Nasz Przewodnik – a picture monthly for schoolchildren

The first issue of ‘Nasz Przewodnik’ (Our guide), ‘the Journal of the Children's Fraternities of Temperance – pisemka Dziecięcych Bractw Wstrzemięzliwosci [in the original]’, was published on January 1st, 1913. The editor was Father Henryk Szuman from the village of Wielo in the Konitz Poviat (today Chojnice) in the German partition. Individual issues were usually eight pages long. Even before the outbreak of World War I, the magazine had 20,000 subscribers. According to the information on prepayments provided by the publisher, it can be concluded that ‘Our Guide’ gained popularity not only among Poles living in the territories of three partitioned parts of Poland, but also among the Polish diaspora in America.

The monthly published poems, prayers, songs, plays, legends and stories, as well as pictures promoting religiosity and calling for abstinence. Children were the target reader, but reading aloud at the family table was also encouraged. Therefore, in the footnotes you can, for example, find the definition of alcohol – ‘poison in vodka, wine, etc.’ (by this, the children were to influence their parents). In later issues, the authors also published riddles, letters from readers and articles presenting the history of Poland.

The yearbook in the collection of the Museum of Martyrdom ‘Pod Zegarem’ is distinguished by its slender volume – it consists of only forty-eight pages. The editions of the magazine in 1920 were issued irregularly. Publishing problems were related to the change of the editor – Father Szuman was replaced by Father Józef Janiszewski from Poznań. The year 1920 was probably the last period of the magazine’s publication.

Both editors met a tragic fate. On September 1st, 1939, Henryk Antoni Szuman was forced to leave the parish in Starogard Gdański. On October 2nd, he was shot in a public execution in front of the wall of St. Nicholas church in Fordon near Bydgoszcz. Before being shot, he shouted: ‘Long live Christ the King, long live Poland’.

When World War II broke out, Józef Janiszewski was already retired. Despite this, he was arrested by the Gestapo and on May 28th, 1940, he was placed in the German concentration camp of Dachau, and about two months later in KL Gusen I. There he worked in inhuman conditions in quarries – prisoners had to carry huge stones in their hands or on their backs. Father Janiszewski died in the camp on August 27, 1940.