Sebastián Košút

* 1941

  • “As we were being monitored by the police and I saw they were staying day and night in front of the parish house, I didn´t notice anything, nor could I think it was something negative. I took it as they were guarding us. So when they guard, all right. However, exactly on June 20, 1969 we had the end of school year celebration in Piastov, current Warsaw. And I wasn´t allowed coming to church that day, since the so-called Polish ŠtB members came exactly at 5:45 am and said: ‘Hands up, give us your gun and documents!’”

  • “They were interrogating us, but each one individually. As I found out, they detained at the same time more than a thousand people in the whole Poland. That´s how it was organized. My brothers were there, too. So we ended up in the prison and they interrogated us day and night. Nonstop. Practically said, one became so dull after such a time that he felt half-dumb. During the first nights they didn´t even let us sleep. However, I knew I didn´t have any official function there. I only gave those people opportunity to live there, perform, gather, etc.”

  • “Back then our friends already told me: ‘Send that priest Jozef away, because they’ll come and you both shall be arrested. So do it as soon as possible, because we have heard it from these and those.’ So I sent him to Warsaw, to Józefów. There he stayed for about two weeks, but then he came back. He didn´t manage it there. So we were together for another month or so. They said: ‘Send him wherever you want, but just send him away.’ So I sent him to Zakopane, into my friends´ house. But didn´t he perform such activities as they informed me then? And at last, he went to Slovakia, illicitly. There he got arrested on the way and they put him to prison. And when he returned, he was not physically, but emotionally broken. Now he lives inactive in a senior house in Spiš region.”

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    Dolný Oháj, 20.06.2017

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Sebastián Košút
Sebastián Košút
photo: album pamätníka

Sebastián Košút was born on November 16, 1941 in Čierna Hora, Poľský Spiš. After the war in 1945 the whole village was annexed to Poland. In 1959 he graduated from the Slovak Grammar School in Jablonka. In Poland he studied in a priestly seminary and in 1965 he was ordained a priest. Until the year 1969 he served as a chaplain in various Polish parishes. On June 20, 1969 he was arrested and accused of spreading the illegal literature and press, as well as for supporting the anticommunist movement Ruch. He was released in spring 1970. He continued working in different parishes and in his pastoral ministry. He was involved in smuggling of church literature and tape recordings via Oravská Polhora. In 1980 he was given a visa to travel to Rome, which he used for emigration. He worked in Italy as a secretary of the exiled bishop Pavol Hnilica until the fall of the communist regime. He organized gatherings of the immigrants from Czechoslovakia living in the camp Latina. More than 20 years he administrated a parish near Italian village Marano Equo. From 2013 he lives in a senior house in Dolný Oháj.