function

diocesan priest

creed

Latin (Roman Catholic) Church RCmore on
en.wikipedia.org
[access: 2014.09.21]

diocese / province

Warmia diocesemore on
en.wikipedia.org
[access: 2018.09.02]

date and place
of death

15.06.1945

(Karelia rep. territory)today: Karelia rep., Russia
more on
en.wikipedia.org
[access: 2020.07.31]

details of death

cause of death

extermination

perpetrators

Russians

sites and events

Karelia (POW camps)Click to display the description, GulagClick to display the description, InsterburgClick to display the description, Deportation of Germans to Russia in 1945Click to display the description, Ribbentrop‐MolotovClick to display the description, Pius XI's encyclicalsClick to display the description

date and place
of birth

18.06.1891

Lidzbark Warmińskitoday: Lidzbark Warmiński gm., Lidzbark Warmiński pov., Warmia‐Masuria voiv., Poland
more on
en.wikipedia.org
[access: 2021.07.29]

presbyter (holy orders)
ordination

23.07.1922

positions held

others related
in death

VONBERGClick to display biography Joseph, WILLClick to display biography Hugh

sites and events
descriptions

Karelia (POW camps): In 1944 at the sites of former Finn concentration camps for Russian POW set up and run in 1941‐1944 (out of 24,000 POWs c. 4,000 perished) Russians organized a set of camps for POWs from the lands captured by the Russians army, among others from East Prussia. In 02.1946 c. 25,748 registered prisoners, mainly Germans, but also Hungarians, Rumanians and Finns, were held there. The camp centre was located in Petrozavodsk on Onega lake where in camp no 120 (and its 6 branches) c. 17,000 POWs were held. POWs slaved mainly at various construction sites. Petrozavodsk was also a HQ for another system of camps no 517/ In its Padozero sub‐camp, in tragic conditions, c. 1,001 women (including many underage) were housed. In Virandozero camp of White Sea shores c. 983 POWs were held (including c. 300 women). In 09.1945 the Padozero camp was dismantled and most of the prisoners were moved to camp no 120 in Petrozavodsk. From 1947 onwards the prisoners were being slowly released and returned to their home countries. Altogether c. ¼ of the POWs kept by Russians in Karelia stayed behind and perished. (more on: old.memo.ruClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2018.11.18])

Gulag: The acronym Gulag comes from the Rus. Главное управление исправительно‐трудовых лагерей и колоний (Eng. Main Board of Correctional Labor Camps). The network of Russian concentration camps for slave labor was formally established by the decision of the highest Russian authorities on 27.06.1929. Control was taken over by the OGPU, the predecessor of the genocidal NKVD (from 1934) and the MGB (from 1946). Individual gulags (camps) were often established in remote, sparsely populated areas, where industrial or transport facilities important for the Russian state were built. They were modeled on the first „great construction of communism”, the White Sea‐Baltic Canal (1931‐1932), and Naftali Frenkel, of Jewish origin, is considered the creator of the system of using forced slave labor within the Gulag. He went down in history as the author of the principle „We have to squeeze everything out of the prisoner in the first three months — then nothing is there for us”. He was to be the creator, according to Alexander Solzhenitsyn, of the so‐called „Boiler system”, i.e. the dependence of food rations on working out a certain percentage of the norm. The term ZEK — prisoner — i.e. Rus. заключенный‐каналоармец (Eng. canal soldier) — was coined in the ITL BelBaltLag managed by him, and was adopted to mean a prisoner in Russian slave labor camps. Up to 12 mln prisoners were held in Gulag camps at one time, i.e. c. 5% of Russia's population. In his book „The Gulag Archipelago”, Solzhenitsyn estimated that c. 60 mln people were killed in the Gulag until 1956. Formally dissolved on 20.01.1960. (more on: en.wikipedia.orgClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2024.04.08])

Insterburg: Russian transit camp, set up after capture on 21‐22.01.1945 of Insterburg by the Russians, for German population of East Prussia — on the site of the DL Insterburg camp, i.e. the German prisoner of war camp Germ. Durchgangslager der Luftwaffe (Eng. Air Force Transit Camp), managed by the German Luftwaffe Air Force, where the Germans held, among others, French and British — one of concentration centers of defeated Germans marked for slave work in Russia. In Insterburg (now: Chernyakhovsk) and in nearby Yurbork c. 60,000 people were held: men, women, girls and old. All were transported — in rail transfers lasting 4‐7 weeks, without hot food, proper sanitation — to Russians slave labour camps. Many perished before reaching destination… (more on: bazhum.muzhp.plClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2018.09.02])

Deportation of Germans to Russia in 1945: On 06.02.1945 Russian State Defence Committee issued an order to intern all Germans, mainly men, able to work from the German territories captured by Russian army and transport them into Russia — to slave labour camps in Donbas region in Ukraine, to industrial centers in Ural mountains, to Russian occupied Belarus, etc. — in order to rebuild destroyed by the war Russia. It was planned to use c. 500,000 Germans, 17‐50 years old, although in practice much older were also arrested. From Upper Silesia only c. 90,000 Germans and Poles were deported 20% of which returned after many years. Among the victims were members of Polish clandestine Home Army AK (part of Polish Clandestine State) fighting with Germans. Tens of thousands were deported from Warmia and Mazurian regions. (more on: en.wikipedia.orgClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2018.11.18])

Ribbentrop‐Molotov: Genocidal Russian‐German alliance pact between Russian leader Joseph Stalin and German leader Adolf Hitler signed on 23.08.1939 in Moscow by respective foreign ministers, Mr. Vyacheslav Molotov for Russia and Joachim von Ribbentrop for Germany. The pact sanctioned and was the direct cause of joint Russian and German invasion of Poland and the outbreak of the World War II in 09.1939. In a political sense, the pact was an attempt to restore the status quo ante before 1914, with one exception, namely the „commercial” exchange of the so‐called „Kingdom of Poland”, which in 1914 was part of the Russian Empire, fore Eastern Galicia (today's western Ukraine), in 1914 belonging to the Austro‐Hungarian Empire. Galicia, including Lviv, was to be taken over by the Russians, the „Kingdom of Poland” — under the name of the General Governorate — Germany. The resultant „war was one of the greatest calamities and dramas of humanity in history, for two atheistic and anti‐Christian ideologies — national and international socialism — rejected God and His fifth Decalogue commandment: Thou shall not kill!” (Abp Stanislav Gądecki, 01.09.2019). The decisions taken — backed up by the betrayal of the formal allies of Poland, France and Germany, which on 12.09.1939, at a joint conference in Abbeville, decided not to provide aid to attacked Poland and not to take military action against Germany (a clear breach of treaty obligations with Poland) — were on 28.09.1939 slightly altered and made more precise when a treaty on „German‐Russian boundaries and friendship” was agreed by the same murderous signatories. One of its findings was establishment of spheres of influence in Central and Eastern Europe and in consequence IV partition of Poland. In one of its secret annexes agreed, that: „the Signatories will not tolerate on its respective territories any Polish propaganda that affects the territory of the other Side. On their respective territories they will suppress all such propaganda and inform each other of the measures taken to accomplish it”. The agreements resulted in a series of meeting between two genocidal organization representing both sides — German Gestapo and Russian NKVD when coordination of efforts to exterminate Polish intelligentsia and Polish leading classes (in Germany called «Intelligenzaktion», in Russia took the form of Katyń massacres) where discussed. Resulted in deaths of hundreds of thousands of Polish intelligentsia, including thousands of priests presented here, and tens of millions of ordinary people,. The results of this Russian‐German pact lasted till 1989 and are still in evidence even today. (more on: en.wikipedia.orgClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2015.09.30])

Pius XI's encyclicals: Facing the creation of two totalitarian systems in Europe, which seemed to compete with each other, though there were more similarities than contradictions between them, Pope Pius XI issued in 03.1937 (within 5 days) two encyclicals. In the „Mit brennender Sorge” (Eng. „With Burning Concern”) published on 14.03.1938, condemned the national socialism prevailing in Germany. The Pope wrote: „Whoever, following the old Germanic‐pre‐Christian beliefs, puts various impersonal fate in the place of a personal God, denies the wisdom of God and Providence […], whoever exalts earthly values: race or nation, or state, or state system, representatives of state power or other fundamental values of human society, […] and makes them the highest standard of all values, including religious ones, and idolizes them, this one […] is far from true faith in God and from a worldview corresponding to such faith”. On 19.03.1937, published „Divini Redemptoris” (Eng. „Divine Redeemer”), in which criticized Russian communism, dialectical materialism and the class struggle theory. The Pope wrote: „Communism deprives man of freedom, and therefore the spiritual basis of all life norms. It deprives the human person of all his dignity and any moral support with which he could resist the onslaught of blind passions […] This is the new gospel that Bolshevik and godless communism preaches as a message of salvation and redemption of humanity”… Pius XI demanded that the established human law be subjected to the natural law of God , recommended the implementation of the ideal of a Christian state and society, and called on Catholics to resist. Two years later, National Socialist Germany and Communist Russia came together and started World War II. (more on: www.vatican.vaClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2023.05.28], www.vatican.vaClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2023.05.28])

sources

personal:
gross-kleeberg.deClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2013.05.19], files.bildarchiv-ostpreussen.deClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2018.11.18]
bibliographical:
„Lexicon of the clergy vicimised in prl in 1945‐1989”, collective work edited by Jerzy Myszor, Warsaw, 2002
original images:
www.bildarchiv-ostpreussen.deClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2018.11.18]