Childhood and Youth

Fr. Jan Świerc was the son of Mateusz and Franciszka (née Rether). He was born on 29 April 1877 in Królewska Huta, now Chorzów. He received Holy Baptism in the parish of Saint Barbara. In 1894, he went to Turin, to Valsalice, to undertake studies at the secondary school.

Salesian Path

After completing secondary school in Turin (Valsalice) in 1897, he entered the novitiate of the Salesian Congregation in Ivrea. He made his first religious profession on 3 October 1899. He then studied philosophy and theology in Turin. He became secretary to the Rector Major, Fr. Michał Rua, and assisted Fr. Wiktor Grabelski in editing the Polish edition of the Salesian News.
On 6 June 1903, in the cathedral of Turin, he received priestly ordination from Cardinal Augustyn Richelmy.

He returned to Poland and was entrusted with preparing the novitiate in the newly opened Salesian house in Daszawa. After its establishment, he became chaplain in Kraków at the Lubomirski Institute. In 1905, he became director of the institution in Oświęcim, taking over this role after the first director, Fr. Emanuel Manassero. Thanks to his efforts and those of Fr. Manassero, the Oświęcim institution obtained the painting of Mary Help of Christians for the church dedicated to her.

In 1911, the then Rector Major, Fr. Paolo Albera, appointed him director of the house in Kraków at the Lubomirski Institute on Rakowicka Street, now the building of the University of Economics. In 1914, he cared for wounded soldiers in that same institution. In 1915, he organized assistance in Oświęcim (Zasole) for war refugees from Eastern Galicia.

In 1918, he opened the first Salesian institution in the territory of the former Russian partition in Kielce and became its first director and parish priest. In 1923, he returned to Oświęcim and organized the 25th anniversary of Salesian activity in Poland, as well as the first pilgrimage of Salesian Cooperators to Rome. In 1924, for seven months, he served as a missionary in America. From November 1925 to October 1934, he was director and parish priest in Przemyśl.

On 15 August 1934, he was appointed director of the house in Lviv at the church of Our Lady of Ostra Brama. A serious illness interrupted his work there, but in July 1938 he resumed pastoral ministry as parish priest of Saint Stanisław Kostka in Kraków and director of the local Salesian community.

Arrest

On 23 May 1941 in Kraków, on the eve of the feast of Mary Help of Christians, he was arrested together with other confreres. From the house on Konfederacka Street, they were all taken to the Montelupich prison in Kraków. Then, on 26 June 1941, together with Kraków intelligentsia and Jews, the prisoners—chained in pairs—were transported from Montelupich prison to KL Auschwitz.

There were twelve Salesians: eleven priests and one coadjutor. On the roll-call square, their shackles were removed, and they were assigned to the penal company in the block of death. The commander of the penal unit, an SS man with a rat-like face and black hawk-like eyes, asked each newcomer about his profession. When the answer was given: “Catholic priest,” he became enraged, kicked him in the stomach, and beat him with a whip on the face and head until blood ran down his neck and back. He shouted: “You are a priest, a thief, a hypocrite!” Then he delivered a “welcome speech,” ending with the words: “You will all die here, you swine dogs! Your only hope is the crematorium.”

Martyrdom and Death

The next day, the prisoners went out to work. The penal company worked in gravel pits. Priests and Jews were separated and placed under the particular supervision of SS men and a sadistic kapo.
Each received an iron wheelbarrow, a shovel, and a pickaxe. The work consisted of breaking stones and gravel with the pickaxe, loading them onto wheelbarrows, and transporting them to a pit eight meters deep.

The work had to be done “at a run,” enforced by specially appointed overseers armed with handles. They beat without mercy, especially abusing the priests. After a short time, the hands became covered with bloody blisters, and exhaustion overtook the aching bones. Fr. Jan Świerc was the first to collapse. He heard from the cruel kapo: “You don’t want to work! I will help you!”—and he beat him with a thick handle on the head and back. Fr. Jan took the wheelbarrow loaded with heavy stones and slowly moved toward the pit, while the degenerate kapo followed him, urging him on and striking him with terrible blows. Whenever he fell to the ground, he was kicked and forced to rise again. Fr. Jan felt that the final moments of his life were approaching. With every blow, he sighed: “O Jesus, Jesus,” which drove the kapo into a frenzy.

“I will show you Jesus!” he shouted. “There is no God here! He will not deliver you from my hands!”
At one moment, he struck Fr. Jan in the face with great force using a hard whip, so violently that the eye was torn out. It hung on the cheek by a single tendon, and from the dark eye socket a stream of blood flowed. His mutilated face was covered with clotted blood and presented a dreadful sight. Fr. Jan was still alive and praying. From his lips came muffled groans: “O Jesus, have mercy on me!” The bloody kapo decided to deal a fatal blow. He lifted him from the ground and with all his strength threw him onto the wheelbarrow of stones, breaking his spine, and crushed his hanging head with a stone.

Fr. Jan was dead. His body was taken on a wheelbarrow to the crematorium. Fr. Jan Świerc was the first victim of that memorable day. He died in the gravel pit on the second day of his stay in the camp. He went to the Lord to receive the reward for his fidelity to his Salesian and priestly vocation.
Fr. Jan Świerc died on 27 June 1941, at the age of 64, in the 42nd year of his religious profession and the 38th year of his priesthood. He bore the camp number 17352.

Beatification Process

Fr. Jan Świerc is one of the 122 Servants of God for whom the second beatification process of the second group of Polish martyrs of the Second World War began on 17 September 2003.
On 24 May 2011, the diocesan phase concluded in Pelplin, and all documentation was forwarded to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in Rome.

The Positio was submitted on 21 July 2022, and its relator was Fr. Szczepan Tadeusz Praśkiewicz, OCD. The postulator of the cause is Fr. Pierluigi Cameroni, General Postulator for the Causes of the Salesian Family, who collaborates with Dr. Mariafrancesca Oggianu.

On Tuesday, 28 March 2023, the historical consultors of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints issued a positive opinion regarding the Positio suppletiva super martyrio of Fr. Jan Świerc and eight companions, priests of the Society of St. Francis de Sales, murdered in odium fidei in German extermination camps in the years 1941–1942.

On 24 October 2025, Pope Leo XIV ordered the publication of the Decree on Martyrdom and its inclusion in the records of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.

On 1 May 2026, Pope Leo XIV signed an Apostolic Letter allowing the Servants of God to be called Blessed and designated 23 May as the day of their liturgical commemoration. On 6 June 2026, the beatification ceremony took place at the Shrine of St John Paul II in Krakow.