function

diocesan priest

creed

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

diocese / province

Lutsk‐Zhytomyr diocese (aeque principaliter)more on
www.catholic-hierarchy.org
[access: 2021.12.19]
Tiraspol diocesemore on
en.wikipedia.org
[access: 2014.11.14]
Włocławek i.e. Kalisz diocesemore on
pl.wikipedia.org
[access: 2019.10.13]
RC Military Ordinariate of Polandmore on
en.wikipedia.org
[access: 2014.12.20]

date and place
of death

24.11.1937

Tashkenttoday: Tashkent reg., Uzbekistan
more on
en.wikipedia.org
[access: 2023.11.24]

alt. dates and places
of death

1937 (after)

details of death

alt. details of death

cause of death

murder

perpetrators

Russians

sites and events

11.08.1937 Russian genocideClick to display the description, Great Purge 1937Click to display the description, Forced exileClick to display the description, Sankt Petersburg (Kresty)Click to display the description, ITL SLONClick to display the description, GulagClick to display the description, Moscow (Butyrki)Click to display the description, Kiev (Lyukyanivska)Click to display the description, Polish‐Russian war of 1919‐1921Click to display the description, Greater Poland UprisingClick to display the description

date and place
of birth

17.11.1880

Skokitoday: Skoki gm., Wągrowiec pov., Greater Poland voiv., Poland
more on
en.wikipedia.org
[access: 2021.07.18]

alt. dates and places
of birth

01.01.1886, 1873

Poznańtoday: Poznań city pov., Greater Poland voiv., Poland
more on
en.wikipedia.org
[access: 2021.07.18]

presbyter (holy orders)
ordination

1907

positions held

comments

others related
in death

SAWIŃSKIClick to display biography Joseph

sites and events
descriptions

11.08.1937 Russian genocide: On 11.08.1937 Russian leader Stalin decided and NKVD head, Nicholas Jeżow, signed a «Polish operation» executive order no 00485. 139,835 Poles living in Russia were thus sentenced summarily to death. According to the records of the „Memorial” International Association for Historical, Educational, Charitable and Defense of Human Rights (Rus. Международное историко‐просветительское, правозащитное и благотворительное общество „Мемориал”), specialising with historical research and promoting knowledge about the victims of Russian repressions — 111,091 were murdered. 28,744 were sentenced to deportation to concentration camps in Gulag. Altogether however more than 100,000 Poles were deported, mainly to Kazakhstan, Siberia, Kharkov and Dniepropetrovsk. According to some historians, the number of victims should be multiplied by at least two, because not only the named persons were murdered, but entire Polish families (the mere suspicion of Polish nationality was sufficient). Taking into account the fact that the given number does not include the genocide in eastern Russia (Siberia), the number of victims may be as high as 500,000 Poles. (more on: en.wikipedia.orgClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2016.03.14])

Great Purge 1937: „Great Terror” (also «Great Purge», also called „Yezhovshchyna” after the name of the then head of the NKVD) — a Russian state action of political terror, planned and directed against millions of innocent victims — national minorities, wealthier peasants (kulaks), people considered opponents political, army officers, the greatest intensity of which took place from 09.1936 to 08.1938. It reached its peak starting in the summer of 1937, when Art. 58‐14 of the Penal Code about „counter‐revolutionary sabotage” was passed , which became the basis for the „legalization” of murders, and on 02.07.1937 when the highest authorities of Russia, under the leadership of Joseph Stalin, issued a decree on the initiation of action against the kulaks. Next a number of executive orders of the NKVD followed, including No. 00439 of 25.07.1937, starting the liquidation of 25,000‐42,000 Germans living in Russia (mainly the so‐called Volga Germans); No. 00447 of 30.07.1937, beginning the liquidation of „anti‐Russian elements”, and No. 00485[2] of 11.08.1937, ordering the murder of 139,835 people of Polish nationality (the latter was the largest operation of this type — encompassed 12.5% of all those murdered during the «Great Purge», while Poles constituted 0.4% of the population). In the summer of 1937 Polish Catholic priests held in Solovetsky Islands, Anzer Island and ITL BelbaltLag were locked in prison cells (some in Sankt Petersburg). Next in a few kangaroo, murderous Russian trials (on 09.10.1937, 25.11.1937, among others) run by so‐called «NKVD Troika» all were sentenced to death. They were subsequently executed by a single shot to the back of the head. The murders took place either in Sankt Petersburg prison or directly in places of mass murder, e.g. Sandarmokh or Levashov Wilderness, where their bodies were dumped into the ditches. Other priests were arrested in the places they still ministered in and next murdered in local NKVD headquarters (e.g. in Minsk in Belarus), after equally genocidal trials run by aforementioned «NKVD Troika» kangaroo courts.

Forced exile: One of the standard Russian forms of repression. The prisoners were usually taken to a small village in the middle of nowhere — somewhere in Siberia, in far north or far east — dropped out of the train carriage or a cart, left out without means of subsistence or place to live. (more on: en.wikipedia.orgClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2014.12.20])

Sankt Petersburg (Kresty): Russian prison in Sankt Petersburg where many Polish priests were kept captive. Many of them were also murdered there. (more on: en.wikipedia.orgClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2014.12.20])

ITL SLON: Russian Rus. Исправи́тельно‐Трудово́й Ла́герь (Eng. Corrective Labor Camp) ITL Rus. Солове́цкий ла́герь осо́бого назначе́ния Ла́герь (Eng. Solovetsky Special Purpose Camp) SLON — concentration and slave forced labor camp (within what was to become Gulag complex) — headquartered in Solovetsky Islands in Arkhangelsk Oblast. Founded on 13.10.1923 in a famous Orthodox monastery. In the 1920s, one of the first and largest concentration camps in Russia. The place of slave labor of prisoners — at forest felling, sawmills, peat extraction, fishing, loading work on the Murmansk Railway Main Line, in road construction, production of food and consumer goods, at the beginning of the construction of the White Sea ‐ Baltic canal, etc. The concept of the later system of Russian Gulag concentration camps prob. had its origins in the Solovetsky Islands camp — from there the idea spread to the camps in the area covered by the construction of the White Sea ‐ Baltic canal, i.e. ITL BelBaltLag, and from there further, to the entire territory of the Russian state. From the network of camps on the Solovetsky Islands — also called the Solovetsky Islands archipelago — prob. also comes the concept of the „Gulag Archipelago” created by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. It is estimated that tens to hundreds of thousands of prisoners passed through the Solovetsky Islands concentration camps. At its peak, c. 72,000 prisoners were held there: e.g. 14,810 (12.1927); 12,909 (03.1928); 65,000 (1929); 53,123 (01.01.1930); 63,000 (01.06.1930); 71,800 (01.01.1931); 15,130 (1932); 19,287 (1933) — c. 43,000 of whom were murdered, including the years 1937‐1938 when c. 9,500 prisoners were transported from the camp and murdered in several places of mass executions, including Sandarmokh, Krasny Bor and Lodeynoye Polye. Among them were many Catholic and Orthodox priests. After the National Socialist Party came to power in Germany in 1933, a German delegation visited the ITL SLON camp, to „inspect” Russian solutions and adopt them later in German concentration camps. It operated until 04.12.1933, with a break from 16.11.1931 to 01.01.1932, when it was part of and later became a subcamp of the ITL BelBaltLag camp. It operated as such until 1939 (from 1936 as a prison). (more on: old.memo.ruClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2024.04.08])

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])

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])

Kiev (Lyukyanivska): Russian political prison in Kiev, in the first half of 20th century run by the genocidal NKVD, informally referred to as prison No 1, formally as Investigative Prison No 13 (SIZO#13). It was founded in the early 19th century. In the 20th century, during the Soviet times, the prison church was transformed into another block of cells. During the reign of J. Stalin in Russia, more than 25,000 prisoners passed through it. (more on: en.wikipedia.orgClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2014.09.21])

Polish‐Russian war of 1919‐1921: War for independence of Poland and its borders. Poland regained independence in 1918 but had to fight for its borders with former imperial powers, in particular Russia. Russia planned to incite Bolshevik‐like revolutions in the Western Europe and thus invaded Poland. Russian invaders were defeated in 08.1920 in a battle called Warsaw battle („Vistula river miracle”, one of the 10 most important battles in history, according to some historians). Thanks to this victory Poland recaptured part of the lands lost during partitions of Poland in XVIII century, and Europe was saved from the genocidal Communism. (more on: en.wikipedia.orgClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2014.12.20])

Greater Poland Uprising: Military insurrection of Poles of former German Germ. Posen Provinz (Eng. Poznań province) launched against German Reich in 1918‐1919 — after the abdication on 09.11.1918 of the German Emperor William II Hohenzollern; after the armistice between the Allies and Germany signed on 11.1.1918 in the HQ wagon in Compiègne, the headquarters of Marshal of France Ferdinand Foch — which de facto meant the end of World War I — against the German Weimar Republic, established on the ruins of the German Empire, aiming to incorporate lands captured by Prussia during partitions of Poland in XVIII century into Poland. The Republic of Poland, reborn on 11.11.1918, initially formally included only the so‐called Germ. Königreich Polen (Eng. Kingdom of Poland), i.e. the territory that had been under Russian rule until 1915 and then under the control of Central States (Germany and Austria–Hungary), but did not include the Prussian partition. Started on 27.12.1918 in Poznań and ended on 16.02.1919 with the armistice pact in Trier, forced by the victorious Entente states, which included provisions ordering Germany to cease operations against Poland and, importantly, recognizing the Polish insurgent Greater Poland Army as an allied armed force of the Entente. De facto it turned out to be a Polish victory, confirmed in the main peace treaty after World War I, the Treaty of Versailles of 28.06.1919, which came into force on 10.01.1920 and in which most of the lands of the Prussian partition were recognized as Polish. Many Polish priests took part in the Uprising, both as chaplains of the insurgents units and members and leaders of the Polish agencies and councils set up in the areas covered by the Uprising. In 1939 after German invasion of Poland and start of the World War II those priests were particularly persecuted by the Germans and majority of them were murdered. (more on: en.wikipedia.orgClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2016.08.14])

sources

personal:
biographies.library.nd.eduClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2014.12.20], mytashkent.uzClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2019.10.13], cathol.memo.ruClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2019.10.13], christking.infoClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2018.09.02], catholic.ruClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2019.10.13], ordynariat.wp.mil.plClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2024.12.13], www.academia.eduClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2024.03.15]
bibliographical:
„Fate of the Catholic clergy in USSR 1917‐1939. Martyrology”, Roman Dzwonkowski, SAC, ed. Science Society KUL, 2003, Lublin
„Parish priest of Lutsk–Żhytomyr 1801‐1920 and Kamyanets–Podilskyi 1869‐1919 dioceses”, Fr Waldemar Witold Żurek SDB, Lublin 2023