Selbongen during World War II

Members of the Zełwągi Branch with Ezra Taft Benson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, 1946.

During World War II, many Polish men were called upon to fight, including most of the men in the Selbongen Branch. By 1945, only two adult priesthood holders, Adolf Kruska and August Fischer, remained. With the assistance of the women in the branch, Kruska and Fischer aided those in the village who had lost husbands and fathers in the war.

The members who remained in Selbongen were not immune to the atrocities of the war. In January 1945, Kruska’s adult son was shot dead in the street by soldiers who demanded cigarettes he did not have. Several times the invading armies pressed young men and women into service or marched them to labor camps. In February 1945, August Fischer was sent to a labor camp in Russia, where he contracted tuberculosis. He never recovered and later died at a hospital in Heidelberg, Germany. Kruska was left as the only priesthood holder in the branch.

No foreign Church leaders had visited Selbongen since 1941, and the branch had had no communication with the Church since 1944. The members fasted and prayed that contact might be made. On Sunday, August 4, 1946, a jeep drove into the village—now known as Zełwągi after the German-Polish borders were realigned in the wake of the war—and parked next to the meetinghouse.

A man in the jeep asked a woman if this was the Mormon meetinghouse. With excitement, she recognized Ezra Taft Benson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Word spread quickly that “the brethren are here!” The meetinghouse was filled with members and friends singing praises, bearing testimonies, and giving thanks.