The Marian Martyrs of Rosica

153 Memoir I have been told many times that I should write my memoirs because so many things are forgotten about our Marian Martyrs. So I tried to summon from my memory those beauti- ful, wonderful figures of our frontier shepherds: the seductive- ly beautiful face of Fr. Boleslaus Gramz; the magisterial figure of Father Superior Kulesza; Fr. Leszczewicz who was so close to me; and Fr. Kaszyra, a straightforward man who came from this people and gave his soul for them. So many of them stayed put to suffer and be humiliated, so as not to leave the people without spiritual care. “Joziu, come with us,” I said to my friend Fr. Frackiewicz explaining my own plans to leave.. “I cannot. I am the pastor. There is no one to take my place. You don’t have such obligations. Go.” He remained and soon after he found himself in Kolyma, Siberia, the country of per- manent night for several months and where the sun doesn’t set for several other months. Everyone spent time in prison during the Stalinist era. Now others have come back to work there again, and they don’t give up. But how many have gone forev- er? They are the heroes of their vocation. No wonder that Joziu Frackiewicz, when he came to visit and spend a few years with us in Brazil and then went to see his family, did not come back to say goodbye to us. He told his rel- atives: “If I went there again, I would have no strength to return to Russia, but I must go back.”