Bishop Adamski in annexed Katowice

Adamski applied B: a discreet and steady pastoral resistance. For more than three years he preserved the Polish liturgy and preached in Polish despite German orders, sheltered the threatened priests, discreetly rescued Polish Jews converted to Catholicism — about two hundred cases in Upper Silesia — and kept the parish schools running in Polish. He saved roughly 1,200 Polish priests from arrest (through transfers, false papers, exfiltration to the Generalgouvernement). But on 28 February 1941 the Gestapo finally arrested him. Detained at Sosnowiec, then placed under house arrest at the monastery of Marków near Tarnów. He remained there until the liberation in January 1945, then resumed his episcopal duties. But the postwar Polish communist regime regarded him as too independent. He was summoned several times by the state security services (UB). In September 1952, he was forced to resign and placed under house arrest in his episcopal palace until his death in 1967. Adamski's beatification has been under way since 2002, slowed by certain controversial aspects (his tactical acceptance of Volksliste III in 1941 on Sapieha's recommendation, a gesture that saved thousands of lives but remains politically awkward). His strategy is studied in pastoral theology as a model of pastoral resistance under occupation.