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Bishop Unveils Plaques Commemorating Catholic Clergy and Religious Who Died in Auschwitz
At the St. Maksymilian Center in the town of Harmęże near Oświęcim on May 28, Bishop Adam Śmigielski of Sosnowiec, Poland, unveiled six plaques commemorating 149 Roman Catholic priests and male religious exterminated by the Nazis in the Auschwitz camp during World War II.
Center spokesman Jan Szewek, a priest in the Franciscan order, noted that the unveiling took place on the 63rd anniversary of St. Maksymilian Kolbe’s imprisonment in Auschwitz.
The names of the religious are engraved on the plaques along with the abbreviations designating their orders. Members of 23 different male religious bodies perished in Auschwitz. The plaques also contain the names of diocesan priests who died there.
The unveiling followed the saying of mass attended by clergy from the Polish provinces of Silesia and Malopolska, Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum staff, the blood donors whose patron saint is Maksymilian Kolbe, and members of the Harmęźe Franciscan community.
The names of the victims were established on the basis of the extant portions of the death records kept by the camp registry office, and other camp records and scholarly studies.
Father Szewek noted that the names appear on the plaques in the order in which the victims perished in the camp. He said that additions could be made to the list as new information comes to light.
One of the religious who died as a martyr in Auschwitz was the Franciscan Maksymilian Maria Kolbe (no. 16670). In late July 1941, Kolbe offered to change places with Franciszek Gajownicz, a stranger who had been sentenced to death by starvation in reprisal for a prisoner escape. Kolbe, who was killed by lethal injection in the starvation bunker on August 14, 1941, was canonized in 1982.
After the unveiling, Franciscans from all over Poland took part in a ceremony marking the anniversary of Kolbe’s deportation to Auschwitz. They walked in a procession from the Arbeit macht frei gate to St. Maksymilian’s death cell, where they prayed for peace on earth and for the intention of the victims of the camp. More than a million people died there, mostly Polish and other European Jews, but also including non-Jewish Poles, Roma, and Soviet POWs.
The St. Maksymilian Center stands near the site of the Nazi Birkenau death camp on grounds that once made up the Aussenkomando Harmense and Komando Fischerei sub-camps, part of the Auschwitz complex.
