Maximillian Kolbe, a Polish prisoner in Auschwitz, deeply touched those he met in the prison camp. Of the many thousands who entered Auschwitz, only five percent survived to be liberated by the Allies. But most of those who knew Kolbe personally in the camp survived.
Pope John Paul II beatified Kolbe on October 17, 1971, in St Peter’s in Rome before a crowd of thousands, many of whom were Auschwitz survivors.
Auschwitz was run by a hellish mix of dehumanization and terror. Thousands were gassed to death. But the prisoners knew there were even worse ways to die. Each morning the prisoners had to line up to be counted. If one was missing, ten were selected at random for death, a slow, torturous death by starvation. All the prisoners awoke with that random, unpredictable terror in their consciousnesses.
Kolbe was among ten such sentenced to death.
As they were led to the concrete death house, Kolbe carried another prisoner who has unable to walk, so overcome was he by terror and anguish. Outside the door the ten were ordered to strip off their ragged prison uniforms, and naked they went down some stairs and into a barren concrete cell.
In the foul, dark air the men went into a frenzy of screaming and despair and cursing. In that darkest corner of the hell that was Auschwitz, it was this psychological anguish that killed most men before thirst and hunger could, usually on the first or second day.
We know what happened with these ten men because a bi-lingual prisoner named Meleshko, who was required by the Nazis to keep daily records of deaths at the camp, survived Auschwitz to tell the world.
As the others screamed and cursed, Kolbe stood and prayed. The others became silent. He began to sing Christian hymns. Slowly the others joined in. Kolbe told them about Christ’s sacrificial death for them and the offer of eternal life. He went from one man to the next, consoling each.
Daily the guards unlocked the door to check for corpses and have them dragged out. Sometimes they found Kolbe’s group so deeply in prayer that they didn’t even notice the SS officers opening the door. It took furious shouts and kicking from the SS men to get the prisoners to stop praying. The soldiers had never seen prayer in the death house, and they could not endure it.
Some of the men would cry and beg for a crumb of bread or drop of water. Kolbe never asked for anything. All he would do was remain standing and gaze directly into the guards eyes.
According to Meleshko, it was not a gaze of pleading but of deep longing, longing that the guards might be freed from the evil in which they were involved.
“Shau auf die Erde, nicht auf uns!” they ordered. “Keep your eyes on the ground, not on us.” They could not endure his gaze.
Day by day one and then another of the prisoners died. The praying continued, but now only in whispers. Each day the Guards found more bodies on the cement. But they always found Kolbe standing or kneeling in prayer.
This went on for two weeks. Finally the commander decided this had to stop and sent guards with injections of carbolic acid which kills in about ten seconds.
When Meleshko came to record the deaths, he saw the anguished faces of all the dead, twisted amidst the filth on the floor.
But Kolbe’s body was clean and his countenance was one of peace, and his body remained keeling, leaning back against the wall.
Meleshko remembers saying, “God has snuck into Hell. I have here seen one of His saints.”
That’s what a believer does: He or she brings the light of Christ into the darkest corners of the hells found on this Earth. Through them, God Himself sneaks into those hells.
On the Cross, God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. God the Father and God the Spirit were there in that darkest moment as God the Son drank fully the cup that was set before Him.
In S.t Peter’s on that October day in 1971, when it came time for the offertory, a man named Francis Gajohnichek led the procession, bearing the ciborium with the bread. All the way down the long aisle he openly wept. When he reached the altar, the deacon was surprised to see Pope John Paul II come around to the front of the altar, take the ciborium himself, hand it to the deacon, and then embrace Gajohnichek.
For nearly thirty years before, Francis Gajohnichek had been one of those ten selected for death that day. As he sobbed, “My wife and my children…,” Kolbe broke ranks, walked slowly forward, and said, “I want to die in place of this prisoner.”