Alojzy Liguda

Blessed Alojzy (Aloysius) Liguda
Born	January 23, 1898 Winów, Poland
Died	December 8, 1942 (aged 44) Dachau Concentration Camp
Venerated in	Roman Catholic Church
Beatified	13 June 1999, Poland by Pope John Paul II

Blessed Aloysius Liguda (January 23, 1898 – December 8, 1942), was a priest and is venerated as a blessed martyr by the Society Of The Divine Word Missionaries.

Life

Born as Alojzy Liguda, he was born in Winów near Opole, Poland in 1892. At age 35, in 1927, he was ordained as a priest and in 1930, he got a degree in Polish Philology. He became the director of the SVD Community in Gorna Grupa. In 1939, the Nazis stormed the community and turned the SVD office house into a makeshift detention camp for the religious and seminarians. In 1940, he was taken to Dachau, and since he knew German, he was a translator for most of the internees, to avoid humiliation. Sometime in 1942, while his health was failing, he and fellow inmates were transported by German soldiers into a nearby water reservoir where they were all supposedly drowned, despite German medico legals stated that the cause of death for the inmates was pneumonia. His body was buried in an unknown mass grave.