STANISŁAW ŻELIWSKI - SZKIC BIOGRAFICZNY PROBOSZCZA STRYSZOWSKIEGO ZGŁADZONEGO W KL AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU

After 1943, in the collective memory of the rural communities of Stryszów and Dąbrówka, the figure of Rev. Stanisław Żeliwski, murdered in Auschwitz, became a kind of a figure of memory from the times of the occupation, which nowadays began to fade into oblivion with the death of the last witnesses of the past. Among the many stories (often of legendary nature) and inquiries of purely conspiratorial narrative, the social, catechetical and pastoral activity of Rev, S. Żeliwski in Stryszów was completely forgotten. For the author, the biography became not only a way to deny (sometimes) untrue news, but primarily a tool to broaden the state of knowledge about the history of the 1930s and 1940s in a private village in the Beskids mountains (Stryszów and Dąbrówka). The article uses unknown sources of the parish archives of Stryszów, supplemented with information obtained through oral history from the last living witnesses of the past of the Stryszów parish. The author, basing on the fragments of the surviving testament of S. Żeliwski, presented the parish priest of Strysz as a priest, chaplain and catechist, and a vicar from the time of the greatest unrest, and outlined the process of the elevating the memory of S. Żeliwski by his successor, Rev. Stanisław Wciślak.