Piotr Sosnowski

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Piotr Sosnowski (born January 10, 1899 in Bielczyny , West Prussia , German Reich ; died October 27, 1939 in Rudzki Most ) was a Polish Catholic priest .

Life

Piotr Sosnowski attended the seminary in Pelplin near Dirschau , became chaplain there in 1923 , provost in the Kashubian village of Groß Bislaw and later dean in Tuchola in 1934 .

On September 1, 1939, the German Wehrmacht began the Second World War by invading Poland . As part of the " Intelligence Action ", units of the SS and the ›Volksdeutsche Selbstschutz‹ began to arrest and shoot members of the Polish upper class and the Church - especially in the Polish Corridor (at the time also Danzig Corridor or Vistula Corridor), i.e. the northern part of Poland, which belonged to Germany before 1920. Polish attacks on native Germans who wanted revenge served as a pretext.

On October 21, 1939, the farmer Hugo Fritz, appointed by the new rulers as the ›Volksdeutscher Amtskommissar‹ in Petzin , died in the fire in his barn. The local police charged Poland with arson. Heinrich Mocek , inspector of self-protection in Konitz, then arbitrarily arrested residents in the area and announced that 40 hostages would be killed every three days if the perpetrators could not be found. On October 24th the shootings began near Rudabrück in the Tucheler Heide . In the second killing three days later, Sosnowski also died. By November 20, 335 Poles had been murdered as part of this “reprisal”. The responsible Mocek was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Mannheim district court in 1965 . On September 17, 2003, the Roman Catholic Church in Poland initiated a process for the beatification of 122 "martyrs from the time of the Second World War," among them Sosnowski.

Between September 1939 and May 1940, a total of tens of thousands of Polish civilians fell victim to German murders and deterrents in conquered Poland. In addition to places like Rudabrück, there were up to 13,000 people in Piasnitz near Wejherowo alone , up to 7,000 in the Spengawsken forest near Prussian-Stargard and around 5,000 people in the area around Bromberg . After June 22, 1941, German units continued similar intelligence campaigns in Soviet-occupied eastern Poland, for example in Lemberg .

literature

swell

  1. ↑ www.gedenkstaettenforum.de
personal data
SURNAME Sosnowski, Piotr
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish Catholic priest
DATE OF BIRTH January 10, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Bielczyny
DATE OF DEATH October 27, 1939
Place of death Rudzki Most