22,356. Since he was a deacon, Leisner was assigned to the priests' block. Prisoners often had to work outside in snow or rain and then had to sleep in their wet prison clothes. Cold weather, poor rations and harsh treatment proved a dangerous combination for someone already suffering to tuberculosis. Such conditions caused Leisner's condition to become active. Then, during an inspection, two Gestapo guards beat him unconscious and he spent several hours on the floor of his hut. By March 1942, he was spitting blood and was forced to report to the infirmary where medical experiments were known to be performed. He was put in a room that was crowded with over 100 tuberculosis patients. In Dachau, there was never any attempt to cure a disease and very little care was given to the sick. During inspections of the infirmary, any patient thought to be incurable was executed. On 17 December 1944, Gaudete Sunday, a fellow prisoner, French Bishop Gabriel Piguet, secretly ordained him a priest. The necessary paperwork with the authorization for the ordination, as well as other necessary items, were smuggled into the camp by "Mädi", the "Angel of Dachau", a young woman named Josefa Mack. (Mack went on to become a School Sister of Notre Dame in Munich, called Sister Maria Imma.) Some imprisoned Protestant pastors helped organize the event and a Jewish violinist played music near the barracks to create a diversion. The newly ordained priest only celebrated a single Mass and was so ill that he had to postpone his first Mass for over a week. When Dachau was liberated on 4 May 1945, Leisner was taken to a sanatarium in Planegg, near Munich. He died there a few months later, on 12 August 1945. Leisner's body was taken to Kleve and buried in a local cemetery on 20 August 1945. His remains were exhumed and re-interred in the crypt of the Cathedral of Xanten in 1966. Beatification On a visit to Berlin in 1996, Pope John Paul II recognized Leisner as a martyr for the Catholic faith and beatified him, together with Bernhard Lichtenberg, another Nazi resister. His feast day is 12 August. The canonization process for Leisner has not yet been completed. Media Some works have been published in English about Leisner. One is The Victory of Father Karl by Otto Pies, published in 1957. It was a translation of Stephanus heute;