Karol had to get a job acceptable to the Nazi authorities running Poland. He found a position, spliting rock in a limestone quarry. He described those days: "Every day I mix with people who do heavy work. They know I am a student, but they are never unkind to me. In spending time with them, I have come to know how they live - their families, their interest, their human worth and their inner dignity."
To get extra food for his father, Karol had to trade on the black market. Then ... six months after he started his job at the quarry ... he returned home to face a reality he had always feared. His father had died, of a heart attack, while Karol was at work.
Karol Wojtyla had lost his entire family: First his mother, then his older brother (a doctor who'd died of scarlet fever) and now his father. For twelve hours, he prayed - alone - by his father's bedside.
"Once he was gone, I never felt so alone. At the age of 20, I had already lost all the people I loved."
Orphaned and alone, Karol decided to resist Hitler and his ever-worsening policies against the Poles. Although he did not take up arms, he was part of the cultural revolution. He helped to found an underground theatre group - the Rhapsodic Theatre - whose members fought the Germans with forbidden words.
After his father's death, Karol felt a sense of purpose with his Rhapsodic Theatre, but he felt a sense of belonging with the Church. It was like a second family to him, and he came to depend on it more and more.
See, also:
Witness to Evil - Young John Paul II, Part 1
Witness to Evil - Young John Paul II, Part 2
Witness to Evil - Young John Paul II, Part 4
Witness to Evil - Young John Paul II, Part 5
Witness to Evil - Young John Paul II, Part 6
Credits
Clip from "Young John Paul II - Witness to Evil," online courtesy BBC.
The BBC provides background information regarding this docudrama:
Drama-documentary telling the story of five years which
transformed the life of Karol Wojtyla and set him on the path to the
Vatican.
The man who would become John Paul II was 19 when the
Germans invaded Poland in September 1939. He had no intention of
joining the church, but the devastating experience of Nazi occupation
led him first to join the underground resistance and then to risk his
life studying in secret to become a priest.
Interviews with key
survivors from the period who knew him well, and the Pope's own
writings, are combined in a powerful exploration of the young John Paul
II's coming of age, including his brushes with death and the horrors he
witnessed that helped to shape his thinking.
"Young John Paul II - Witness to Evil" (2008)
Director
Philip Smith
Producer
Leanne Klein
Writer
Philip Smith
Starring John Sackville
as Karol Wojtyla
Narrator
Richard Lintern
Wall-to-Wall for the BBC. Originally broadcast, BBC One.
