Angry in the Great White North

For those who don't know his story, the Captain has an account of the horror and sacrifice of this modern saint. Father Kolbe was murdered on this day in 1941 in Auschwitz (Oswiecem in Polish), sacrificing his life for that of another prisoner condemned to death by the Nazi commandant. That this man survived the war could be seen as a miracle in of itself, perhaps so that the story of Father Kolbe's life and death could be told.

The Captain's account focuses on the events in the death camp. I'd like to provide some details on how Father Kolbe came to be there, and some details of his life that might be of particular interest to bloggers:

He entered the Franciscan junior seminary in Lwow, Poland in 1907 [at the age of 13] where he excelled in mathematics and physics. For a while he wanted to abandon the priesthood for the military, but eventually relented to the call to religious life, and on 4 September 1910 he became a novice in the Conventual Franciscan Order at age 16. He took the name Maximilian, made his first vows on 5 September 1911, his final vows on 1 November 1914.

In January 1922 he began publication of the magazine Knight of the Immaculate to fight religious apathy; by 1927 the magazine had a press run of 70,000 issues.

At its peak the Knight of the Immaculate had a press run of 750,000 copies a month. A junior seminary was started on the grounds in 1929. In 1935 the house began printing a daily Catholic newspaper, The Little Daily with a press run of 137,000 on work days, 225,000 on Sundays and holy days.

Not content with his work in Poland, Maximilian and four brothers left for Japan in 1930. Within a month of their arrival, penniless and knowing no Japanese, Maximilian was printing a Japanese version of the Knight; the magazine, Seibo no Kishi grew to a circulation of 65,000 by 1936. In 1931 he founded a monastery in Nagasaki, Japan comparable to Niepokalanow. It survived the war, including the nuclear bombing, and serves today as a center of Franciscan work in Japan.

Poor health forced him to curtail his missionary work and return to Poland in 1936. On 8 December 1938 the monastery started its own radio station.

Arrested with several of his brothers on 19 September 1939 following the Nazi invasion of Poland. Others at the monastery were briefly exiled, but the prisoners were released on 8 December 1939, and the men returned to their work. Back at Niepokalanow he continued his priestly ministry. The brothers housed 3,000 Polish refugees, two-thirds of whom were Jewish, and continued their publication work, including materials considered anti-Nazi. For this work the presses were shut down, the congregation suppressed, the brothers dispersed, and Maximilian was imprisoned in Pawiak prison, Warsaw, Poland on 17 February 1941.

On 28 May 1941 he was transferred to Auschwitz and branded as prisoner 16670. He was assigned to a special work group staffed by priests and supervised by especially vicious and abusive guards. His calm dedication to the faith brought him the worst jobs available, and more beatings than anyone else. At one point he was beaten, lashed, and left for dead. The prisoners managed to smuggle him into the camp hospital where he spent his recovery time hearing confessions. When he returned to the camp, Maximilian ministered to other prisoners, including conducting Mass and delivering communion using smuggled bread and wine.

After Father Kolbe's death by injection of carbolic acid, his body was burned in one of the death camp ovens, and the ashes scattered.

Father Kolbe is a patron saint of journalists, especially those who pursue their profession under duress and who use the media to take a stand against evil. As a journalist, he embraced that new media of the 1930s, radio. Today, the new media is the internet. Perhaps he can spare a moment to look after us bloggers.

Addendum: An injection of carbolic acid sounds cruel, like dipping someone in car battery acid. For the sake of completeness, I should point out that carbolic acid, also known as phenol, has anesthetic properties, and death comes swiftly after the dose is delivered:

Injections of phenol have occasionally been used as a means of rapid execution.

Phenol was also used as a mean of extermination by the Nazis during the second world war. Phenol injections were given to thousands of people in concentration camps like Auschwitz-Birkenau. These injections were administered by the doctors in the camp, and very often by their assistant. They were given at first in the veins of the intended victims and later on they changed the procedure and they injected it directly to the heart causing death within seconds.

The Nazis dealt out death with cruel efficiency.