BLESSED JOSEPH KOWALSKI AND THE  5 YOUNG POLISH MARTYRS FROM THE ORATORY AT POZNAN.

 

 

NOTE:  We celebrate this occasion on Thursday of this week - the following material has been taken from the new SDB portal in Rome (www.sdb.org) and you can also go there to obtain a brief life of the five young men).

 

Five youths from Poznan figure amongst the group of beatified martyrs.  They are: Edward Klinik (23 years of age), Francis Kesi (22 years of age), Jarogniew Wojciechowski (20 years of age), Edward Kazmierski (23 years of age).

 

They offer some common features: the five were Oratory members, all of them knowingly involved in their own human and Christian growth, all of them involved in animating their companions, bound to one another by interests as well as social and personal projects, and all taken together by surprise and imprisoned in various places but for a short period of time.  They were for a time imprisoned together and all faced martyrdom on the same day and in the same way.  The friendship of the Oratory remained alive until that final moment.

 

The presence together of these youths and Fr. Kowalski in a single beatification is significant: young people evangelized by us, involved together in the apostolate, following us to the point of martyrdom and being raised to the honour of the altar together with their educators.

 

While together in imprisonment and death, each of them however has his own biography that is intertwined with that of the others in their belonging to a Salesian environment.  Singly, and as a group, these youths let us see the formative strength of the Oratory experience when it is able to rely on an environment, on a youthful shared community, on personalized proposals and where there are one or more confreres able to accompany young people on the way of faith and grace.  The five young men came from Christian families.  With this as the foundation, the life and programmes of the Oratory stimulated their generosity towards the Lord, their human maturity, their prayer and apostolic engagement.

 

The group, as a place of growth and engagement, was decisive.  They will always be known as the group of ‘five’.  It is moving to read of each: “He took part in the leadership of the Oratory, bound tightly by bonds of friendship and aspiration to high Christian ideals with the other four.”

 

The Oratory experience produced a youthful solidarity between them based on ideals and projects – a solidarity manifested in sincere sharing, in mutual support in overcoming trials, in spontaneity and in joy.

This friendship encouraged them to continue their gatherings when the occupation forces took over the Oratory, leaving the Salesian only two rooms, and transforming the entire building and the Church into a military barracks.  In one room, and with a piano that the brothers of the Sacred Heart put at their disposal, they continued with choral activities and friendly gatherings. Later, deprived even of this possibility, the places for gathering became the small parks around the city, the fields near the river and the nearby woods.  No wonder that the police identified them or confused them with those who entered into clandestine associations.  Friendship became their mutual support during the passage through their various incarcerations until their death.

 

PRISON AND MARTYRDOM

All five were taken into custody in September of 1940, Edward Kazmierski right at his workplace, without the possibility of taking leave of his loved ones.  That was Sunday.  The evening of Monday 23^rd, at curfew and scarcely having arrived home, it was Francis’s turn.  The other three were taken from home and mostly at dead of night, from amongst their families.  They found themselves in the Poznan Fort VII.  They went on first to the prison at Neukoln, near Berlin, then to prison in Zwikau, Saxony, underwent interrogation and torture and were sentenced to hard labour,

 

The 1^st August 1942, final sentence was pronounced: condemned to death for treason.  They stood as they listened, then a long silence broken only by an exclamation from one of them: “May your will be done.”  Three weeks later they were brought into the courtyard where a guillotine had been prepared, and were decapitated.  It was the 24^th August and in our communities, the monthly commemoration of Mary Help of Christians was being celebrated.

 

We are able to follow their trail through the different prisons thanks to the precious little notes they found ways to write.  These contain short sentences but enough to provide a glimmer into the events in prison and to reveal to us that here we are dealing with spiritual giants.  “Only God knows how much we suffer.  Prayer has been our only help in the abyss of days and nights.”  And in another note: “God gave us the cross; he is also giving us the strength to carry it.”  As it was for Fr. Kowalski, so for these five young men – there is a moving turn of events to do with the rosary.  When they were taken into custody they had been deprived of everything they carried on them.  Their rosary beads were thrown into the rubbish bin.  Just at that point they took advantage of a moment of distraction on the part of their jailors and courageously retrieved their rosary beads that gave them such precious comfort during the most difficult moments.  Before they died, they were able to write to their parents. 

 

Reading their final sentiments leaves us standing speechless before such grand stature: “Do not cry.  We are happy.”  Today they are ‘blessed’.  To our three young people: St. Dominic Savio, Blessed Laura Vicuña and Venerable Zefferino Namancurá, these five young martyrs are now added, as if the saintly typology has now been completed with its missing element: martyrdom.  For us it bespeaks all the meaningfulness of such first fruits in the youth scene.  In them we want to see a model for so many young people suffering because of their Christian faith in not a few parts of the world.  We point to them as intercessors as well as for their ideals of more demanding values.