Blessed Józef Cyrek

Józef Cyrek (13 September 1904 –2 September 1940) was a Polish Jesuit and writer who shortly after the Nazi invasion of Poland was arrested by the Gestapo, imprisoned at several places of detention, and lastly deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp where he was murdered. He has in recent years been accorded the title of Servant of God and is in the process of being beatified by the Catholic Church. Józef Cyrek was born in Bysina, a village some 34 kilometres (21 mi) south of Kraków, on 13 September 1904 – when the area was under Austrian occupation – to the family of Józef Cyrek, a farmer, and his wife Barbara née Sobal who died when Cyrek was 18-months' old. Cyrek was thus from his earliest years inured to physical work having been obliged to help out with the agricultural work of the family. He went to school at Bysina and at nearby Myślenice, continuing secondary education in Kraków and in Pińsk in Poland (now Pinsk in Belarus). During his secondary studies he entered the Society at Stara Wieś (already in independent Poland; see picture to the right) on 6 December 1924. He studied in Kraków at Jagiellonian University (philosophy) and in Belgium at Louvain (theology), where he also took holy orders on 24 August 1934. After his return to Poland in 1935 Cyrek worked for the religious publisher, the Wydawnictwo Apostolstwa Modlitwy ("Publications of the Apostleship of Prayer") of Kraków, the oldest Catholic publishing house in Poland (now called the Wydawnictwo WAM). In 1938 he became the editor of the periodical Hostia ("The Host"), an organ of the Eucharistic Crusade (see Croisade eucharistique), becoming the chief secretary of the movement. In May of the same year he participated in the 34th Eucharistic Congress in Budapest.