Nicholas Holz

Holy Hieromartyr Nicholas Holz (in Polish Mikołaj Holc) was an Orthodox priest in Poland, killed for the faith in 1944. He was born on 27 July 1907 at Kotlachov in the Zhytomyr region, into a family of officials of mixed Polish and German descent. Between 1931 and 1935 he studied theology in Bulgaria, where he also married, and was then ordained priest and served at Obsza, Długoszyje, Kohylno and Volodymyr-⁠Volynskyi, and during the war as parish priest at Nowosiółki.

On 10 March or 2 April 1944 he was abducted and killed by a unit of Polish partisans, after he had, in the dreadful days that followed the destruction of several Orthodox villages nearby, called people of different faiths and nationalities to live in peace. According to accounts, he was taken by force outside the village, tortured and left to die. He was buried the next day on the site where a church destroyed in 1938 had stood. In 2003 he was canonized by the Polish Autocephalous Orthodox Church, with the other martyrs of Chełm and Podlasie (canonization services at Chełm, 7 and 8 June 2003).