Anti-Catholic Repression during the German Occupation of Poland as a Consequence of the Anti-totalitarian Stance of the Catholic Church

The Catholic Church in Poland was one of the targets and victims of the murderous policy pursued by Nazi Germany in the occupied Polish lands. Catholic clergy was among the groups to suffer the most substantial personal losses, and a markedly high percentage of Catholic priests perished in German concentration camps (among others in KL Dachau, but also in KL Auschwitz and KL Gusen).

This particular zeal in the persecution of the Catholic clergy had several causes. Firstly, German occupation authorities recognized the Church as playing a key role in bringing together the Polish society, and thus as being a stronghold of anti-Nazi resistance. Secondly, the Catholic clergy constituted an important and integral part of the Polish intelligentsia and social elites. Thirdly, the Catholic Church in Poland consistently adopted an anti-totalitarian, and hence anti-Nazi position.

Focusing on the third cause of persecution – which, in my opinion, is the least obvious – I will emphasize the following aspects of the Church’s anti-totalitarianism:

1. the criticism of Nazism present in the writings of Polish bishops even before 1939, so in the period when European elites showed tolerance for the Nazi policy in Germany;
2. the Catholic anti-totalitarian line of reasoning from the war period, which was based not only – as could be expected – on the resistance to the murderous anti-national policy of the occupier, but most importantly on Christian humanism, and which can be found in wartime sources;
3. the active involvement of the Catholic clergy and lay Catholics in rescuing Jews from the Holocaust, undertaken for religious reasons.

In conclusion I will emphasize that the anti-totalitarian facet of the Polish Catholicism found its continuation in the rejection of the Communist regime during the Polish People’s Republic and in the attitudes of Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński and John Paul II.