Name Josef Lenzel | ||
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Died July 3, 1942, Dachau concentration camp | ||
Josef Lenzel (21 April 1890 — 3 July 1942) was a German Roman Catholic priest active in resistance movement against the National Socialism, who died in the Dachau concentration camp where he had been sent as a result of his work with Polish forced labourers.
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Biography
Lenzel was born in 1891 in Breslau (now Wrocław) in Prussian Silesia. In 1911, he started his theological studies at the University in Breslau, and was ordained as a priest on 3 June 1915 in Breslau Cathedral. He became a vicar in Wołów immediately after this, and in 1916 became a vicar in Berlin-Pankow. In 1929, he became a rector, then a titulary provost of St Mary Magdalene’s parish in Berlin-Niederschönhausen. During the Second World War, he helped Polish obligatory workers in his parish; his help was viewed unkindly by local Nazi authorities. In January 1942, during his preparations for a mass for maltreated Poles, he was arrested by the Gestapo and then sent to the Dachau concentration camp. He died there on 3 July 1942 from ill-treatment and exhaustion