Life After Death

man. "Who are you?" asked Fritzsch. "A Catholic priest," was the straightforward reply. The reprieved man, Franciszek Gajowniczek, was ordered to return to his place in the line. The condemned men were then sent to be stripped of their rags and to be buried alive.

Paying the Price What happened next was recounted by Bruno Borgowiec, an assistant janitor and interpreter in the underground bunkers. He described the atmosphere in Cell 18 as resembling that of a church. Father Kolbe led the prisoners in prayers and hymns as they prepared for death. Gradually they died, one by one. After two weeks, only four remained alive and Father Kolbe was the only one who remained conscious.

The authorities wanted to use the bunker for a new batch of victims and so the head of the camp hospital, Hans Bock - a common criminal - injected each of the men with carbolic acid. When Borgowiec returned to the cell he found Father Kolbe "still seated, propped up against the corner, his head slightly to one side, his eyes open and fixed on one point. As if in ecstasy, his face was serene and radiant".

It was 14 August 1941, the vigil of the Feast (greatly celebrated throughout Poland) of the Virgin's Assumption into Heaven. In that underground cell, good overcame evil; the voluntary surrender of a life, on behalf of another, overcame death. It was the definitive answer to the megalomania of the Nazis; it was the victory of love over hate. It was the outlaw taking on the giant's might. Franciszek Gajowniczek, the Jewish prisoner whose life was purchased by Maximilian Kolbe, survived the camps. During the last days of the war his two young sons were tragically killed on the streets by Russian shells. He was present when another Pole, John Paul II, the former bishop of Krakow, canonised Maximilian Kolbe as a martyr-saint in October 1982. John Paul described Father Kolbe's life as offering a wonderful synthesis of the sufferings and hopes of our age, but it also offers a warning: "It is a cry directed to man, to society, to the whole human race, to systems which hold human life and human society in their hands ... This martyred saint cries aloud for a renewed respect for the rights of men and nations". It is also a cry to respect life. The story of Maximilian Kolbe is a story which gives some comfort to those who wonder aloud about the failure of the world to respond to the plight of the Jewish people. If this comfort instills a sense of complacency, then the sacrifice will have been in vain and the story worthless. Stories like this can also tempt us to shrug our shoulders and feel we could not act so courageously. But as some of the stories later in this book illustrate, you do not have to be a hero - or an extraordinary person - to take a stand. "I Did Nothing" At the end of the Second World War, Pastor Martin Niemoller reflected on the failure of Christians to speak out and to act politically. "First they came for the Jews and I did nothing," are the words which ring down the pages of history. Then it was the trade unionists, gypsies, homosexuals, Catholic and Protestant dissenters. But people generally did nothing. The terrible truth is that most people did comply and very few repudiated Nazism.