Maximilien Kolbe

Rajmund Kolbe , in religion Maximilien Marie Kolbe , born the January 7th 1894 with Zduńska Wola, (Poland), died with the Concentration camp of Auschwitz the August 14th 1941 was a brother conventual Franciscain Polish, which was offered to die in the place of a father in the concentration camp Nazi with Auschwitz I. It is venerated in the Roman Catholic church under the name of “saint Maximilien Kolbe”.

During its childhood, it would have had a vision of the Vierge of Czestochowa, following which it decides to become priest. Entered with the Seminar its adolescence, it is ordered priest the April 28th 1918.

In 1917, it had founded the Militia of the Immaculate Virgin. On the same impetus, it creates in January 1922 the newspaper the Knight of Immaculate the . In August 1927, it founds Niepokalanow, “the city of Immaculate”, close to Warsaw. It sets up at it a publisher and a radio station (it was him even Radioamateur under code SP3RN), both intended to promote the veneration of the Vierge. In 1939, its fraternity provides the shelter to Polish refugees, including Juif S. the February 17th 1941, it is stopped by the Gestapo, and is transferred in May in the camp from Auschwitz I, under number 16670.

In July 1941, a man disappears in the block 14, where is the Kolbe father. At once, the Nazi S select ten men of the same hut and condemn them to die of hunger, in order to discourage the escape bids. The missing man, thereafter, was found drowned in the latrines of the Kolbe camp goes voluntary to replace François Gajowniczek, father. The Nazi S grant substitution; the ten prisoners are locked up in the bunker of the underground of the hut. After two weeks of famine, only four of the ten men are still in life. Kolbe in fact part. The place have suddenly missed, they are carried out of an injection of phenol in the arm. Their bodies are burned in a Crematorium the August 15th. François Gajowniczek survives the captivity and dies in 1995.

Maximilien Kolbe was béatifié like Confesseur in 1971. The October 10th 1982, it was canonized like Martyr by the pope Jean-Paul II. It is the only one to be honoured initially like confessor, then like martyr. In July 1998, the Church of England inaugurated a statue of Maximilien Marie Kolbe on the Western door of the Abbaye of Westminster, with London, as an element of one monument to the memory of ten Martyr S of the 20th century.

Krzysztof Zanussi drew a film (1991) from its life.

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