“I began the 104th year of my life,”’ said Father Kazimierz Herud, greeting his guests at a birthday celebration in a home for retired priests in Poznan, where he has lived for the past 28 years.
Among those who said a thanksgiving mass with Father Herud was Archbishop Stanisław Gądecki.
Father Herud was ordained in 1933. Arrested by the Gestapo in 1941, he spent four years in the Nazi German concentration camp of Dachau. His brother, one of his fourteen siblings, died in the camp. After the liberation of Dachau by the Allies, he became a chaplain in the Polish Military Mission at the British Army of the Rhine. He returned to Poland in 1946 and worked in several parishes in Western Poland, including a thirty year-long stint as head of parish in Brody Poznańskie.
He retired on his 75th birthday, which happened to be the day of the introduction of martial law in Poland, 13 December 1981.
Despite his advanced age, Father Herud says a mass every day, though he rarely leaves his room. (mk)