Dr. Frank, Governor-General of the occupied Polish territories, held a reception in Krakow with Metropolitan Dionisii on this day in 1940. I wrote on September 17 that the territories of Eastern Poland went over to the Moscow Patriarchate after being occupied by the Soviet Union on that day in 1939. According to the secret appendix to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, Western Poland was occupied seventeen days earlier by Germany. National Socialism was pragmatic in its relationship toward Christianity and wanted to use the German Churches to bolster its cause. With this objective in mind, it bestowed the legal rights of corporation on the Roman Catholic and Lutheran churches. The Reich government nominated the ROCOR to be the German Reich’s sole Orthodox Church. In 1935, the Russian Church Abroad received the status of a public corporation. Therefore, in 1939, when the West of Poland was occupied by Wehrmacht, 98 parishes were transferred to the jurisdiction of Archbishop Seraphim (Lade) of Berlin. The end of the independent Polish state also signified the end of the autocephalous Polish Church (proclaimed by the Patriarchate of Constantinople in 1923). Most of the parishes were constituents of the Diocese of Chełm and had Ukrainian flocks, while Archbishop Seraphim belonged to the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. Therefore, one year later, the Nazis restored Metropolitan Dionisii (Valedinskii) as the first hierarch of the Polish Church. During a solemn reception in Krakow’s Wawel Royal Castle with Governor-General Dr. Hans Frank on September 23, 1940, Metropolitan Dionisii swore to obey the laws of Generalgouvernement. The next day in Warsaw, Archbishop Seraphim stepped down as the head of the church in Poland. The new Polish Church received the name of the “Autocephalous Church in the Generalgouvernement.” On October 20, 1940, Metropolitan Dioniosii presided over the episcopal consecration of the Ukrainian scholar Iwan Ohijenko, who was tonsured with the name Hilarion. Ultimately, he refused to recognize this Ukrainian “autocephaly.” (Prof. Ohijenko’s daughter was a librarian at Holy Trinity Seminary and buried in Jordanville.) In February of 1942, two hierarchs of the Polish Church, Policarp (Sikorskii) and Aleksandr (Inozemtsev), consecrated bishops for a revived “Ukrainian Autocephalous Church.” Sources M. V. Shkarovskii, Natsiskaia Germaniia I Pravoslavnaia Tserkov’ [Nazis’ Germany and the Orthodox Church] (Moscow, 2002). Monk Veniamin (Gomarteli), “Letopis’ tserkovnykh sobytii Pravoslavnoi Tserkvi nachinaia s 1917 goda.” [The Timeline of the Evenst in the History of the Orthodox Church Beginning with 1917] Part Three. 1939-1949. | 
