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80 years ago, the Germans murdered Jesuit Adam Sztark for rescuing persecuted Jews. In 2001, he was recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem, the world centre for Holocaust research, documentation, education, and commemoration.
Adam Sztark was a Polish Catholic clergyman and the first Polish Jesuit to be awarded the Righteous Among the Nations medal.
Jesuit Adam Sztark was born in Zbiersk on July 30, 1907. After graduating from middle school in Kalisz, he entered the Jesuit order in Stara Wieś. He was ordained a priest in June 1936.
After the outbreak of World War II, he became a victim of repression by the Third Reich. According to witnesses, he exhorted from the pulpit to help the Jews and collected money for them among his parishioners. Sztark hid orphaned Jewish children found on the street in the presbytery.
He was arrested on December 18, 1942, and was shot the following day by the Germans. He was shot near Pietralewicki Hill near Slonim.
On March 8, 2001, the Israeli Yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem awarded him the Righteous Among the Nations medal.
He is one of the 122 Servants of God against whom the second process of beatification of the second group of Polish martyrs from the Second World War began on September 17, 2003.