Saint Alojzy Liguda

Aloysius Liguda (23 January 1898 – 8 December 1942) was a Polish priest and is venerated as a blessed martyr of the Society Of The Divine Word Missionaries (SVD). Liguda was a chaplain, and teacher. He died at Dachau concentration camp in the course of medical experimentation. Alojzy Liguda was born in Winów near Opole, Poland in 1892, the youngest of seven children of Wojciech and Rozalia Przybyl Liguda. His father led pilgrimages to the Basilica of the Visitation in Wambierzyce and to Mount St. Anne. Liguda was a good student; he became interested in missions in China and Africa from reading magazines. At the age of fifteen, Liguda entered the Divine Word minor seminary at Nysa. He was drafted in 1917 and sent to the French front as an artilleryman. After the war, he returned to the seminary to complete his studies. In 1920 he went to the Society of the Divine Word novitiate in Mödling, Austria. He was then sent for teacher training to Pieniezno, where he taught Latin and mathematics at the minor seminary. From there he returned to St. Gabriel's in Mödling for further studies in dogmatics and church history. At age 35, in 1927, he was ordained as a priest. Liguda was assigned to the provincial house in Górna Grupa. After validating his secondary education certificate he was accepted to the Polish Philology Faculty at the University of Poznań. In Poznań he also served a chaplain and religious education teacher at the Ursuline Sisters school for girls. He returned to Grupa and taught at the minor seminary; he also served as chaplain to the garrison in Grupa on Sundays. In the summer of 1939 he became the rector of the monastery at Gorna Grupa. In February 1940, the seminary was turned into a makeshift detention camp for the religious and seminarians. He was sent from one camp to another: Nowy Port in Gdańsk, Sachsenhausen, and Stutthof. By December he was in Dachau and, since he knew German, he was a translator for most of the internees.