Murder of Maximilian Kolbe, Friar, Martyr].

Murder of Maximilian Kolbe, Friar, Martyr].

Maximilian Maria Kolbe OFMConv (born Raymund Kolbe; 8 January 1894 - 14 August 1941) was a Polish Catholic priest and Conventual Franciscan friar who volunteered to die in place of a man named Franciszek Gajowniczek in the German death camp of Auschwitz, located in German-occupied Poland during World War II. 

He had been active in promoting the veneration of the Immaculate Virgin Mary, founding and supervising the monastery of Niepokalanów near Warsaw, operating an amateur-radio station (SP3RN), and founding or running several other organizations and publications.

In 1907 Kolbe and his elder brother Francis joined the Conventual Franciscans.  They enrolled at the Conventual Franciscan minor seminary in Lwow later that year. 

lIn 1910, Kolbe was allowed to enter the novitiate, where he chose a religious name Maximilian. He professed his first vows in 1911, and final vows in 1914, adopting the additional name of Maria (Mary).

Kolbe was sent to Rome in 1912, where he attended the Pontifical Gregorian University. 

In the midst of these studies, World War I broke out. Maximilian's father, Julius Kolbe, joined Jozef Piłsudski's Polish Legions fighting against the Russians for an independent Poland, still subjugated and still divided among Prussia, Russia, and Austria. 

Julius Kolbe was caught and hanged as a traitor by the Russians at the relatively young age of 43, a traumatic event for young Maximilian.

In 1918, Kolbe was ordained a priest.  In July 1919, he returned to Poland, which was newly independent. 

He was active in promoting the veneration of the Immaculate Virgin Mary. He was strongly opposed to leftist – in particular, communist – movements.

Between 1930 and 1936, Kolbe undertook a series of missions to East Asia. He arrived first in Shanghai, China, but failed to gather a following there.  

Next he moved to Japan, where by 1931 he had founded a Franciscan monastery, Mugenzai no Sono, on the outskirts of Nagasaki.

After the outbreak of World War II, Kolbe was one of the few friars who remained in the monastery, where he organized a temporary hospital.  

After the town was captured by the Germans, they arrested him on 19 September 1939; he was later released on 8 December. He refused to sign the Deutsche Volksliste, which would have given him rights similar to those of German citizens in exchange for recognizing his ethnic German ancestry.  

Upon his release he continued work at his friary where he and other friars provided shelter to refugees from Greater Poland including 2,000 Jews whom he hid from German persecution in the Niepokalanów friary.

On 17 February 1941, the monastery was shut down by the German authorities. 

That day Kolbe and four others were arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned in the Pawiak prison.  On 28 May, he was transferred to Auschwitz as prisoner 16670.

Continuing to act as a priest, Kolbe was subjected to violent harassment, including beatings and lashings. Once, he was smuggled to a prison hospital by friendly inmates.

At the end of July 1941, a prisoner escaped from the camp, prompting the deputy camp commander, SS-Hauptsturmführer Karl Fritzsch, to pick ten men to be starved to death in an underground bunker to deter further escape attempts. 

When one of the selected men, Franciszek Gajowniczek, cried out, "My wife! My children!" Kolbe volunteered to take his place.

According to an eyewitness, who was an assistant janitor at that time, in his prison cell Kolbe led the prisoners in prayer. 

Each time the guards checked on him, he was standing or kneeling in the middle of the cell and looking calmly at those who entered. 

After they had been starved and deprived of water for two weeks, only Kolbe and three others remained alive.

The guards wanted the bunker emptied, so they gave the four remaining prisoners lethal injections of carbolic acid. Kolbe is said to have raised his left arm and calmly waited for the deadly injection.  

He died on 14 August 1941. His remains were cremated on 15 August, the feast day of the Assumption of Mary.

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