Fr. Jerzy Schneider, SDB

Fr. Jerzy Schneider, SDB (1923-2011)
Rue Eisen of Don Bosco Prep contributed to this obituary
Fr. Jerzy Schneider, SDB, a member of the Salesian community of Don Bosco Prep High School in Ramsey, N.J., died on the evening of Nov. 22, 2011, at New York Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan, where he had been taken after suffering a heart attack the day before. He was 88 years old.

Earlier this year Fr. Schneider celebrated his 65th anniversary of religious profession; he made his first vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience on Aug. 26, 1946, at the Salesian novitiate Krakow, Poland.

Fr. Schneider was born to Filip and Ludmila Schneider at Zywiec, a town in the far south of Poland, on Aug. 3, 1923, and baptized in the parish church not long after.

During the German occupation of the country, Filip Schneider refused to put the family on the volkslist, a register of German people, and as a consequence the family home was confiscated and Jerzy, then 18, was sent to a labor camp in Breslau, Germany. He would spend the rest of the war there, constructing, maintaining, and gardening in greenhouses. During his limited break times he liked to read a Bible that a professor friend had given him before he was interned. His reading deepened his faith and his love for God and stirred in him the desire to become a priest in spite of all the suffering and trauma he saw around him and indeed had experienced himself.

When the Russian Army liberated the labor camp in February 1945, Jerzy started walking the 200 miles toward Krakow through the snow. He was wearing wooden-soled shoes he’d made himself. Polish people kindly offered him food and shelter along the way, and at times he was able to hop a train for short rides where the tracks hadn’t been destroyed. The fiancée of a friend whom he met en route passed word to his parents that he was alive and was going to Krakow to become a priest.

At Krakow he encountered the seminarian Karol Wojtyla, who would be ordained the following year and who had himself been forced by the Germans to work in a stone quarry while studying secretly for the priesthood. Karol had lived in the Salesian parish of St. Stanislaus Kostka in Krakow as a university student and during the occupation (see Salesian Bulletin U.S.A., Spring 2011). As he met with Jerzy over the course of three days, he directed him toward the Salesians instead of the diocesan seminary.

Jerzy had never heard of St. John Bosco or the Salesians, but he contacted them and was admitted to the novitiate at Krakow in August 1945 with 20 other young men.

After his profession Bro. Schneider studied philosophy in the Salesian seminary in Krakow, earning a B.A. in 1948. He carried out his practical training from 1947 to 1949 at St. Joseph’s Hospice in Prusy, a village near Krakow. St. Joseph’s included an orphanage and academic, trade, agricultural, and evening schools; apparently on the basis of his wartime experience, Bro. Schneider worked in the agricultural school. He made his perpetual profession on Aug. 27, 1949.

Following theological studies first in Krakow (1949-1951) and then in Oswiecim (1951-1953), Fr. Schneider was ordained in Oswiecim on May 30, 1953.

Ever since childhood Fr. Schneider had been interested in art. Realizing his talent, the provincial sent him to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow in 1955. For six years he took up art history and all the practical applications of drawing, painting, drafting, and sculpting. In 1961 he was awarded a master’s degree in fine arts, which would become his chief apostolate for most of his 58 years as a priest.

From 1961 to 1967 Fr. Schneider was part of the Salesian community of Oswiecim (Auschwitz in German), motherhouse of all the Salesian work in Poland, which now is divided into four provinces. He was rector of the chapel at the Auschwitz concentration camp from 1965 to 1967, and at that time developed a museum for eight Salesians who had been martyred in the camp. One, Fr. Joseph Kowalski, has already been beatified, and the cause of the others is in process.

Fr. Schneider continued his artwork, especially paintings of Christ and the Madonna and Child. One painting, The Red Madonna, attracted a great deal of attention at a Krakow exhibition, and some Polish Americans who saw it convinced the provincial to send him to America. The arrangements were facilitated by Fr. Joseph Tyminski, director of Don Bosco Prep in Ramsey, and Fr. Arthur Slomka, a Polish Salesian working from the Prep.

And thus Fr. Schneider came to the U.S. in 1967, although he remained officially a member of the Krakow Salesian Province. He spent the rest of his life at Don Bosco designing and executing works of liturgical art in a studio there. For some years he taught modern languages, art, and drafting at the Prep. He went to many local parishes to celebrate Mass in Polish and looked after the numerous Polish immigrants in northern New Jersey and southern New York, such as at St. John the Evangelist Church in Mahopac, N.Y., where he was feted on his 80th birthday in 2003.

Meanwhile, The Red Madonna was published on the cover of Sign, a national Catholic magazine, in December 1967, and Fr. Schneider’s work was shown in such venues as the Contemporary Christian Art Gallery on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan. He was asked to execute murals and other paintings in many churches, including St. Hedwig in Floral Park, N.Y., Immaculate Conception in Mahwah, N.J., and others in Trenton and Pittsburgh. He also designed vestments for several companies over the years.

According to Rue Eisen, public relations director at Don Bosco Prep, Father Schneider’s “work encompassed a large body of sacred art as well as art inspired by nature. This can be seen in the slide show he created, and the copies he has amassed here of his large body of work. In it, there are many expressionistic Madonnas; some were red Madonnas, others were blue, brown or grey. He also depicted Christ in many paintings in these same color themes. His work can be considered expressionistic, cubist or post-modern. He has modern landscapes of trees and mountains. He also was a photographer…. He worked long and hard at his art. He told me that he was asked to create paintings by many of his directors and provincials, who then gave them away as gifts. He didn’t know where much of his work had gone, but he said that it was given away by his superiors as gifts to their superiors or visiting dignitaries. His sister in Poland maintains a collection of some of his work.”

In the late 1970s he built an altarpiece in molded and hammered copper for the chapel of Mary Help of Christians at Don Bosco Prep, and between October 1989 and February 1990 he carried out a major redecoration of the chapel.

Writing in Don Bosco Prep’s alumni magazine in 2003, Mrs. Eisen observed: “Fr. Schneider’s life has been arduous with many ordeals and trials, yet he offers it all up to God and remains joyful. He is highly intelligent with a wry wit and a strong manner. His artwork is of museum quality.” She also noted his life of prayer and service and his confidence in God’s generosity.

Fr. Schneider is survived by his sister Ludmila Pawelek of Zywiec, Poland.

Fr. Schneider's funeral was celebrated in the chapel of Don Bosco Prep on Nov. 25. Fr. Tom Dunne, the provincial, presided, and Fr. Schneider's former pupil Fr. Steve Shafran preached. Fr. Steve also is a former director of the Prep, and he described some of his conversations about art with Fr. Schneider.

Fr. Schneider was buried in the province cemetery in Goshen on the 26th.