Had it not been for Werner von Braun, the USA might be singing Russia My
Native Land instead of the Star Spangled Banner....he got us to the moon
FIRST while communist agitators and spies were infiltrating orgazations
under the flag of We Shall Overcome - overcome what? It was We Shall
Overthrow.
Little mention is made of the Jesuits by the way, who died in WWII at
the hands of the Nazis and a good number of these doctors and scientists
went to Russia.....von Braun a true nobleman, came to the USA
Old expression when in Rome, do as Romans....what can unarmed Priests do
but hide and shelter the poor or wanted - a city of refuge - does one
send a Marxist to reside in the Aryan Nations and when one is a Nazi,
they they do as this FBI informer did - tattoo swatstikas on arms to
show to whom they were bonded?
All is not as it seems to be is it, for as Huey Long said when Fascism
comes it will come in disguise - it is here, it is in Israel, it is in
the Clinton camp and Reno camp at Waco and Ruby Ridge.......now Timothy
McVeigh what was he - most certainly not a hero or traitor - he was just
a criminal trying to impress his boss, like a Mafia Made Man who wants
inside?
Bible holds lots of clues as to actors upon the stage...they play many
roles....
Good story here on the Jesuits - and once a Jesuit, always a
Jesuit....some of the most brilliant men in the world, are Jesuits - two
men on a horse - what we need are real Crusaders today to clean out this
country.
People worried about McVey being Martyered? Watch and see who paints
the piciture....
Saba
Return to the Hiatt Holocaust Collection Home Page
Jesuit Victims of the Nazis
***
Jesuits Killed During the Holocaust - 83 Victims
Jesuits who Died in Concentration Camps - 43 Victims
Jesuits who Died in Captivity or of its Results - 26 Victims
***
***
-- From The Jesuits and the Third Reich
by� Vincent A. Lapomarda.
Father Adam Sztark and Companions, Jesuit Martyrs:
(Their Cause Inaugurated 23 March 2000)
Fr. Stanislaw Bednarski (1902-1942) at Dachau
Fr. Jozef Cyrek (1904-1940) at Auschwitz
Fr. Kazimierz Dembowski (1912-1942) at Dachau
Fr. Stanislaw Felczak (1906-1942) at Dachau
Fr. Franciszek Kaluza (1877-1941) at Dachau
Br. Stanislaw Komar (1882-1942) at Dachau
Fr. Michal Malinowski (1887-1942) at Dachau
Fr. Marian Jozef Wojciech Morawski (1881-1940) at Auschwitz
Mr. Jerzy Musial (1919-1945) at Dachau
Fr. Stanislaw Tadeusz Podolenski (1887-1945) at Dachau
Fr. Czeslaw Sejbuk (1906-1943) at Dachau
Mr. Stanislaw Sewillo (1907-1943) at Dachau
Fr. Adam Sztark (1907-1942) at Slonim
Fr. Wladyslaw Wiacek (1910-1944) at Warsaw
Mr. Bronislaw Wielgosz (1916-1942) at Dachau
***
ADAM SZTARK, S. J.� (1907-1942)
MARTYR
����������� When Pope John Paul II visited
Warsaw, on 13 June 1999, he beatified 108 victims of the Nazis, half of
whom died through torture or execution� at the Auschwitz or Dachau
concentration camps. The list included Capuchins, Carmelites,
Dominicans, Franciscans, and Salesians, not to mention a number of other
religious whose orders and congregations which, as far back as 1992,
responded to the invitation to introduce the causes of their members.�
Unfortunately, at that time, the Jesuits of Poland did not regard the
inclusion of Jesuits as that important.� Subsequently, they have come
to appreciate that they had missed an important opportunity to include
those heroic Jesuits who were martyred by the Nazis during World War II.
����������� Certainly, it is encouraging to anyone
who knows the extent of the Nazi persecution of the Catholic Church�
that the Holy Father was able to beatify so many martyrs of his native
country.
����������� These Polish� martyrs for the faith
recall St. Augustine of Hippo's affirmation that there was no need to
pray for the repose of the souls of martyrs becaue they had already
attained eternal life through their martyrdom.� This is what
Augustine's Latin judgment "Injuriam facit martyri qui orat pro eo" ("he
offends a martyr who prays for him") means.� The Church now makes much
the same declaration by simply declaring that recognized martyrs need no
proof of a miracle before beatification.
����������� The Second World War, which saw the
destiny of many groups� linked in suffering,� was a horrible time
for dedicated Catholics as well as Jews. Just as it is true to speak
of� a Nazi war against the Jews, it is also accurate to speak of a
similar war against the Jesuits.� This is particularly so in Poland
where� at least seventy Polish Jesuits perished as victims during the
Nazi persecution.� Of these, some twenty died at Dachau where more�
Jesuits than any other religious order were imprisoned.� And, of the
approximate 150 Jesuit victims of the Nazis,� at least half of them
were Polish priests, brothers, and seminarians.
����������� One of that number was Adam Sztark,
a� priest who sacrificed his life at the age of thirty-five to save
Jewish children.
����������� For years, this writer has engaged in
corresponding with Yad Vashem in Jerusalem to have that authority
recognize Father Sztark as a Righteous Gentile (at least eight Jesuits
are listed among them)� for sacrificing his life to save Jewish
orphans.
����������� However, the lack of documentation in
his case has been regarded as an obstacle to recognizing� him as a
Righteous Gentile by the state of Israel.
����������� Yet, Father Sztark has at least three
times been named a Jesuit martyr ---� by Felicjan Paluszkiewicz,
Przyszli sluzyc (Rome, 1985), by the present author, in his book on The
Jesuits and the Third Reich (1989), and by the editor of an encyclopedia
on the Jesuits in Poland� (1992).� Moreover, he has now been listed
in the martyrology� yearbook of the Society of Jesus� for 2000.�
His sacrifice has earned him the honor of being considered one of�
Poland's most distinguished unsung heroes of the Holocaust and World War
II.
����������� There are few details about�
Sztark's life before he had his rendezvous with destiny. The son of
Wladyslaw and Teresa (Galecka) Sztark, Adam was born, on 30 July 1907,
at Zbiersk in the Province of Kalisz, southwest of Warsaw. The day of
his birth was the day before the Feast of St. Ignatius Loyola, the
Founder of the Society of Jesus.� He entered� the Jesuit Order at
Stara Wies, on 6 September 1924,� becoming a member of the branch
of� known as the Greater Polish and Mazovian Province of� the
Society of Jesus, which is centered in Warsaw.
����������� He was ordained a priest at Lublin,
east of Warsaw, on June 24, 1936, after the customary long years of
Jesuit preparation.� He was assigned as pastor of the Marian Shrine at
Zyrowice in 1939, the fatal year of the German invasion of Poland. The
shrine was located in what is now the country of Belarus in the region
of� Grodno (Hrodna)� not far from Slonim, in a territory which,
between the two world wars, was held by Poland,� and later by the
Soviet Union from 1939 to 1941, until� the Germans occupied the area.
����������� The terror unleashed by� the Nazi
occupation forces began in Slonim on June 25, 1941, three� days after
Germany invaded Russia.� In a short time the Nazis had exterminated�
almost the entire� Jewish population of Slonim. Before the German
seized the area, that population numbered at least twenty thousand.
����������� The Jewish community in the area of�
Slonim dated back to Ashkenazic Jews who fled to Eastern Europe from
Portugal and Spain in the early 1500s.� Jews were already settled in
Slonim there when the Jesuits established their famous Baroque
church,� a college and a school there in the late 1600s.
����������� Located northeast of Warsaw, Slonim
was� noted for its historic Jewish center, the Great Synagogue, along
with its historic Jesuit church, until� the Jesuit presence in the
area had been terminated with the suppression of the Society of Jesus in
the later part of the 1700s.� The Jewish presence remained very
evident� in that part of Belarus after the Jesuits had been deprived
by the papacy of their ecclesiastical and educational foundations.�
With their restoration in the early 1800s, the Jesuits returned to that
region� to carry on different apostolic works, such as that of Father
Sztark at the Marian shrine at Zyrowice and at the local hospital, where
he ministered to Roman Catholics.
����������� Starting on� July 14,� 1941, the
Nazis began rounding up the leadership of the Jewish community,
executing� at least one thousand of them. Then, on November 14, the
Nazis went after ten thousand more of the Jewish population, before they
set up a ghetto in the Zabinka area of Slonim in December.� In June of
1942, the Nazis set fire to this hoping to eliminate even more of the
Jewish population. These were preliminary steps in the German plan of
total annihilation, temporarily delayed by fierce Russian battles.�
>From August 1942,� the German Army had been engaged� in furious
actions which would in the following year lead to the pivotal Battle of
Stalingrad.� The� Nazis were counting on a victory there that would
enable them to complete their� barbaric extermination policy which was
already well under way.
����������� It was in the final phase of their
"final solution" that� the Gestapo broke into the convent of the
Sisters of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, on
December 19,� 1942.� The convent was in the [prewear Polish]�
provincial area of Nowogrodek, in� Slonim.� The religious community
was under Mother Superior Kazimiera Wolowska (1879-1942) whose religious
name was Sister Maria Marta. She was assisted by Bogumila Noiszewska
(1885-1942) who was known in religious life as Sister Maria Ewa.� Both
had been hiding and caring for� orphaned Jewish children, whom Father
Sztark had been rescuing and bringing to them.� The children had been
hidden in the attic of the convent of the nuns.
������������ Though the sisters lived in fear of
a Nazi search, they were completely surprised� when armed men broke
into their convent.� A thorough search soon located the Jewish
children in the attric. Since hiding Jews was a crime punishable by
death, the Gestapo tortured the sisters to extract any information they
could use to continue their campaign against the Jews. When the sisters
refused to betray any of those helping them in their clandestine
activities, the Nazis. that very day, took� both sisters out to a
nearby execution site,� a place called Gorki Pantalowickie.� There
the forced the nuns into a pit and shot them.
����������� Within ten days of the execution of
Blessed Maria Marta and Blessed Maria Ewa, the Gestapo caught up with
Father Sztark.� The priest's life had been in danger for years.�
First during the hostile occupation� by the Soviets and then by the
Nazis.� He never hesitated to serve as a shepherd for the defenseless,
first as the pastor for parishioners in Zyrowice, then for Jewish
childrlen who had managed to survive the round up and slaughter of their
parents.� The priest repeatedly risked his life by collecting the
children and concealing them in his rectory until he was able to
secretly take them to the realtive safety of� the Immaculate
Conception Convent.� He fully knew that keeping these Jewish children
out of the hands of the Nazis would cost him his life if he should be
discovered.� It is clear that he began this work and continued to
carry it oiut in respect to to the Gospel command to "love your
neighbor."
����������� Just as the Gestapo came in suddenly
on the sisters in the convent on December 19th, so on December 27th
their command car appeared without warning� in front of the priest's
house in� Zyrowice.� The startled priest was immediately ordered to
leave without taking anything with him.� He asked if he could take
bread in order to say Mass. The Gestapo agent leading� the Jesuit away
sardonically said:�� "Where you are going, there's plenty of
bread!"� This merciless tone of the SS man told� Father Sztark that
his end was near.� He submitted, simply saying: "It is my martyrdom."
����������� Father Sztark still had one more night
to live, however.� It was not until the following day that he was
packed into a truck filled with others who had defied the laws of the
Nazi occupation. They were taken to the same place, Gorki Pantalowickie,
where the two Sisters of the Immaculate Conception had been killed just
a few days previously, the same site which the Nazis used for their
executions of the Jews in that area.� When they arrived there,�
Father Sztark, like his fellow victims, was ordered to undress
himself.� He was� prepared to meet his Maker, but he wanted to do so
in the black robe of the Jesuit Order of which he was such a faithful
member.� So he told his executioners he would not undress, saying he
wanted to die in his robe.� For some reason his killers granted him
his last wish.
������������ The Nazis forced him along with all
their victims into a pit, and began riddling them with bullets.� The
priest, though mortally wounded, was not immediately killed.� In one
last great display of will and in excruciating pain he managed to stand
and gasp out these final, glorious words: "All for Christ the King!�
Long Live Poland!"
����������� For Jesuits, those words recall the
final words of another Jesuit, Blessed Miguel Augustin Pro
(1891-1927).� Fr. Pro had been brought to his execution in a similar
manner three years after Father Sztark had entered the Society of
Jesus.� The Mexican priest had cried out, "Long Live Christ the King!"
Perhaps Blessed Miguel Pro's last words had inspired� Father Sztark's
words of courage, faith, love and patriotism.
����������� Certainly, in reflecting on the life
of Father Sztark, there is no doubt that he died a martyr.� His life
stands as a symbol of what the Jesuits did in order to help the Jews at
a time when the Jesuits themselves were the objects of constant Nazi
persecution.
���������� And, since the two Sisters of the
Immaculate Conception, who had helped Fr. Sztark rescue the orphaned
Jewish children, were among those 108 Polish martyrs who were beatified
by Pope John Paul II in Warsaw, there can be no doubt that Rev. Adam
Sztark, S. J.,� is also worthy of being considered� one of the
distinguished Polish martyrs of the twentieth century.
***
By Rev. Vincent A. Lapomarda, S. J.
Coordinator, Holocaust Collection
Copyright �� INSIDE THE VATICAN, May 2000, 52-53
[Later Published in Polish, ZYCIE DUCHOWE, Jesien, 24/2000]
MARTYRS
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