From: Tomasz Kaczmarek - Flavio Peloso, LIGHTS IN THE DARKNESS. The 108 martyrs of the Church in Poland: 1939 – 1945, Michalineum, Warsaw, 1999.

BETWEEN HISTORY AND FAITH

Author: Flavio Peloso, general secretary and postulator of the Little Work of Divine Providence (Don Orione)



POLAND AFTER THE 1ST WORLD WAR

Poland came into being once more as a nation as a consequence of the first world war (1914-1918). She had seen the simultaneous collapse of the Russian Czarist empire and the central empires of Germany and Austria, among whom Poland herself had been partitioned for 123 years. The western frontiers had been established by the treaty of Versailles (1918), and the eastern ones by the treaty of Riga in 1921, following the victory of Marshal Pilsudski on the Vistula against the Russians under Lenin (whose army was led by Tuchaczewski).

In 1921 there was also a plebiscite in Upper Slesia which had the effect of increasing the Polish territory. In 1923 the Western Allies recognised the definitive boundaries.
On 17th March 1921 the First Constitution of the new Polish Republic, then comprising around thirty million inhabitants, had been voted in. 1924 was the year of monetary reform, carried out by the capable Minister of Finance, Wladyslaw Grabski. Finally, in May 1926 Marshal Pilsudski, whom we have already mentioned, assumed power, with Dmowski a prominent figure in the new Poland.
It was a historic occasion of patriotic fervour and religious and literary renewal, announcing hope after the great but troubled 19th century. In this context we cannot fail to mention the great writer and inspiration of the nation, Henryk Sienkiewicz. In 1920 the Catholic University of Lublin was founded.

At the same time as the rebirth of an independent Polish State there was also an encouraging religious revival. In 1925 a Concordat was made with the Holy See. A considerable amount of credit for this was clearly due to Pius XI, who had been Visitor and later Nuncio in Warsaw during the unhappy years of the war. Thanks to the Concordat the Church in Poland was able to develop freely. Eminent figures of the Polish Episcopate were Mgr. Bilczewski, the Latin Rite Archbishop of Leopolis (Lvóv), Mgr. Teodorowicz, the Armenian Rite Archbishop of the same city, the Salesian Cardinal Hlond, Primate of Poland, and Archbishop Sapieha of Cracow.

In the twenties and thirties the Church developed a widespread catechistic activity in the parishes and schools. Social and charitable schemes multiplied for the benefit of the vast numbers of poor people. Catholic Action surged forward in all the dioceses, involving the laity in both social and religious matters. During these two decades there was a notable and rapid development of religious Orders in Poland, especially in the regions that formerly belonged to the Austrian Empire where 40% of Religious were. In 1937 males in religious orders numbered 5765, of whom 2052 were seminarians. There were 16000 nuns.

A typical feature of the Church in Poland, one which became more soundly based at this time, was the strong link between Polish Catholicism and the patriotic cause. For more than a hundred years when the nation was split up, the Catholic Church constituted a strong focal point of the Polish identity and traditions, to the extent that the term “Polish” was considered the equivalent of “Catholic”. “Deo et Patriae” (for God and our Homeland) – the motto engraved on the façade of the Catholic University of Lublin – were the essential values of every good Pole. The ideology and planning of the Nazis were well aware of this fact, since, as we know, they were to act violently against the Polish Nation and the Catholic Church. The military invasion went along side by side with religious persecution.

Over this state of optimistic social and ecclesial development, however, the dark, menacing shadow of Nazism began to loom from nearby Germany in the thirties.



1st SEPTEMBER 1939: THE CHURCH CALLED TO MARTYRDOM

The 1st of September 1939 arrived. This was a date that marked the world’s history, a date that every Pole knows more than any other. On that day the German troops unleashed a planned and violent attack on the Polish people by invading their territory. Another terrible, tortured chapter in civil and religious history was beginning. After a few days, in that September of 1939, Pius XII, in an audience with the Poles resident in Rome, observed that the Polish people “had, in the course of the centuries, sometimes for a long time, sometimes for less, lost their land, their possessions and their independence, but never their faith.” The fact now was that a new page of martyrdom for the faith had been turned.

The tragic events of the second world war (1939-1945) are well-known. Hitler’s Germany attacked Poland. The military strength and the unprecedented atrocities perpetrated by the German divisions caused panic and alarm, obliging the population to flee in search of shelter. The roads thus became blocked with refugees, making it difficult for the Polish army to move in its attempts at defence. In a few days the Polish state was written off the map, occupied as it was in the west by Germany and in the east by the Soviet Union, under the pretext of opposition to the German Reich.

From the very beginning the German occupation included a clear, planned conflict with the Church. It was conducted without mercy, having her destruction as its aim. The Decree of the Reichstatthalter (Governor) and Gauleiter Arthur Greiser, dated 14th March 1940 and containing the famous “13 points” against the Church, was a “finely sharpened knife to destroy Christianity… It was no longer a question of the ‘separation of Church and State’, but rather of the elimination of the Church.” (1) Historical reconstruction has since documented the type of religious persecution of the repression carried out by Hitler’s Nazism, first of all in Germany and then extended, with even more radical determination, to the occupied countries. (2)

There followed some noteworthy round-ups and arrests from the ranks of the clergy, the religious and the Catholic laity of prominence in society. Jan Domagala observed that the basis for the arrests, deportations and elimination of the clergy and Polish Catholic intelligentsia was solely “the intention to turn conquered Poland into a German province as soon as possible. The occupying power destroyed principally the Polish clergy of Warthegau and Pomerania.” (3) Bishops, priests, religious, seminarians, sisters and lay Christians were arrested, not on any political or racial pretext as happened for other classes of people, but solely because they belonged to the Polish Catholic Church. “Certainly, the reason for the arrests,” states Mgr. W. Sarnik, who was interned for five years in the camp at Dachau, “was not anti-German behaviour, nor was it deeds or statements along those lines. The aim was to annihilate the clergy. The Germans informed us that there would be persecution to the point of annihilation: “You will go up in smoke!” (4)

The Apostolic Nuncio in Poland, Filippo Cortesi, was obliged to flee. Cardinal August Hlond, the Primate, was not allowed to return to his Homeland. There were subsequently four large arrest operations of bishops and priests, who were then deported to concentration camps. Around 1300 churches were closed, as were the major seminaries, the Catholic schools and many religious houses. Religious instruction was prohibited. (5)
The Apostolic Administrator for German Catholics, Fr. Hilarius Breitinger, informed Pope Pius XII that “in many meetings with political leaders, persons of authority in the State reported secret indications that the aim of German policy was to eradicate all confessional ties in the German Reich and to create a Reich that was free of Christianity.” (6)

On the situation concerning the religious persecution of the Third Reich in Poland we have full information from Cardinal Maglione, the Secretary of State, in a document of 18th February 1941, addressed to the Nuncios. It reports, among other things: “His Eminence the Cardinal Archbishop of Gniezno and Poznan, and the Bishops of Chelmno and Wloclawek have been denied permission to return to their sees; the Auxiliary in Wloclawek (Kozal) has been interned in a convent. A great number of priests, both secular and regular, have been imprisoned and deported to concentration camps. Many of these have died there; dozens of others have been murdered.
There are at present around 1200 ecclesiastics who are interned (for the most part coming from these regions). When the Holy See intervened on their part for their liberation and emigration to neutral countries the response given was negative. All that was given was a promise to bring them all together to the camp at Dachau where they would be allowed to hear Holy Mass (which only a few would be allowed to celebrate). Many non priests have had to emigrate to the General Government territory. Very many parishes are therefore without clergy. In December 1940 in the Archdiocese of Gniezno, for example, 171 out of 253 parishes had no clergy. In the Archdiocese of Poznan, 120 out of 371 were revealed last October…” (7)



IN THE PROCESSION OF MARTYRS

It is important that we continue to reflect on the second world war as well as on its unbelievable and tragic results. To keep alive the memory of what happened is not only a historic requirement but also a moral one. John Paul II, while celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the world conflict, warned: “We must not forget! There is no future without remembrance. There is no peace without remembrance!” (8)

A long time ago the Church, in her wisdom, set out the criteria for recognising the conditions required for true martyrdom. (9) In Poland, with the memory of the years of Nazi persecution against the Catholic Church – to which we must add the harsh Communist totalitarianism that followed – the memory was preserved of deeds and of people who were conspicuous for the sacrificial and religious character of their deaths. Mementoes and accounts of heroic witness to faith and charity have been gathered together. Processes have been formally undertaken in order to recognise the “martyrdom” of some of these.
When we read the abundant documentation of the processes for the beatification of the different ecclesiastics and witnesses to the faith who died in the concentration camps under Nazism, we see a clear justification of the statement made in May 1945, by Cardinal Emmanuel Suhard, when he publicly spoke of these heroic prisoners: “Those who encountered death in Dachau are true martyrs; those who survived are confessors.” (10)

In Dachau alone 2794 priests and religious of 21 nationalities were imprisoned. Of these 1773 were Poles. Out of the 1034 ecclesiastics who met their deaths there, 868 were Poles! (11) 31 Italian priests, deported after 1943, were also recorded at Dachau. The cause for beatification has been introduced for two of them: Padre Giuseppe Girotti, a Dominican from Turin, and Don Antonio Seghezzi, the secretary of the Bergamo Catholic Action group.
In Dachau, with unbelievable historical accuracy, what St. Paul said, both of his own “martyrdom” for Christ and of the “martyrdom” of the first Christians, came true: “For your sake we are being killed all day long” (Rom 8. 36). To seek other kinds of explanations would be to deny the facts. So many priests and religious in the prison camps had the sentence of death stamped on them, precisely because of their faith and their sacred ministry. Also to be remembered are the humiliating ways and repressive actions by which, in Dachau and in other camps, they were treated and eliminated: “…as though sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world” (1Cor 4. 9): “For while we live we, are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh” (2Cor 4. 11).
In this book we have briefly commemorated the 108 martyrs whom Pope John Paul II beatified in Warsaw on 13th June 1999. Of these, 46 died in the Dachau camp, 14 in Auschwitz and 16 in other concentration camps.

The significance of the exterminations at Dachau, as well as of those in other Nazi concentration camps (and not just the Nazi ones) can certainly not be reduced to political or patriotic levels, however noble these may be. It was something much higher than that. From the Christian viewpoint, especially for many of the deaths, it was a case of true martyrdom. In the civil domain, the many who died in these camps have been glorified and their memory has been upheld as a symbol of freedom and teaching for the whole world. The Church, on the other hand, has not been slow in examining the events in the search for sufficient factors to confer upon many of the victims the glorious crown of martyrdom. We bring to mind Maximilian Kolbe, Titus Brandsma and Edith Stein, the standard-bearers of a heroic company of witnesses to Christ, all of whom died in the camps.

In Dachau, for example, the date of 21st September 1941 remained a memorable one. This was the day of the “Roll-call of truth”, the unanimous refusal of the Polish priests to take up the proposition put to them by the Vice-Commandant of the camp: “If you put your names on the list of German nationality you will receive special treatment. Think about it carefully, then give your name and surname to the clerk and you will then be called to the registry in order to sign the document.” No-one out of the thousand and more priests and seminarians who were present responded to the triple invitation made both in German and in Polish. They all knew of the severe consequences of that refusal. (12)

There was a certain hierarchy in the treatment of the prisoners in the camp. This involved small but very significant aspects concerning work and food, of utmost importance to survival. The hierarchy was as follows: first of all the German prisoners, then the Czechs, then the other nationalities of Western Europe, then the Poles, then the criminals and, at the end, the Polish priests. By the end of the war this resulted in 868 Polish ecclesiastics numbered among the dead in Dachau. (13)

We would also like to point out that the martyrs in these camps did not cut their lives short in just one heroic instant of suffering. They underwent a long, painful calvary made up of humiliations, insults and mistreatment which prepared the way for and often determined the final, total holocaust. This was a remarkable procession of Christians who very largely underwent the same stages of Christ’s passion. They freely and consciously offered up their lives which, as borne out by the facts, were wickedly taken from them. “I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No-one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.” (Jn 10. 17-18). (14)

On the religious persecution carried out against Catholics, whether clergy, religious or lay people as such, and not for other reasons or pretexts, there is almost total silence in the historical relating of the events relative to Nazism and the second world war. Evidence, documents and comments were compared, for the first time in Italy, at the Conference entitled “Religious in the Dachau camp” (Turin 14.2.1997), organised both by the National Association of former Political Deportees in the Nazi camps and by the University of Turin. (15)



THE MARTYRS, A HERITAGE FOR THE THIRD MILLENNIUM

The 20th Century has been one of great developments and marvellous achievements. Mankind has crossed new thresholds of knowledge and technology. The 20th Century, however, has also been the century of terrible wars, more destructive than any before. Massacres and genocide have in some ways marked every decade leading up to the year 2000.
Euphoria and heartbreak are feelings that accompany the memories and plans of men and women of the third millennium. The Church prefers simply and realistically to invite us to hope. Hope is linked to faith in the provident love of God and in man’s capacity to understand and to love. This hope, during the 20th century, has been realised above all by the martyrs. And it is the voice of the martyrs – those of the shedding of blood as well as those of the daily martyrdom of charity – who call us to walk towards the future along the road of love, of respect for mankind and of solidarity.

John Paul II has given the stamp of martyrdom to the Jubilee of the Year 2000 and to the crossing of the threshold of the new Millennium. He has put forward numerous blessed and holy martyrs for the devotion of the faithful and for the admiration of the whole world. He has invited the local Churches to foster the memory of their own martyrs, including those that are considered “minor” ones merely because there has been no official veneration of them. These latter still form a leaven of faith and civilisation.
In the Jubilee document, “Incarnationis Mysterium”, John Paul II writes: “An on-going sign of the truth of Christian love, but one which is particularly eloquent today, is the memory of the martyrs. The martyr, especially nowadays, is a sign of that greater love which is the quintessence of all other values.” Martyrdom is the best apology for the faith and for the civilisation of love inaugurated by “Redemptor Hominis”. “Martyrdom is the eloquent proof of the truth of the faith, giving a human aspect even to the most violent of deaths and manifesting its beauty even in the most terrible persecutions.”

The 20th century was as much a century of martyrs as the previous ones were. The Pope is not afraid of openly proclaiming this: there has been too much sorrow in this century, too much suffering and too many victims of Nazism, Communism, insensitive and violent Liberalism and racial and tribal warfare. The martyrs are the witnesses to the world’s great suffering. “People of every social class have suffered for their faith, paying in blood for their faithfulness to Christ and to the Church, or courageously facing interminable years of imprisonment and deprivations of all kinds, because they would not yield to an ideology that had turned into a regime of ruthless dictatorship.”

There must be no more martyrs through man’s mistreatment of man! The martyrs are our heritage as well as being an appeal to men and women of the third millennium to build a juster, freer, more humane world, one that is closer to God.



NOTES
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1. R.A GRAHAM. Il piano straordinario di Hitler per distruggere la Chiesa in La Civiltà Cattolica 1995, pp. 548-549.

2. Cf. R.T. GRAHAM, o.c. pp. 544-552.

3. Cf. his Ci, Którzy Przeszli przez Dachau, Warsaw 1957, pp. 51-60.

4. Positio super martyrio of the 108 martyrs of the Polish Church, Rome 1997, p. 695.

5. Cf. A. MARTINI, Poland 1939: the first stage of a cruel war, in La Civiltà Cattolica (1960), p. 353371; Appeals from Poland to the Holy See during the Second World War, in La Civiltà Cattolica (1962), pp. 3-14; The silences and words of Pius XII for Poland during the Second World War, in La Civiltà Cattolica (1962), pp. 237-249.

6. From a letter of 28.7.1942 quoted by R.A. GRAHAM, o.c. p. 551.

7. In Positio M. Kozal, Chap. VI, pp. 114-115.

8. In L’Osservatore Romano, 13.6.1995, p. 1.

9. “Martyrdom is a voluntary suffering or enduring of death because of Faith in Christ, or because of another act of virtue related to God,” Benedict XIV teaches in his Canons. “Martyrdom is not the punishment but the cause,” was the teaching of St. Augustine. In order to speak of martyrdom, certain fundamental elements must be present: in the persecutor, the hatred of the faith and of any activities relating to it; in the martyr, the proclamation of the faith or the accomplishment of deeds required by it. Cf. Benedict XIV, Canons, L. III, Chap. XI, No. 1.

10. Positio M. Kozal, V test., p. 202.

11. For these data we refer to E. WEILER, The clergy in Dachau, Modling, 1971, p. 45 and to The Dachau Concentration Camp, Brussels, pp. 60-61.

12. Cfr. F. KORSZYŃSKI, A Polish Bishop in Dachau, Morcelliana, Brescia 1963, pp. 50-51. While the Catholic priests of other nationalities were relatively respected and many survived, the Polish and German ones were assigned to the more burdensome tasks and the great majority of them died.

13. Cf. W. JACEWICZ – J. WOŚ, Martyrologium polskiego duchowieństwa rzymskokatolickiego pod okupacją hitlerowską w latach 1939-1945, Vol. I, Warsaw 1977, pp. 34-46.

14. Cf. F. PELOSO, We will offer up our lives as Poles for God, for the Church and for our Homeland in L’Osservatore Romano, 13.9.1998. These were the last words of Don Franciszek Drzewiecki, one of the 108 Polish martyrs beatified on 13th June 1999.

15. Cf. Regional Council of Piedmont – ANED, The Religious in the prison camps, Minutes of the Conference, 14th February 1997, Franco Angeli Publishing, Milan, 1999.

16. Peloso F. - Borowiec J., Francesco Drzewiecki. N. 22666: un sacerdote nel lager, Borla editore, 1999, Roma.


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