Easter is a time of joy and hope in the Resurrection for Christians. In 1942, however, in the Dachau concentration camp(KL Dachau), it became a time of brutal torture. The Germans deliberately chose the Easter holidays to systematically abuse Polish priests over several days—from Palm Sunday through Easter Monday.
KL Dachau held a unique place among German concentration camps. From 1940, clergy from occupied Europe were sent there, and a separate section for priests—the so-called Priesterblock—was established. Around 250,000 prisoners passed through the camp, including 2,720 clergymen of various denominations. The largest group were Polish priests—1,780 in total, of whom only about 870 were alive at the time of the camp’s liberation by American forces.
Polish priests were assigned to a separate block, number 28. They were subjected to harsher persecution than other inmates. Risking their lives, they secretly held religious services for anyone willing to attend, regardless of nationality or faith. In response, camp authorities placed informers hostile to the Church among them.
The pretext for the Easter ordeal was a violation of camp regulations by Fr. Stanisław Wierzbowski. The Germans applied the principle of collective punishment—everyone in the block was penalized. The reason could be trivial, even something as minor as an improperly made bed. Fr. Wierzbowski, then 45, was flogged and placed in solitary confinement. He likely died as a result of the beating, although camp records listed heart failure due to pneumonia as the cause of death.
But this was only the beginning.
Harassment from Dawn to Dusk
Camp guards decided that all Polish priests—including the elderly and the sick—would be forced to participate in so-called “sports” over the following days. It began on March 28, Palm Sunday, and lasted until April 6, Easter Monday. Every day, from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.
One survivor, Fr. Henryk Malak, recalled:
“We are led to the roll-call square, divided into groups of a hundred, each headed by an SS man, a block leader, or a senior inmate—and then the bloody sport begins.”
Fr. Leon Stępniak—one of the youngest Polish priests in KL Dachau, ordained just three months before the outbreak of the war—described what he endured:
“The prisoners had to drop on command, then throw themselves into puddles and mud, and they would walk over us, trampling us into the mud. And so it went: marching in military step, running, gymnastic exercises.”
The guards constantly devised new methods of torment. At mealtime, when other prisoners could eat and rest, the clergy from the punished block were ordered to clean the grounds—deliberately littered beforehand by German perpetrators. “And when someone fainted during the exercises, they were doused with water, kicked, and beaten,” Fr. Stępniak remembered.
Faith Endured
Several priests paid for the days-long ordeal of beatings and humiliation with their lives. One of the victims was Fr. Prelate Dominik Kaczyński—before the war, the builder of the Church of Our Lady of Victory in Łódź and its first parish priest.
The torture ended as abruptly as it had begun. Fr. Franciszek Korszyński, later auxiliary bishop of Włocławek, recalled:
“On Easter Monday, when we came in for dinner, we found the beds already made—we didn’t need to make them. (…) It meant that the punitive exercises had ended. It was April 6.”
Despite the brutality, the clergy were not broken. Fr. Stefan Wincenty Frelichowski—later beatified in 1999 by Pope John Paul II—told his fellow prisoners that these sufferings “would surely be counted for us by God in heaven and that these persecutions would turn to our good (…) there in heaven.”
The following Easter in 1943 looked different. Clergy were allowed to receive parcels from their families and share festive meals together. Fr. Stępniak recalled:
“Each of us set aside a portion of food on a blanket spread over the bed. We sat down together for a communal Easter breakfast.”
True joy came on April 29, 1945, when American troops entered KL Dachau. Orthodox clergyman Gleb Alexandrovich Rahr described the moment: Greek and Serbian priests put on improvised liturgical vestments over their prison uniforms and began to sing.
Today, chapels and memorials of various denominations stand on the grounds of the former KL Dachau. They bear witness to the fact that faith—even when trampled into the mud by the Germans—endured. And its witnesses deserve remembrance, especially during Easter.