April 17th, 2018

Father Paweł Alojzy Liguda was appointed rector of the Society of the Divine Word Missionaries, in Górna Grupa, months before Hitler's death troops stormed into Poland, on September 1, 1939, igniting World War II.
The German Socialists quickly took over the monastery, on October 29, 1939, and used it as a temporary internment camp for the Catholic monks, as well as 80 other priests and seminarians from other dioceses. On November 11, 15 priests and 2 others were executed in the Mniszka Forest.
Father Liguda and the remaining others were shipped to a German prison camp in Gdańsk, in July 1940, then to the Stutthof concentration camp, and then, finally, to Dachau extermination camp, on November 16, 1940, where he received the number 22604 tattooed on his forearm.
At Dachau, he suffered torture, beatings, starvation, scabies, the freezing cold and fell ill with tuberculosis. Toward the end of 1942, he was transferred to the Disabled People's Barracks. Those in the camp knew from experience the next move was the Invalids Transports, headed for the Hartheim Euthanasia Institute, where the enemies of the German Socialists were gassed.
But it was not to be. Instead, on December 8, 1942, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, Father Paweł Alojzy Liguda was murdered during one of the Socialists' brutal medical experiments, in which the "scientists" observed the human skin in icy water. Of those who survived, their skin was peeled off.
Before he was submerged, Father Paweł Alojzy Liguda was tortured even more when the German Socialists ripped strips of flesh from his body.
Father Paweł Alojzy Liguda did not survive the experiments, but remained faithful to Christ and Pope to the end. His body was burned in the camp crematorium four days later, and a few days later, his mother received a clay urn with ashes and the number 22604.
VIVA CRISTO REY! Niech żyje Chrystus Król!