Josef Kowalski (priest)

Josef Kowalski as a young priest

Josef Kowalski as a concentration camp prisoner

Josef Kowalski SDB (born March 11, 1911 in Siedliska near Józefów , † July 4, 1942 in Auschwitz ) was a Polish Salesian of Don Bosco , a Roman Catholic priest, martyr and blessed of the Roman Catholic Church.

Life

Josef Kowalski was the seventh of nine children of the Wojciech and Zofia Kowalscy farming family. His parents belonged to the rural middle class in his home village. As a child he was seriously ill and his mother had already given up hope that he would survive. According to her, he felt better after holding him in front of a picture of Our Lady . Josef Kowalski attended elementary school in Siedliska from 1917 to 1922 and then continued his school education in Auschwitz. He received his first communion on June 16, 1921. His teachers described him as an intelligent and hardworking student. As a child he also played the theater, as evidenced by a photo of him as a ten to twelve year old in a costume as the Little Lord .

Even as a child he was deeply devoted to the Virgin Mary . He especially venerated the Black Madonna of Czestochowa and the Mother of God in the Maria-Hilf Church in Auschwitz.

On July 15, 1927, he began the novitiate with the Salesians of Don Bosco and began the usual studies. At the age of 18, Kowalski asked to join the religious community . Doubting the correctness of his decision, he wanted to leave the Salesians towards the end of the novitiate. His spiritual helped him to overcome the crisis of faith and he took his religious vows in 1934 . On May 22, 1935 he received the tonsure and on January 5, 1936 the first two and on June 21, 1936 the other two minor ordinations . On May 29, 1938, he was ordained a priest in Kraków and on June 5, 1938 he celebrated Primiz in his home parish of Lubenia . As a pastor, he worked as provincial secretary of the order. He also tried to help young people by organizing a singing school for them.

On May 23, 1941, the Gestapo searched the order and the theological study house of the Salesians in Cracow and arrested a friar and eleven priests, including Josef Kowalski. Four priests were murdered in Kraków, the rest were taken to Auschwitz on May 26th , where the prisoner number 17,350 was tattooed on him.

In the concentration camp, Father Kowalski did not try to direct his gaze to the chimneys of the crematorium, to which the commandant Karl Fritzsch had told the priests that they would only leave the camp through them, but to the Maria-Hilf-Kirche, just recognizable in the village of Auschwitz. Despite the unimaginable tribulation he tried to keep his dignity as a person and a priest. He celebrated Holy Mass with a tiny goblet in the attic of infection block 20 , where the guards rarely went due to the risk of infection. 19 letters from that time have been preserved that were left by the censors . Although they had to adapt to the tone of the oppressors because of this, they testify to Kowalskis' spiritual strength and power based on belief in God. He tried his best to encourage and comfort fellow inmates. He himself sought solace in praying the rosary .

In June 1942, 60 priests were to be relocated from Auschwitz to Dachau . At roll call , Kowalski hid a rosary in his hand . When an overseer saw this, he struck his hand with the whip, causing the rosary to fall to the ground. When Father Kowalski refused to step on him, he was separated from the group and transferred to the Auschwitz Penal Company instead of Dachau . Surviving fellow prisoners reported numerous ridicules and torments that he had to endure.

When some concentration camp prisoners tried to flee on June 11, 300 prisoners were assigned to the crematorium as a punitive measure, including Father Kowalski. But he was previously assigned to forced labor along with ten other people sentenced to death. Father Kowalski was taken away on the evening of July 4th, 1942, badly mistreated and, since he was still alive, thrown into a sewer and drowned. Before the martyrdom he asked the bystanders to pray for himself and his persecutors.

On June 13, 1999, Pope John Paul II Kowalski was beatified in Warsaw along with 107 other Polish martyrs from the time of World War II . His feast day in the Roman Catholic Church is July 4th .

Web links

Commons : Józef Kowalski  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Ecumenical Lexicon of Saints
• Josef Kowalski ( Memento from June 1, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) on www.donbosco.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Birgit Kaiser: Christ in the concentration camp . Sankt Ullrich Verlag, Augsburg, 2011, ISBN 978-3-86744-164-3 , pp. 194-202.
   Sources named there: Archives of the Archdiocese of Salzburg. Hanns Humer, Werner Kunzenmann: Great figures of the church in Tyrol - life pictures . Verlag Kirche, Innsbruck, 2002