Franciszek Kęsy

Franciszek Kęsy (born November 13, 1920 in Berlin , † August 24, 1942 in Dresden ) was a Polish resistance fighter from the circle of the Salesians of Don Bosco . During the German occupation of Poland, along with other young Poles, he was sentenced to death by the Nazi judiciary and executed in 1942. He is venerated as a martyr in the Roman Catholic Church .

Life

His parents' family belonged to the Polish part of the population of the Prussian province of Posen . Stanislaus and Anna Maria Kesy had married in Wronke in 1911 and soon after moved to Berlin, where their father had worked as a tram driver . During the First World War he was an artilleryman and last worked as a fitter . Franz was born the third of five children in Berlin-Wilmersdorf . Shortly after his baptism on January 23, 1921, which took place in Berlin, the family left the German Reich because the father had opted for Polish citizenship . From February 1921 they lived in Poznań , now Polish , where Stanisław Kęsy found work in the power station . Franciszek came into contact with the Salesians of Don Bosco, who ran a Christian leisure home for young people in the city, a so-called oratorio. He even intended to enter the Salesian novitiate and become a religious . In the oratorio he led a youth group and got to know his later fellow sufferers Czesław Jóźwiak , Edward Kaźmierski , Edward Klinik and Jarogniew Wojciechowski . The German invasion of Poland and the incorporation of Poznan into the German Reich marked a deep turning point in the lives of the boys. Franciszek Kęsy could not continue his church studies during the occupation and had to work in an industrial company. The oratory was closed and used by the German military . The friends continued to meet. War experiences and the experiences of the occupation challenged their patriotic spirit of resistance. It is possible that the group had contacts with the Polish student and high school student scene, which agreed to go underground for actions against the Germans, including the so-called "Military Organization of the Western Territories" ( Wojskowa Organizacja Ziem Zachodnich , WOZZ). After Edward Klinik was arrested at his place of work on September 21, 1940, his friends from the oratory, including Kęsy, were taken from their apartments by the Gestapo on the night of September 24, 1940 and initially taken to the infamous Fort VII in Posed . On November 16, 1940, they were transferred to a prison in Wronki . In April 1941 the group was transferred to Berlin and in May 1942 to Zwickau . There they were sentenced to death on July 31, 1942 for preparation for high treason and taken to Dresden the next day. The boys, along with other convicts from the Polish resistance, were accused of being members of the Polish national party SN . They are among the victims of the extremely harsh Germanization policy pursued by National Socialist Germany in the so-called Warthegau , which not infrequently also turned against church groups and intellectuals. The judgment of the Higher Regional Court in Poznan , for which the boys' Catholic convictions played no role, was issued with retroactive application of the so-called Polish Criminal Law Ordinance of December 4, 1941, which made particularly draconian punishments possible. It was carried out in the place of execution on Münchner Platz in Dresden. The prison chaplain, Father Franz Bänsch OMI, accompanied the group of eight young men sentenced to death with pastoral care to the scaffold . Kęsy and his companions were buried on August 28, 1942 in a mass grave in the Outer Catholic Cemetery in Dresden by a Franciscan priest .

Commemoration

Memorial at the New Catholic Cemetery in Dresden

The place of execution in Dresden became a memorial to the anti-fascist resistance in the GDR . Because of their ecclesiastical background, the names of the five friends from the Poznan oratory were not mentioned there. In 1999 the grave was rediscovered in the New Catholic Cemetery; a memorial from the Catholic parish of St. Paul in Dresden-Plauen reminds of Kęsy among others. In the same year he and his friends and 103 other people were beatified by the Polish Pope John Paul II . His feast day is August 24th, the day of his execution, June 12th in the Diary of Don Bosco's Salesians. In Poland he is considered a martyr of the German occupation . Despite his Polish nationality, he is also listed in the German martyrology of the 20th century and registered there for the diocese of Essen , which, together with the diocese of Berlin, cherishes the memory of Kęsy and the Edward Klinik, who was beatified with him, the two members of the Poznan who were born in Germany Group. Together with the Polish friar Grzegorz Frąckowiak SVD , who was executed in the same place eight months later , the five boys are also grouped together to form the group of six blessed martyrs from Münchner Platz in Dresden , whose joint commemoration will be celebrated on June 12th. This group of martyrs was consecrated on June 1, 2020 in the diocese of Dresden-Meißen newly established Roman Catholic parish .

literature

• Johannes Wielgoß SDS : Blessed Franciscek Kęsy and Blessed Edward Clinic. In: Helmut Moll (ed.): Witnesses for Christ. The German martyrology of the 20th century. Volume I. 7th, revised and updated edition, Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 2019, ISBN 978-3-506-78012-6 , pp. 221-224.

Web links

• Franciszek Kęsy in the Ecumenical Lexicon of Saints
• Antonio Borrelli: Beato Francesco Kesy Martire. Short biography on santiebeati.it (Italian)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Gunner in the 1st Lower Silesian Field Artillery Regiment No. 5 ; see. German loss lists of the First World War: Edition 266 of December 10, 1914 (Prussia 98), p. 3540 ( Kan. Stanislaus Kesy , Nossalewo, Samter ).