Saint Władysław Mączkowski

Władysław Mączkowski (born June 24, 1911, in Ociąż; died August 20, 1942, in Dachau) was a Polish Catholic priest and a blessed of the Catholic Church. The son of Szczepan, he passed his secondary school final examinations in 1931 at the Boys' Gymnasium in Ostrów Wielkopolski. He studied at seminaries in Poznań and Gniezno and was ordained a priest in 1937 by Primate August Hlond. His first assignment was to a rural parish in Słupy in the Archdiocese of Gniezno, where he worked for two years. In the summer of 1939, he was sent to serve as a vicar in Szubin. During World War II, he performed priestly duties in secret. After some time, he was appointed administrator of a rural parish in Łubowo near Gniezno. Arrested on August 26, 1940, he was sent to a transit camp in Szczyglin. After a few days, he was deported to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, and from there, in December 1940, he was transferred to the Dachau concentration camp. He died on August 20, 1942, exhausted by forced labor and starvation. His body was burned in the camp crematorium. He was beatified by Pope John Paul II in Warsaw on June 13, 1999, as one of the 108 Blessed Polish Martyrs. He has been honored with portraits in the gallery of lecturers and alumni at the Kompałła and Lipski High School (formerly the Boys' Gymnasium) in Ostrów and in the presbytery of the Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Ociąż.