Józef Kowalski

Józef Kowalski was born on 13 March 1911 in Siedliska, a village in Galicia then belonging to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and now in southeastern Poland. He was Polish by nationality and was raised in the Roman Catholic Church in the last years of the partitions of Poland. Drawn to the educational and pastoral mission of Saint John Bosco, he entered the Salesians of Don Bosco (the Society of Saint Francis de Sales). After novitiate and studies in philosophy and theology he was ordained a priest in Kraków on 29 May 1938. In the short period of public ministry that followed he worked among young people in Salesian houses, in keeping with the congregation’s charism of serving youth.

The German invasion of Poland in September 1939 and the occupation of Kraków placed clergy and religious under growing pressure. Kowalski remained with the Salesian community in Kraków and continued pastoral work as far as conditions allowed. On 23 May 1941 the Gestapo arrested him together with other Salesians from the Kraków house. He was held in Montelupich prison in Kraków and in June 1941 was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where he was registered as prisoner number 17350.

In the camp he sought to exercise his priesthood in secret. Fellow prisoners later testified that he heard confessions, encouraged the despairing, and on occasion celebrated Mass clandestinely. He retained a rosary despite the prohibition of religious objects. On 4 July 1942, according to survivor accounts, an SS officer discovered the rosary and ordered him to trample on it. When Kowalski refused, he was beaten and killed. Several testimonies state that after the beating he was drowned in a cesspool or barrel of excrement. He was thirty-one years old. His remains were not recovered, as was typical for prisoners murdered at Auschwitz.

Pope John Paul II beatified him in Warsaw on 13 June 1999 as one of the 108 Martyrs of World War II, a group of Polish bishops, priests, religious, and lay people killed under the Nazi occupation. The Catholic Church commemorates these blesseds liturgically on 12 June. Kowalski is venerated especially by the Salesian Family and in Poland as a martyr of the faith. He has not been canonized.