August Froehlich

His father, originally from Królowe/Leobschütz district, owned the 'First Königshütte Steam Mill’ and was chairman of the supervisory board of Śląski Bank Ludowy Królewska Huta.

In 1912 young Froehlich started (after education stations in Beuthen and Liegnitz) theological studies in Breslau to become a priest, but before completing it, at the break of the First World War, he was mobilized.

On 19 June 1921 August Froehlich was ordained a priest by Cardinal Adolf Bertram in the cathedral of Breslau Diocese.

After his first Mass in his home parish Saint Barbara in Königshütte, he was appointed by the Bishop of Breslau to the autonomous Berlin ecclesiastic province.

For the young priest it was natural to use a large part of his inheritance and his income to support impoverished families.

I have at least just as much courage to show my uniform and my greeting, as I assume you do with yours.From 1937 to 1942 he lived in Rathenow as a parish priest in the church of Saint Georg.

Numerous Polish forced labourers worked in the Rathenow area at the optical armaments company Emil Busch A.G. Because Polish Catholics were not allowed to participate in German worship, August Froehlich and his assistant priest celebrated separate Sunday Masses for them.

When he heard about maltreatment of Polish forced labourers (e.g. of a pregnant woman), he brought that courageously into public and spoke about it during church announcements.

In the period of eleven months he was in three concentration camps: Buchenwald, Ravensbrück and, finally, Dachau, where he died because of bad prison conditions on 22 June 1942.