function

diocesan priest

creed

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

diocese / province

Katowice diocesemore on
en.wikipedia.org
[access: 2013.05.19]
RC Military Ordinariate of Polandmore on
en.wikipedia.org
[access: 2014.12.20]

honorary titles

War Order of Virtuti Militari — Silver (5th Class)more on
en.wikipedia.org
[access: 2019.10.13]
September Campaign Crossmore on
pl.wikipedia.org
[access: 2023.11.24]

date and place
of death

04.1940

Kharkivtoday: Kharkiv urban hrom., Kharkiv rai., Kharkiv obl., Ukraine
more on
en.wikipedia.org
[access: 2022.08.05]

alt. dates and places
of death

05.1940

details of death

prisoner camp's numbers

364 (KLW StarobilskClick to display the description)

cause of death

mass murder

perpetrators

Russians

sites and events

Kharkiv (NKWD murders 1940)Click to display the description, «Katyn genocide 1940»Click to display the description, KLW StarobilskClick to display the description, Moscow (Butyrki)Click to display the description, Ribbentrop‐MolotovClick to display the description, Pius XI's encyclicalsClick to display the description

date and place
of birth

05.08.1905

Borsigwerktoday: part of Biskupice district of Zabrze, Zabrze city pov., Silesia voiv., Poland
more on
en.wikipedia.org
[access: 2021.04.02]

alt. dates and places
of birth

Biskupicetoday: district of Zabrze, Zabrze city pov., Silesia voiv., Poland
more on
en.wikipedia.org
[access: 2021.04.02]

presbyter (holy orders)
ordination

22.06.1930

positions held

others related
in death

CZEMERAJDAClick to display biography Joseph, DROZDOWICZClick to display biography Ignatius, NIWAClick to display biography Andrew, PLEWIKClick to display biography Vladislav, SWIRTUNClick to display biography Alfred, TCHÓRZEWSKIClick to display biography Vladislav, TYBOROWSKIClick to display biography Stanislav

sites and events
descriptions

Kharkiv (NKWD murders 1940): On 05.04‐12.05.1940 Russians executed in Kharkiv c. 3,739 Polish prisoners of war (POW) kept in Starobilsk concentration camp. The murders were committed in the NKVD District Directorate HQ, at 3 Dzerzhinsky Sq. Convoys of prisoners were transported by rail to the Kharkov railway station, and from there by car to the NKVD headquarters. The victims' hands were tied behind their backs with a rope and at night they were taken to a windowless room in the basement. There, they were murdered with a shot in the neck from a 7.62 mm Nagant revolver. Immediately afterwards, the bodies were taken away in trucks and buried in mass graves near Kharkov, 1.5 km from the village of Piatykhatky. The murders were part of an organized Russian genocidal operation against Polish prisoners of war, bearing all the hallmarks of genocide, known as the «Katyn genocide». (more on: en.wikipedia.orgClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2014.09.21])

«Katyn genocide 1940»: On 05.03.1940, the Russian Commie‐Nazi authorities — the Politburo of the Russian Communist Party — made a formal decision to exterminate tens of thousands of Polish intelligentsia and military personnel held in Russian camps as a consequence of the German‐Russian Ribbentrop‐Molotov Agreement, the invasion of Poland and the annexation of half of Poland in 09.1939, and the beginning of World War II. The implementing act was order No. 00350 of the head of the NKVD, Mr Lavrentyi Beria, on the „discharge of NKVD prisons” in Ukraine and Belarus. On 03.03.1959, Alexander Shelepin, head of the Russian KGB, described it in a handwritten note: „Since 1940, the Committee for State Security under the Council of Ministers of Russia, has been keeping records and other materials relating to the prisoners of war and interned officers, gendarmes, policemen, etc., people from former bourgeois Poland shot that year. In total, based on the decision of the special troika of the NKVD of the USSR, 21,857 people were shot, of whom: 4,421 people in the Katyn Forest (Smolensk Oblast), 3,820 people from the Starobelsk camp near Kharkov, 6,311 people from the Ostashkov camp (Kalinin Oblast), and 7,305 people in other camps and prisons in Western Ukraine and Western Belarus. The entire operation of liquidation of the above–mentioned was carried out on the basis of the Resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU of 05.03.1940”. The operation — the murders were committed, among others, in Katyn, Kharkov, Tver, Bykovnia and Kuropaty — was coordinated centrally from the NKVD headquarters in Moscow. This is evidenced by the so‐called deportation lists of subsequent groups of Polish prisoners (usually about 100 people) from NKVD camps sent to places of execution, prepared and distributed a few days before the executions from Moscow. It is also evidenced by the earlier deportations of Polish priests from the Kozelsk, Ostashkov and Starobilsk NKVD camps to NKVD prison in Moscow, or their isolation, just before Christmas on 25.12.1939, prob. in order to deprive Polish prisoners of spiritual care at that time — clearly actions controlled from the NKVD HQ in Moscow. There are indications — i.e. four so‐called „NKVD‐Gestapo Methodical Conferences” of 1939‐1940: in Brest on Bug, Przemyśl, Zakopane and Cracow — of close collaboration between Germans and Russians in realization of plans of total extermination of Polish nation, its elites in particular — decision that prob. was confirmed during meeting of socialist leaders of Germany: Mr Heinrich Himmler, and Russia: Mr Lavrentyi Beria, in another German leader, Mr Hermann Göring, hunting lodge in Rominty in Romincka Forest in East Prussia. (more on: en.wikipedia.orgClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2023.12.15])

KLW Starobilsk: Russian Rus. Концентрационный Лагерь для Военнопленных (Eng. POW Concentration Camp) KLW, run by genocidal Russian NKVD organization, for Poles arrested after the invasion in 1939, operating in 1939‐1940 in Starobilsk — on the premises of the „All Afflicted Joy” Icon of Our Lady Orthodox monastery, looted and closed by Russian Bolsheviks in 1923. In 04.1940 c. 3,800 were kept there (in 11.1939 — 11,262) — per captive there was c. 1.25 m2 of bunk space on which they had to sleep, eat and keep their belongings, initially the receiving only one meal a day. Subsequently— as the fulfillment of Russian government decision to exterminate Polish intelligentsia and prisoners of war camps (Polish holocaust) — were executed in Kharkiv. Among the victims were 8 generals, 55 colonels, 127 lieutenant colonels, 230 majors, c. 1,000 captains, and c. 2,450 lieutenants and second lieutenants of the Polish Army. Almost half were reserve officers: over 20 professors of universities, all without exception scientific staff of the Anti‐Gas Institute of the Polish Army and almost the entire staff of the Institute of Armament of the Polish Army, c. 400 doctors, several hundred lawyers, several hundred engineers, c. 100 teachers, c. 600 pilots , many social activists, several dozen writers and journalists. Used as a concentration camp for Poles later as well. (more on: pl.wikipedia.orgClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2012.11.23])

Moscow (Butyrki): Harsh transit and interrogation prison in Moscow — for political prisoners — where Russians held and murdered thousands of Poles. Founded prob. in XVII century. In XIX century many Polish insurgents (Polish uprisings of 1831 and 1863) were held there. During Communist regime a place of internment for political prisoners prior to a transfer to Russian slave labour complex Gulag. During the Great Purge c. 20,000 inmates were held there at any time (c. 170 in every cell). Thousands were murdered. (more on: en.wikipedia.orgClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2020.05.01])

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:
www.ordynariat.wp.mil.plClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2012.11.23], encyklo.plClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2016.05.30], episkopat.plClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2019.10.13], biographies.library.nd.eduClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2014.05.09]
bibliographical:
„Lexicon of Polish clergy repressed in USSR in 1939‐1988”, Roman Dzwonkowski, SAC, ed. Science Society KUL, 2003, Lublin
original images:
www.ogrodywspomnien.plClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2013.08.10], ordynariat.wp.mil.plClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2022.05.23], radio.lublin.plClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2022.05.23], ofm.krakow.plClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2022.05.23], www.katedrapolowa.plClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2014.01.16], ipn.gov.plClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2019.02.02]