Kazimierz Dembowski

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Blessed Kazimierz Dembowski

Kazimierz Dembowski (3 August 1912 – 10 August 1942) was a Polish Jesuit involved in the religious publishing industry, who shortly after the German invasion of Poland was arrested by the Gestapo, imprisoned at several places of detention, and lastly deported to the Dachau concentration camp where he was murdered in a gas chamber. He is among 122 Polish martyrs whose beatification process was advanced in 2003.[1]

Life

Dembowski was born in

Pińsk in Poland (now Pinsk in Belarus; see picture above) where he graduated in May 1932, subsequently pursuing higher studies at the Jesuit institute in Kraków (1932–1935) and at Lyon, France (1935–1939).[2]

After his return to Poland in 1939 Dembowski worked as a translator for the religious publisher

co-editor of the monthly magazine Posłaniec Serca Jezusowego [pl] ("The Messenger of the Heart of Jesus"), a serial publication which appeared in 40 languages.[6]

The Cracoviense Collegium Maximum SS. Cordis Iesu, place of Dembowski's arrest by the Gestapo

On 6 November 1939, just sixty-six days after the German invasion of Poland, the Gestapo carried out the so-called Sonderaktion Krakau, an operation in which virtually all of the professors of the Jagiellonian University of Kraków were arrested and imprisoned in the ulica Montelupich as part of the larger plan of Third Reich to eliminate all Polish intelligentsia. Four days later, on 10 November 1939, Dembowski was arrested by the Gestapo together with 24 other Jesuits of the Jesuit College of Kraków (the Cracoviense Collegium Maximum SS. Cordis Iesu, see picture to the right) — eight of them employees of the publishing house Wydawnictwo Apostolstwa Modlitwy — and likewise imprisoned in the ulica Montelupich.[7][8] Although the Jesuits were never informed of the reasons for their arrest, it was clear that they opposed the vision of the Germans and for that reason were treated as the enemies of the Reich.[9] During his incarceration at the Montelupich Prison, Dembowski was appointed by the rector of his Jesuit College (Wiktor Macko) to perform the functions of the chaplain to his fellow-arrestee Jesuit confrères.[7] After 43 days of detention at Montelupich, Dembowski was transferred on 23 December 1939, together with the lay Jesuit brother, Ludwik Rzeźnikowski, to another notorious Gestapo prison at Wiśnicz, which was in reality (if not in name) a German extermination camp in which prisoners were worked to death.[7][10] Despite the exhausting conditions of imprisonment exacerbated further by his tall stature and delicate health, Dembowski managed secretly to continue his ministry to his confrères and other prisoners.

On 20 June 1940, after six months (180 days) at Wiśnicz, Dembowski was

memoirs.[12] In Auschwitz Dembowski was impressed into a penal company, the so-called Straf­kompanie, consisting of several prisoners whose gruelling tasks included pushing an enormous road roller with which they had to level the Appellplatz (roll-call ground) under the watchful eye of the infamous Auschwitz henchman Ernst Krankemann.[13]

On 10 December 1940 Dembowski together with the other surviving Jesuits was transferred to the

diarrhoea at the camp's revier or infirmary.[14]

Pińsk
, place of Dembowski's studies 1928–1932

Kazimierz Dembowski is currently one of the 122 Polish martyrs of the Second World War who are included in the beatification process initiated in 1994, whose first beatifica­tion session was held in Warsaw in 2003.[1]

Dembowski's name is incorporated in the bronze plaque that hangs on a courtyard wall outside the Finucane Jesuit Center at Rockhurst University in Kansas City (Missouri) commemorating 152 Jesuit victims of the Germans during the Second World War.[15]

Bibliography

See also

References

  1. ^ a b "Proces beatyfikacyjny - Proces Beatyfikacyjny - PL - Męczennicy". 2013-06-26. Archived from the original on 2013-06-26. Retrieved 2018-09-30.
  2. ^
    ISBN 9788375053470
    .
  3. ISBN 8370971253
    .
  4. ^ J.-V. Bainvel, La Dévotion au Sacré-Coeur de Jésus : doctrine, histoire, 3rd ed., augm., Paris, G. Beauchesne, 1911.
  5. ^ J. V. Bainvel, Kult Serca Bożego: teorja i rozwój, tr. K. Dembowski, Kraków, Wydawnictwo Księży Jezuitów, 1934. (See on Google Books.)
  6. ISBN 0521364299
    .
  7. ^
    ISBN 9788375053470
    .
  8. ISBN 9788372715524
    .
  9. ISBN 0889468281
    .
  10. ^ Sacrum Poloniae millennium: rozprawy, szkice, materiały historyczne, vol. 11, Rome, Typis Pontificiae Universitatis Gregorianae, 1965, p. 76. This source puts the date of Dembowski's transfer from Montelupich to Wiśnicz one day earlier, at 22 December 1939.
  11. Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau
    , 1983, p. 111.
  12. ^ Adam Kozłowiecki, Ucisk i strapienie: pamiętnik więźnia, 1939–1945, ed. J. Humeński, Kraków, Wydawnictwo Apostolstwa Modlitwy, 1967.
  13. ISBN 9788385047568
    .)
  14. ^
    ISBN 9788375053470
    .
  15. ^ Vincent A. Lapomarda, on the College of the Holy Cross website (see online).

External links


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