In the Warta district members of the hierarchy were brutally beaten, the clergy were decimated in a frightful manner, seminars, numerous establishments of religious orders and all Catholic schools and associations were abolished, ecclesiastical property was expropriated, sisters were driven - from their convents, churches in large part were closed, wayside
crosses and shrines were destroyed, Polish inscriptions on gravestones were effaced and
loyalty to religion was made extremely difficult and was ridiculed in every conceivable manner and more than three million Polish Catholics were left completely outside the pale of the law and were at the mercy of the despotic whims of the
National Socialists.