Polish missionary in India nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

Published: 2004-02-19

NEW DELHI, India (CNS) -- A Polish missionary and Nazi concentration camp survivor who has worked among people with Hansen's disease has been nominated for the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize. Divine Word Father Marian Zalazek, 86, was short-listed by the Nobel Peace Prize committee in 2002. "It should be a secret," Father Zalazek said jokingly when contacted by telephone at his home in Puri. "I am doing my duty. If someone finds it important, it is for them to do what they want," said the missionary who survived five years in the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau, Germany, before coming to India. Father Zalazek said his "love for the leprosy-affected people started in 1975" when the Divine Word Society posted him to Puri. There, a government official requested he help patients who lived in a segregated leper colony; most of them survived by begging from the thousands of Hindu pilgrims who visited Puri, a holy city on India's east coast.

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