Józef Zapłata

Józef Zapłata was born on 5 March 1904 in the village of Jeruzal in the Łódź region of central Poland, then under the Russian partition (Congress Poland). He was raised in a Catholic peasant family and received the sacraments in his local parish. In adulthood he entered the Congregation of the Brothers of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (Zgromadzenie Braci Serca Jezusowego), a Polish institute of religious brothers. After formation he made his vows and served the congregation in practical, non-ordained roles, including tailoring and the care of community and liturgical spaces. He was associated with the congregation’s house in Poznań.

After the German invasion and occupation of Poland in 1939, Catholic clergy and religious were systematically targeted by the Nazi authorities. Houses of religious congregations were closed or seized, and many brothers and priests were arrested. Brother Józef was taken into custody by the German security police and, after imprisonment in occupied Poland, was deported to the Dachau concentration camp in Bavaria. Dachau served as a principal camp for imprisoned clergy from German-occupied Europe; large numbers of Polish priests and religious were confined there under forced labor, starvation rations, and epidemic disease.

Brother Józef Zapłata died at Dachau on 19 February 1945, only weeks before the camp was liberated by the United States Army in April 1945. His death is attributed to exhaustion and illness caused by the camp regime. Like most of those who perished at Dachau, he received no individual Christian burial; the remains of the dead were ordinarily cremated in the camp crematorium.

His memory was kept by his congregation and by the Church in Poland among the religious who died under the Nazi occupation. On 13 June 1999, during a pastoral visit to Poland, Pope John Paul II beatified him in Warsaw together with 107 other Polish victims of the Second World War, the group known as the 108 Martyrs of World War II. They are commemorated jointly on 12 June in the liturgical calendar of the Catholic Church in Poland. Blessed Józef Zapłata is venerated as a martyr who remained faithful to his religious consecration until death.