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 ,
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 (18771958) on 19 May 1935. He then taught for a year at a Salesian minor seminary in near
Stryj in Poland (now
Stryi in
Ukraine), on his return to Kraków taking on the duties of a
catechist in
elementary schools and those of a director of an oratorium and patron of Catholic youth organizations. During the
September Campaign Wojciechowski remained in Kraków rendering assistance to persons displaced by the hostilities of war. When the
Nazis allowed the opening of schools in the
General Government in November 1939, he returned to his school work. In the evening hours of Friday, 23 May 1941, Wojciechowski together with eleven of his Salesian confrères, including ten priests and one lay friar was arrested by the
Gestapo at the house in the
ulica Konfederacka № 6 in the
Dębniki district of Kraków (the site of a Salesian
parish; see picture to the right) and imprisoned in the
ulica Montelupich. This was also the time frame within which two of Wojciechowski's fellow-Salesians,
Ignacy Dobiasz and
Jan Świerc, were murdered and removed to crematorium. During the lunch break Wojciechowski was unable to eat on account of the sustained wounds. On the afternoon shift he was beaten again and when he complained he was thrown into a previously excavated gravel pit, told to lie down next to another Salesian friar,
Franciszek Harazim (18851941; inmate number 17375), whom he observed lying at the bottom of the pit in a state of unconsciousness, and together with him was suffocated to death by having a single wooden pole thrown across both his and Harazim's necks, which was then weighed down by the bodies of two
prisoner functionaries a
kapo and a barrack leader (
blockälteste) who stood on the pole at either end. Wojciechowski was 36-years' old. Kazimierz Wojciechowski is currently one of the 122 Polish martyrs of the Second World War who are included in the
beatification process initiated in 1994, whose first beatification session was held in Warsaw in 2003 (see
Słudzy Boży). A person nominated for beatification receives within the Roman Catholic Church the title of "
Servant of God"; once he is actually beatified he is accorded the title of "
Venerable" and "Blessed", which are a prerequisite for
sainthood conferred in a process known as
canonization. In all, over 140 Polish Salesian friars found themselves imprisoned, deported to
concentration camps, or exiled from the country during the Second World War. ==Bibliography==