Maximilian Kolbe

MAXIMILIAN KOLBE

As we approach the annual Remembrance Sunday, the media is full of stories of ordinary men and women who have shown extraordinary courage in times of conflict.

Today, I want to introduce you to a person whose name has not been recorded in the media. His name is Raymond, though he was also called Maximilian and died as prisoner 16670.

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Raymond was born in Poland in 1891. When he was ten years old, his mother in desperation exclaimed, 'Whatever is going to become of you when you grow up'.

Raymond worried about this all day, and during the night he had a dream. In that dream he claimed that he had seen, not his own mother, but the mother of Jesus, holding two crowns in her hands. One was white and the other was red.

She asked him if he were willing to accept either of them. The white crown meant that when he grew up he would give up the possibility of a wife and family and join a religious order. The red crown meant that he would die for our Lord.

In his dream he claimed that he chose both crowns, and from that time his life was changed dramatically. He now knew what would become of him.

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So, in 1910, Raymond became a Franciscan Friar and changed his name to Maximilian Kolbe. He studied in Rome, but, suffering from tuberculosis, he returned home to his native Poland where he became a lecturer in church history.

In 1922, he began to publish a monthly magazine on the Christian life, whose circulation reached 70,000 copies within five years.

In early 1941, two years after Germany had invaded Poland, he wrote: 'No one in the world can change the truth. What we can do is to seek truth and serve it when we have found it. The real conflict is an inner conflict. Beyond armies of occupation and hecatombs of extermination camps, there are two irreconcilable enemies in the depth of every soul; good and evil, sin and love. And what use are victories in the battlefield if we ourselves are defeated in our innermost selves?'.

The result of such plain speaking, and the fact that he had organized refugee camps for Poles and Jews, he was arrested as an intellectual and imprisoned in Warsaw.

Here Maximilian was singled out for special treatment. An SS guard, seeing him wearing his Franciscan habit, asked him if he believed in Christ. Maximilian replied, ‘I do', and the guard struck him. The same question was repeated several times, receiving the same reply. Shortly afterwards, his Franciscan habit was taken away, and he was compelled to wear a prisoners uniform.

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On the 28th May I941, he was deported, together with three hundred other prisoners, to the concentration camp at Auschwitz. Here Maximilian was branded with the number 16670 and put to work, together with other priests, carrying heavy blocks of stone for the construction of a crematorium wall.

Later, prisoner 16670 was assigned to another section run by an ex criminal known as "Bloody” Kroff, who forced the prisoners to cut and carry huge tree trunks. The work went on all day at the double, encouraged by vicious blows from the guards. Some of the heaviest loads he personally loaded onto prisoner 16670's back, whom he ordered to run. When he collapsed, Krott would kick him in the stomach and face, and also had his men give him fifty lashes, throwing him, as if dead, into the mud.

Food was also in short supply in the camp, and everyone struggled to get a place in the queue when it was brought in. However, prisoner 16670 would regularly stand aside and often there was nothing left for him. At other times, he would share his meagre ration of soup and bread with others. He once told another priest: ‘We must be grateful we are here. There is so much to do. Look how these people need us'. He also celebrated the Eucharist in secret and heard confessions, always showing compassion.

In July that year, a prisoner tried to escape from Block 14. The commandant's deterrent after an escape, was to confine 20 prisoners to a starvation cell, from which no one ever emerged alive. However, on this occasion, the commandant decided to be merciful and punish only ten prisoners. As he began to choose his victims, a polish army sergeant, Francis Gajowiczeki, broke down and pleaded for mercy since he had a wife and two children. Prisoner 16670 offered to take the place of the sergeant.

From the airless underground cell rose the prayers of the condemned men, led by prisoner 16670. Slowly, the prisoners began to die of starvation until only prisoner 16670 was left alone. Since the cell was needed for other prisoners, the head of the sick quarters was brought in to give him a lethal injection of carbolic acid.

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Maximilian Kolbe was beatified by the Roman Catholic Church in 1971 and later canonized, in other words, made a saint by a fellow Pole, Pope John Paul 2 in the presence of that Polish sergeant whom he had replaced in the death cell. We in the Church of England recall his memory in our calendar on 14th August.

Now you are probably wondering why I have told you about Maximilian Kolbe, originally known as Raymond, and later as prisoner 16670. Let me explain.

Firstly, Maximilian died as a prisoner during the Second World War. On Remembrance Sunday, we also remember all those who have died as the result of international conflict, not just in the First and Second World Wars, which we recall by the two minutes silence, but also those who have died in subsequent conflicts in places such as Korea, Malaya, Cyprus, Northem Ireland, the Falklands, the Gulf, Kosovo, Bosnia, Afghanistan, and so on.

Secondly, before he died, Maximilian suffered much, particularly at the hands of "Bloody” Krott.

Whilst the red poppies remind us of the poppy fields of Flanders in the First World War, and the blood spilt there, we also remember those who have suffered, and still suffer today, as the result of war; the injured and disabled; the homeless and refugees; the mentally distressed, and those who mourn their dead, who have lost husbands, wives, children, parents and close personal friends, as the result of conflict.

And we also remember with thanksgiving, those who seek to bring relief to their suffering, and especially the work of the Royal British Legion and other charities.

Finally, Maximilian was a person who always put other people first, whether it was going without food in the camp canteen, or taking the place of a fellow Pole in the death starvation cell.

So we also remember today, and thank God for, those many acts of self-sacrifice made in the field of international conflict, which have brought relief and happiness to others.

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So, as we recall the life of prisoner 16670, originally known as Raymond and later as Maximilian Kolbe on this Remembrance Sunday, we also remember all those who have died, suffered and made personal sacrifices to prove that good is stronger than evil, and love stronger than sin, which Maximilian once declared in his writing.