Blessed Kazimierz Dembowski

Kazimierz Dembowski (3 August 1912 – 10 August 1942) was a Polish Jesuit involved in the religious publishing industry, who shortly after the German invasion of Poland was arrested by the Gestapo, imprisoned at several places of detention, and lastly deported to the Dachau concentration camp where he was murdered in a gas chamber. He is among 122 Polish martyrs whose beatification process was advanced in 2003. Dembowski was born in Strzyżów in the family of Zygmunt Dembowski and his wife Marja, née Denkert. Through a special indult from the General of the Jesuits, he entered the Society at Stara Wieś on 23 November 1926 at the age of 14. At Stara Wieś he passed a two-year novitiate under the novice master Augustyn Dyla (1885–1958), a Jesuit professor of philosophy. He was subsequently educated at a Jesuit gimnazjum at Pińsk in Poland (now Pinsk in Belarus; see picture above) where he graduated in May 1932, subsequently pursuing higher studies at the Jesuit institute in Kraków (1932–1935) and at Lyon, France (1935–1939). After his return to Poland in 1939 Dembowski worked as a translator for the religious publisher Wydawnictwo Apostolstwa Modlitwy of Kraków, the oldest Catholic publishing house in Poland (now called the Wydawnictwo WAM). He translated into Polish the text of Jean-Vincent Bainvel (1858–1937), a professor in the Institut catholique de Paris, entitled La Dévotion au Sacré-Coeur de Jésus : doctrine, histoire, which appeared in his translation in 1934 as Kult Serca Bożego: teorja i rozwój. He was also a co-editor of the monthly magazine Posłaniec Serca Jezusowego ("The Messenger of the Heart of Jesus"), a serial publication which appeared in 40 languages.