1894-1941
"Forget not
love."
"We have to win the whole world and each soul, now and in the future until the end of times,
for the Immaculate, and through her, for the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus."
(St. Maximilian María Kolbe)
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Zdunska Wola
St. Maximilian's Birthplace and the Church of the Assumption
where he was baptized.
The first son of the Kolbe family was Francisco. Later, on the
8th of January 1894, Raymond was born in Zdunska Wola, which at
that time was occupied by Russia. On that same day he was
baptized Raymond in the parish Church of "The Assumption of the
Virgin Mary" in the Wloclawek and Wojewod Lodz diocese. He would
later take the religious name - Maximilian. In this same church
he would do his confirmation. Three more sons were born: José,
Valentín and Antonio. The last two died prematurely. The Kolbe
home was poor but full of love. The parents, hardworking and
religious, educated their three sons who were mischievous and
full of life, with rectitude. St. Francis was the ideal for the
young boys. "Maximilian desired to overflow with joy like St.
Francis and like St. Francis he desired to converse with the
birds." (Proc.Vars., fol 340)
Pabianice
Place where the Virgin Mary offered St. Maximilian the
Two Crowns.
Around 1906, an event took place that marks a fundamental
milestone in the life of Maximilian and that left his mother
worried and disconcerted. She herself related the event a few
months after her son's martyrdom.
"I knew ahead of time, based on an extraordinary event that took
place in his infancy, that Maximilian would die a martyr. I just
don't recall if it took place before or after his first
confession. Once I did not like one of his pranks and I
reproached him for it: ‘My son, what ever will become of you?!’
Later, I did not think of it again, but I noticed that the boy
had changed so radically, he was hardly recognizable. We had a
small altar hidden between two dressers before which he used to
often retire without being noticed and he would pray there
crying. In general, he had a conduct superior to his age, always
recollected and serious and when he prayed he would burst into
tears. I was worried, thinking he had some sort of illness so I
asked him: ‘Is there anything wrong? You should share everything
with your mommy!’ Trembling with emotion and with his eyes
flooded in tears, he shared: ‘Mama, when you reproached me, I
pleaded with the Blessed Mother to tell me what would become of
me. At Church I did the same; I prayed the same thing again. (He
was referring to St. Matthew's Church in Pabianice.) So then the
Blessed Mother appeared to me holding in her hands two crowns:
one white the other red. She looked at me with tenderness and
asked me if I wanted these two crowns. The white one signified
that I would preserve my purity and the red that I would be a
martyr. I answered that I accepted them...(both of them). Then
the Virgin Mary looked at me with sweetness and disappeared.’
The extraordinary change in the boys' behavior testified to me
the truth of what he related. He was fully conscious and as he
spoke to me, with his face radiating; it showed me his desire to
die a martyr.” Maximilian's fascinating encounter with his
celestial "mommy" is more than a fleeting episode. It is the
root of his entire future; it is the motor behind his
far-reaching plans; it is the force for his most audacious
flights; it is the wellspring of his sanctity and apostolate.
Ordination
When he was 13 years old he entered the Franciscan
Fathers Seminary in the polish city of Lvov, which was at that
time occupied by Austria. It was in the seminary where he
adopted the name Maximilian. He completed his studies in Rome
and in 1918 was ordained a priest.
The
mission
Devoted to the Immaculate Conception, he thought that the
Church should be militant in its cooperation with Divine Grace
for the advancement of the Catholic Faith. Moved by this
devotion and conviction, in 1917 he founded a movement called,
"The Militia of the Immaculata" whose members would consecrate
themselves to the Blessed Virgin Mary and whose purpose would be
to fight, through all the morally valid means available, for the
building of the Reign of God in the whole world. In the words of
the saint, the movement would have "a global vision of catholic
life under a new form that consists in a union with the
Immaculata.” A truly modern apostle, he initiated the
publication of his monthly magazine, "Knight of the Immaculata,"
oriented to promote knowledge, love and service to the Virgin
Mary in the task of converting souls for Christ. In 1922 he had
500 copies in print, and by 1939 he reached close to one million
copies in print. In 1931, after the Pope solicited missionaries,
he offered himself as a volunteer to travel to Japan where he
founded a new city of the Immaculata ("Mugenzai No Sono") and
published in Japanese the magazine, "Knight of the Immaculata"
("Seibo No Kishi").
Niepokalanow
Today Niepokalanow is considered the second religious
sanctuary in Poland, it is the most important one in Poland
after Jasna Gora, next to Czestochowa. It is situated
approximately 40 kilometers to the west of Warsaw. St.
Maximilian was not resigned to just one or various magazines,
his dream was to create a true, "City of the Immaculata" and for
it to be the motor and focus that radiates magazines, books,
newspapers and dailies to conquer the whole world for the Sacred
Heart through the Immaculata. “Cover the whole world with
printed paper to give back to souls the joy of living," is what
St. Maximilian taught his brothers in the City of the Immaculata
-or "the house, property and reign of the Immaculata."
St. Maximilian began with his homeland, but with the desire and
objective that in all nations there would eventually be a
Niepokalanow. Niepokalanow is translated in Latin as “Inmaculateum,”
meaning, what belongs to the Immaculata. The name reflects the
ideal, the program, and the end of a great saint like St.
Maximilian Kolbe: “In Niepokalanow, Mary is everything: she is
the heart and the goal; she is the ideal and the strength. We
work, we live, we suffer, for Her. We also die for her. All for
the greater glory of the Immaculata!"
The organization and functioning of the City of the Immaculata
with its citizens – the Franciscan friars – under the authority
of the superior of the convent, who also acted as the director
of the editorial complex and a division with five departments,
was distributed as follows:
1. Writing and Administration Department.
2. Printing Department.
3. Technical Department.
4. Domestic Economics Department.
5. Construction Department.6. A clinic, two houses of Formation
and two houses for the Novitiates- for aspiring brothers and for
aspiring friars - future priests.
At the moment of its greatest flourishing, Niepokalanow was the
largest Religious Community having a total of 762 religious.
“We should conquer the universe and each soul, now and in the
future until the end of time, for the Immaculata and through her
for the Sacred Heart of Jesus.” (St. Maximilian Maria Kolbe,
The Knight of the Immaculata)
THE IMMACULATA THROUGHOUT THE WORLD
After the City of the
Immaculata was firmly established in Poland, St. Maximilian set
his sights abroad to conquer hearts throughout the world for the
Immaculata. He set off for the far east and ended up in
Nagasaki, Japan, where he established another community. In the
midst of sickness, poverty, and many difficulties, the new
community in Japan began to grow. Very soon, they had a Japanese
version of the Knight of the Immaculata, the periodical
that had flourished originally in Poland, and now in Japan.
After a few years in Japan, St. Maximilian was summoned back to
Poland, largely due to his ever-declining health.
His Arrest
In 1936 he returned to Poland as the spiritual
director of Niepokalanów. Three years later, in the midst of the
Second World War, he was imprisoned along with other friars and
sent to concentration camps in Germany and Poland. He was freed
shortly thereafter, precisely on the day he consecrated himself
to the Immaculate Conception. In February of 1941 he was again
made a prisoner and sent to the Pawiak prison. He was later
transferred to the concentration camp in Auschwitz, where in
spite of the terrible living conditions he continued his
ministry.
Auschwitz
The former concentration camp in Auschwitz, situated
some 60 km from Cracow, is located in the midst of swampy
terrain. The SS chose these old quarters from the
Austro-Hungarian monarchy to situate the concentration camp
because of the favorable conditions for lines of communication.
Under the authority of the camp’s first commander, Rudolf Höss,
the camp, which would later be known as Auschwitz I or Central
Camp, began to be built in May of 1940. This first expansion was
thought to house 7000 prisoners, and it included 28 two-story
brick buildings and some other adjacent wooden buildings. Two
barbed wire fences with high electrical voltage surrounded the
entire camp. Over the door at the entrance of the camp, a sign
of sarcasm and disdain read: "WORK WILL SET YOU FREE."
There, every kind of cruelty and infamy, every sort of
bestiality and aberration, every kind of atrocity and horror,
took place to truly transform the camp into a living hell.
Continual deaths occurred due to illness, malnutrition, cold,
exhausting fatigue, scurvy, dysentery, traumas and infections.
The firing squad would riddle with bullets dozens of people at a
time, against a thick wall lined with rubber to diminish the
sound. In the arms plaza, five people would climb unto a stool,
the executioner would place the rope around their necks, and
with a kick of the bucket, the victims remained suspended in
air.
Auschwitz had become famous for the having installed the first
gas chamber which began to operate the 15th of August 1940. It
was not the bullets, hangings, or the gas chambers that were
feared most, but rather the death basements or bunkers, which
caused the slow, agonizing and maddening martyrdom due to hunger
and thirst. By Heinrich Himmler’s order, Auschwitz II (Birkenau)
camp began to be built in October of 1941. This one was much
more extensive than the central camp. Auschwitz is the epitome
of the most atrocious crime ever committed in the history of
humanity. A crime that was completely documented, Auschwitz
represents the location where the most well-organized and
planned genocides in history took place. The victims were not
buried; instead, they were burnt and their ashes where spread
along the adjacent fields. Our linguistic resources are
insufficient to describe all the cruelties that so many innocent
men, women and children were subjected to in this place of
horror. Not only were they brutally assassinated, but in
addition, thousands of them died of starvation and many were
subjected to forced labor under inhumane conditions until they
died of exhaustion.
The Gas Chambers
The most efficient method of exterminating humans was
asphyxiation through the gas chambers. In a hermetically
enclosed space, the SS used Zyklon B acid, which evaporates at
body temperature so that in a very short time it provoked death
by asphyxiation. The first attempts at submitting humans to
asphyxiating gases were in Auschwitz I on September of 1941 in
prison cells located in block 11. Later on the deposit of
cadavers adjacent to Crematorium I was used as a gas chamber.
Because of the limited space in Crematorium I and the
impossibility of maintaining this in complete secrecy, the SS
moved to Birkenau in 1942 and transformed two farms in the
middle of a forest into gas chambers. The cadavers were
transported by narrow train lines to graves. Since these
provisional installations were also not sufficient, in July of
1942 they began to build the four great “death factories.” These
began functioning between March and June of 1943. The prisoners
themselves were forced to build these places of extermination.
At that time it was possible to assassinate and burn 24,000
persons daily.
Assassination by lethal injection
The prisoners were afraid of being admitted to the
infirmary since this meant they would be submitted to a “lethal
injection,” even when they had only a minor illness.
The “lethal injection” meant being assassinated by an injection
of 10 cm of phenol, injected directly into the heart. The
victims died on the spot. This assassination method began in
August of 1941. The majority of times the phenol injections were
administered by the health officers, Josef Klehr and Herbert
Scherpe, as well as initiated prisoners like, Alfred Stössel and
Mieczyslaw Panszcyk. The prisoners, including children, who were
selected for the lethal injection needed to present themselves
to block 20 of the central camp. There they were called in one
by one and told to sit in an ambulatory chair. Two prisoners
held the victim’s hands and a third one blindfolded his eyes.
Immediately thereafter, Klehr would introduce the needle into
the heart and empty the syringe. Between 30 and 60 people died
each day by this method.
Love in the midst of
hate
In an attempt by the Germans to exterminate all the
leaders in Poland, in May of 1941, St. Maximilian Kolbe was
arrested by the Gestapo in Niepokalanow-the city of the
Immaculata, and taken to Auschwitz-the city of hatred and death.
Fr. Kolbe was beaten and received great cruelties for the simple
fact that he was a Catholic priest. They made priests work even
harder than civilians and the SS enjoyed the most minimal
opportunity to beat them inhumanly. If anyone attempted to help
them, they would punish the priests by increasing their work, or
they would beat them until they would lose consciousness. St.
Maximilian was a light in the midst of such darkness. There are
many testimonies by those who, through his words and example,
were able to keep the faith in the middle of such desperation
and death.
One concentration camp survivor explained: "Life in the
concentration camp was inhumane. One could not trust anyone
because there were spies, even amongst the prisoners. All of us
were selfish at heart. With so many being assassinated all
around, the hope was that others would be assassinated and that
we could survive; our animal instincts took over because of
hunger.” This was the reality that Maximilian Kolbe shared with
them, yet he brought peace to the hearts of the most troubled,
consolation to the afflicted, strength to the weak, and the
grace of God through the Sacrament of Mercy, prayer and
sacrifice – just like a good Teacher of souls. He lived to the
extreme what he didn’t tire preaching to his friars: “Don’t ever
forget to love.”
In Auschwitz, the Nazi regime looked to shed all prisoners of
any vestige of their personality by treating them inhumanly and
impersonally, as if people were numbers. St. Maximilian was
assigned number 16670. In spite of everything, during his stay
in the concentration camp, he never ceased being generous and
concerned for others, and he always maintained the dignity of
his fellow inmates. On the night of August 3, 1941 a prisoner
assigned in the same section as St. Maximilian escaped. As a
reprisal, the camp commander ordered that 10 random prisoners be
chosen to be executed. Among the men chosen was Polish Sergeant,
Franciszek Gajowniczek, who was married with children. "There is
no greater love than to give up your life for your friends" (Jn
15, 13). St. Maximilian, who was not one of the 10 chosen to be
executed, offered himself to die in the Sergeant’s place. The
commander of the concentration camp accepted the exchange and
St. Maximilian was condemned to die of starvation together with
the other nine prisoners. Days after the condemnation, since he
was still alive, they administered a lethal injection on the
14th of August, 1941.
The legacy
St. Maximilian, in the midst of the greatest
adversity, gave testimony and exemplified human dignity. In 1973
Paul VI beatified him and in 1982 John Paul II canonized him as
a Martyr of Charity. John Paul II comments on the great
influence that St. Maximilian had on his priestly vocation:
“Another singular and important dimension of my vocation arises
from here. The German occupation soldiers in the West and the
Soviet occupation forces in the East made a great number of
detentions and deportations of polish priests to concentration
camps. In Dachau alone there were interned almost three
thousand. There were other camps, like for example, the one in
Auschwitz, where St. Maximilian Kolbe, the Franciscan Friar from
Niepokalanow, offered his life for Christ and became the first
priest canonized after the war.” (John Paul II, Gift and
Mystery)
St. Maximilian’s legacy provides a notion of a militant Church,
unceasingly building up of the Kingdom of God. Even today there
still remain active works he inspired, such as the religious
institutes of the Franciscan friars of the Immaculate, the
Franciscan sisters of the Immaculate, as well as other movements
consecrated to the Immaculate Conception. But above all, St.
Maximilian’s legacy was his marvelous example of Love.
̈“Charity should be open to all without discrimination; her
only limit should be whatever is possible, which because of its
spirit of sacrifice- should reach to the extreme.” (St.Maximilian)
TESTIMONIES OF THOSE
WHO LIVED WITH SAINT MAXIMILIAN KOLBE IN AUSCHWITZ CONCENTRATION
CAMP
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.
Mieczyslaus Koscielniak relates how Saint Maximilian had
attempted to create a school of saints in Niepokalanow, and how
he attempted to do the same
amidst the horror of Auschwitz:
Saint Maximilian would encourage us to persevere with fortitude,
“Do not allow yourselves to break down morally,” he would say to
us, promising that God’s justice existed and that the Nazis
would eventually be defeated. Listening to him, we would forget
about our hunger and the degradation which we were subjected to
constantly.
One day, Saint Maximilian asked me for a favor. He said, our
life here is very insecure, one by one we are being taken to the
crematoriums, maybe I will go next, but in the meanwhile, can
you do me a favor? Could you make me a drawing of Jesus and
Mary, to whom I am very devoted? I drew it for him in the size
of a postage stamp, and he would carry it with him all the time
in a secret space he had on his belt.
Risking his own life or at least a good beating, between the
months of June and July, he secretly met with us, almost every
day, to instruct us. His words meant a lot to us. He would speak
to us with such great faith about the saints who were celebrated
each day, and how much they had to suffer. He would speak to us
with great ardor about the martyrs who had totally sacrificed
their lives for God’s cause. On Pentecost, he exhorted us to
persevere, not to lose hope. Even if we don’t all survive, he
said, we will all for sure triumph.
Henry Sienkiewicz was a young man who slept next to Saint
Maximilian when they both arrived at the camp. I never let a day
pass by without seeing my friend. Father will win the hearts of
all. Father Kolbe lived day by day by the hand of God. He had
such an attraction, which was like a spiritual magnet. He would
take us to God and the Virgin Mary. He wouldn’t stop telling us
that God was good and merciful. He desired to convert everyone
in the Camp, including the Nazis. He not only prayed for their
conversion, but would exhort us to also pray for their
conversion.
One morning when I was getting ready to go do some hard labor,
right before leaving, Father gave me a quarter of his bread
portion. I didn’t want to take it, because I noticed he had been
brutally beaten and he was exhausted. Besides, he would not
receive anything else until the night. Father Kolbe embraced me
and said: You should take it. You are going to be doing hard
labor and you are hungry.
If I was able to leave that place alive, keep my faith and not
despair, I owe it to Father Kolbe. When I was close to
desperation and just about to jump on the electrical voltage
barbed wires, he gave me strength and told me I would come out
of there alive. Just lean on the intercession of the Mother of
God. He instilled in me a strong faith and a living hope,
especially in her Maternal protection.
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