Nazi persecution of the Catholic Church in Poland

Adolf Hitler said in August 1939 that he wanted his Death's Head forces "to kill without pity or mercy all men, women, and children of Polish descent or language".

The United Kingdom and France declared war on Germany as a result of the invasion while the Soviet Union invaded the Eastern half of Poland in accordance with the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with Hitler.

Operation Barbarossa, the German attack on the Soviet Union was launched in June 1941, shattering the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact and bringing all of Poland under Nazi control.

[9] Biographer Ian Kershaw said in the scheme for the Germanization of Central and Eastern Europe, that Hitler had made it clear there would be "no place in this utopia for the Christian Churches".

Hitler's chosen deputy and private secretary Martin Bormann and the official Nazi philosopher Alfred Rosenberg were firmly anti-Christian.

The remainder of Nazi-occupied Poland came under the administration of the General Government [12] – a "police run mini-state" under SS control and the rule of Nazi lawyer Hans Frank.

[16] During the 1939 invasion, special death squads of SS and police were sent to arrest or execute anyone considered capable of resisting the occupation: professionals, clergymen, and government officials.

[15] The following summer, the A-B Aktion (Extraordinary Pacification Operation) rounded up several thousand Polish intelligentsia and the SS shot many of the priests in the General Government sector.

Entire areas of the country have been deprived of all spiritual ministrations and the church seminaries have been dispersed.Around 150,000 to 180,000 civilians were killed in the suppression of an uprising, along with thousands of captured insurgents.

Evans wrote that "numerous clergy, monks, diocesan administrators and officials of the Church were arrested, deported to the General Government, taken off to a concentration camp in the Reich, or simply shot.

He reported seizures of church property and abuse of clergy and nuns in the Archdiocese of Gniezno:[29] Many priests are imprisoned, suffering humiliations, blows, maltreatment.

[29] In the Diocese of Chełmno, which had been incorporated into the Reich, Hlond reported that religious life had been almost entirely suppressed, and the ancient cathedral had been closed and turned into a garage.

The Churches have almost all been closed and confiscated by the Gestapo... all the crosses and sacred emblems by the roadside have been destroyed... 95% of the priests have been imprisoned, expelled, or humiliated before the eyes of the faithful... and the most eminent Catholics executed.Hlond reported similar outrages and terror in the Dioceses of Katowice, Łódź and Włocławek which had also been incorporated into the Reich.

In his final observations for Pope Pius XII, Hllond wrote:[29] Hitlerism aims at the systematic and total destruction of the Catholic Church in the rich and fertile territories of Poland which have been incorporated into the Reich...

Anti-religious prisoners were planted in the Polish block to ensure that the rule was not broken, but some found ways to circumvent the prohibition: secretly celebrating the mass during their work.

With the Poles in Block 28 it was different: all Christians of whatever nationality were welcomed as brothers and invited to attend the clandestine Sunday masses, celebrated before dawn in conditions reminiscent of the catacombs".

[47] Wojtyla had been a member of the Rhapsodic Theatre, an underground resistance group, which sought to sustain Polish culture through forbidden readings of poetry and drama performances.

[48] Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, a co-founder of Zegota, had worked with the Catholic underground movement, the Front for the Rebirth of Poland, and was arrested in a 1940 Nazi purge of the intelligentsia, and sent to Auschwitz.

[21] When AK Home Army Intelligence discovered the true fate of transports leaving the Jewish Ghetto, the Council to Aid Jews – Rada Pomocy Żydom (codename Zegota) was established in late 1942, in co-operation with church groups.

General Antoni Chruściel issued instructions on how front-line troops could continue to pray, recite the rosary, offer confession and religious celebrations.

[55] According to Davies, the Catholic religion was integral to the struggle:[56] Among the hundreds of chaplains attached to the Home Army was Stefan Wyszyński, who later served as Cardinal Primate of Poland in the Communist era.

Davies wrote that the sisters began their evening prayers gathered around the tabernacle, surrounded by a thousand people, as German aircraft flew overhead and "the church collapsed in one thunderous explosion... rescue teams dug to save the living... a much diminished convent choir was singing to encourage them.

[59] Among the most revered Polish martyrs was the Franciscan, Saint Maximillian Kolbe, who was murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau, having offered his own life to save a fellow prisoner who had been condemned to death by the camp authorities.

Pius XII lobbied world leaders to avoid war and then sought to negotiate a peace, but was ignored by the belligerents, as Germany and Russia began to treat Catholic Poland as their colony.

The encyclical attacked Hitler's war as "unchristian" and offered these words for Poland:[64][65] [This is an] "Hour of Darkness"... in which the spirit of violence and of discord brings indescribable suffering on mankind...

The nations swept into the tragic whirlpool of war are perhaps as yet only at the "beginnings of sorrows"... but even now there reigns in thousands of families death and desolation, lamentation and misery.

The blood of countless human beings, even noncombatants, raises a piteous dirge over a nation such as Our dear Poland, which, for its fidelity to the Church, for its services in the defense of Christian civilization, written in indelible characters in the annals of history, has a right to the generous and brotherly sympathy of the whole world, while it awaits, relying on the powerful intercession of Mary, Help of Christians, the hour of a resurrection in harmony with the principles of justice and true peace.The Papal Nuncio to Poland, Fillippo Cortesi had abandoned Warsaw along with the diplomatic corps, after the invasion and the Papal Nuncio to Germany, Cesare Orsenigo, assumed the role of communicating the situation of the territories annexed to Germany – but his role of protecting the Church in Poland was in conflict with his role of facilitating better relations with the German government, and his own fascistic sympathies.

[66] In April 1940, the Holy See advised the US government of Franklin D. Roosevelt that all its efforts to deliver humanitarian aid had been blocked by the Germans and that it was therefore seeking to channel assistance through indirect routes like the American "Commission for Polish Relief".

The Conference noted the Pope's 28 October Encyclical and reported that Pius addressed Polish clergy on 30 September 1939, speaking of "a vision of mad horror and gloomy despair" and saying that he hoped that despite the work of the "enemies of God", Catholic life would survive in Poland.

Despite personal risk, priests used their pulpits for maintaining national spirit and encouraged resistance, the bishoprics were a visible sign of the existence of an organisation, although not governmental and the resistance movement was full of clergy in all sorts of positions...[-]... the Catholic Church emerged from the war victorious, spiritually strengthened, inwardly toughened by its losses, surrounded by universal respect and ready for new and difficult days ahead.