Eduard Ossowski

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Eduard Ossowski SAC (born July 3, 1878 in Struga ; † January 14, 1944 in the Gestapo prison in Frankfurt ) was a Roman Catholic friar who died in custody during the National Socialist dictatorship.

Life

After completing elementary school, Eduard Ossowski worked on his parents' farm, did his military service and then worked as a builder in Duisburg . On March 19, 1902, he entered the Order of the Pallottines and made his first profession on October 9, 1904 in Limburg an der Lahn . In 1914 he was drafted into military service and remained a soldier until the end of the First World War . In the following two decades, Ossowski worked as a bricklayer in various Pallottine branches in Germany, but was then forced to switch to another field of activity due to an increasing rheumatic disease. That is why he had been doing auxiliary services in the kitchen of the Pallotine study house in Vallendar since 1938 .

Arrest and death

After the study house was closed by the National Socialists in the same year, Eduard Ossowski switched to the kitchen of the Pallottine mission house in Limburg. A branch of the Gestapo was housed in the same building complex and it was not long before Ossowski, who had contacted the French prisoners of war working in the neighboring auxiliary hospital and also supported them with secret food gifts, came under the spotlight of the security authorities. In doing so, his attitude of mind, described as simple but all the more open and honest, was his undoing. In a verbal confrontation with a Gestapo officer he was to the statement carried away "you and Hitler and his associates will burn beautiful in hell and must devils brush their tails!" . Thereupon he was arrested on December 13, 1942 for subversive attitudes and sentenced on September 17, 1943 by the special court to one year in prison for undermining military strength, despite recognition of his reduced mental health . Although he has been in custody for nine months, the special court only counted him three months of that time. According to the authorities, Eduard Ossowski died on January 14, 1944 in the Frankfurt Gestapo prison as a result of the flu. In fact, he was apparently simply starved to death. An eyewitness account after the end of the war even reported that Eduard Ossowski had been strangled by the Gestapo officers. Initially buried in Frankfurt, he was soon transferred to Limburg.

literature

  • Ulrich von Hehl : priest under Hitler's terror. A biographical and statistical survey . Paderborn: Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh 1996, 3rd edition, Vol. I, p. 844. ISBN 3-506-79839-1 .
  • Benedicta Maria Kempner : Priest before Hitler's tribunals . Rütten + Loening Verlag, Munich 1966, p. 316ff.
  • Helmut Moll (Ed.): Witnesses for Christ - The German Martyrology of the 20th Century , Paderborn-Munich-Vienna-Zurich 1999, Vol. II, p. 835f. ISBN 3-506-75778-4 .

swell

  1. ↑ Alexander Holzbach: Brother Eduard Ossowski . In: Helmut Moll (Ed.): Witnesses for Christ - The German Martyrology of the 20th Century , Vol. II, p. 836, cf. also: Benedicta Maria Kempner: Priest before Hitler's tribunals, p. 317.
  2. ↑ Alexander Holzbach: Brother Eduard Ossowski . In: Helmut Moll (Ed.): Witnesses for Christ - The German Martyrology of the 20th Century , Vol. II, p. 836.
personal data
SURNAME Ossowski, Eduard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Roman Catholic friar
DATE OF BIRTH July 3, 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH Struga
DATE OF DEATH January 14, 1944
Place of death Frankfurt