One of my favorite places to visit while in London is Westminster Abbey. The site is not as much a traditional church as it is a Gothic-style historical time capsule of famous Europeans—scientists, authors, military leaders, politicians, and the “Unknown Warrior.” Some 3,300 people are buried there. Sixteen are monarchs dating back to King William the Conqueror (1087). Charles Darwin, Geoffery Chaucer, Isaac Newton, William Wilberforce—to name a few of the greats.
In 1998, ten niches above the Great West Door as filled with icons of famous 20th-century Christian martyrs: Manche Masemola, Janaui Luwum, Grand Duchess Elizabeth of Russia, Martin Luther King Jr, Oscar Romeo, Dietrick Bonhoeffer, Esther John, Lucian Tapiedi, Wang Zhiming, and to the far left, Saint Maximilian Kolbe (see the inserted image).
He wasn’t always known as Maximilian. He was the second (or third) son of poor weavers Julius and Maria Kolbe and was initially named Raymond Kolbe. He had four brothers, though the correct birth order is debated. He was born on January 8, 1894, in Zdunska Wola, Poland. After his birth, the family moved to Pabianice, Poland.
When he was a young boy, about twelve years old, he had a vision of the Virgin Mary. He later described this in his memoirs, “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 I would accept both.” (Looking at the inserted image of the Westminster icon, you will see Kolbe holding a book (scripture), pointing at two crowns. The skull at his feet indicates his martyrdom and victory over death.
Kolbe became a Franciscan and joined the seminary in 1907 with his eldest brother Francis. When he entered his formal spiritual training (novitiate), he took the name Maximilian. He continued his formal education receiving multiple other degrees in topics of divinity.
While studying for this doctorate of theology, World War I began. Maximilian’s father went to war, fighting for the liberation of Poland from Russia. Unfortunately, Julius was captured and executed at 43 for treason against Russia. This galvanized Maximilian’s patriotic nature and will to stand firm in the face of his enemies.
Kolbe witnessed demonstrations and protests from Freemasons against Popes Pius X and Benedict XV. Images of these Popes were published showing them serving or laying at the feet of Satan. He soon decided to organize a military force, “The Army of the Immaculate One,” to fight enemies of the Catholic Church—specifically Freemasons.
Maximilian was ordained a Catholic priest in 1918 and returned the following year to Poland to serve the people. He was an active promoter of the worship and veneration of the Virgin Mary and was hotly opposed to liberal, communist platforms. From 1919-1922, Kolbe taught at the Krackow Seminary and soon contracted tuberculosis resulting in an extended leave of absence from his teaching position and his lungs severely damaged.
He continued his work in a variety of methods of avenues, establishing a seminary on the mountainside of Nagasaki. (Side Note: the seminary survived the atomic bombing of Nagasaki because of its positing on the mountainside. It continues to function today as a Franciscan monastery and retreat center “Mugenzai no Sono” [Garden of the Immaculate]).
He published many pamphlets, newsletters, and books promoting the vernation of the Virgin Mary. His first publication, “Knight of the Immaculate,” distributed around 5,000 copies. Later after acquiring a small printing company, he distributed over 70,000 copies of the documents. Upon his return to Poland, the publishing company he originally established there was distributing 137,000-225,000 copies of his works. Two years later, in 1939, he started a radio station in Poland (station SP3RN).
During World War II, Kolbe reorganized a monastery at Niepokalanow into a hospital. The Nazis captured the town and arrested him on September 19, 1939. He was later released because of his partial German lineage. He returned to the monastery, began hiding refugees, including an estimated 2,000 Jews, and continued publishing religious material, though primarily as anti-Nazi propaganda.
On February 17, 1941, the Nazis again shut down the monastery and arrested Kolbe and four others. On May 28, he was transferred to the concentration camp at Auschwitz and renamed and branded prisoner “16670.” Though in the death camp, Kolbe continued to function as a priest, hearing confessions, offering prayers, and serving others with traditional Catholic rites.
At the end of July 1941, some prisoners escaped from the death camp. At role call, three prisoners were noted to be missing; one from Kolbe’s camp and two from another. The SS officer overseeing the camp, Karl Fritzsch, a convicted criminal before the Nazi takeover, ordered ten men to be selected randomly to die in proxy for the three escapees. One of the selected men, Franciszek Gajowniczek, cried out “My Wife! My Children!” Maximilian Kolbe freely volunteered to take the man’s place and fate.
The ten men were paced in an underground bunker and deprived of all food and drink in order to starve the men to death as an egregious example to the others against escape. Other Jews were assigned to go down to the bunker daily to remove any “fluids” (urine) to prevent the doomed from drinking it. One eyewitness reported that each day when he entered the bunker, Kolbe was standing or sitting in the middle of the room, surrounded by starving and dying men, reciting prayers and singing hymns. After two weeks, nine of the men were already dead and decaying, and only Kolbe remained alive.
The SS men entered the bunker; seeing Kolbe alive and somewhat nourished by his faith, they gave him a lethal injection of carbolic acid. Reports indicate that Kolbe approached the SS men with a cheerful smile and willingly extended his left arm. He died on August 14, 1941, and his body was cremated in the ovens of Auschwitz. His remains were disposed of on August 15, 1941—ironically, the Catholic feast day of the Assumption (ascension/glorification) of Mary.
On May 12, 1955, the Catholic Church recognized Kolbe as a “servant of God” (the first step in sainthood.) Then, on January 30, 1969, Pope Paul VI, declared him “venerable” (the second step) and then as a “confessor of the faith” in 1971. (Side Note: This step recognizes a Christian for their bravery in facing persecution up to the point of death.) Then, on October 10, 1982, Pope John Paul II canonized Kolbe as a saint, confessor, and martyr of charity.
The man Kolbe saved from the bunker in Auschwitz, Franciszek Gajowniczek, survived the Holocaust. He appeared at Kolbe’s ceremonies and said,
“I could only thank him with my eyes. I was stunned and could hardly grasp what was going on. The immensity of it: I, the condemned, am to live and someone else willingly and voluntarily offers his life for me – a stranger. Is this some dream? I was put back into my place without having had time to say anything to Maximilian Kolbe. I was saved. And I owe to him the fact that I could tell you all this. The news quickly spread all round the camp. It was the first and the last time that such an incident happened in the whole history of Auschwitz.”
Bruno Borgowiec, a Polish prisoner with Kolbe who was charged with tending to the prisoners in the bunker, said,
“The ten condemned to death went through terrible days. From the underground cell in which they were shut up there continually arose the echo of prayers and canticles. The man in charge of emptying the buckets of urine found them always empty. Thirst drove the prisoners to drink the contents. 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 face of the SS men. Father Kolbe never asked for anything and did not complain, rather he encouraged the others, saying that the fugitive might be found and then they would all be freed. One of the SS guards remarked: this priest is really a great man. We have never seen anyone like him…”
Pope John Paul II decided that Kolbe should be recognized as a martyr because the systematic hatred of the Nazi regime was inherently an act of hatred against religious faith, meaning Kolbe’s death equated to martyrdom. At his canonization in 1982, Pope John Paul II said: “Maximilian did not die but gave his life … for his brother.”
Quotes from Father Kolbe:
“Courage, my sons, Don’t you see that we are leaving on a mission? They pay our fare in the bargain. What a piece of good luck! The thing to do now is to pray well in order to win as many souls as possible. Let us, then, tell the Blessed Virgin that we are content, and that she can do with us anything she wishes.”
“The most deadly poison of our times is indifference. And this happens, although the praise of God should know no limits. Let us strive, therefore, to praise Him to the greatest extent of our powers.”
“No one in the world can change Truth. What we can do and should do is to seek truth and to serve it when we have found it. The real conflict is the inner conflict. Beyond armies of occupation and the hecatombs of extermination 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 battlefield if we ourselves are defeated in our innermost personal selves?”
References
Tejvan Pettinger. “Biography of Maximilian Kolbe.” (Oxford University Press: Oxford) 2014.
Tejvan Pettinger. “Maximilian Kolbe.” https://www.biographyonline.net/spiritual/maximilian-kolbe.html. Accessed July 10, 2022. (Biographies Online)
Terry H Jones. “Maximilian Kolbe.” https://web.archive.org/web/20120201110545/http://saints.sqpn.com/saint-maximilian-kolbe/. Accessed July 10, 2022 (Star Quest Production Network).
Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximilian_Kolbe
Internet Archive. https://web.archive.org/web/20200803192059/http://www.catholicpages.com/saints/st_maximilian.asp. Accessed July 10, 2022. (Catholic Pages.com)
Tirso Villaverde. “Mugenzai no Sono.” https://sites.google.com/site/mugenzainosonomariandevotion/. Accessed July 10, 2022.
