Blessed Adam Bargielski

Blessed Adam Bargielski was a priest of the Diocese of Łomża and curate in Myszyniec. In 1940 he voluntarily gave himself up to the Germans in exchange for his arrested parish priest, and he died in the Dachau concentration camp. The Roman Martyrology commemorates him on September 8, the day of his death.

He was born on January 7, 1903, in Kalinowo, in the parish of Piątnica near Łomża. After finishing secondary school in Łomża in 1924, he entered an officer cadet school but soon left it, and in January 1925 he began his studies at the seminary in Łomża. He was ordained a priest on February 24, 1929.

He first served as curate in the parish of Saint Adalbert in Poznań. He was then sent to study law in Strasbourg, but he broke off those studies. After his return he worked as curate in several parishes of the diocese, among them Suwałki, Kadzidło, and Wąsosz. In 1936 he wanted to join the Marian Fathers and go to the United States, but the bishop asked him to remain in the diocese, and Adam stayed. He was remembered for his zeal, his love of working with young people, and his respect for every person. From 1939 he was curate in Myszyniec.

Myszyniec came under German occupation. On April 9, 1940, during mass arrests of clergy and members of the intelligentsia, the Germans detained the elderly parish priest, Father Klemens Sawicki. Adam was away at the time, ministering to a sick person. When he returned and learned of the arrest, he immediately went to the Germans and asked them to release the parish priest and take him instead. The Germans accepted the exchange.

By way of the camp at Działdowo he was taken in April 1940 to Dachau, in May to Gusen in Austria, and in December of that year back to Dachau, where he was given the number 22061. According to his fellow prisoners, he bore his sufferings bravely and never lost his inner peace. He died on September 8, 1942: struck by a camp overseer, he fell and suffered fatal injuries.

The decree on his martyrdom, promulgated on March 26, 1999, states that he went to prison voluntarily in place of his parish priest. Pope John Paul II beatified him on June 13, 1999, in Warsaw, among the 108 martyrs of the Second World War.