St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe

St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe was born January 8, 1894 at Zdunska Wola, near Lodz, in Russian Occupied Poland. The second son of devout parents who worked in a cottage weaving industry, he was baptized Raymond at the Parish Church.

Already proficient in virtue, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to him in 1906 A.D., about the time of his first communion. She offered him the graces of virginity and martyrdom and asked him which he wanted. Filled with zeal, he begged for both, and was filled thereafter with the most ardent desire to love and serve this Immaculate Queen.

Under the Russian occupation, the family lived in poverty and the parents became Franciscan tertiaries. In 1907 Raymond joined the Order of Friars Minor Conventual (Conventual Franciscan Friars) at Lwow in Austrian Occupied Poland, where he took the name Maximilian, and in 1910 he entered the Franciscan Order. Afterwards, his parents separated and dedicated themselves to religious lives. His mother became a Benedictine and later a Felician lay sister, and his father a Franciscan until he left the Order to direct a bookshop at Czestochowa, the national shrine of the Blessed Virgin. After enlisting with Palsudski's patriots, Maximilian's father was wounded fighting the Russians, and as one of their subjects, was hanged as a traitor in 1914, aged forty-three. In 1912, after finishing preliminary studies at the junior seminary, Maximilian was sent to Rome, where he studied theology and philosophy at the Pontifical Gregorian University. In 1917 on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the conversion of Alphonse Ratisbon, renowned anti-Catholic and agnostic of Jewish lineage, he was moved by divine grace to found a pious association of the faithful known as the sodality (i.e., devotional association) of the Militia of the Immaculate.

A significant contribution to the international Marian movement, the Militia was to be a loosely organized tool in the hands of the Immaculate Mediatrix for the conversion and sanctification of non-Catholics, especially those inimical to the Church. Its members consecrated themselves to the Blessed Virgin Mary, invoked Her daily for the conversion of sinners, and strove by every legal means to build up the Kingdom of the Sacred Heart throughout the world.

Ordained to the priesthood in 1918, Father Maximilian returned to Poland to teach Church History at a seminary in Cracow in 1919, after being diagnosed with tuberculosis. After a nearly fatal attack he determined to organize the first group of the Militia outside of Italy, and to found a magazine for Christian readers in Cracow who needed effective apologetics. The monthly magazine, Rycerz Niepokalanej ("The Knight of Mary Immaculate") promoted the knowledge, love and service of the Immaculate Virgin, and the conversion of all souls to Christ Our Lord. The magazine was an extraordinary success and soon the obsolete presses were moved to better facilities in Grodno. Circulation increased from 5,000 copies to more than 45,000. Shortly after, new machinery was installed, which was worked by priests and lay brothers alone. In spite of another attack of tuberculosis, Father Maximilian continued to promote the growth of the Militia and to manage the growth of the magazine.

The phenomenal growth of this apostolate between 1927 and 1929, led to the foundation of Niepokalanow, near Warsaw. The name "Niepokalanow" means "City of the Immaculate" and expressed Father Maximilian's life-long devotion to the Virgin Mary. This was a Franciscan community which combined prayer with cheerfulness, and poverty with modern technology, to promote via the mass media the Militia through all parts of Poland. The friary at Niepokalanow was one of the largest in the world and the center of much and varied activity. Niepokalanow was completely self supporting; its 762 inhabitants included doctors, dentists, farmers, mechanics, tailors, builders, printers, gardeners, shoemakers and cooks. Later on when Father Maximilian acquired a fire brigade he turned some of his monks into firemen as well!

Niepokalanow was a seminary, a mission house, a printing establishment, a radio station; there seemed no end to its possibilities. Father Maximilian was a guiding spirit: the success of his monthly magazine whose circulation eventually reached 750,000 encouraged him to install ultra-modern machinery in his printing department and to adopt the latest techniques of type-setting, photoengraving and binding. By 1935 he had launched a daily Catholic Newspaper, and in a few short years of its existence it became one of Poland's leading newspapers. Father Maximilian did not rest there. Intent on being able to use all the means of social communication, he set up a radio station whose signature tune, the Lourdes hymn, was played by the friars own orchestra. In 1930, Father Maximilian, heeding the call of the Holy Father to all religious, to come to the aid of the missionary efforts of the universal Church, volunteered to go to the Orient to found another city of the Immaculate, Mugenzai No Sono. It said something for his determination that, in spite of knowing nothing of the Japanese language, exactly one month after the arrival of himself and four other friars he had acquired a printing press and was distributing a magazine. Because Father Maximilian possessed two doctorates, the Archbishop of Nagasaki also asked him to take the vacant chair of philosophy in the local seminary.

With Niepoklanow firmly established in Japan, Father Maximilian sailed for Malabar in Kerala, India. His dream was to establish a "City of the Immaculate" there and another in Russia, but both dreams were never realized.

In 1936 he was recalled to Poland, and returned to Niepokalanow, as its spiritual father. Father Maximilian became superior of Niepokalanow, and director of what was now Poland's chief Catholic publishing complex. Under his able direction the number of friars grew to more than 900 in the months preceding World War II. The publishing apostolate was producing 1,000,000 magazines monthly as well all 125,000 copies of a daily paper for the 1,000,000 members of the Militia worldwide.

His health, always bad, had deteriorated even further; now he was racked by violent headaches and was covered with abscesses - but these things were only pinpricks compared with what was yet to come. True martyrdom awaited him at the hands of the German invaders. When the German Wermacht invaded Poland in September of 1939, Father Maximilian, realizing that his monastery would be taken over, sent most of the friars home, warning them not to join the underground resistance. Niepokalanow was ransacked, and Father Maximilian along with about 40 others was taken to a holding camp, first in Germany, and later in Poland. By the mercy of the Immaculate they were released and allowed to return home on December 8th (the feast of the Immaculate Conception) of that same year. Father Maximilian and others returned to Niepokalanow, which became a refugee camp for thousands of Poles and Jews of the Poznan district, seeking escape from Nazi persecution. The friars shared everything they had with the refugees, and the monastery, once housing Catholic friars now became a universal shelter of brotherhood. For this reason, Father Maximilian, his friars and the monastery soon came under suspicion of the Gestapo.

For some time the friars had continued publishing papers, taking a patriotic, independent line, critical of the Third Reich. Father Maximilian, a journalist, publisher and "intellectual", who had refused German citizenship, was considered to be a threat to absolute German domination. To incriminate him, the Gestapo permitted one final printing of the "Knight of Mary Immaculate" in December of 1940. It was in this issue that Father Maximilian wrote: "No one in the world can change truth. What we can do and should do is to seek it and serve it when it is found. The real conflict is inner conflict. Beyond armies of occupation and the catacombs of concentration camps, there are two irreconcilable enemies in the depth of every soul: good and evil, sin and love. And what use are the victories on the battle-field if we ourselves are defeated in our innermost personal selves?"

On February 17, 1941, Father Maximilian was again arrested, this time on charges of aiding Jews and the Polish underground. Gestapo officers who were shown around the whole monastery were astonished at the small amount of food prepared for the brothers. He was sent to the infamous Pawiak prison in German Occupied Warsaw, and was singled out for special ill-treatment. A witness tells us that in March of that year an SS guard, seeing this man in a Franciscan habit girdled with a rosary asked if he believed in Christ. When the priest replied "I do" the guard struck him. The SS guard repeated the question several times, and, always receiving the same answer, went on beating him mercilessly. Shortly afterwards his Franciscan habit was taken away and a prisoner's garment substituted.

Father Maximilian and four companions were deported to Auschwitz on May 28th, 1941, which was then both a labor and a death camp. Over the entrance gate of this concentration camp was a sign in German: "Arbeit macht frei" - Work makes free, a mockery of human spirit and human endeavors. Few who passed through that gate left the camp alive. In reality, upon entering Auschwitz, prisoners were told by Camp Commandant Karl Fritsch ("Butcher" Fritsch), that Jews had the right to live only two weeks, and Roman Catholic priests one month. Cruelly, they were told that the only way out of the camp was through the chimneys of the crematorium.

At Auschwitz, untold millions of Roman Catholics and Jews were murdered. The objective of Hitler, in his hatred for Jesus Christ, was both to remove all witness to the truth of the original revelation of the God of Israel (the Jewish nation), as well as all who came to believe in Him in His Incarnation by Mary (Roman Catholics).

Thus it was that Father Maximilian Kolbe, Knight of the Immaculate Virgin, was placed by Divine Providence at the very center of the ideological and spiritual conflict of the century, and was destined by God to be a sign of contradiction to a nation given over to diabolic hatred of God and His people.

Father Maximilian received the striped convict garment and was tattooed with the number 16670. He was put to work immediately carrying blocks of stone for the construction of a crematorium wall. On the last day of May he was assigned with other priests to the Babice section which was under the direction of "Bloody" Krott, an ex-convict. "These men are layabouts and parasites," the Commandant said to Krott, "get them working." Krott forced the priests to cut and carry huge tree trunks. The work went on all day without a stop and had to be done at the double - spurred on by vicious blows and kicks from the guards. Despite his one lung, Father Maximilian accepted the work and the blows with amazing calm, especially in view of the fact that Krott conceived a violent hatred for the Franciscan and gave him even heavier tasks than the others. Sometimes his colleagues would try to come to his aid, but he refused to put them in danger. "No," he said, "Mary gives me strength. All will be well."

One day Krott found some of the heaviest planks in the vicinity, and personally loaded them onto the Franciscan's back, ordering him to run with them. When he collapsed, Krott kicked him in the stomach and face and had his men give him fifty lashes. When the priest lost consciousness Krott flung him down into the mud and left him for dead, but Father Maximilian's companions managed to smuggle him to the Revier, the camp hospital. Although he was suffering greatly, he secretly heard confessions in the hospital and spoke to other inmates about the love of God.

Prisoners at Auschwitz were slowly and systematically starved, and when food was brought, everyone struggled to get his place and be sure of a portion. Father Maximilian however, stood aside in spite of the ravages of starvation, and frequently there would be none left for him. At other times he shared his meager ration of soup or bread with others. Once he was asked if such self-denial didn't amount to folly in a place where every man had to struggle to survive. His answer was, "Every man has an aim in life; for most men it is to return home to their wives and families. For my part, I want to give my life for the good of all men." In response to all the vicious hatred and brutality of the prison guards, Father Maximilian was ever obedient, meek, and forgiving. He gave counsel to his fellow prisoners urging them to "Trust in the Immaculate!" and to "Love your enemies and pray for your persecutors!" The truly astonishing thing, to which innumerable witnesses testify is that Father Maximilian Kolbe knew nothing of hatred. He looked at executioners and victims alike with the same clear gaze, to the point where even the most sadistic turned away, saying, "Do not look at us like that." This man, who was branded with the number 16670, won that most difficult of victories, that of a love which absolves as it forgives.

Men gathered in secret to hear his words of love and encouragement, and he continued his priestly ministry, smuggling in bread and wine for the Eucharist. What counted most however was the example that he set. He was conspicuous for sympathy and compassion towards those even more unfortunate than himself. Father Zygmunt Rusczak remembers: "Each time I saw Father Kolbe in the courtyard I felt within myself an extraordinary effusion of his goodness. Although he wore the same ragged clothes as the rest of us, with the same tin can hanging from his belt, one always forgot this wretched exterior and was conscious only of the charm of his inspired countenance and of his radiant holiness."

Camp law, viciously enforced, stated that if anyone attempted to escape, ten men from the same bunker would be selected for death by starvation in the dreaded, windowless underground Bunker. Near the end of July, a prisoner apparently escaped, and men from Kolbe's bunker were paraded in the blazing midday sun, knowing what to expect. One man from each line was selected at random, including a sergeant, Francis Gajowniczek. When he cried out in a despairing voice, "My wife, my children, I shall never see them again!" a man stepped out from the ranks and offered to take Gajowniczek's place. He was prisoner 16670, Father Maximilian Kolbe. The SS man, "Butcher" Fritsch, did not care who went to the Bunker, so long as there were ten of them, so he nodded. "Who are you?" he asked carelessly. "I am a Catholic priest. I wish to die for that man. I am old; he has a wife and children." Father Maximilian and the nine others were led off to the death chamber of Cell 18. The dreadful irony of the situation is that the escaped prisoner was later found drowned in a camp latrine, so the terrible reprisals had been exercised without cause.

Bruno Borgowiec, an assistant to the janitor and an interpreter in the underground Bunkers, was an actual eyewitness to the sad events that followed.

"In the cell of the poor wretches there were daily loud prayers, the rosary and singing, in which prisoners from neighboring cells also joined. When no SS men were in the block I went to the Bunker to talk to the men and comfort them. Fervent prayers and songs to the "holy Mother of the Unhappy" resounded in all the corridors of the Bunker. I had the impression of being in a church. Father Kolbe was leading and the prisoners responded in unison. They were often so deep in prayer that they did not even hear that inspecting SS men had descended to the Bunker; and the voices fell silent only at the loud yelling of their visitors. When the cells were opened the poor wretches cried loudly and begged for a piece of bread and for water, which they did not receive. If any of the stronger ones approached the door he was immediately kicked in the stomach by the SS men, so that falling backwards on the cement floor he was instantly killed; or he was shot to death ... Father Kolbe bore up bravely, he did not beg and did not complain but raised the spirits of the others ... "Since they had grown very weak prayers were now only whispered. At every inspection, when almost all the others were now lying on the floor, Father Kolbe was seen kneeling or standing in the center as he looked cheerfully in the faces of the SS men. Two weeks passed in this way. Meanwhile, one after another they died, until only four were left, including Father Kolbe who alone was fully conscious. This the authorities felt was too long; the cell was needed for new victims. So one day they brought in the head of the sick-quarters, a German, a common criminal called Bock, who gave each in his turn an injection of carbolic acid (phenol) in the vein of the left hand. Father Kolbe with a prayer on his lips himself gave his arm to the executioner. Unable to watch this I left the cell under the pretext of work to be done. Immediately after the SS men had left I returned to the cell, where I found Father Kolbe leaning in a sitting position against the back wall with his eyes open and his head drooping sideways. His face was calm."

So it was that Father Maximilian Kolbe was executed on 14 August, 1941 at the age of forty-seven years, a martyr of charity. His body was removed to the crematorium, and without dignity or ceremony was disposed of, like hundreds of thousands who had gone before him, and hundreds of thousands more who would follow.

The heroism of Father Maximilian went echoing through Auschwitz and beyond. In that desert of hatred he had won love. After the war, newspapers all over the world began carrying articles about this "saint for our times", "Saint of Progress" and "Giant of Holiness". Beginning shortly after the war, cures were claimed through him. "The life and death of this one man alone," wrote the Polish bishops, "is proof and witness of the fact that God can overcome the greatest hatred, the greatest injustice, even death itself." The demands for his beatification became insistent and eventually proceedings started in 1947. When all the usual objections had been overcome, the promoter spoke of "the charm of this magnificent fool."

On October 17, 1971, Kolbe was beatified by Pope Paul VI, the first Nazi victim to be proclaimed blessed by the Roman Catholic Church. Present at the solemn beatification at St. Peter's basilica was Sergeant Gajowniczek, a dramatic footnote to Kolbe's sacrifice. Cardinal Wojtyla, formerly archbishop of Cracow, the diocese which contains Auschwitz, attended the ceremony in Rome and later addressed a Press conference. He focused on the fact that Father Kolbe had replied, "I am a Catholic Priest." As Pope John Paul II, he canonized Father Maximilian Kolbe in 1982 as a martyr of charity. The feast day of St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe is August 14th.

So it was as a Catholic priest that St. Maximilian accompanied his wretched flock of nine men condemned to death. It was not a question of saving the life of the tenth man - he wanted to help those nine to die with dignity. From the moment the dreadful door clanged shut on the condemned men, he took charge of them, and not just them but others who were dying of hunger in cells nearby, and whose demented cries caused anyone who approached to shudder. It is a fact that from the moment he came into their midst, those wretched people felt a protective presence, and suddenly their cells, in which they awaited their final end, resounded with hymns and prayers. The SS themselves were astounded: "So was haben wir nie gesehen" - We never saw anything like it before, they said. At a time when so many priests all over the world are fretting about their "identity", Father Maximilian Kolbe gives the answer, not with theological argument, but with his own life and death. The ultimate test for a follower of Christ, he applied devoutly and ultimately Christ's words: "Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13). St. Maximilian died in an age of fury and contempt, in which men were reduced to the level of robots, lower even than slaves. The nightmare memory of the concentration camps is slowly fading; the young know scarcely anything about them, but the survivors of that period know only too well that under a totalitarian system humanity is degraded, humiliated and mocked. Against such a background, it would seem that only hatred can flourish. A survivor once said: "I hate them, because they taught me to hate." Maximilian Kolbe was the ideal of what a priest should be, a modern 20th century priest, a man who embodied in his own person the love that Christ showed towards all men. St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe's life and work continues today in the religious Order of the Friars Minor Conventual (Conventual Franciscans) to which he belonged and in the movement known as the Militia of Mary Immaculate (M.I.).

Print this page