A Most Courageous Choice – “The Saint of Auschwitz”

Posted on February 09, 2010 by Ronald T. Brown, Ph.D.

The concentration camp of Auschwitz was a killing machine during WWII, where exterminations were conducted by Nazis on an industrial scale. An estimated three million people were killed through gassing, starvation, disease, shooting, and burning.

One man who died at Auschwitz was a Catholic Priest named Maximilian Kolbe…

In 1936, Maximilian supervised a friary near Warsaw Poland where, during World War II, he and the other friars sheltered Polish refugees, many of whom were Jews.

In May 1941 the friary was closed by the Nazis, and Maximilian and four companions were taken to Auschwitz where they worked with the other prisoners carrying logs.  Maximilian also carried on his priestly work surreptitiously, hearing confessions in unlikely places and celebrating the Lord’s Supper.

To discourage escapes, the Auschwitz had a rule that if a man escaped, ten prisoners would be killed in response. In July 1941, the Nazis thought a man from Kolbe’s bunker had escaped. (After this incident, the “escaped” prisoner was found drowned in the camp latrine.)

“The fugitive has not been found!” the commandant Karl Fritsch screamed. “So ten of you will die in his place in the starvation bunker.”  Ten men were selected, including Franciszek Gajowniczek, who had been imprisoned for helping the Polish Resistance.  When he was selected, Franciszek could not help but cry out, “My wife! My poor children! What will they do?”

Suddenly and silently, Maximilian Kolbe stepped forward. Astounded, the Nazi commandant asked, “What does this Polish pig want?”  Maximilian took off his cap, and stood before the Commandant and requested, “I am a Catholic Priest from Poland; I would like to take this man’s place because he has a wife and children.”

The Commandant remained silent for a moment, then accepted the request. The Nazis had more use for a young worker than for an old Priest. So Franciszek Gajowniczek was returned to the ranks, and Maximilian took his place.

Soon after Kolbe was thrown with 9 other men into the starvation bunker and left to die.  One by one, the men died of hunger and thirst.  After two weeks, only four were left alive.  But since the cell was needed for new prisoners, the camp executioner came in and injected a lethal dose of cabolic acid into the left arm of each of the four remaining men. And soon it was all over…

So Father Maximilian Kolbe was executed on August 14, 1941, at the age of forty-seven, a martyr of charity.  His body was removed to the crematorium, and without dignity or ceremony, disposed of.

** And the man he saved - Franciszek Gajowniczek - What happened to him?

Franciszek Gajowniczek lived a full life, dying on March 13, 1995, in Poland at the age of 95… 53 years after Kolbe had saved him from execution.  Franciszek never forgot the Priest. After his release from Auschwitz, Gajowniczek spent the next five decades paying homage to Father Kolbe. Every year on August 14 he went back to Auschwitz and honored the man who died on his behalf.