Remembering Auschwitz martyr Maksymilian Kolbe
PR dla Zagranicy
Jo Harper
14.08.2015 16:54
Friday marks the 74th anniversary of the death of the Polish Franciscan monk, Father Maksymilian Kolbe, who offered his life in exchange for another inmate's in the Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
After a morning mass in the Saint Kolbe’s Centre in Harmęże, near Auchwitz, the relics of the saint were carried in a five kilometer-long procession to the site of the camp where a mass was celebrated by a local bishop close to the Wall of Death and a basement cell in which Maksymilian Kolbe was left to starve to death and where a prison guard finally killed him with an injection of carbolic acid.
During a selection of prisoners to be starved to death as a reprisal for an escape of an inmate, Father Kolbe volunteered to die for another man, who cried out for his wife and two children at home.
He was canonised by Pope John Paul II in October 1982. (mk/jh/rk)