Latvian priest Father Kasimir Vilnis has been awarded the title ”Righteous among the Nations” by Yad Vashem, the authority responsible in Israel, the Diocese of Stockholm reports. Fr Kasimir saved the lives of Jews, risking his own life, during the second World War.
During the war Fr Kasimir was parish priest in Riga, and he hid Jews in the Church and in houses belonging to the Church.
When the communists were about to occupy Latvia, he had to flee. In 1944 he came to Sweden where he resided till the end of his life in 1988.
Catholics in Sweden remember him as a good-hearted man, a good priest - who loved a joke. During all the years in Sweden he kept in contact with his Latvian relatives and with Latvians all over the world.
He never spoke about how he helped Jews during the war, even though he as late as the year before he died was awarded a medal for his help by the Latvian-Jewish society in USA.
Proof for his effort was brought forward by the Catholic diocese in Stockholm.
As result Yad Vashem named him "Righteous among the Nations" on March 27 this year.
The medal and diploma will be handed over to his relatives in Latvia by the Israeli embassy in Riga at a later date.
"I am grateful that an effort, done secretly, is acknowledged. It also shows the close bonds between Jews and Christians. F Kasimirs effort is one more proof that even during the hardest of times we human beings have the possibility to reach out to our fellow man and make the choice to do what is good and just," Stockholm Bishop Anders Arborelius OCD said.
Fr Kasimir Vilnis was born in Nautreni, Latvia in December 1907, where his parents, Petris and Eugenija were farmers. He was ordained in Riga 1933. In November 1944 he fled to Sweden where he lived till he died in 1988. All his life he kept in contact with his sisters in Latvia, where his relatives still live.
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