Fr. Maximilian Kolbe

Father Maximilian Kolbe is a Polish Franciscan Priest that died in Block 11 of Auschwitz I and a major reason why I decided to come to Poland to was to learn more about the Holocaust. My experience in high school was instrumental in forming my faith. Through retreats, theology classes and mission work, the Franciscan Brothers captured my heart and rooted it in service and solidarity. Kolbe was a major influence to me during this time. He was the perfect representation of the Franciscan motto, that I hold very dear, of preaching the Gospel at all times, and, only when necessary, using words. The retreat planned for the sophomore class of St. Anthony’s was focused on understanding the “other” and instilling an understanding that everyone has an “invisible backpack” that they carry their burden in with them. The life and mission of St. Maximilian Kolbe was used to illustrate this theme. My sophomore retreat impacted me deeply and inspired me to later become involved in coordinating and running the Kolbe retreat.

Coming to Auschwitz I and viewing where Kolbe was starved and eventually killed with injection after serving as a pillar of strength for other starving men in his cell, as well as other prisoners inspired by his selflessness in the camp, was a disorienting experience. Here, his story is among a million. A million other stories of suffering, loss, and persecution.

His story is honored because he was the only prisoner to have switched places with another in Auschwitz I. In the camp, the German Nazis minimized escapes by enforcing a policy of collective responsibility. If one man escaped, 10 others from his kommando or block would be chosen to be tortured and killed. One day, a man escaped therefore, 10 men from Kolbe’s block were to be chosen and killed. The SS lined the men up in the yard and picked 10 men. Suddenly, a man named Franciszek Gajowinczek started crying, pleading for his wife and children. Kolbe stepped forward and spoke directly to the guard, which broke every rule and could have gotten him shot on the spot. He asked the guard to switch places with the man, to which the SS guard agreed. Kolbe was taken to Block 11 with the 9 other men chosen to die in cell 18, the starvation cell. He survived in the cell for two weeks and then was injected with phenol by SS officers.

A plaque with St. Maximilian Kolbe’s prison number (16670) on it memorizing the spot in the camp where he sacrificed his life.  

Another prisoner in the camp was taken by Kolbe’s act of love and mercy. Mariana Kolodeijia was a prisoner on the first transport to Auschwitz. He was a Polish resister who survived five years in the camp. For almost 50 years, he found it impossible to speak about his experience, until having a stroke. When recovering, he started drawing, creating his testimony. Kolodeijia’s work is unique and extremely impactful. He depicted the horror and destruction in a way that empty buildings cannot. St. Kolbe was also a major influence in his experience in the camp which is seen through his art. Kolodeijia was a Catholic man, therefore Kolbe and Jesus Christ are two frequently repeated figures throughout the exhibition.

Kolodeijia’s artwork from the exhibit. There were multiple drawings of these eyes all throughout the exhibition. 

The drawings I was most struck by were the depictions of Kolbe and Christ throughout the exhibit. Several times, Kolodeijia shows Jesus being crucified with a crown of barbed wire, in a cell or on a post of the gate that surrounded the camp. In some, Kolodeijia and Kolbe are being drawn up by the barbed wire along with Jesus. Kolodeijia clearly sees Jesus suffering and dying with the prisoners of Auschwitz. In the course selection book, Jan Audrzej Kloczowski debated in an article where God was during the Holocaust and starts by asking if God can suffer. This is a large theological question that to fully answer, several angles must be considered, which are laid out in the article. However, when viewing Kolodeijia’s work is it hard not to see how God was with these people and suffered alongside them. He felt their pain and cried with them.

Another piece of Kolodeijia’s art. In this image, Fr. Maximilian Kolbe is providing support to those starving in cell 18 while the crucified Christ is watching over them.  

I am a big believer in seeing God in other people, and I believe Kolodeijia also lived with that notion. He saw God in Fr. Kolbe, as a Christ like figure who sacrificed himself for the welfare of another. There was a specific piece of art in the exhibit that impacted me. It depicted Fr. Kolbe, skeleton thin, number tattooed on this back, tied to a bar with barbed wire. In this image he is also wearing a crown of thorns. This image paralleling Christ’s crucifixion exemplifies the idea of God suffering through the suffering of his creation.

Kolodeijia portrays Fr. Maximilian Kolbe with a crown of thorns made of barbed wire.

At the museum, the Franciscan Priest gave us a photo pamphlet with some Kolodeijia’s work and a part of a letter he wrote. At the end of the pamphlet, there is a quote from Prof. Jozef Tischner which states, “the question, ‘where is God?’, hangs over the designs… but God can’t be where He wasn’t invited. Here lies man’s greatness: his ability to not invite God into his world and to even expel Him from it. And this is the world where God is driven out, expelled, and yet on the other land, at the same time, is present through Fr. Kolbe”. In Auschwitz and other camps, the Nazis expelled God, banishing Him from a place of such brutality. However, through Kolodeijia’s art, we can tell that they were unsuccessful. Through people in the camp, such as Kolbe, God remained present and suffered alongside victims. There are many accounts of Jewish prisoners keeping their faith alive, resisting spiritually against their victimization. They also invited God into Hell on earth. Their act of remaining faithful to God and not losing hope in Him is one of the most amazing acts of rebellion in the camp. Kolodeijia pays tribute to Jewish people who were targeted and murdered in Auschwitz. Kolodeijia was Catholic, therefore much of his work portrays Christ suffering, however the presence of God is with to all those in the camp through his work. He portrays God through his own tradition through most of his work and uses symbols of Jewish ritual and spirituality when memorizing them. All people of faith brought God into the camp through their spiritual resistance, fighting against the Nazi attempt to expel God through their evil actions against God’s creation.

God was there, crucified, strung up with barbed wire on a gate post, suffering with his people.

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Education and Trees

We arrived in Poland on Saturday, March 16th. Once settled in, our group received a tour of our home for the next week, The Centre for Prayer and Dialogue; a Catholic center dedicated to open and honest dialogue of people from all perspectives. The Centre was started in the hopes of fostering positive relations between groups healing from the Shoah by providing a place of comfort and respect where all are welcome.

On the tour I noticed a lot of tree imagery in the Centre, which immediately reminded me of the tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburg which was brutally attacked. It remined me of why we were here, which was bigger than learning about the history of the ground. We are here to be witnesses, to be able to educate others so this evil is never seen again. When Stan Ronell came to speak to our class about his story, I was stuck by his sense of duty. He was made it his mission to sharing his story to make others a witness. He spoke to the importance of witnessing and urged us to take action. He was adamant about the education of young people about the Holocaust so that we do not forget or become bystanders.

I kept the image of the tree in the forefront of my mind, reminding me of our purpose while trying to find other meanings. Why had the Centre chosen this imagery? It had been chosen long before the connection I made was possible. Stan’s message of education was recalled through seeing this image and made me begin to question my own education about the Holocaust. Had I been taught enough? Were we really the heroes of the war we thought we were?

On Monday, we took our first tour of Auschwitz I. As a part of the museum, there is a room with children’s drawings placed around the room. I came across this drawing of a tree and felt a deep immediate connect to it, making the whole experience sink in. The tree, to me, became a symbol of strength and resilience, which suits the Jewish community well. I have always admired the strength and resilience of the Ancient Jewish people, and now here, under the deepest torture and victimization- still strong and resilient.

After being moved by this image, I did some research to the significance of the tree in Judaism. The tree symbolizes God’s creation and many times throughout the Torah, trees are compared to people. There are many lines from scripture that make this connection, including, “For as the days of a tree shall be the days of my people” (Isaiah 65:22). Once again, instilling the strength and resilience of the Jewish people in the image of a tree, by comparing days of a tree, which could be endless to the days of the people. There is also an important holiday in Judaism surrounding the tree called Tu B’Shvat, which is the new year for the tree. This marks the occasion of trees producing sap instead of taking up water. It is a time for growth for the Jewish people, to grow stronger roots and more resilient branches (Rabbi Shraga Simmons, aish.com).

Throughout our group’s experience in the camps of Auschwitz, I came across a book entitled Hana’s Suitcase, a story of a women from Tokyo dedicated to educating children about the Holocaust. Her mission is similar to Stan Ronell’s, which is to provide education to promote tolerance, respect, compassion, and to encourage others to step up and not become a bystander; all in an effort to never allow an event like the Holocaust to happen again. Throughout her journey trying to provide educational tools for children to understand an event that happened far away from them to a population they may not have encountered before, Fumiko Ishioka tried to get an artifact that belonged to a child donated to their small museum about the Holocaust in Tokyo. The Auschwitz Museum donated some artifacts, among them a suitcase belonging to a girl named Hana Brady. While flipping through this book, I recognized a drawing. While uncovering Hana’s story, some of her drawings were discovered in in the concentration camp Theresienstadt. One of these drawings was the tree from the museum.

Hana Brady’s drawing of a tree on display in the Yah Vashem exhibit at Aushwitz I

Hana’s story has a sad ending, having spent two years at Theresienstadt and then transported in 1944 to Auschwitz where she was selected to die upon arrival. Hana had an older brother, George, who was also transported to Auschwitz, however was processed into the camp for work and survived. Ishioka was able to get in contact with George Brady, who shared stories, photos and information about Hana. George visited Japan to meet with the children that were so dedicated to teaching others about the Holocaust. They prepared poems and art for him in Hana’s honor. Their work to expand education about the Holocaust was more successful with more information about Hana. The children wrote a poem memorizing Hana which stated, “We, Small Wings, will tell every child in Japan what happened to Hana. / We, Small Wings, will never forget what happened to one-and-a-half-million Jewish children. / We children can make a difference in building peace in the world- so that the Holocaust will never happen again” (Levine, Hana’s Suitcase, pp. 106) George was overwhelmed with their work and moved by the fact that Hana’s dream of becoming a teacher had become true through her memory. Through Hana’s story, education about the Holocaust is being continued around the world, making sure that this brutality cannot happen again. This experience and connection has inspired me to a commitment to further education for myself and to the best education of children.

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How Can We Live Like Maksymilian Kolbe?

Maksymilian Maria Kolbe, a Polish Franciscan Father, committed one of the purest acts of love man can do. He sacrificed his own life, for the life of a stranger. At the end of July in 1941, the attempted escape of a prisoner prompted SS Officers to choose ten random prisoners to be locked in the starvations cells in the basement of Block 11. This was as common practice to deter any prisoners from trying to escape or to try and commit suicide. At random, Franciszek Gajowniczek was selected a cried out: “My children, my wife!” Other prisoners felt little pity for him because they too had wives and children, but Maksymilian Kolbe asked to trade places with the hysterical prisoner.

It should not have worked. Kolbe broke regulation multiple times in order to swap places. His first break of regulation was stepping out of line. His second was speaking directly to the SS Officer. Both men should have been shot on the spot, but for some reason, the SS Officer allowed for the break in regulation and gave permission for the swap.

Kolbe and the other nine prisoners were then taken to the starvation cells in the basement of Block 11. The cells were small, dark, and claustrophobic. For two weeks, Kolbe was deprived of food and water. After the two weeks, he was one of the only remaining prisoners and was killed with a phenol injection. His cause of death was ruled a heart attack on his death certificate.

A drawing of Macksymilian Kolbe, by Marian Kolodziej, a survivor from Auschwitz. He was in in the very first transport and survived all five years. 

What Maksymilian Kolbe did was an act of pure love; an act of pure agape that I believe most people may not see in their lifetime. Franciszek Gajowniczek was a total stranger to Kolbe. Kolbe had no obligation to switch places with him. While I do like to see the good in people, I do not believe that the common person would be able to sacrifice themselves for a person they had never met before. I don’t know if I could commit an act of love that great. I know if I were in that situation and one of my family members were to be picked, I would swap with them in a heartbeat. I would like to think that I could maybe switch places with some of my closest friends, but I do not think I would be able to switch places with a total and complete stranger. It could be called selfish for not wanting to give up my life for another’s or it could simply just be human. We are built with this need for self-preservation engrained in us, and that is something that is very hard to ignore.

At that moment, I believe Maksymilian Kolbe was God on Earth. He let go of every selfish reason to not switch, and he made the ultimate sacrifice. He gave his life, for another man’s. At that moment, he was an embodiment of pure love, a complete contrast with the acts of pure hate that had led to him being put in that situation. Even while being surrounded by acts of total and complete hate, Kolbe stood out as the purest act of love.

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Parallels In The Past And Present

Sign at the entrance of Auschwitz 1. It reads: "Work will make you free."

While visiting Auschwitz, I could not help but recognize the parallels, as well as the extremely harsh contrast, between visiting the memorial museum today and being deported to the camp during World War II.

To get to the camp, we walked. We walked from the very comfortable and warm Center for Dialogue, where we are fed amazing food, in our heavy winter jackets and protective footwear. Similarly, the Jewish prisoners walked to the camp as well. They were unloaded on the shipment platform a short distance away and marched to Auschwitz One. Unlike us, the prisoners did not come from a comfortable center with warm beds and warm food. Many of the prisoners came from ghettos, where starvation was already plaguing their populations. Some who had arrived in the summertime were well overdressed. They had put on as many of their clothes as possible since most of the time they were only allowed to being that they could carry. Renee Firestone, a Hungarian survivor, wore a bathing suit her father had gotten her while on a trip. She held onto this bathing suit as a reminder of her past and childhood. She was devastated when SS officers made her remove it and give it up with the rest of her belongings (Last Days Film).

Once we got to the camp we were lead to a building where we went through security, picked up our headphones, and had our tickets scanned to give us access to the camp. The new prisoners also started in the same building. In this building they were stripped of their belongings, documented, shaved, assigned a number as their identity, and then forced into camp. Irene Zisblatt, for example, went to great lengths to hold onto four diamonds that her mother had given her. In order to hide them, she would swallow the diamonds, let them pass through her, and recollect them once they were passed. She repeated this many times throughout her time in Auschwitz (Last Days Film).

Once we were “processed,” we walked into the camp on our own free will. No one was forcing us, no one was threatening us, no one wanted to kill us. We walked in with our identity, with our dignity, and with our humanity. We had the right to exercise our free will all day. If we did not want to enter a building, we did not have to. If we wanted to sit for a minute we were allowed to. If we wanted to have a conversation with our neighbor, we were allowed to.

The prisoners had no free will. Before they even got to camp, their rights were taken away by the emerging German Empire. They were forced to leave their land and belongings, and once they arrived at the camp, they lost even more. They could not decide what to wear, what to eat, where to sleep, or what their job was. They were stripped completely of their right to make decisions. They were treated more poorly than cattle.

Crematorium 1 in Auschwitz 1.

While we were at the camp. We had access to clean bathrooms with flushing toilets and clean water. The prisoners shared a communal bathroom and had no access to clean water. One young prisoner washed her face with her own urine every morning. The last harsh comparison was our ability to walk out of the gas chamber. If a prisoner was sent to the chamber, their life was over. Once they saw the inside, they were never able to speak of it. We were able to walk away. We were able to walk through, leave the camp, and walk back to the center where warm soup and hot chocolate were waiting for us.

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The Kindness When Faced With Hate

Throughout our tours of Auschwitz One and Birkenau our tour guide was telling us stories of survivors from the camps. These stories consisted of brutalities they faced at the hands of the SS officers although the ones that have stuck with me are ones of prisoners helping each other and the help they were given.

Birkenau was created to house more prisoners when Auschwitz One ran out of space. For this reason, many of the stories of kindness came from there. One story was of the building in the women’s section of the camp where they housed sick prisoners temporarily before they were sent to the gas chambers. (seen in the picture to the right) When the building was so cramped, they had the women stay out in the courtyard exposed to the elements, they were given no food or water. In the winter if there was snow other prisoners would make snowballs and through it over the wall for the sick to have some type of water. Another story from that barrack was of a female prisoner, that worked in the “Canada Houses” or the storage and sorting houses of the possessions that the prisoners brought with them. She made a friend, which was rare since the life span at the camps was an average of three months. The friend had gotten sick and was put into the barrack to wait to go to the gas chamber. The female prisoner smuggled some gold she found in the Canada houses and tried to bribe the kommando with it, although they refused and wanted a body for a body. The woman took the officer and dragged a dead body she found and exchanged it for her friend. This story really got to me because I thought about how much I treasure my friends and would want to be with them as long as I could in a hell like Auschwitz, Birkenau. That inmate as well as others who worked in the Canada houses would smuggle goods back. There were stories of a girl who wore shoes way too big for her in order to wear a second pair of shoes inside them to smuggle back to other inmates.

Smuggling was a kind gesture that saved lives inside and outside the camps. While here we went to a pharmacy in the Bohaterów ghetto in Krakow belonging to Tadeusz Pankewicz. Pankewicz was a Christian pharmacist who was told to move out but convinced the Germans that because there were going to be two hospitals in the area that it would make sense to allow him to stay to local. They agreed and Pankewicz stayed in operation giving medications to the Jewish people of the ghetto for free and allowing to use his back door for escape. Today we consider Pankewicz a righteous gentile which means, a non-Jewish person who helped save the Jews. In the book The Holocaust Kingdom, by Alexander Donat, the wife Lena Berg worked in a pharmacy which saved her. Donat recalled that to have a job kept you from being deported. Shops described in The Holocaust Kingdom and Pankewicz’s saved Jews in a multitude of ways.

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The Almost Forgotten

Growing up in the United States our education I believe was limited throughout our High School and Middle School educational careers. Growing up we learned about the camps, who was targeted, why and how it happened but we never talked about how close to success the Nazi regime was to eliminating the Jewish population. When we were in Oświęcim we visited the Jewish Community Center where we learned about the Jewish community in the town of Oświęcim. We learned of how the Nazi’s destroyed all of the synagogues except the one that had become part of the Museum we had visited. The only reason that one survived was because the Nazi’s used it as an ammunition bunker and storage. A building of religion and piece turned into a storage unit for the tools to kill the exact people who originally owned the building. With the destruction and repurposing of the synagogues the Nazi’s did the same to the Jewish graves. A cemetery in the town had been destroyed, the tomb stones knocked over and broken. Volunteers over the years along with the efforts of the Jewish Center have worked to restore the tombstones even though they know they’ll never be able to reconnect the stones with the people they represent.

The above images are of the Jewish Cemetery with the volunteer’s numbers in attempt to catalog the work.
We were informed that the tombstones were also used as paving stones for the roads. They would lie the stones down with the writing face down to further desecrate the memory of the person. The Nazi regime attempted to destroy evidence of the Jewish people ever existing, not only did they destroy the people’s past, but they repurposed their artifacts for their advantage.

When visiting Auschwitz One the other day we saw more examples of this destruction and repurposing. In my early schooling I had known that the Nazi’s had taken the clothing and valuables of the prisoners to help supply the German people back home. Although the extent of this I never knew. What really disturbed me was the fact that the SS would have the sonderkommandos, the prisoners forced to handle the dead bodies, cut the hair off the corpses of women from the gas chambers so their hair would be taken to be made into textiles. Textiles that would then be turned into mattresses, shoe lining, and coats for German soldiers. This to me was the worst possible interpretation of “reduce, reuse, recycle.” This was using the innocent victims as sheep. When I first saw the exhibit that exposed this atrocity I was immediately repulsed, I held back the instinct to scream in disgust.

In class back home we had talked how trying to wrap one’s head around six million deaths were so incomprehensible. Our professor shared a paraphrased quote from Rabbi Marc Gellman’s eulogy on September 24, 2001 for the victims of the 911 terror attack. Rabbi Gellman said six thousand (911 victim count) and six million, sounds more like scores and to instead think of it as one person dying six thousand or six million times. (For more on the eulogy the link is provided bellow.) I still couldn’t wrap my head around that concept until we saw that hair exhibit. Seeing the hair made it easier for me to see the six million. At the time of liberation, they found 300 bags of hair, equaling seven tons of hair. They had on display for a lack of a better term two tons of the hair, this in no way is close to the six million but it helped me at least put it better into perspective.

In one of our late-night group reflections, we were asked to use creativity to describe what we were seeing. An image of the 1,100,000 Jews who died in the concentration camps and the ones not counted in the one million, fading away with their symbols and culture. The Nazi’s were so close to wiping out the Jewish culture from eastern Europe.

Click here for Rabbi Marc Gellman’s Eulogy: https://eu.thenewsstar.com/story/life/faith/2016/09/16/reflections-eulogy-delivered-years-ago/90482788/

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Reflecting on Auschwitz Birkenau

Walking through the train tracks to Auschwitz Birkenau, there were so many thoughts running through my head. Thoughts of walking on the same exact path the prisoners walked to get to the death camp, where they would soon be murdered; thoughts of walking to one of the biggest graveyard sites in history. I was imagining myself sitting in the tight cramped spaces of the cattle car of the train with my belongings or possibly nothing, wondering what my fate would be. Walking down the path towards the death camp, I thought about walking it with no shoes, hardly any clothing, and possibly not having eaten a meal on this long journey. What would I do once the Cattle car stopped, and I was walking towards the camp? I can only imagine how the prisoners felt upon their arrival to the camp.

Arriving at the camp and seeing how enormous it was, was truly shocking. I thought to myself “wow this is extremely big, bigger than I had imagined it to be or what I had seen in photos.” Going up to the watch tower and looking out really put into perspective how big it was. Being in the watch tower, I thought about all of the SS officers who would sit up there and watch all of the prisoners to ensure that no one escaped. Walking through the gates of the camp I saw that the camp was exactly like what I had seen in pictures and the “Last Days Film.” Victims like Alice Lok Cahana, who walked through the camp and could identify each building and the atrocities that occurred in those buildings. One thing that I found interesting was that in the film Alice said that while they were in the latrine, they would pray on the Sabbath. They couldn’t communicate due to the language barriers, but they knew the same prayers.

Seeing the train tracks going through the gates of the camp and imagining the prisoners going off to their deaths, was extremely depressing and heartbreaking. Walking through the camp and seeing all of the barracks from the men’s to the children’s to the women’s and seeing the living conditions was saddening. Seeing the rows of bunk beds that they had to sleep on, the washroom, and the toilets was so unsettling. What struck me the most was where the prisoners changed before going to the gas chambers and seeing what was left of the gas chamber and crematorium. While walking through the camp I thought what if I was in the prisoner’s position, what I would do? How would I live and work in the camp? How would I survive? I honestly do not think I would have lasted a week. The prisoners showed so much courage and resilience. I also believe their faith got them through the horrors. The fact that they were going through this torture and still never once gave up their faith! They were truly courageous!

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