On this International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and the commemoration of the 70 anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, I wanted to bring you the story of Fr. Maximilian Kolbe.

Fr. Kolbe was born in 1894, in what today is Poland, of an ethnic German father and a Polish mother.

Kolbe described an apparition of the Virgin Mary that he had as a child of nine, an apparition which strongly influenced him all of his life:

That night I asked the Mother of God what was to become of me. Then she came to me holding two crowns, one white, the other red. She asked me if I was willing to accept either of these crowns. The white one meant that I should persevere in purity, and the red that I should become a martyr. I said that I would accept them both.

He became a Franciscan priest, and achieved two doctorates, one in philosophy and one in theology. He had a brilliant mind, was interested in astrophysics and even designing the concept of an spacecraft that looked like an airplane, long before the Space shuttle. He founded an order inspired by Mary and spreading the word through media. At one point he had over 700 Franciscan friars at his monastery working to put out a newspaper, a magazine and a radio program. He also went to Nagasaki and started a monastery there, built on the backside of the mountain away from the city, contrary to Shinto tradition. When asked about why he did that, he said, essentially, “what I have done, I have done”. The monastery continued and was one of the few structures to survive the bomb drop in 1945 because it was built on the backside of the mountain.

In 1936, Fr. Kolbe returned from Asia to Poland and the ever encroaching threat from the Nazis. When the Nazis invaded, one of the first groups they targeted were the intelligentsia who might spread dissent. Fr. Kolbe was right up there on the list. He was arrested but let go initially. He refused the protection of declaring himself an ethnic German which he could have because of his father. Instead he said, “I am Polish”. Upon his release he continued work at his monastery, where he continued to speak out strongly against them through his media, and where he and other monks provided shelter to refugees from Greater Poland, including 1,000–2,000 Jews whom he hid from Nazi persecution in their friary in Niepokalanów. In 1941, the Nazis came for him again, arresting him again, and this time, taking him to Auschwitz.

As a Catholic priest, Fr. Kolbe was often beaten more, as they attempted to break him and humiliate him.

A guard who saw his Franciscan habit and his rosary asked, “Do you believe in Christ?” Father Kolbe answered, “Yes, I do.” The guard struck him in the face and asked again. Father Kolbe kept giving the same answer, and the guard kept beating him until he could no longer stand.

While at Auschwitz, Fr. Kolbe would frequently comfort other prisoners, often giving them his own meager food rations. More than that, he encouraged them to keep their humanity, to pray and to love despite the horror around them.

Sigmund Gorson, a Jewish survivor of Auschwitz, called him “A prince among men.”

I was born in a precious family where love was abundant. All my family, parents, sisters and grandparents were murdered in the Concentration Camp. I was the only survivor. For me, it was extremely hard to find myself alone in this world, in the horror and hell that was lived in Auschwitz, and alone thirteen years old.

Many youth like myself lost all hope of survival, and many jumped into the high voltage barbed wires to commit suicide. I never lost hope of finding someone among the immense mass of people who would have known my parents, a friend, a neighbor, so that I wouldn’t feel so alone.

This is how Father Kolbe found me, to put it in simple terms, while I was looking for someone with whom I could make a connection. He was like an angel for me. Just like a mother hen takes in her chicks, that’s how he took me into his arms. He would clean my tears. I believe more in the existence of God ever since then. Ever since the death of my parents, I would ask myself, Where is God? I had lost all faith. Father Kolbe gave me back my faith.

Father Kolbe knew I was a young Jew, but his love would embrace everyone. He gave us lots of love. To be charitable in times of peace is easy, but to be charitable the way Father Kolbe was in that place of horror is heroic. I not only loved Father Kolbe a lot in the Concentration Camp, but I will love him until the last day of my life.

One day, a prisoner escaped from the cell block in which Fr Kolbe was living. It was the custom at the camp that if anyone escaped, ten more men from the block would be executed in that prisoner’s place. The deputy camp commander assembled the camp and the names of ten men were called out, including Franciszek Gajowniczek, who cried out, “My wife! My children!”.

Upon hearing that, Fr. Kolbe stepped forward toward the the commandant, SS-Hauptsturmführer Karl Fritzsch, and asked to take Franciszek’s place. “I am a Catholic Priest”, he said. “I am old. He is young, he has a wife and children. I would like to take his place.” The other prisoners held their collective breath, certain the commandant would take both of them. But after a moment, he said, “Done!” Fr. Kolbe and the other nine men were led away to a starvation bunker.

While in the bunker, Fr. Kolbe prayed and gave counsel to the other prisoners. He was the last prisoner alive when after a couple of weeks, the guards came to administer a lethal injection to him. He had helped and prayed with the others as each died before him. On August 14, 1941, Fr. Kolbe was martyred.

The bunker is now a shrine, and Fr. Kolbe was made a saint by John Paul II in 1981. They were never able to take away his faith or his humanity, even as the Nazis lost theirs, and in that he was the victor.