Who is Maximilian Kolbe?

  In July, 1941 a prisoner from one of the barracks at Auschwitz, the infamous Nazi prison camp, had disappeared. To discourage further escape attempts, the deputy camp commander picked ten men to die by starvation. Franciszek Gajowniczek, a Jewish man, was one of the men chosen. On knowing his fate he cried out in agony, "My wife! My children! I will never see them again." Nearby, Maximilian Kolbe stepped forward, "I am a Catholic Priest from Poland. I would like to take his place because he has a wife and children."
The Nazi camp commander could have refused or could have taken both to Block 13 for starvation but for some reason he agreed and Kolbe was thrown into the cell with the nine others whereas Gajowniczek remained in the barracks. Perhaps the commander considered Gajowniczek as more use alive as he was younger than Kolbe and would be able to work longer. Ironically, the missing prisoner, that had started the incident, was found dead in one of the latrines.
After three weeks of dehydration and starvation, only four of the men in Block 13 remained; one of them was Kolbe. Since the cell was needed for others, the guards gave each of the men an injection of carbolic acid.
Who Was Maximilian Kolbe?
Born Raymond Kolbe in 1894 in Zdunska Wola, Poland (then part of Russia) his parents were poor weavers. Kolbe had four brothers. In 1907, Kolbe and his elder brother illegally crossed the border into Austria-Hungary to join the Order of Conventual Franciscans. He took the name "Maximilian" at his first vows in 1911 and in 1912, he was sent to Rome where he studied philosophy, theology, mathematics and physics. He earned his doctorate in philosophy at the Pontifical Gregorian University and was ordained in 1918.

Before Auschwitz
During his time in Rome, Kolbe witnessed demonstrations against the Pope and decided to establish the Militia of the Immaculata (Army of Mary) to pray and work towards conversion of enemies of the Catholic Church. The organization published pamphlets, a monthly magazine (circulation of over one million) and a daily newspaper.
Kolbe also went to Japan where he founded a monastery near Nagasaki. He had been advised to build the monastery on one side of the mountain but instead built it on the opposite side. When the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, the monastery was not destroyed but would have been if it had been built on the other side.
He returned to Poland because of tuberculosis and there Kolbe provided shelter to a number of refugees, including 2,000 Jews. For this reason and because of the anti-Nazi literature he published, he was arrested on February 17, 1941 by the Gestapo.

Imprisonment at Auschwitz
Kolbe was transferred to Auschwitz on May 25, 1941. In the prison camp he heard confessions and acted as a spiritual guide to all those who came to him. He offered to die for Gajowniczek in July of that year. After the war, Franciszek Gajowniczek returned home to find his wife alive but his two sons dead. He died in 1995 at the age of 95.

Sainthood
Maximilian Kolbe was beatified in 1971 and canonized on October 10, 1982 by Pope John Paul II. The Jewish man he saved from death, Franciszek Gajowniczek was among those in the audience.

Sources:
Hallam, Elizabeth, (Editor) Saints. New York: Simon and Schuster 1994.
Marytown, National Shrine of Saint Maximilian Kolbe website, Accessed August 23, 2010
Jewish Virtual Library Website. Accessed August 15, 2010.
Auschwitz - Denmark website. Accessed August 15, 2010.
photo Seibo no Kishi、Eｘｔｒａ Issue of Jan. 1983

Salt of the Earth or Dangerous Fanatics?

In 1833 slavery in Great Britain ended. For eighteen years William Wilberforce had lobbied against the slave trade and had introduced anti-slavery motions in the British parliament. Finally the law to end the slave trade had ended in spite of the opposition of influential people who profited by it. After this success Wilberforce worked to make education accessible to all children and was involved in the Royal Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. William Wilberforce was an Evangelical Christian.
Three hundred years before Wilberforce, Thomas More, a Roman Catholic lawyer, was Lord Chancellor of England and Henry VIII's right-hand man. Because More would not acknowledge Henry's divorce from Katherine of Aragon and would not recognize the King as the Head of the Church in England over the Pope, the King had him beheaded. Before his execution More proclaimed, 'I die the King's servant, but God's first.'
Obviously these politicians did not believe they should leave their religious beliefs outside the doors of parliament.
Closer to our own time, Father Maximillian Kolbe, a Polish priest, boldly criticized the politics of Hitler in his newspaper and hid 2,000 Jews, saving them from the Nazis. Deitrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran pastor and theologian, participated in the resistance movement against the Nazis in his native Germany. Both of these men died in concentration camps because of their actions. Notably, Father Kolbe offered to die in place of a man who was married and had children. Father Jerczy Popieluszko (1947-1984) a chaplain for Poland's Solidarity Movement, was instrumental in the resistance to Communism in his native land. He was killed by the Communist secret police in 1984 and his martyrdom led to the final defeat of Communism in Poland. They were not politicians but Kolbe, Bonhoeffer and Popieluszko took their religious beliefs into the political arena and risked their lives for them.
Lest some think there were no like-minded women, read about Florence Nightingale, who felt that God had called her to be a nurse, a profession that was unheard of for women of her class in the Victorian era. Florence defied convention and not only improved medical care of soldiers during the Crimean War but overhauled the training of nurses in Britain and made nursing a respected profession. An American convert to Catholicism Dorothy Day (1897-1980),began the Catholic Worker Movement to help the poor, many of them immigrants.
Were these people the 'Religious Right' of their day? Were they criticized by their non- believing contemporaries? Did they have a' hidden agenda'? Or were they just trying to be 'the salt of the earth' as Jesus had told his followers they should be?
In today's Canada surely there are those whose tactics even make some of their fellow-Christians cringe. But let us not forget there are still Christians who speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. There are still those who feel it is their responsibility to defend natural law. They may do this by their votes, by petitions, peaceful protests or even by running for political office but as long as they are not disobeying any law in Canada don't they, as taxpayers and Canadians, have a right to free speech? Perhaps we may even look back someday and thank them for the way they helped change society for the better.