“If the lot of their Excellencies the Bishops has been a source of anxiety for the Holy See, the condition of an immense number of priests and members of religious orders has caused it, and still causes it, no less grief.
“In the territory now called ‘Warthegau’ more than 2,000 priests exercised their ministry before the war; they are now reduced to a very small number.
“According to accounts received from various quarters by the Holy See, in the first months of the military occupation not a few members of the secular clergy were shot or otherwise put to death, while others—some hundreds—were imprisoned or treated in an unseemly manner, being forced into employments unbecoming their state and exposed to scorn and derision.
“Then, while numbers of ecclesiastics were exiled or constrained in some other way to take refuge in the ‘Generalgouvernement,’ many others were transferred to concentration camps. At the beginning of October 1941 the priests from the dioceses of the ‘Warthegau’ detained in Dachau already numbered several hundreds; but their number increased considerably in that month following a sharp intensification of police measures which culminated in the imprisonment and deportation of further hundreds of ecclesiastics. Entire ‘Kreise’ (districts) remained thus completely deprived of clergy. In the city of Poznan itself the spiritual care of some 200,000 Catholics remained in the hands of not more than four priests.
“No less painful was the fate reserved for the regular clergy. Many religious were shot or otherwise killed; the great majority of the others were imprisoned, deported, or expelled.