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Do not fill this in! == Early life == {{Main|Early life of Pope John Paul II}} [[File:Emilia and Karol Wojtyla wedding portrait.jpg|thumb|upright|The wedding portrait of John Paul II's parents, Emilia and Karol Wojtyła Sr.]] Karol Józef Wojtyła was born in the Polish town of [[Wadowice]].<ref name="A&E" /><ref name="ShortBio" /> He was the youngest of three children born to [[Karol Wojtyła (senior)|Karol Wojtyła]] (1879–1941), an [[ethnic Pole]], and [[Emilia Kaczorowska]] (1884–1929), who was of distant Lithuanian heritage.<ref name="CNN6" /> Emilia, who was a schoolteacher, died from a heart attack and kidney failure in 1929<ref name="CBN" /> when Wojtyła was eight years old.{{sfn|Stourton|2006|p=11}} His elder sister Olga had died before his birth, but he was close to his brother Edmund, nicknamed Mundek, who was 13 years his senior. Edmund's work as a physician eventually led to his death from [[scarlet fever]], a loss that affected Wojtyła deeply.<ref name="CNN6" />{{sfn|Stourton|2006|p=11}} Wojtyła was [[Sacraments of the Catholic Church#Baptism|baptized]] a month after his birth, made his [[First Communion]] at the age of 9, and was [[Confirmation in the Catholic Church|confirmed]] at the age of 18.<ref>{{cite web |title=St. Pope John Paul II |url=https://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=6996 |website=Saints & Angels |publisher=Catholic Online |access-date=11 November 2020}}</ref> As a boy, Wojtyła was athletic, often playing [[association football]] as [[Goalkeeper (association football)|goalkeeper]].{{sfn|Stourton|2006|p=25}} During his childhood, Wojtyła had contact with the large Jewish community of [[Wadowice]].<ref name="Svidercoschi">{{cite news | url = https://www.vatican.va/jubilee_2000/magazine/documents/ju_mag_01111997_p-46_en.html | title = The Jewish "Roots" of Karol Wojtyła | access-date = 3 July 2013 | last = Svidercoschi | first = Gian Franco | publisher = Vatican.va}}</ref> School football games were often organised between teams of Jews and Catholics, and Wojtyła often played on the Jewish side.<ref name="CNN6" />{{sfn|Stourton|2006|p=25}} In 2005, he recalled: "I remember that at least a third of my classmates at elementary school in Wadowice were Jews. At secondary school there were fewer. With some I was on very friendly terms. And what struck me about some of them was their Polish patriotism."{{sfn|Pope John Paul II|2005|p=99}} It was around this time that the young Karol had his first serious relationship with a girl. He became close to a girl called Ginka Beer, described as "a Jewish beauty, with stupendous eyes and jet black hair, slender, a superb actress."{{sfn|Stourton|2006|p=32}} In mid-1938, Wojtyła and his father left Wadowice and moved to [[Kraków]], where he enrolled at the [[Jagiellonian University]]. While studying such topics as [[philology]] and various languages, he worked as a volunteer librarian and though required to participate in [[compulsory military training]] in the [[36th Infantry Regiment (Poland)|Academic Legion]], he refused to fire a weapon. He performed with various theatrical groups and worked as a playwright.<ref name="Kuhiwczak" /> During this time, his talent for language blossomed, and he learned as many as 15 languages — Polish, [[Latin]], Italian, English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, [[Luxembourgish]], Dutch, Ukrainian, [[Serbo-Croatian language|Serbo-Croatian]], [[Czech language|Czech]], [[Slovak language|Slovak]], and [[Esperanto]],<ref>{{cite book |last=Grosjean |first=François |title=Life With Two Languages |url=https://archive.org/details/lifewithtwolangu0000gros |url-access=registration |access-date=6 July 2013 |year=1982 |publisher=Harvard University Press |location=United States |isbn=978-0-674-53092-8 |edition=8 |page=[https://archive.org/details/lifewithtwolangu0000gros/page/286 286]}}</ref> nine of which he used extensively as pope. In 1939, after invading Poland, [[Nazi Germany]]'s [[Occupation of Poland (1939–1945)|occupation forces]] closed the university.<ref name="A&E" /> Able-bodied males were required to work, so from 1940 to 1944 Wojtyła variously worked as a messenger for a restaurant, a manual labourer in a limestone quarry and for the [[Solvay (company)|Solvay]] chemical factory, in order to avoid deportation to Germany.<ref name="ShortBio" /><ref name="Kuhiwczak" /> In February 1940, he met [[Jan Tyranowski]] who introduced him to the [[Carmelite]] spirituality and the "[[Living Rosary]]" youth groups.<ref>Weigel, George. Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II (p. 44). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.</ref> In that same year he had two major accidents, suffering a fractured skull after being struck by a tram and sustaining injuries which left him with one shoulder higher than the other and a permanent stoop after being hit by a lorry in a quarry.<ref>[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/apr/01/catholicism.religion3 The Guardian, "History of the Pope's health problems", 1 April 2005]. Retrieved 26 March 2015.</ref> His father, a former Austro-Hungarian [[non-commissioned officer]] and later officer in the [[Polish Army]], died of a heart attack in 1941,<ref name="Ancestry">{{cite web |url= http://www.catholic.org/pope/jp2/genealogy.php |title=Family Genealogy of Blessed Pope John Paul II |publisher=Catholic Online |year=2012 |quote=Family Genealogy of Blessed Pope John Paul II |access-date=3 February 2012}}</ref> leaving the young adult Wojtyła an orphan and the immediate family's only surviving member.<ref name="CNN6" /><ref name="CBN" />{{sfn|Stourton|2006|p=60}} Reflecting on these times of his life, nearly forty years later he said: "I was not at my mother's death, I was not at my brother's death, I was not at my father's death. At twenty, I had already lost all the people I loved."{{sfn|Stourton|2006|p=60}} [[File:Baudienst, Kraków, Karol Wojtyła.jpg|thumb|left|Wojtyła (second from right) in a [[Baudienst]] forced labour work crew during the [[occupation of Poland (1939–1945)]], circa 1941]] After his father's death, he started thinking seriously about the priesthood.{{sfn|Stourton|2006|p=63}} In October 1942, while [[World War II]] continued, he knocked on the door of the [[Bishop's Palace, Kraków]], and asked to study for the priesthood.{{sfn|Stourton|2006|p=63}} Soon after, he began courses in the [[Education in Poland during World War II|clandestine underground seminary]] run by the [[Archbishop of Kraków]], the future Cardinal [[Adam Stefan Sapieha]].<ref>{{Cite book |title=Social memory and history: anthropological perspectives |date=2002 |publisher=AltaMira Press |isbn=978-0-7591-0177-7 |editor-last=Climo |editor-first=Jacob |location=Walnut Creek, CA |pages=280 |editor-last2=Cattell |editor-first2=Maria G.}}</ref> On 29 February 1944, Wojtyła was hit by a German truck. German [[Wehrmacht]] [[Officer (armed forces)|officers]] tended to him and sent him to a hospital. He spent two weeks there recovering from a severe [[concussion]] and a shoulder injury. It seemed to him that this accident and his survival was a confirmation of his vocation. On 6 August 1944, a day known as "Black Sunday",{{sfn|Weigel|2001b|p=71}} the [[Gestapo]] rounded up young men in Kraków to curtail [[Kraków Uprising (1944)|the uprising there]], {{sfn|Weigel|2001b|p=71}} similar to the recent [[Warsaw Uprising|uprising in Warsaw]].{{sfn|Davies|2004|pp=253–254}}{{sfn|Weigel|2001b|pp=71–21}} Wojtyła escaped by hiding in the basement of his uncle's house at 10 Tyniecka Street, while the German troops searched above.{{sfn|Stourton|2006|p=63}}{{sfn|Davies|2004|pp=253–254}}{{sfn|Weigel|2001b|pp=71–21}} More than eight thousand men and boys were taken that day, while Wojtyła escaped to the Archbishop's residence,{{sfn|Stourton|2006|p=63}}{{sfn|Weigel|2001b|p=71}}{{sfn|Davies|2004|pp=253–254}} where he remained until after the [[Germans]] had left.<ref name="CNN6" />{{sfn|Stourton|2006|p=63}}{{sfn|Davies|2004|pp=253–254}} On the night of 17 January 1945, [[Vistula–Oder Offensive|the Germans fled the city]], and the students reclaimed the ruined [[seminary]]. Wojtyła and another seminarian volunteered for the task of clearing away piles of frozen excrement from the toilets.{{sfn|Weigel|2001b|p=75}} Wojtyła also helped a 14-year-old Jewish refugee girl named Edith Zierer,<ref name="EdithZ" /> who had escaped from a Nazi [[labour camp]] in [[Częstochowa]].<ref name="EdithZ" /> Edith had collapsed on a railway platform, so Wojtyła carried her to a train and stayed with her throughout the journey to Kraków. She later credited Wojtyła with saving her life that day.<ref name="CNNLive" /><ref name="archive" /><ref name="IHT" /> [[B'nai B'rith]] and other authorities have said that Wojtyła helped protect many other [[History of the Jews in Poland|Polish Jews]] from the Nazis. During the [[Nazi occupation of Poland]], a Jewish family sent their son, Stanley Berger, to be hidden by a [[Gentile]] Polish family. Berger's biological Jewish parents were killed in [[the Holocaust]], and after the war Berger's new Christian parents asked Karol Wojtyła to baptise the boy. Wojtyła refused, saying that the child should be raised in the Jewish faith of his birth parents and nation, not as a Catholic.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://ekai.pl/wydarzenia/x9122/jan-pawel-ii-sprawiedliwym-wsrod-narodow-swiata/ |title=Jan Paweł II Sprawiedliwym wśród Narodów Świata? |language=pl |trans-title=John Paul II Righteous Among the Nations? |publisher=Ekai.pl |date=5 April 2005 |access-date=22 October 2014 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141222053631/http://ekai.pl/wydarzenia/x9122/jan-pawel-ii-sprawiedliwym-wsrod-narodow-swiata/ |archive-date=22 December 2014 }}</ref> He did everything he could to ensure that Berger leave Poland to be raised by his Jewish relatives in the United States.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.kosciol.pl/article.php?story=20030926144011902 |title=Papież sprawiedliwym wśród narodów świata |language=pl |trans-title=Pope righteous among the nations of the world |publisher=Kosciol.pl |date=26 September 2003 |access-date=22 October 2014 |archive-date=1 July 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150701052401/http://www.kosciol.pl/article.php?story=20030926144011902 |url-status=dead }}</ref> In April 2005, shortly after John Paul II's death, the Israeli government created a commission to honour the legacy of John Paul II. One of the honorifics proposed by a head of Italy's Jewish community, Emmanuele Pacifici was the medal of the [[Righteous Among the Nations]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://m.onet.pl/wiadomosci/swiat,m7r7s |title=Papież otrzyma honorowy tytuł "Sprawiedliwy wśród Narodów Świata"? |language=pl |trans-title=The Pope will receive the honorary title of "Righteous Among the Nations"? |publisher=Onet.pl |date=4 April 2005 |access-date=22 October 2014 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141023061706/http://m.onet.pl/wiadomosci/swiat%2Cm7r7s |archive-date=23 October 2014 }}</ref> In Wojtyła's last book, ''[[Memory and Identity]]'', he described the 12 years of the Nazi régime as "[[wikt:bestiality|bestiality]]",{{sfn|Pope John Paul II|2005|p=16}} quoting from the Polish theologian and philosopher [[Konstanty Michalski]].<ref>{{cite book |title=Między Heroizmem a Beatialstwem |trans-title=Between Heroism and Bestiality |publisher=Częstochowa |year=1984}}</ref> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. 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