From L-R: My Father - Eric Firkowski, Grandmother - Zofia, Grandfather - Wladysław (Walter), Father Walenty Waloszek & Aunt - Anastasia in Ludwigsburg, Germany 13 March 1950
Who was Father Walenty Waloszek and why is he important to a family's genealogy? He is important to my family history because he was the man who helped my grandparents, father and aunt get to the United States. Families he helped could have gone on to live in any number of countries that were taking in refugees following the end of WWII to include Brazil and countries in South America.You will not find much information on the Internet about ks. Walenty Waloszek, but he helped many Poles in Germany after WWII.
My grandparents, father and aunt left their home in Oświęcim, Poland in about 1942/1943 and traveled into southern Germany via the Tatry Mountains. In Germany they stayed in DP camps in various areas. While in Ludwigsburg, my grandfather and Walenty became very close friends. Father Walenty Waloszek helped with all the paperwork to get my grandparents to America in December of 1950. Father Waloszek helped many Poles who were stranded in Germany during the end of WWII and after. He and my grandparents kept in contact after they settled themselves into their new home in the United States. The copies of letters and cards I have speaks to how close they were; he even sent a copy of the announcement of his new position with the church in Stuttgart in the year just after my grandparents left for America. One of the items he sent was of genealogical value. It
contained a list of persons in my family that had passed on. Prayers were said for these family members, in the church by Father Walenty Waloszek at my grandmother's request. My father has told me of the story that he had two younger sisters named Irena and Krystyna that had died young before my father was born. My father used to have a photo of their grave, but the photo was lost (that is another story). A search of known churches in the area did not produce any death records, so I had no documentation to show anything about his sisters, but this list of those who had passed in the family DID contain the names of his sisters. This is the only documentation to show those sisters. Maybe someday I will be able to locate their death records.
Walenty Waloszek was born 12 February 1903 in Grzawa, Poland. He was a Salesian novitiate in Klecza Dolne from 1923 to 1924. He was a religion teacher at Universal School in Krakow and vicar of the parish of St. Stanislaus Kostka. He was ordained on 26 May 1934.
On 23 May 1941, he was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Auschwitz and then on to Dachau. Father Walenty Waloszek said while in Auschwitz he remembers being given a heavy iron wheelbarrow, pick and shovel. They were required to work quickly with their pickaxes to break stones, without looking up and resting. They had to move them in a wheelbarrow along the gravel and bring them down 7 meters at a distance of 50 meters. He was then freed by American troops on 29 April 1945.
After being freed, he remained in Germany. From 1945 to 1948 he held masses for the Poles in Hohenfelz, from 1948 to 1950 in Ludwigsburg, and from 1950 began pastoral work among the Poles in Stuttgart and the surrounding area, where he worked selflessly to the end of 1980 when he retired at the age of 77. Father Walenty Waloszek died on May 1, 1985 in Baberg, Germany. His life and fervent work remain in the memory of the local Polish-American parish.