Blessed Kazimierz Wojciechowski

Kazimierz Wojciechowski, SDB (16 August 1904 – 27 June 1941) was a Polish Catholic priest, a member of the Salesians of Don Bosco. He was involved in the education of the youth, and after the Nazi invasion of Poland was arrested by the Gestapo, imprisoned at Montelupich, and subsequently deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp, where he was murdered by two prisoner functionaries the day after arrival. Wojciechowski was born in the Polish city of Jasło, one of the three children of Andrzej Wojciechowski, a railway employee, and his wife Marja Wojciechowska (née Boskówna). His father died when Wojciechowski was five-years' old. Owing to the efforts of his mother struggling single-handedly to support the family he was enrolled at the age of 8 at the Salesian-run boarding school for poor children (the Zakład Salezjański im. Lubo­mir­skich w Krakowie) located in the ulica Rakowicka № 27 in Kraków. At school he was described as a vivacious and content child. In 1916 he entered a similar Silesian institution for older children located at the city of Oświęcim (the future site of Auschwitz during the Second World War) where in 1920 (while in the fourth year of the gimnazjum) he expressed the wish to enter the Salesian novitiate in Klecza Dolna. Accepted by the Salesians of Don Bosco, he professed his religious vows on 2  October 1921. Subsequently, he continued his studies at a Salesian academy in Kraków (the Wyższe Seminarium Duchowne Towarzystwa Salezjańskiego), and upon their completion was given a position at a minor seminary of the Salesians at Ląd in central Poland as an assistant tutor in mathematics and a singing-teacher (see picture to the right). He also taught music and singing at Salesian educational institutes at Antoniewo, Warsaw, Aleksandrów Kujawski, and in Oświęcim. He began his theological studies in Kraków in 1930, and upon their completion received holy orders at the hands of Bishop Stanisław Rospond (1877–1958) on 19 May 1935.