Chosen at random from a group of sick, weak, and terrified prisoners from Cell Block 14, the men had stood for hours under the broiling sun in the enclosed yard of the concentration camp before the horrifying selection was made. In the bunker, Father Kolbe prepared the men for death, the sound of the Rosary and hymns echoing through the walls.

Dead bodies from the bunker were removed as the days passed. After two weeks, four men were still clinging to life. Maximilian Kolbe was one of them. He and the others were then injected with poison and died on the evening of August 14, 1941.

In the three months he spent at Auschwitz, Kolbe had been singled out for extraordinary punishment because he was a Catholic priest. He was forced to work longer and harder than the others and was beaten and kicked savagely many times. He risked death over and over by leading prayers and hearing confessions. He volunteered to do the work of those weaker than himself, and often gave his meager portions of bread or soup to other prisoners who were sicker than he.

Franciszek Gajowniczek, whose life was dramatically spared by Father Kolbe's sacrifice, was present at the canonization of Saint Maximilian Kolbe in 1982. Though most prisoners who entered Auschwitz died there, some survived. A surprising number of those who knew Kolbe there, including Gajowniczek, lived to tell about him. Many say that Father Kolbe promised to pray for them, and they credit his promise with their survival. They reported how he comforted them and heard their confessions. Wishing to give communion to them, he would take part of his own bread, bless it, and give each of them a piece. He gently refused their offers to pay him back out of their own rations.

Once, some Eucharistic hosts were smuggled into the camp and passed along to Father Kolbe. He and about thirty other prisoners celebrated Mass on two separate occasions with great stealth, knowing that they would be executed immediately if discovered.

Before he was put into the prison camp at Auschwitz, Maximilian Kolbe was a Franciscan friar, famous throughout Poland and Europe for the publications he printed to spread devotion to Mary. However, he is remembered primarily as the man who dramatically gave up his life for another.

The Holocaust is the name given to the murder and mass extermination of Jews, Poles, Catholics, Gypsies, protestors, the handicapped, and others who were considered inferior or undesirable by the Nazi regime. According to Hebrew Law, a holocaust was a kind of sacrifice in which the whole burnt offering was consumed, with none of it remaining to be eaten.

In the New Covenant, Jesus offered himself as the sacrifice. "This is my body, which will be given for you" (Luke 22:19). This is a sacrifice in which we share. Father Kolbe's act was a sacrifice for many as well. One fellow prisoner at Auschwitz testified: "to say Father Kolbe died for one of us or for that person's family is too great a simplification. His death was the salvation of thousands. That's how we felt about it?e were stunned by his act, which became for us a mighty explosion of light in the dark camp night."