In 1941, a prisoner at the Auschwitz concentration camp escaped. In retaliation, the officials at the camp selected ten prisoners who would be starved to death. One of the selected prisoners, Franciszek Gajowniczek, a Polish Catholic, cried out, "My wife! My children!" Upon hearing his pleas, a Franciscan Friar, Maximilian Maria Kolbe, volunteered to take the place of Gajowniczek.
In the following weeks, each time the guards checked on him, he was standing or kneeling in the middle of the cell, calmly looking at those who entered. After the group had been starved and deprived of water for two weeks, only Kolbe and three others remained alive.
Impatient to empty the bunker, the guards gave the four remaining prisoners lethal injections of carbolic acid. Kolbe is said to have raised his left arm and calmly waited for it. Maximilian Kolbe died on 14 August 1941. He was cremated on 15 August, which happened to be the feast day of the Assumption of Mary.
Kolbe was canonized by Pope John Paul II on 10 October 1982.
Gajowniczek was transferred from Auschwitz to Sachsenhausen concentration camp on 25 October 1944. He was liberated there by the Allies, after spending five years, five months, and nine days in concentration camps in total. He reunited with his wife Helena, six months later in Rawa Mazowiecka.
Saint Maximilian Kolbe's prisoner number at Auschwitz was 16670.
