachau, 167 in Auschwitz, 90 in Działdowo, 85 in Sachsenhausen, 71 in Gusen, 40 in Stutthof, and the rest in camps such as Buchenwald, Gross-Rosen, Mauthausen, Majdanek, Bojanowo, and others. The toll among the diocesan clergy and male religious orders in the so-called Wartheland were staggering. Of the approximately 2,100 priests in 1939, 133 were murdered inside that district, 1,523 were arrested, 1,092 were sent to concentration camps, 682 were murdered in concentration camps, and around 400 were deported to the General Government. In all, 72 percent of the clergy were imprisoned in Nazi camps and prisons, and 39 percent perished.7 A detailed, comprehensive listing of losses among the Polish Catholic clergy is found in Wiktor Jacewicz and Jan Woś, Martyrologium polskiego duchowieństwa rzymskokatolickiego pod okupacją hitlerowską w latach 1939–1945, 5 volumes (Warsaw: Akademia Teologii Katolickiej, 1977–1981) [afterwards Jacewicz and Woś, Martyrologium]. For more recent overviews of the fate of the Roman Catholic clergy in occupied Poland see Czesław Łuczak, Polska i Polacy w Drugiej wojnie światowej (Poznań: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu im. Adama Mickiewicza, 1993), at pages 489–506; and Jerzy Kloczowski, A History of Polish Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), at pages 297–308. Thus, according to the most recent research, losses among the Catholic clergy and religious, especially the diocesan clergy, under German occupation were proportionately higher than among the Christian population as a whole. Almost 2,800 out of approximately 18,000 Polish priests and male religious were killed, which represents almost 16 per cent of their total number. Some 4,000 of them (and an additional 400 clerics) were interned in concentration camps; thousands more suffered other forms of internment or repression. Of the almost 17,000 Polish nuns, more than 1,100 were imprisoned in camps and 289 were killed. Of the 38 bishops in Poland at the outbreak of the war, thirteen were exiled or arrested and sent to concentration camps (six of them were killed). In addition, some 240 Catholic priests and 30 clerics lost their lives at the hands of the Soviets, who occupied Eastern Poland from September 1939 until June 1941. Poles constituted the vast majority of the Christian clergy persecuted by the Nazis. Nowhere else in occupied Europe was the Church hierarchy under direct assault.8 Dachau was the principal camp employed to imprison clergy from all of Europe. Poles constituted 65 percent of the camp’s total clergy prisoners, and about 90 percent of the clergymen put to death.9 According to the latter source, 4,618 Christian clergymen were imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps, 2,796 of them in Dachau. Almost 95 percent of the clergymen in Dachau were Roman Catholics, and almost 65 percent were Poles. The 1,807 Polish clergymen interned in Dachau were comprised of 1,413 diocesan priests and 360 monks belonging to the Catholic faith, and 34 clergymen of other Christian faiths. Of the 947 clergymen put to death in Dachau, 866 were Poles (over 91 percent of those killed there). These consisted of 747 diocesan priests, 110 monks, and 9 clergymen of other faiths. Of all the Christian clergy in Dachau, Polish priests were undoubtedly the worst treated and were used as guinea pigs for medical experimentation such as hypothermia and infecting them with malaria.10 Moreover, the Polish Catholic clergy suffered significant losses at the hands of the Soviet Union, which invaded and occupied Eastern Poland from September 1939 until June 1941, and re-occupied and incorporated prewar eastern Polish territories in 1944. Approximately 250 priests and seminiarians were murdered, deported to the Gulag, or arrested during the first period of occupation, and several hundred were arrested and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment in Soviet camps between 1945 and 1951.11 It should be noted that the number of Roman Catholic clergy (of the Latin rite) in Poland was not large. On the eve of the Second World War, they counted some 18,600 priests, monks, and male religious and more than 20,000 female religious (nuns). Their numbers were considerably smaller than the ranks of the Catholic clergy in Belgium, and many times smaller than that of the Catholic clergy in France and Italy.12 By Western European standards, Polish nuns lived in poverty and had humble lodgings. Moreover, they had a host of problems to contend with such as the closure of many convents and the need to care for displaced Poles and war orphans. Unlike in Poland, the German authorities rarely interfered with the day-to-day activities of Christian clergy in most other occupied countries and, with few exceptions, the Christian clergy did not suffer mistreatment in those countries. This makes the wartime fate of the Polish Caholic clergy, as well as their rescue efforts, all the more striking. Unlike the Latin-rite Catholic clergy, the Eastern-rite Catholic or Uniate clergy in occupied Polish territories was virtually unhampered by the Germans.13 The rescue efforts on behalf of Jews carried out by the Polish Catholic clergy, especially by nuns, was widely known during and after the war, yet the Catholic clergy suffered no scorn or disrepute by Polish Catholics on this account.14 Yüklə 7,11 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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