April 25th, 2018

"If a priest gets out of the camp, please have him go to Gosławice and tell my parishioners that I will give my life for them," were the dying words of Father Dominik Jędrzejewski, on August 29, 1942, in Dachau extermination camp.

Hitler's death troops invaded Poland, on September 1, 1939, and immediately, the German Soclialists began their programs of rounding up, imprisoning and liquidating the intellectuals of those determined to be of Polish race, almost 90% of the population.

Gestapo, the Socialists' thugs, arrested Father Dominik Jędrzejewski, on August 26, 1940, and then transferred him to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he received Number 29935.

With 525 priests, Father Jędrzejewski was shipped to Dachau extermination camp, on December 14, 1940, where he received Number 22813, and lived in Block 28.

For prisoners, each day was a day of pain and sorrow, with starvation, beatings, torture, endless roll calls, slave labor, vindictive kapos and sadistic guards.

In Dachau, it was announced in February 1942, that the elderly and near-death prisoners were to be transferred via the Invalid Transports to Hartheim Castle. But it was not a resort. It had been converted to Hartheim Euthanasia Center, where the German Socialists executed their plan of Vernichtung von lebensunwertem Leben, which translates to Destruction of a Life Unworthy of Life.

Prisoners in the camp knew that those who left on the Invalid Transports never returned, so as Father Jędrzejewski's health declined, his fellow priest prisoners literally helped him up and helped him walk, to prevent him from being shipped off to the Hartheim Euthanasia Center, where those traveling in the Invalid Transport vans were gassed to deathy by the German Socialists who directed the exhaust pipes into the vans.

Father Jędrzejewski perished from starvation and exhaustion, on August 29, 1942.

VIVA CRISTO REY! Niech żyje Chrystus Król!