
Joseph Huwer (1895-1941) front, third from left, ca. 1922. Photo: Encyclopedia of Knowledge of the Catholic Church in Silesia.
©Public Domain
Hardly had they invaded Poland in the autumn of 1939 than the Germans took brutal action against the Polish elite. Thousands of professors, artists and teachers were shot to death or arrested as potential insurgents. The Catholic priest Józef Huwer was also on one of the arrest lists. He had been working in the Catholic mission house in Bruczków, first as an administrator and teacher and meanwhile as director. In the summer of 1940 he was deported to Germany along with other Polish clerics. At the Buchenwald concentration camp he had to work in the quarry. He survived the heavy labour there for no more than a few months.