function

diocesan priest

creed

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

diocese / province

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

date and place
of death

04.1940

(Russia territory)today: Russia
more on
en.wikipedia.org
[access: 2022.08.05]

alt. dates and places
of death

1940 (after)

details of death

alt. details of death

cause of death

mass murder

perpetrators

Russians

date and place
of birth

07.01.1906

Piotrowotoday: Czerwin gm., Ostrołęka pov., Masovia voiv., Poland
more on
en.wikipedia.org
[access: 2021.12.18]

presbyter (holy orders)
ordination

19.01.1930 (Lutsktoday: Lutsk city rai., Volyn, Ukraine
more on
en.wikipedia.org
[access: 2021.09.17])

positions held

others related
in death

BĄCZKOWSKIClick to display biography Thaddeus, MATZNERClick to display biography Stanislav Clement, TELEŻYŃSKIClick to display biography Michael, NIEIZWIESTNYClick to display biography Anatol

murder sites
camp 
(+ prisoner no)

Katyn (NKWD murders 1940): From 03.04.1940 till 12.05.1940 Russians in a planned genocide executed in Katyń c. 4,400 Polish POWs kept in Kozielsk concentration camp. The victims were brought by train through Smolensk to the Gnezdowo station in convoys, in groups of 50 to 344 people. From the station to the crime scene, in the so‑called the Kozye Hory area —NKVD recreation center — the victims were transported in a prison bus (known as „chornyi voron”, i.e. black crow). At the site the younger and stronger had military coats put over their heads and their hands were tied behind their backs with a Russian‑made hemp rope, after which they were all killed at short distance with a shot from a 7.65 mm Walther pistol, usually one to the back of the head. Some victims were pierced with a square Russian bayonet. A number of the victims were prob. murdered in the basements of the so‑called internal prison of the NKVD Regional Directorate in Smolensk, where the victims were placed in a sewer manhole, their heads were placed on the bank, and then they were shot in the back of the head. The murdered were buried in eight pits ‑ mass graves. The victims included, among others: Rear Admiral Xavier Czernicki, Generals Bronislav Bohatyrewicz, Henry Minkiewicz and Mechislav Smorawiński, the Chief Orthodox Chaplain of the Polish Army, Lieutenant Colonel Simon Fedorońko, the Chief Rabbi of the Polish Army, Major Baruch Steinberg, 9 Roman Catholic priests, one Greek Catholic and one Evangelical priest, as well as one woman — a pilot Second Lieutenant Janine Lewandowska. 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: pl.wikipedia.orgClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2012.11.23], en.wikipedia.orgClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2014.09.21])

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])

Tver (NKWD murders 1940): On 04.04‑22.05.1940 the Russians executed in Tver c. 6,314 Polish prisoners of war (POW) kept in Ostaszkov concentration camp. The prisoners were brought — Tver is c. 190 km from Ostashkov — to the NKVD HQ building (now Tver Medical Institute at Sovetskaya Str., formerly classical gymnasium) identified one by one in a basement room known as the „Lenin’s room”, handcuffed, taken to another room cellar with a door covered with felt, and then murdered by a shot from a German Walther P38 pistol into the back of the head. The bodies where next dumped into mass graves in ditches in the Miednoje forest, in the NKVD summer resort, and covered with sand by an excavator. 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: pl.wikipedia.orgClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2012.11.23], en.wikipedia.orgClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2014.05.09])

«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. The entire action — 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])

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])

Lutsk: Prison run in 1939‑1941 by the Russians. After German attack in 06.1941 Russians murdered there approx. 2,000 prisoners. Again used by the Russians after 1944. (more on: pl.wikipedia.orgClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2017.03.11])

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.duszki.plClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2012.11.23], biographies.library.nd.eduClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2014.05.09], episkopat.plClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2019.10.13], www.nowymyszyniec.plClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2014.05.09]
bibliographical:
„Register of Latin rite Lviv metropolis clergy’s losses in 1939‑45”, Józef Krętosz, Maria Pawłowiczowa, editors, Opole, 2005
„Biographical lexicon of Lviv Roman Catholic Metropoly clergy victims of the II World War 1939‑1945”, Mary Pawłowiczowa (ed.), Fr Joseph Krętosz (ed.), Holy Cross Publishing, Opole, 2007
„Lexicon of Polish clergy repressed in USSR in 1939‑1988”, Roman Dzwonkowski, SAC, ed. Science Society KUL, 2003, Lublin
original images:
episkopat.plClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2019.10.13], radio.lublin.plClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2022.05.23], ofm.krakow.plClick to attempt to display webpage
[access: 2022.05.23]