"Let us be guided by Mary, wherever she wants us to go"

Father Maximilian Kolbe, born in Poland into a modest and deeply religious family, was a difficult child at times. One day his mother exclaimed in desperation, "My poor child, what will become of you?"

This remark upset him. A major event followed, which he confided to his mother: "That night I asked the Mother of God what was to become of me. Then she came to me holding two crowns, one white, the other red. She asked me if I was willing to accept either of these crowns. The white one meant that I should persevere in purity and the red one meant that I should become a martyr. I said that I would accept them both."

On February 17, 1941, the Gestapo arrested Father Maximilian Kolbe and four other brothers and took them first to the Polish prison of Pawiak in Warsaw. Father Kolbe was violently beaten simply because he was a religious and a priest. He wrote to his friar sons who had remained in Niepokalanow (1):

"The most loving Immaculate Mother has always surrounded us with tenderness and will always watch over us. Let us be guided by her, more and more perfectly wherever she wants and whatever her good pleasure may be, so that, fulfilling our duties to the end, we may, through love, save all souls." A few days later, on May 28, in a train full of prisoners, the priest arrived at the concentration camp of Oswiecim (Auschwitz) and was assigned the number 16670.

In July and August, in retaliation for the escape of a prisoner, a dozen prisoners, including Father Maximilian, who voluntarily took the place of a young married man named Franciszek Gajowniczek, were locked up in the underground bunker of Block 14 and condemned to die of hunger and thirst.

On August 14, Father Maximilian was the last survivor, after having assisted his companions in their agony. Prison guards finished him off by a lethal injection of carbolic acid in his left arm. His remains were cremated on the next day, August 15, the feast day of the Assumption of Mary.

Translated and adapted from: Library of Marian Writings

(1) Franciscan monastery founded by St. Maximilian Kolbe in 1927, located in Terezin, west of Warsaw, Poland.