Blessed Michal Kozal

Blessed Michal Kozal was a Polish Roman Catholic bishop. He was born on September 27, 1893 to the peasants Jan Kozal and Marianna Płaczek.

Kozal commenced his education on 27 April 1905 at Krotoszyn and at one stage participated in a student strike to take action against the forced Germanization and the forced teaching of the German language. He passed his examinations in 1914 and was offered further studies but rejected the offer to instead pursue a path to the priesthood first in Poznan and then in Gniezno for theological and philosophical studies. Kozal was ordained to the priesthood in the Gniezno Cathedral in 1918.On 1 June 1920 he was appointed as the administrator of the Saint Nicholas parish until 1923 and around this time collaborated with the Catholic Action movement and the Polish Red Cross. In 1932 he became titled as a Monsignor after Cardinal Hlond sought papal approval for this.

The outbreak of World War II saw him tend to the wounded victims and those who were displaced due to the war and the Polish invasion. The Gestapo arrested him and 44 other priests and seminarians on 7 November 1939, and he was tortured and jailed in his diocese; he was later moved to Lad before being sent to both Szczeglin and Berlin before the fatal transfer to Dachau, from which he would never again leave. Kozal never shirked from his duties and spent his time in imprisonment ministering to fellow prisoners despite extensive abuse he received from the guards at the camp.

Kozal suffered from typhoid, and his situation grew worse on 17 January 1943; on 26 January the Nazi doctor Joseph Sneiss gave him a lethal injection of phenol in his right arm, and his remains were cremated in the camp’s crematorium on 30 January. His death was announced on Polish radio on 1 February.