Artigos de revistas sobre o tema "Silesian priests"

After Poland regained its independence in 1918, the Polish Roman Catholic Church needed to be reunited, so that thoroughly educated priests could be deployed to work in the newly established dioceses. The system of teaching had to be reorganized and this issue was fi­nally regulated by the 1925 Concordat which guaranteed the possi­bility of creating a seminary in each diocese. A special situation took place in Krakow, where in the 1920s, in addition to the existing dioc­esan seminary, the Częstochowa Seminary and the Silesian Seminary were located. The article outlines the circumstances in which the seats of these institutions were established outside home dioceses and draws attention to the cultural context of the events of that time, whose mate­rial reflection remains as the two modernist buildings preserved in the center of Krakow.

The aim of the article is to present the person and scientific achievements of Fr. Karl Urban (1864–1923), in the years 1899–1923 a priest at Sadów in the Lubliniec deanery. He himself – being the son of Carl Urban (1836–1922), a teacher in Upper Silesian schools, the author of a few books combining the subjects of pedagogy and history – he was engaged in scientific activity almost all his life. He published some of his research works in the Silesian scientific journal: „Oberschlesische Heimat. Zeitschrift des OberschlesischenGeschichtsvereins”, and he was actively participating in the activities of the Upper Silesian Historical Society founded in 1904. The members of that society focused their work mainly on the history of local communities, creating accounts contributing to the synthetic history of Upper Silesia. The preliminary archival query found the first articles of Fr. Urban, concerning the history of the lands of Lubliniec and Koszęcin. The author shares the preliminary results of his research, the aim of which is to publish a book about this forgotten researcher of local history on the hundredth anniversary of his death.

Establishing and implementing rules that would teach young people to become active citizens became a crucial technique for turning those spots on the map of Europe whose sovereignty had shifted after World War I into lived social spaces. This article analyses how principals of borderland secondary schools negotiated transformation in Polish Upper Silesia with the help of Arnold Van Gennep’s notion that a shift in social statuses possessed a spatiality and temporality of its own. The article asks whether and how school principals were called on to offer elite training that would make Polish Upper Silesia more cohesive with the rest of Poland in terms of the social origins of pupils and the content of the history curriculum. In addition, it examines the extent to which borderland school principals accepted, refuted, or helped to shape that responsibility. The social origins of pupils are detected through a quantitative analysis of recruitment figures and the profiles of pupils’ parents. This analysis is combined with an exploration of how school principals provided a meaningful explanation of the recent past (World War I and the Silesian Uprisings). The article demonstrates that while school principals were historical actors with some room to make their own decisions when a liminal space was created, changed, and abolished, it was ultimately a priest operating in their shadows who possessed more possibilities to become a master of ceremonies leading elite education through its rites of passage.

The Hospitallers of St. John and the female orders in Silesia in the Middle Ages The networks of the houses of the Hospitallers and of the female monastic orders in Silesia were similar (about 14 houses of the Hospitallers and 13 monasteries of nuns). There were many differences between these groups of clergy, too. The monasteries of nuns belong to various orders (e.g., Benedictines, Cistercian Nuns, Poor Clares, Dominican sisters, Sisters of St. Mary Magdalene, and the Canons of St. Augustine). Moreover, some houses of Beguines were active in medieval Silesia, too. The number of nuns is estimated to have been about 600, as opposed to the number of Hospitallers, which is estimated to have been about 200. The nuns were enclosed, while the Hospitallers were active in the pastoral care. The relations betwee both groups were not very intense. The priests from the Order of St. John were the chaplains and confessors of the nuns, or they coudl serve as the protectors of the property of the female monesteries (e.g., the Benedictines in Strzegom and the Beguines in Głubczyce). The Hospitallers, in return, asked the nuns for intercessory prayers in the time of the crisises, especially on the Isle of Rhodes. They also had contacts with the individual nuns, who were in some cases their relatives or neighbors. These relations were a sign of the absorption the Order of St. John by the local society.

Recent scholarship, particularly the fundamental source editions of A. Patschovsky and D. Kurze make apparent the dynamic development of Waldensian community in XIV th century Bohemia, Silesia, Pomerania and Brandenburg. The believers were recruited mainly from the immigrants of German origin. The records of inquisitorial interrogations permit to recreate a set of beliefs and eschatological images of the local Waldensian communities. Not a few Waldensians participated in the Catholic cult and the Catholic popular devotions. It did not remain without influence on their views of the Other World. Despite being deeply rooted in Waldensian beliefs, a dual view of the Other World yielded to a pressure exerted by the Catholic idea of purgatory. Among the followers of heterodoxy there appeared, against their own doctrine, timid hopes for the existence of a place, where a posthumous punishment might be passed. These attitudes were kept alive by the concern expressed for the fates of the souls of relatives and friends. The Waldensian structure of the Other World showed affiliation between particular abodes of human souls. The Paradise was also connected with Earth through the voyages of priest missionaries returning periodically for God's gifts and graces / the renewal of charisma / . It was wide open for the followers of a choser community, but also accessible for the good and the just who belonged to the "aliens" / Catholics /. The images of everlasting punishment refered to the condemned Catholic clergy and all other persecutors of Waldensians. However, among the dwellers of Waldensian hell, one can also find the stereotypes of the damned, known from the didactic teachings of the Church. The dominating motif of Waldensian beliefs - the immediate determination of soul's fate after death - succumbed to the images invoking supplementary eschatological spaces, functioning as "quasi-refrigerium". Possibly, a "fair meadow" present in the images of Silesian Waldensians filled such a part. Mid-European Waldensian movement was becoming a syncretic belief, crumbling under the impact of both the Catholic catechetical instruction and the "popular Christianity".

The reform of the Catholic clergy initiated by the Council of Trent emphasized the importance of the practical exercise of the care of souls (cura animarum). The ideal priest should, following the example of Christ—the Good Shepherd, take responsible care of his ‘sheep’—the parishioners. The paper focuses on how the parish clergy performed pastoral care, based on the analysis of reports written on clerics working in the 1760s in ten Moravian and Silesian estates of the Prince of Liechtenstein. These reports prepared by the Prince’s officials mostly contain an evaluation of the performance of the pastoral care by the given cleric. They thus provide an interesting insight into the religious services offered by the lower clergy from the perspective of the owner of the estate, who was also the patron of the local parishes. They show that the Prince of Liechtenstein as the patron, together with his officials, supervised how the clerics provided for the spiritual needs of his subjects and furthermore through the exercise of the right of patronage he helped to provide his subjects with proper pastoral care.

Stefan Schiwietz (Stefan Siwiec), 1863-1941 – a Roman Catholic priest, Doctor of Theology, historian of the Eastern Orthodox Church, pedagogue – was born in Miasteczko Śląskie (Georgenberg) on 23th August 1863. He studied theo­logy at the University of Wrocław for 3 years (1881-1884) under H. Laemmer, F. Probst, A. König and M. Sdralek, among others, and then continued his theo­logical studies in Innsbruck (1884-1886), where he was a pupil of J. Jungmann and G. Bickell. The seminarist spent two years (1885-1886) in Freising in Bavaria, where in 1886 he took his holy orders. Siwiec published his doctoral thesis in Wrocław in 1896, so at the time when Sdralek took the chair of Church History. The subject of the Silesian scholar’s dissertation concerned the monastic reform of Theodore the Studite De S. Theodoro Studita reformatore monachorum Basilianorum. Siwiec combined his didactic work as a religious and mathematics teacher in the public middle school in Racibórz with his academic studies on the history of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, especially on monasticism. The results of his research were published both in German and in Polish. His most significant work is a three-volume monograph Das morgenländische Mönchtum (Bd. 1: Das Ascetentum der drei ersten christl. Jahrhunderte und das egyptische Mönchtum im vierten Jahrhundert, Mainz 1904; Bd. 2: Das Mönchtum auf Sinai und in Palästina im 4 Jahrhundert, Mainz 1913; Bd. 3: Das Mönchtum in Syrien und Mesopotamien und das Aszetentum in Persien vierten Jarhundert, Mödling bei Wien 1938) on the history of the beginnings and development of Oriental monas­ticism in Egypt, Palestine, Syria and Persia, until the 4th century, which up to the present day has been cited in the world Patristic literature. Yet, Siwiec’s academic work still remains little known, especially in the circle of historians of antiquity and Polish patrologists. The equally little known figure of Max Sdralek, another Silesian (coming from Woszczyce) priest and academic, Rector of University of Wrocław, provides a significant context with the research methodology which this eminent scholar initiated, developed and tried to pass down to his pupils, among whom was also Stefan Siwiec. Sdralek strictly demanded that the principle of the priority of Church history over history of religion and psychology should be kept. In his works a description of socio-cultural factors and natural conditions determining the process of development of Christianity enables to see in a much clearer way how God’s plan has unfolded in history. The mutual dependence of Sdralek and Siwiec, the similarities and differences in their ways of studying and understanding Church history still remains an issue worth further exploration.

The rise of nationalism threatened the integrity of the Catholic milieu in borderlands such as Prussian Upper Silesia. Facing this challenge, the ecclesiastical elite developed various strategies. This article presents interpretations of sacred art works from the first half of the 20th century, which reveal different approaches to national discourses expressed in iconographic programs. The spectrum of attitudes includes indifference, active counteraction to the progress of nationalism by promoting a different paradigm of building temporal imagined communities, acceptance of nationalistic metaphysics, which assumes the division of humanity into nations endowed with a unique personality, and a synthesis of Catholicism and nationalism, in which national loyalties are considered a Christian duty. The last position proved particularly expansive. Based on the primordialist concept of the nation and the historiosophical concept of Poland as a bulwark of Christianity, the Catholic-national ideology gained popularity among the pro-Polish clergy in the inter-war period. This was reflected in Church art works, which were to present Catholicism as the unchanging essence of the nation and the destiny of the latter resulting from God’s will. This strategy was designed to incorporate Catholic Slavophones into the national community. The adoption of a different concept of the nation by the pro-German priests associated with the Centre Party—with a stronger emphasis on the subjective criteria of national belonging—resulted in greater restraint in expressing national contents in sacred spaces.

W XIV w. Grochowy (wieś w pow. konińskim, gm. Rychwał) były własnością biskupów lubuskich. Prawdopodobnie za ich sprawą utworzono tam parafię oraz wybudowano pierwszy kościół. W końcu XV w. wieś trafiła w ręce lokalnej szlachty. Stary obiekt był zrujnowany, dlatego za sprawą dziedziczki Żychlińskiej na początku XVI w. wybudowano drugą drewnianą świątynię. Jej główna bryła (konstrukcja zrębowa) mogła przetrwać do początku XX w. Ze źródeł wynika, że kościół składał się z nawy, prezbiterium, zakrystii i kruchty. Pod względem architektonicznym świątynię można było zaliczyć do grupy śląskich kościołów późnogotyckich. Konsekrowany w 1727 r. obiekt jeszcze pod koniec XVIII stulecia był w dobrym stanie. Świadczy o tym opis parafii z 1794 r. Niszczał jednak przez kolejne dekady aż do 1863 r., kiedy proboszczem został ks. Bethier. Duchowny wyremontował kościół i postawił plebanię. Decyzją jego następców w latach 1908-12 powstał w Grochowach murowany kościół. Zabytkowy rozebrano zaś w 1928 r. The Wooden Church of St. Dorothy in Grochowy. A Contribution to the History of a Nonexistent Temple In the 14th century Grochowy (a village in Konin county, Rychwał commune) belonged to Lubusz bishops. It was probably thanks to them that a parish was established there and the first church was built. At the end of the 15th century the village became the property of the local gentry. The old building was in ruins, so thanks to the heiress Żychlińska a second wooden temple was built at the beginning of the 16th century. Its main body (log structure) may have survived until the beginning of the 20th century. The sources show that the church consisted of a nave, a chancel, a vestry and a porch. From an architectural point of view, the church could be classified in the group of Silesian late Gothic churches. Consecrated in 1727, the building was still in good condition at the end of the 18th century. This is evidenced by the description of the parish from 1794. However, it deteriorated in the following decades until 1863, when Fr Bethier became the parish priest. The priest renovated the church and built a parsonage. His successors decided to build a brick church in Grochory in 1908-12. The historic church was demolished in 1928.

Primate Stefan Wyszyński engaged in a series of administrative and diplomatic activities related to the institution of the Polish Church organisation in the Western Lands. In the years 1948-1967 he exercised his authority over the Church in this area. He initially supervised apostolic administrators in Wrocław, Opole, Gorzów Wielkopolski, and in Olsztyn and Gdańsk, and after their removal in 1951 he sanctioned vicar capitulars elected by the state authority to preserved unity of the Church in Poland. In 1956 his attempts resulted in the restoration of the relevant bishops to their posts. In 1967 at his request the Pope Paul VI excluded the Church organisation in the Western Lands from the jurisdiction of Primate of Poland and subordinated it directly to the Holy See, instituting apostolic administrations there. primate repeatedly conducted negotiations with the Holy See in case of the institution of the Polish Church organisation in this area, which ended only after the ratification of the Polish-German treaty in 1972 by the announcement of the apostolic constitution Episcoporum Poloniae coetus. During the entire period Primate repeatedly visited archdiocese of Wrocław and supported the activities of the hierarchs governing this area, initially priest Karol Milik, and subsequently priest Kazimierz Lagosz and since 1956 bishop Bolesław Kominek. Primate Wyszyński repeatedly emphasised the rights of Poland to these lands in his speeches and sermons delivered in Wrocław. He proved that they resulted, on the one hand from their historical embeddedness in the Polish culture (he was referring to the relations of Silesia with Poland in the Piast period), and on the other hand he pointed to the re-Catholising mission of the Church in these lands. He also indicated that these lands are the peculiar compensation for the losses incurred by the Polish nation during the Second World War. He perceived the tasks of the Church in this area during the period of the stabilisation of the Polish Church administration as the Polish reason of state.

Wilhelm von Blandowski (1822-1878) was born in Gleiwitz, Prussia (now Gliwice, Upper Silesia, Poland). From 1862 through 1868, Wilhelm von Blandowski may have taken up to 10, 000 photographs. Though only a portion of his photographic accomplishment has been preserved, the existing photographs provide an insight into their content and character, as well as providing us with the better understanding of the work of their author. The main emphasis in the paper will be on Blandowski’s photographs presently in the collections of Museum in Gliwice. It will focus on his portraits with reference to some of the formal experiments Blandowski carried out, such as photomontage and narrative photography. Attention will be also drawn to his creation of documentary-like and realistic photographs. Both the commercial nature of the photographic business run by Blandowski, as well as his personal interest in picturing the human condition, had a strong influence on his photography. He put the person at the center of his interest. This was reflected in Blandowski’s attempts to capture the natural world of the Prussian borderlands in the 1860s. Blandowski depicted a place inhabited by Germans, Jews and Poles ‘the promised land’ of early industrialization. Witnesses of these days, the known and anonymous characters look at us from the hundreds of prints taken by Blandowski. Among them one can see wealthy industrialists, priests and doctors, workers and peasants, children and women, the rich and the poor, persons of different professions, nationalities and confessions. The article concludes with a discussion of the influences that Blandowski has had on his contemporaries and also of his place in the history of early photography in Poland.

In her narrative Bronisława Guza (born in 1929) talks about the life of her family in Obertyn – a small town in the former Stanisławów province – starting from 1930s and WW2 period, to the post-war years when she came to Lower Silesia. In her recollections she describes places that played an important role in the town’s life: Saints Peter and Paul’s church and priests serving in it, a convent belonging to the Congregation of the Servants of the Holiest Virgin Mary of the Immaculate Conception from Stara Wieś, along with an orphanage run by the nuns (which she used to attend as a child), the market square on market days, various shops, houses, a mound made to commemorate the battle of Obertyn in 1531, as well as a cross standing on its top. She tells us about relations between Obertyn’s inhabitants: Poles, Ukrainians and Jews – how they established and maintained close bonds, together celebrated holidays and weddings, participated in funerals, and so on – and about mutual respect for other denominations and customs. Bronisława Guza’s story of WW2 contains recollections of the Soviet and German occupations, circumstances of the Soviet re-entering at the end of March and at the beginning of April 1944, and of the activity of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists on these territories. The key moment for this time in history was in 1945, when a vast majority of the Polish community of Obertyn was resettled to the Western Territories. Bronisława Guza and her family ended up in Siedlce near Oława, where initially she lived together with the German, evangelical community of the village. The inhabitants settled down in the new place and tried to adapt to the new life conditions.

From 1487, Martin Mareš studied with the financial support of his brother-in-law Václav of Rovné, a chancellor of the South Bohemian Rožmberk family, at the University of Bologna, where he received the degree of Doctor of Canon Law in 1494. He was one of the favourite students of the leading Italian Humanist Filippo Beroaldo the Elder, who dedicated the first edition of his collection Orationes et poemata to him in 1491. Martin Mareš worked as a parish priest in his native Český Krumlov from 1496 until 1498 while developing his ecclesiastical career in Wrocław, Silesia, where he had been, already as a student, appointed canon and, later in 1498, vicar general of the diocese. Nevertheless, he died there the next year, in 1499, before the age of thirty. Mareš’s library is one of the most interesting Humanist collections of the Jagiellonian period. It mainly consists of Italian printed books, which he purchased during his studies. The reconstruction of Mareš’s scattered library was carried out more than 50 years ago by the classical philologist Josef Hejnic. In the appendix, the author of the paper presents descriptions of six recently discovered incunabula and a complemented description of one previously known incunabulum (four are part of the collections of the National Library of the Czech Republic, one is deposited in the collections of the National Széchényi Library in Budapest, one in the Lobkowicz Library at Nelahozeves Castle and one in the Schwarzenberg Library at Český Krumlov Castle). In total, we know of one manuscript and almost seventy incunabula from Mareš’s library. Most of them are editions of works by ancient authors, especially Roman poets. New discoveries have enriched Mareš’s collection with Virgil, Horace and Justin. The equally large collection of works by Italian Humanists included i.a. Naldo Naldi and Francesco Filelfo. Surprisingly enough, Mareš’s library contained only a few juristic and theological titles. We now know that he owned collected works of St Augustine and also the Digest, which was part of the codification of Roman law.

In 1939-1945, the Nazi invaders organized over 1300 prisons and jails in the occupied territory of Poland. The institutions were instrumental to the policy of extermination the Polish nation which was among the aims of the invasion. Prisons and jails were places where Polish people were isolated, tortured and slaughtered. Inmates were transported to places of mass execution and to concentration camps; during evacuation in January l945, route columns were sent on ,,death marches”. The prisons where such genocidal practices were particularly intense are still present in Polish historical consciousness as places of torture and martyrdom. A symbol of this kind is the Pawiak prison in Warsaw where the Nazi confined over 100 thousand persons; 37 thousand were put before a firing squad, slaughtered, or tortured to death, and 60 thousand were sent to concentration camps. The Pawiak prison was also the site of the inmates' incessant struggle for freedom, survival, and preservation of dignity. In their struggle, the prisoners were assisted in a variety of ways by many Polish members of the staff compulsorily employed by the Nazi out of necessity especially during the first months of occupation. The assistance was both material and spiritual. The Staff would hand over to inmates articles such as food, drugs, cigarettes etc., and to confined priests - the Host. The Polish prison staff smuggled messages, contacted the prisoners' families, disclosed informers, warned against the Gestapo and helped to escape. Their acts resulted from patriotic, humanitarian and religious values. Attitudes of a considerable proportion of Polish prison staff who sabotaged the rulings of Nazi administration helped to accomplish intelligence operations started in prisons as early as the autumn of 1939 by underground independance organizations. In December 1939, Warsaw District Headquarters of Siuïba Zwycikstwu Polski [Service to Poland’s Victory, SZP] recruited three prison guard officers who were ordered to organize intelligence divisions in each of the Warsaw prisons. In the Pawiak prison, the structure continued to operate till July 1944; it based on the work of Polish staff duty prisoners, and a group of outside liaisons. Participation of the prison staff in intelligence operations undertaken by independence organizations broadened the notion of prison conspiracy, adding to it a variety of actions directly related to struggle against the invaders. Symbols similar to the Pawiak prison were also other institutions in Nazi-occupied Poland and in Polish territories included in the Reich. On the local scale, the prisons were symbols of particular torment of their inmates and of underground involvement of the Polish staff. The actual possibility of forming a prison conspiracy in Nazi-occupied territories depended on many factors. This was related to differences in the functioning of prisons systems in different regions. Individual administrative districts in territories included into the Reich differed in this respect from the occupied regions and from the eastern borderland of Poland, Nazi-occupied since 1941. The basic factor that determined the nature and intensity of underground activities was the size of Polish staff and their individual motivation resulting from the system of values professed. In territories included into the Reich, the prison system subordinated to Ministry of Justice controlled 142 formerly Polish prison institutions. Their arrangement in individul administrative districts was as follows: Warta Land - 49, Gdansk and West Prussia - 28, Silesia - 12, East Prussia - 6, and Białystok - 4. Among those taken over by Nazi invaders, the largest in respect of inmate population were the prisons in Sieradz (capacity of 1,146), Rawicz (1,075), Wronki (1,016), Koronowo (562), Poznań (464), and Łódź(420). Some of the prisons were taken over together with their inmates and Polish prison staff who were ordered to work on. This corresponded with the order that all inhabitants of invaded territories return to work on pain of severe sanctions, the death penalty included. The order applied also to prison staff who stayed on in their original place of residence or returned from evacuation or POW camps. Among those returning to work were guards who on the day of evacuation had been given secret orders to stay on and to take a job under occupation (Cracow, Wronki). In some localities, during the first weeks of occupation, there was a shortage of candidates for prison guards among both the Polish population and the local German community. The invaders thus had to hire German-speaking Poles with some knowledge of prisons, as e.g. court ushers. In November 1939, the process started of Polish staff being removed from prisons, in Warta Land in particular, and replaced with German guards brought in from the Reich, local Germans, and Poles who had signed the German nationality list. In 1943, the front situation becoming worse, some of the German prison staff were mobilized. Vacancies were filled with forcefully employed former Polish guards. Thus according to the changing staff conditions, also the possibilities of clandestine assistance to inmates changed. The possibility of intelligence operations in prisons in territories included into the Reich depended also on the functioning of independence organizations. The extent of repressions suffered by Polish people in those territories made it impossible to develop regular underground activities in prisons. In some prisons in the Gdansk and West Prussia district where Polish staff were left on the job (Grudziądz, Koronowo, Starogard Gdański), the guards immediately started helping prisoners: they contacted the families and smuggled packages, letters and messages. Most important was assistance in organizing escapes, saving persons from transports to concentration camps, putting them in the infirmary, or finding them a job in the prison. The Koronowo prison had special conditions for development of underground activity: throughout the period of occupation, its Staff included 44 Poles, 39 of them among the guards. Most guards became involved in various forms of assistance to prisoners; they cooperated with an inmate self-defense group and with an underground group of Koronowo women who rendered material assistance to inmates and helped their families coming on permitted visits. They also helped to find shelter for escaped prisoners. The only Polish woman guard in the Fordon women’s prison was only employed in 1943. From the very start, she rendered material and moral assistance to political prisoners, and organized a local group who gathered food and drugs for the inmates. Most limited were the possibilities of assisting prisoners in the institutions of Warta Land. The conditions were favorable during the first months after the invasion only when the invaders were forced to employ Polish prison staff and the system of internal and external supervision and surveillance had not yet been introduced to the full. In this situation, Polish guards mainly assisted inmates materially and morally and served as liaisons between them and their families. For example, a guard in the Leszno prison smuggled farewell letters of hostages wainting for execution; another one in the Rawicz prison orsanized a contact station for prisoners’ families in his own apartment; and a guard in the Kościan prison help priests to say masses in secret. Later on when few Polish guards were still in service, they could only assist inmates on a limited scale and with extreme caution. But even in this situaion, they were still willing to help. During the first months after the invasion, a Polish clerk in the Kościan prison not only assisted the inmates but also documented Nazi crimes: among other things, he kept lists of the executed. In prisons of the Warta Land district involvement of Polish prison staff in underground intelligence was practically non-existent. This was due to a rapid replacement of Polish guards and to organizational difficulties encountered by the underground in that district. Favorable conditions could be found in the Wieluń prison which had a large group of pre-war Polish Staff throughout the period of Nazi occupation. Moreover, one of prison staff leaders, reserve oficer of the Polish Army, was sworn as agent of Sieradz and Wieluń Inspectorate of the underground Armed-Struggle Union - Home Army (ZWZ AK). In prisons taken over by the invaders in Silesia district, the Nazi administration created a climate of mistrust, suspicion and intimidation with respect to Polish staff temporarily left on the job. This limited and in some cases precluded the guards’ secret contacts with inmates and their families. A special role in prison conspiracy in Silesia was played by Emil Lipowczan, forcefully recruited to the police and delegated to work as guard in Gestapo remand prison in Mysłowice. Acting for patriotic, humanitarian and religious reasons, he rendered comprehensive material and spiritual assistance to prisoners. He reached their families and warned persons threatened with arrest. He was assisted in this work by his entire family. Starting from 1943, he worked for Home Army intelligence. Once the Nazi-Soviet war broke out in June 1943, the eastern territories of Poland - previously occupied by USSR – were taken over by Nazi administration. Extremely few Polish prison guards could actually be used by the new invaders as the staff had been pacified by NKVD in 1939-1941. For this reason, prisons of Białystok district were staffed with various persons; some of them were subsequently recruited by ZWZ AK intelligence. Many a time, ZWZ AK would also appoint its members to take a job in prisons and Gestapo remand prisons and to carry out information and intelligence tasks there while at the same time assisting detained AK soldiers. Such guards only rendered material and moral assistance to other prisoners with utmost caution as a side-activity which they pursued for humanitarian reasons. In Nazi-occupied Poland (Generalgouvernement), the conditions were entirely different and more favorable for prison conspiracy. Nearly all prisons, also those subordinated to security police (except the Montelupi prison in Cracow), had Polish staff throughout the occupation. Besides, operating in ihe neighborhood of individual institutions were numerous legal, semi-legal and illegal organizations assisting prisoners and their families. Through persons who stayed in touch with the inmates, SZP-ZWZ AK would penetrate prisons on regular basis. The prison staff (pre-war guards forcefully reassigned to the job) not only assisted the inmates but also became involved in intelligence work. Tasks of this kind were performed mainly by guards purposely sent to the prison by an independence organization. Prison conspiracy has a variety of organizational forms. In Tarnyw, there was an highly centralized prison section; Lublin, instead, had several active but independent small groups of guards and duty prisoners. In Cracow, Częstochowa (prison in Senacka Street), and in a few other smaller prisons, the structure was atomized and based on independent underground work of individual guards. The extent of assistance rendered to inmates and of intelligence tasks assigned often depended on the committal and personality of the head of AK prison section; this can be said e.g. of the prisons in Jasło, Pinczów and Rzeszów. Significant was also the contribution of intelligence officers who supervised the prisons sections e.g. in Biała Podlaska, Siedlce, Wiśnicz and Zamość. Added to Generalgouvernement in August 1941 was Galicia district. Polish guards were but a small group among the prison staff of that district; they were supervised by Germans, Ukrainians and other nationalities. In such conditions, the scope of assistance to inmates was extremely limited. Yet ZWZ AK intelligence officers would get in touch even with those few Polish guards and gain them over for cooperation. Prison conspiracy in Galicia and in the remaining eastern territories consisted first of all in individual guards’ committal and performance of tasks assigned by his superior intelligence officer. This form could be found in Lvov, Pińsk, and Równe. The Nazi prison administration mistrusted Polish staff who were submitted to everincreasing surveillance by the Germans and other nationalities, and also by few quislings among Polish guards and informers among the inmates. Yet neither persecution nor repression (arrests, executions, confinements to concentration camps) applied to Polish staff could reduce the extent of assistance to political prisoners or check intelligence work in prisons.

When in 1908 in Cieszowa, one of the oldest Jewish communities in Upper Silesia, buildings of the dissolved Kehilla were put up for auction, Fr. Karl Urban (1864-1923), the priest of the parish of St. Joseph in Sadów, to which Cieszowa also belonged, purchased a synagogue with the surrounding outbuildings from his own resources, thus protecting them from inevitable liquidation. Cieszowa was one of four villages in Upper Silesia, in which Jews were ordered to reside during Prussian settlement bans, issued in the 1770s and 1780s. The article briefly describes the history of the Jewish community in Silesia, with the emphasis on the religious community set up by them in Cieszowa. In addition, the circumstances of the auctioning of local buildings in 1908 and their purchase by Fr. Karl Urban were described. The author focused on the activity of Fr. Urban, aimed at creating a religious and museum memorial site. Moreover, the author undermines the popular opinion involving the demolition of wooden monuments, allegedly after 1911, postponing the time of their destruction for the years after the death of Fr. Urban, i.e. after 1923.