One of the foremost experts on KL Dachau, Sr Stephanie A. Hayward OCD, wrote in her book about Blessed Stephen Vincent Frelichowski: „Concentration camps in human history were something previously unseen in such a form and on such a scale — something that had not existed before. Humanity had no experience in dealing with such evil; it lacked even the vocabulary to describe what was happening there, and human imagination was insufficient to fully grasp such things”. Quoted one of the prisoner at KL Dachau and KL Buchenwald, the Austrian Fr Conrad Just OCist: „There is no atrocity that did not occur in one of the concentration camps”. And added: „It can be said without exaggeration that what took place in the German concentration camps was absolute evil in all its manifestations”.

The first Catholic clergy became prisoners of KL Dachau as early as 1938. They were Austrians imprisoned following the Germ. Anschluss (Eng. annexation), i.e. the forced annexation of the Austrian state into the German Reich. In 09.1939, immediately after the outbreak of World War II, Catholic clergy from the Czech lands became victims of KL Dachau; they were transported there as part of Germ. Aktion Albrecht I (Eng. Operation Albrecht I), i.e. a campaign of arrests targeting individuals deemed potentially dangerous in the dict. Germ. Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren (Eng. Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia), an administrative unit established by Germany on 16.03.1939, from the territories of Bohemia, Moravia, and Czech Silesia, occupied following the Munich Agreement of 30.09.1938 — and, in particular, Polish clergy.

Between 1939 and 1940, the Germans interned clergymen arrested in occupied Polish territories in numerous concentration camps, including KL Stutthof, KL Sachsenhausen, KL Buchenwald, KL Mauthausen–Gusen, KL Auschwitz. The Holy See intervened, demanding the release of the prisoners — among them several bishops — or their transfer to the German‐occupied and run quasi‐state called the Germ. General­gouvernement (Eng. General Governorate), i.e. GG, or even permission for them to emigrate to a neutral European country or Latin America. In 06.1940 — at the time of the defeat of France — the Germans rejected these proposals, which had been presented by the Apostolic Nuncio in Berlin, Abp Cesare Orsenigo; they justified their refusal by citing the opinion of the Germ. Generalgouverneur der besetzten Gebiete Polens (Eng. Governor–General of the occupied Polish territories), i.e. GG Governor, a Doctor, you bet!, of Law (the supervisor of his doctoral dissertation, „The Public Legal Entity: A Contribution to the Doctrine of the Characteristics of Public Legal Personality”, was the renowned public law professor of Jewish descent, Walter Jellinek), and a prominent German National Socialist figure — regarding the „anti‐German stance of the Vatican press and radio”. In 11.1940, the Germans made different decision — endorsed by another prominent German National Socialist figure, Reichsführer‐SS Heinrich Luitpold Himmler. The executive order was issued by the head of the Germ. Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Eng. Reich Main Security Office), i.e. RSHA, SS‐Obergruppenführer Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich. On 09.11.1940, in a letter from the Germ. Reichsministerium für die Kirchliche Angelegenheiten (Eng. Reich Ministry for Church Affairs) to Adolf Cardinal Bertram, the Archbishop of Wrocław, one of the paragraphs stated Germ. „Nach einer Entscheidung des Reichsführers SS und Chefs der Deutschen Polizei werden nunmehr sämtliche bisher in verschiedenen Konzentrationslagern untergebrachten Geistlichen im K.L. Dachau zusammengefaßt werden. Dort werden sie nur mit leichten Arbeiten beschäftigt. Auch wird ihnen Gelegenheit gegeben, täglich die Messe zu lesen oder zu besuchen” (Eng. „In accordance with the decision of the Reichsführer‐SS and Chief of the German Police, all clergy previously held in various concentration camps will now be gathered at the Dachau concentration camp. There, they will be assigned only light work. They will also be given the opportunity to celebrate or attend Holy Mass daily”). This measure was also to be applied to military chaplains, constituting a violation of the Hague Convention.

The decision resulted i.a. in the transfer — on 08.12.1940 — of c. 152 members of the clergy from the KL Mauthausen–Gusen concentration camp complex. Of these, 139 were definitively identified as Polish clergy. Fr Henry Malak, who arrived at the KL Dachau concentration camp a few days later from the KL Sachsenhausen camp, recalled: „The transports from Mauthausen and Gusen to Dachau presented a truly wretched sight. Our fellow priests from those camps were so terribly emaciated and ill that they looked more like shadows than human beings […] They were all priests, aged between 27 and their early forties. Looking at these hunched skeletons and gaunt faces — with sunken eyes gleaming with an unhealthy light — it was hard to hold back tears. Seeing what months of labor in the quarries had done to these young men, who, not long ago, had been in the prime of health”. A transport of c. 527 clergymen — c. 500 among them were Poles — who had been held at the KL Sachsenhausen concentration camp, arrived at KL Dachau on 14.12.1940. A day earlier, on 12‐13.12.1940, 68 Polish clergymen were brought from the KL Auschwitz concentration camp. In KL Dachau, at the gate bearing the inscription Germ. „Arbeit macht frei” (Eng. „Work sets you free”), they were greeted by one of the deputies to the Germ. Lagerkommandant (Eng. camp commandant), the notorious SS‐Sturmbannführer Alexander Bernhard Hans Piorkowski, with:

„You are in Dachau; no one leaves this place […] This is not a sanatorium. The only way out of here is through the chimney or in a coffin”….

All the clergymen were housed in three adjacent barracks — Nos. 26, 28, and 30. A few months later, on 26.03.1941, these barracks were enclosed with barbed wire, creating a sector that went down in history as the Germ. Priesterblöcke (Eng. priests' barracks), thereby isolating the clergy from the rest of the prisoners. Earlier, on 21.01.1941, a chapel had been set up in room No. 1 of barrack No. 26, where a Polish priest, Fr Paul Prabucki, celebrated Mass for his fellow clergymen every morning. The clergy were exempted from the most arduous physical labor, provided with breviaries, and granted extra food rations — such as wine, beer, and cocoa — though they were required, by order of the SS‐man present, to consume these in a single gulp.

Yet in German plans the Polish clergy — and throughout the entire period of operation of KL Dachau, they constituted the majority, c. 1,780 out of 2,720, of the imprisoned clergy — were to be treated separately. As early as 25.09.1939, Arthur Greiser — who would soon become the Germ. Gauleiter (Eng. district leader) of the ruling National Socialist German Workers' Party NSDAP and the Germ. Reichsstatthalter (Eng.Reich Governor) of the Germ. Reichsgau Wartheland (Eng. Warta Country Reich District) — stated that „all religiosity is contrary to common sense and cannot be reconciled with the NSDAP program”. Seeking to make the province under his jurisdiction a Germ. „Mustergau” (Eng. model district), made one of the pillars of his policy the tenet: Germ. „Ohne Gott, ohne Religion, ohne Priesters und Sakramenten” (Eng. „without God, without religion, without priest and sacrament”). In 1940, the preparation of the practical assumptions of this policy was led by a German Evangelical theologian, Germ. Regierungsrat (Eng. Government Counselor) and Germ. Kirchenreferent (Eng. Church Referent), Wilhelm Dudzus. On 10.07.1940, prob. at a party meeting in Munich, barely 17 km from KL Dachau, he revealed the „13 Points”, which were to become the basis of German policy in the Germ. Reichsgau Wartheland. Point 1 read: „There are no churches in the national sense, but only religious groups in the sense of associations”, and Dudzus added that „Churches cease to be corporations under public law”. In point 2, he informed that „There are no relations with groups outside the Germ. Reichsgau, nor any ties of a legal, financial, or service nature with the Reich Church”. And explained: „The churches of the Germ. Reichsgau Wartheland are to be independent” and that „The union of the Catholic Church with the Vatican will be dissolved”. And in point 12, it informed that „All religious institutions and monastic associations are subject to dissolution because they are contrary to the German concept of decency and nationality policy”. These postulate were subsequently implemented step by step, culminating in the decree issued on 13.09.1941 by the Germ. Gauleiter Arthur Greiser Germ. „Verordnung des Reichsstatthalters im Wartheland über religiöse Vereinigungen und Religionsgesellschaften im Reichsgau Wartheland” (Eng. „Regulation of the Reich Governor in Wartheland regarding religious associations and religious unions in Reichsgau Wartheland”). § 1.1 stated: „In the Germ. Reichsgau Wartheland […] [the three Churches and] the "Roman Catholic Church of German Nationality in the Wartheland" exist as legal entities under private law. They replace the legal entities of the Evangelical and Roman Catholic Churches that existed on September 1, 1939, in the Wartheland”. De facto, this meant the delegalization of the Roman Catholic Church, retroactively to 01.09.1939, the date of the German invasion of Poland. At the same time, § 6.1 sanctioned a racial policy towards religious denominations: „[…] a German may be a member of a religious association or society exclusively of German nationality. Poles may not be members of a religious association or society of German nationality”.

Thus it was no coincidence, that a few days later, on 18.09.1941, SS‐Hauptsturmführer (from 30.01.1942 SS‐Sturmbannführer) Egon Zill, the Germ. Schutzhaftlagerführer (Eng. camp leader), i.e. Germ. Lagerführer, and deputy to Germ. Lagerkommandant Piorkowski for prisoner affairs, assembled the Polish clergy for roll call. All prob. hailed from occupied Polish territories directly incorporated into the Reich — specifically the Germ. Reichsgau Wartheland, the Germ. Provinz Oberschlesien (Eng. Province of Upper Silesia), and the Germ. Reichsgau Danzig–Westpreußen (Eng. Reich District of Gdańsk ‐ Zachodnie Prusy). Zill proposed that they sign the Germ. Deutsche Volksliste (Eng. German National List), i.e. DVL, effectively demanding the renounciation of their Polish nationality. The „reward” for doing so was to be a transfer to Barrack No. 26 — where German clergymen were held and which contained a chapel — as well as the retention of certain „privileges”. All of them refused — though some sources suggest that two signed but subsequently withdrew their consent. The following day, 19.09.1941, Barrack No. 26 was physically cordoned off with barbed wire, and Polish clergymen were forbidden from entering it, including the chapel; their breviaries and religious objects were confiscated, and they were prohibited from reciting the rosary, making the sign of the cross, praying, reading the Bible, or hearing confessions. Not only were food privileges revoked, but standard camp rations were also drastically reduced. Furthermore, the prisoners were forced to perform the most grueling physical labor — including work in the fields of the Germ. Kräutergarten Dachau (Germ. Dachau Herb Garden), known as Germ. Die Plantage (Eng. The Plantation). There, according to Wikipedia, the Germans conducted experiments aimed at creating a „German folk medicine consistent with the nationalist and natural–historical concepts of National Socialist ideology”. That same source, citing the recollections of a former prisoner — the Czech historian Stanislav Zámečník — notes that „working conditions were murderous. The terrain was exceptionally unfavorable: the damp, heavy peat soil was unsuitable for growing herbs. It had to be turned over, drained, and de‐acidified. In rainy weather, the prisoners sank into the mud; in summer, they stood in the scorching sun, toiling on ground as hard as concrete”. And adds, „The land could have been plowed by two horses in a few days. Instead, the soil was dug up by hand with shovels”. And quotes Zámečník: „No one will forget how the prisoners returned to the camps in the evenings. Behind the column of exhausted, staggering people, there were always ten or more wheelbarrows filled with corpses and the dying”.

The situation was further exacerbated by overcrowding in the „Polish” barracks, Nos. 28 and 30 — for on 29.10.1941, a transport of c. 530 Polish priests arrived at KL Dachau, many of them elderly, who had been arrested, following the aforementioned decree by Germ. Gauleiter Greiser, primarily in the Germ. Reichsgau Wartheland. Only c. 80‐82 of them would survive KL Dachau. This deterioration was also a consequence of a secret decree issued on 27.08.1941, by Germ. Reichsführer‐SS Himmler, which ordered that Germ. „sämtliche hetzerische Pfaffen… und ähnliches Gesindelgrundsätzlich auf längere Zeit einem Konzentrationslager zugeführt werden sollen” (Eng. „all agitator–shavelings… and similar rabble should, as a rule, be sent to a concentration camp for an extended period”), while noting that „the Dachau concentration camp has been designated as the collection camp for all clergy held in Germ. die Schutzhaft (Eng. protective custody) or slated for such detention within the territory of the Reich, including the annexed and incorporated eastern territories”.

The Polish Institute of National Remembrance IPN reported that „Polish priests felt the ban on entering the chapel and the inability to receive Holy Communion extremely keenly — all the more so because German priests, fearing the chapel might be closed, initially refused to provide them with consecrated Hosts. This caused them understandable distress. Soon however, German and Czech priests were found who began sharing Holy Communion with them. It was most often distributed in the morning while the beds in the barracks were being made. Many priests carried hidden particles of the Host to their workplaces, where they distributed them to prisoners who felt the need to receive the Eucharistic Christ. Father Adam Kozłowiecki — who would later become the Archbishop of Lusaka — noted in his memoirs: "I have a tiny Vaseline tin in which I receive seven consecrated Particles, each measuring no more than 7×5 mm. I carry this little box with me at all times; I consume one daily and, when necessary, administer them to others"”.

An indescribable hunger prevailed, making it impossible to think of anything other than a single goal: how to obtain a piece of bread. A prisoner's weight often did not exceed 40 kg. And in 1942, the Germans reduced starvation rations even further. One former prisoner recalled: „Hunger that lasted not just a day, a month, or a year, but two, three, four, or more years. Hunger caused non‐healing wounds, dysentery, heart and kidney disease, the need to urinate up to 17 times a night, and unquenchable thirst — yet the fluids one drank could kill […] Blood turned to water, leading to edema and dropsy […] During an inspection by a German doctor — I was in the infirmary at the time due to a broken arm — the doctor patted my swollen belly and said, Germ. "Gut für die Arbeit" (Eng. "good for work"). However, the Germ. Stubendienst (Eng. barrack orderly) […] declared that it was not obesity but edema reaching the heart. To prove it, he took a long needle and pierced my abdomen; fluid spurted a meter high from the opening, spraying those standing nearby. Without that procedure, I would have died within a day or two”.

The camp authorities' de facto exclusion of Poles from the ranks of the Roman Catholic clergy also entailed an intensification of the camp regime. A particularly stark example of this was the „Bloody Holy Week” of 1942; after a few hundred dollars were found on one of the Polish priests, the Germans imposed a collective punishment on all the clergy held in barracks Nos. 28 and 30. From 28.03.1942 (the eve of Palm Sunday) until 06.04.1942 (Easter Monday), between the hours of 6:00 a.m.

and 6:00 p.m., the priests were forced to perform exhausting physical exercises. Were made to carry out these drills at a run across the roll‐call square, which was covered in mud and puddles — all while a cold, drizzling rain fell and a freezing wind blew from the nearby Alps. Those who collapsed from exhaustion were beaten, kicked, and trampled into the mud. During this time, a special detachment — composed of young Luxembourgish police officers who had been imprisoned for refusing to obey the German occupation authorities — ransacked the barracks, throwing everything out into the mud and onto the camp thoroughfare. Once the „exercises” concluded, the utterly exhausted men were forced to immediately restore their barracks to „order”. Fr Malak, mentioned earlier, described it as follows:

„— Ten days of non‐stop physical exertion! — came the punitive decree.

It was not until Monday, April 6, that we were finally dismissed from the parade ground […] Averaging 50 kilometers a day — comprising marching, running, jumping, hitting the ground, and running again — we covered roughly five hundred kilometers over those ten days. This was the very same route as the later foot–based evacuation transports, during which a great many prisoners perished. No fewer died from our own ranks during those days”. Perhaps to heighten the effect, the Germans — at that very same time — chose not to intervene when German priests from Barrack No. 26 organized clandestine, internal „literary lectures”….

C. 1,500 Polish priests were driven to a state of extreme exhaustion. As a result, many were deemed unfit for work and transferred to Barrack No. 29 — known as the Germ. Invalidenblock (Eng. Invalid Barracks) — from where, starting in late 1941, prisoners were transported to an unknown destination under the pretext of being moved to a „sanatorium”. It soon became clear that they were being taken away to be killed. Although the first priest involved in such a Germ. Invalidentransport (Eng. invalid transport) — in 01.1942 — was a German priest, the overwhelming majority of victims among the clergy, i.e. c. 92.5%, where Poles. From 05.1942 — barely a month after „Bloody Holy Week” — hundreds of Polish priests were transported to the Germ. Tötungsanstalt (Eng. Killing/Euthanasia Center) TA Hartheim and murdered in the gas chamber there, as part of the continuation of the genocidal German program known as Germ. «Aktion T4» and its extension, Germ. «Aktion 14 f 13» (Eng. „Operation 14 f 13”).

The year 1942 was the most tragic in the history of KL Dachau. Yet, against the backdrop of this unspeakable cruelty and criminality — with the Germans murdering c. 656 Polish clergymen during that time — a series of events unfolded at the highest levels of the German leadership that led to unexpected changes. First, the all‐powerful Germ. Lagerkommandant Alex Piorkowski, was dismissed from his post in late summer 1942 for „corrupt practices” (the aforementioned Germ. Lagerführer, Egon Zill, had already been transferred out in 12.1941). More importantly, however — given the scale of hostilities in the East, which had begun on 22.06.1941, with the German attack on their erstwhile allies, the Russians — Reichsführer‐SS Heinrich Himmler on 31.01.1942 established the Germ. SS‐Wirtschafts‐ und Verwaltungshauptamt (Eng. SS Main Economic and Administrative Office), i.e. SS‐WVHA. The SS‐WVHA was headed by SS‐bergruppenführer Oswald Pohl. Directly subordinate were e.g. Germ. die Konzentrationslager (Eng. concentration camps) and Germ. die Vernichtungslager (Eng. extermination camps) — including KL Dachau — which, from 03.1942, were administered by its Germ. Amtsgruppe D (Eng. Office Group D), a division that included the Germ. Inspektion der Konzentrationslager (Eng. Inspectorate of Concentration Camps). As the English‐language Wikipedia states: „In 1942, the WVHA's main remit was to expand the SS's contribution to the war effort by using forced labor in armaments manufacture and construction projects. Slave labour at the camps was part of the effort to maximize economic utility”.

On 30.04.1942, Oswald Pohl issued an order to all commandants of the niem.

die Konzentrationslager: „The camp commandant bears sole responsibility for the utilization of available labor. This utilization must — in the full sense of the word — lead to the total exhaustion of the [prisoner's] strength, so as to achieve the highest possible productivity […] Working hours are subject to no limitations […] Any circumstances that might result in a reduction of working time (e.g., meals, roll calls) must therefore be limited to the absolute minimum, beyond which no further reduction is possible”. However, the clergy held in Barrack No. 26 were exempt from this order; just nine days earlier, on 21.04.1942, the head of the Germ. Amtsgruppe D, SS‐Brigadeführer Richard Glücks — who reported directly to Oswald Pohl — had issued a circular mandating that „the Reichsführer‐SS and Chief of German Police has ordered that Polish and Lithuanian Germ. Pfaffen (Eng. shovellings) work properly, meaning they may be assigned to all types of labor. German, Dutch, and Norwegian clergy, etc., are, however, to continue being employed exclusively in the medicinal herb gardens”. Ergo — to use modern terminology — two fundamental changes occurred in the German approach to the prisoners' slave labor. Primo: the slaves were still to be subjected to extermination through labor, yet the principle of "maintenance" was to be applied — meaning the incurrence of minimal costs of operating and maintaining human resources — as opposed to killing through labor without incurring any costs for keeping the individuals alive. Secundo: the work performed had to make sense from the perspective of German National Socialist objectives.

Paradoxically, those criminal orders saved the lives of many Polish clergymen — although the Germ. die Invalidentransport (Eng. invalid transports) to the TA Hartheim continued until 12.1942 (German clergymen had been exempted from the Germ. Invalidenblock as early as 13.08.1942, following a protest by the family of one condemned man); although in 07.1942, Claus Karl Schilling — a „distinguished” German scientist and employee of the renowned Germ. Robert Koch‐Institut (Eng. Robert Koch Institute), as well as a professor, naturally!, at the even more renowned Germ. Friedrich–Wilhelms–Universität (Eng. Friedrich Wilhelm University) in Berlin, now Germ. Humboldt–Universität (Eng. Humboldt University) — began medical experiments in KL Dachau involving malaria, using e.g. 120 Polish clergymen as „guinea pigs”. A fellow prisoner, Fr Henry Malak, put it this way in his recollections: „A different wind is beginning to blow in the camp. We do not understand much of it, but we know for certain that […] being assigned to privileged work details might save us from annihilation. Each of us — provided two conditions are met: possessing sufficient physical strength and some vocational skill — now has the chance to get into a viable work detail, where there is a roof over one’s head and a food allowance is provided, and where work is not merely mindless rushing about designed to torment. One after another, men return to the barracks with excitement on their faces and news on their lips:

— I've got a work detail!”.