A Polish Franciscan friar who offered his life in exchange for a stranger’s at Auschwitz and died there in 1941.

Saint Maximilian Kolbe was a Polish Conventual Franciscan priest who, imprisoned at the Auschwitz concentration camp, volunteered to die in place of a fellow prisoner selected for execution by starvation, a stranger with a wife and children. He died by lethal injection on August 14, 1941, at the age of forty-seven. Pope John Paul II canonized him in 1982 as a martyr of charity.

Quick Facts

• Born: January 8, 1894, Zduńska Wola, Poland
• Died: August 14, 1941, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland (age 47)
• Venerated as: Priest, founder, and martyr of charity
• Canonized: 1982 by Pope John Paul II; Feast Day: August 14

Who Was Saint Maximilian Kolbe?

Before his imprisonment, Maximilian Kolbe was a Conventual Franciscan friar known for founding the Militia Immaculatae, a movement of Marian consecration, and for building a major publishing and broadcasting apostolate in Poland dedicated to spreading the faith through modern media. Arrested after the German invasion of Poland for sheltering refugees, including Jews, at his friary, he was eventually sent to Auschwitz in 1941.

Historical Setting

Auschwitz, established by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland, became the site of the systematic murder of over a million people, the great majority of them Jews, alongside Polish political prisoners, clergy, and others deemed enemies of the regime. Camp discipline included collective punishment: when a prisoner escaped from Kolbe’s block in July 1941, camp authorities selected ten men to be starved to death as a deterrent to others.

Why the Church Remembers Saint Maximilian Kolbe

The Church remembers Kolbe above all for the moment he stepped forward when one of the ten condemned men, Franciscek Gajowniczek, cried out for his wife and children, and Kolbe offered to take his place. He survived two weeks in the starvation bunker, reportedly leading the other condemned men in prayer, before camp guards ended his life with an injection. His act has become one of the twentieth century’s most recognized examples of self-sacrificial love.

Canonization and Feast Day

Maximilian Kolbe was beatified as a confessor in 1971 and canonized as a martyr in 1982 by Pope John Paul II, who was moved to recognize the canonization explicitly as a martyrdom of charity — a voluntary gift of life for another out of love, in addition to the ordinary category of dying for the faith. His feast is kept on August 14, the date of his death.

What Catholics Can Learn Today

Kolbe’s witness stands as one of the clearest modern illustrations of Christ’s words that no one has greater love than to lay down his life for his friends — extended even to a man he barely knew. Catholics can take from him courage to make sacrifices, small or great, on behalf of others, trusting that self-giving love is never wasted.

A Prayer to Saint Maximilian Kolbe

Saint Maximilian Kolbe, you gave your life so that a husband and father might live. Teach us to love as generously as you did, ready to set aside our own safety and comfort for the sake of others, in imitation of Christ’s own sacrifice. Amen.

Sources

• Vatican.va, biography prepared for the canonization of Maximilian Kolbe (1982)
• Butler’s Lives of the Saints, ed. Herbert Thurston and Donald Attwater
• EWTN, coverage of Saint Maximilian Kolbe