Tiny Hadleuski

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Tiny Hadleuski

Winzent "Winzuk" Hadleuski ( Belarusian Вінцэнт / Вінцук Гадлеўскі , Vincent Hadleŭski * 16th November 1888 in Porazawa at Vawkavysk , Grodno, Russian Empire , now in Belarus ; † 24. December 1942 in the extermination camp Maly Trostinez ) was a Belarusian Catholic priest and nationalist politician .

Life

Early years

Hadleuski was born on November 16, 1888 in the village of Porazawa, the son of a farmer. From 1908 to 1911 he attended a Roman Catholic seminary in Vilnius . In 1912 he attended the Roman Catholic Theological Academy in St. Petersburg , where he received a master's degree in theology. In 1914 he was ordained a priest . After his studies he served as a curate in a parish in Minsk .

Activities as politicians and priests

During the Russian Civil War in 1917, he began to organize in the Belarusian national movement. He took part in the First Belarusian People's Congress in March 1917 and was one of the co-founders of the Belarusian Christian Democrats (BChD). Hadleuski initiated the Congress of Belarusian Priests in May 1917. He also took part in the establishment of the Belarusian People's Republic , of which he was a member of the Rada , but which was dissolved after a few months and divided between the Soviet Union and Poland . In 1918 he was the editor of the newspaper Krynica ("The Source"), for which he also wrote articles under the pseudonym W. Skalimanouski . He also campaigned for the establishment of a separate Catholic seminary for Belarus in Minsk or Nyasvish , where he then taught and whose rector he was from 1924. The seminar was moved to Vilnius (at that time part of Poland) in 1925.

Cover of the Four Gospels, translated by Winzent Hadleuski

Politically, Hadleuski can be attributed to the right wing of the Belarusian national movement. Because of his nationalist activity, he was arrested and sentenced several times by the Polish authorities. From 1927 to 1929 he was imprisoned in Warsaw. He then returned to Vilnius, where he was one of the co-founders of the Belarusian Catholic publishing house. He worked on the translation of the New Testament into Belarusian, which was published in 1939. In 1936 he resigned from the BChD and until 1939 published the newspaper Biełaruski Front ("Belarusian Front"), which politically can be regarded as the forerunner of the later Independent Party. In it Hadleuski analyzed the international situation in Europe and announced an imminent war. Therefore, he urged the Belarusian elite to take advantage of the expected changes to unite the country and proclaim an independent state.

Second World War

After the Red Army marched into eastern Poland and these areas were annexed to the Soviet Union, Hadleuski fled to Kaunas in Lithuania in 1939 and - after this was also occupied by the Soviet Union - to Warsaw . There he organized the semi-legal Belarusian National Front . When he learned of the impending German invasion of the Soviet Union , in June 1941 he gathered various emigrated executives at the Belarusian National Center in Berlin who were to take over functions in a future Belarusian civil government. From the cooperation with the National Socialists he hoped for extensive autonomy for Belarus, if not the establishment of its own nation-state.

In September of the same year he returned to Minsk, which was now occupied by the Germans, where he became chief school inspector of the general district of Belarus and was a member of the main radar of the Belarusian self-help organization . With the tolerance of the German occupiers, he founded the Belarusian Independent Party and, together with Usewalad Rodska and Michal Wituschka, was one of its leading members. However, his expectations of the Germans were disappointed and he joined the resistance by organizing the Belarusian Central Front , which operated underground . Because of his relations with nationalist dissidents and the Vatican, the occupiers became suspicious. Hadleuski was arrested by the Gestapo on Christmas Eve 1942 and shot in the Maly Trostinez extermination camp on the same day .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c d Wojciech Roszkowski, Jan Kofman: Biographical Dictionary of Central and Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century. Routledge, July 8, 2016. p. 325.
  2. a b c d e Hadleŭski Vincuk, Rev., slounik.org (English)
  3. a b c d e Рыцар Свабоды (Ксёндз Вінцэнт Гадлеўскі, 1888-1942), jivebelarus.net (Belarusian)
  4. ^ Andrew Wilson : Belarus: The Last European Dictatorship , Yale University Press, New Haven 2012, ISBN 978-0-300-13435-3 . P. 108

Web links

Commons : Vincent Hadlieŭski  - collection of images, videos and audio files