Father Maximilian Kolbe

January 8, 1894: Father Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish Catholic priest, is born in Zduńska Wola. He became a Christian Martyr when he volunteered to be executed at Auschwitz in place of another prisoner. 

Kolbe was heavily influenced by a childhood vision he had of the Virgin Mary, and became an ordained priest in 1919. Between the years of 1930 and 1936, he departed on a series of religious missions in East Asia. Following the invasion of Poland in 1939, his monastery was shut down for sheltering Jewish refugees and publishing anti-Nazi literature. He was arrested and imprisoned at Auschwitz.

At the end of July 1941, three prisoners escaped from Auschwitz. In response, the SS camp guards picked 10 prisoners at random to be executed as collective punishment for the escape. Captain Witold Pilecki describes this event in his most comprehensive report on his secret undercover mission at Auschwitz:

It once happened that a young inmate was chosen, whereupon an old man, a priest, stepped out of the ranks and asked the Camp Commandant to take him and release the young man.
This was a powerful moment and the block froze in amazement.
The Commandant agreed.
The heroic priest went to his death and the other inmate returned to the ranks.

Excerpt from “The Auschwitz Volunteer: Beyond Bravery,” by Captain Witold Pilecki.

Franciszek Gajowniczek, the man whose life Father Kolbe had saved, survived Auschwitz and was freed by Allied liberation forces in 1944. He was reunited with his wife after World War II and lived a full life until his passing in 1995.

When the selfless sacrifice of Father Kolbe became known,  the Catholic church in 1971 under Pope Paul VI beatified him as a Confessor of the Faith, and in 1982 under Pope John Paul II, as a martyr. John Paul II declared Father Maximilian Kolbe “The Patron Saint of Our Difficult Century.”