Antonin - en

Conventual Franciscan friar, priest
(1915-1941)

Jan Eugeniusz was born at Vilnius on January 17th, 1915, only child of Jan and Aniela Wilkowska. His parents were well-to-do. He was baptised on March 14th, 1918, in the parish church of the Holy Spirit, at Vilnius. When he was seven years old he began to attend the primary school.
After the middle school certificate, he continued his studies, at first in the royal gymnasium J. Lelewel and then in the classical gymnasium A. Mickiewicz, also in Vilnius.
He was a very able person. He could speak fluently some languages. On June 16th, 1933, he obtained the school leaving certificate and decided to consecrate himself to God, in spite of his family's resistance.

This is what he wrote about that period of his life: "In 1933, after the school leaving certificate, I was faced by a dilemma: to became a friar or a diocesan priest. As some of my classmates came from the diocesan seminary, and I often went to visit them, I opted for the second solution even if, with my heart, I was more inclined to a Religious Order". So he began to study in the major seminary of the diocese of Vilnius.However, his vocation for the religious life was so strong that, after one year of studies, he left the diocesan seminary and entered the Conventual Franciscan Order. He was accepted in the Polish Province on August 17th, 1934, and on September 1st of the same year he received the Franciscan habit and the name Antonin.

He spent his noviciate in Niepokalanów, were he pronounced the temporary vows on September 2nd, 1935. Afterwards, he started again to study Theology in the Franciscan seminary of Krakow. He crowned his religious formation with the perpetual profession on November 1st, 1938 and the priestly ordination on May 1st, 1939. His first destination was Niepokalanów, where he arrived on July 2nd, 1939. Very soon the guardian of the convent, Father Maximilian Kolbe, chose him as his second substitute, that is, the second vicar of the convent.

The brethren of the community remember Father Antonin as a thoughtful priest, who distinguished himself for the deep faith, the devotion, the spirit of prayer and the delicacy towards the others.Owing to his weak health, Father Antonin spent the first months after his arrival in Niepokalanów in the nursing home, called "Lasek" because it was immersed in the wood, a couple of kilometres from the convent. Here, he was caught in the outbreak of the second world war, on September 1st, 1939. When the Germans, on September 19, arrested and deported almost all the friars who remained in the convent of Niepokalanów, those who resided in the "Lasek", including Father Antonin, avoided the prison and the persecutions.

MARTYRDOM

However, in a second moment, he couldn't avoid the arrest. On February 17th, 1941, the Gestapo deported him, together with Father Maximilian, Father Pius Bartosik and other two friars from Niepokalanów, and he was shut up with them in the Pawiak prison in Warsaw. During his stay in that prison, Father Antonin encouraged his fellow prisoners, showing great patience, inviting them to behave correctly and offering them his rations of food. While he was in prison, he continued to wear the Franciscan habit, although it was the cause of further ill treatments by the SS. In the night between the 4th and 5th of April 1941, he was transported with Father Pius to Oswiecim (Auchwitz), where he was tattooed with the number 12764. When he arrived in the "lager" or barrack, he was brutally beaten by the SS with the Franciscan Crown Rosary he wore on his side.

Besides these ill treatments, Father Antonin suffered because he became ill with abdominal typhus. In spite of his disease, he devoted himself to the patients of the "lager", as the good Samaritan, giving them bodily and spiritual help, above all through the sacrament of confession, seriously running the risk of losing his life. He patiently bore the sufferings of life in the "lager", often repeating: "I'm nailed to the cross together with Christ".

Exhausted because of the hard labour, Father Antonin died in the concentration camp of Oswiecim on May 8th, 1941, in the day dedicated to the martyr Saint Stanislaus. By then, feeling the death coming close to him, he said to the priest Don Konrad Szweda, who had confessed him for the last time: "Tell my brethren of Niepokalanów that I died here, faithful to Christ and Mary". He died with the names of Jesus and Mary on his lips.

Proclaimed "blessed" by John Paul II on June 13th, 1999.