Maximilian Kolbe
Auschwitz, Block 11
Nine stops with the priest who took another man's place
In July 1941 a prisoner escaped from Auschwitz, and the commandant chose ten men from the same block to be starved to death for it. One of them cried out that he had a wife and children. A Polish friar stepped out of the line and said: I am a Catholic priest, I want to take his place. He was forty-seven, tubercular, and had one lung. The man he replaced lived another fifty-three years. This pilgrimage walks nine stops with Maximilian Kolbe — from a child's vision of two crowns, through a printing house and a Japanese hillside, into the worst place human beings have ever built, and out the other side. It is for anyone who is frightened, imprisoned by something, or carrying a life that feels spent for nothing.
The nine days
Day 1 · The Vision — He Asked for Both
Pabianice, Poland, 1906
Day 2 · The Work — The City of the Immaculate
Teresin, Poland, 1927
Day 3 · The Mission — The Wrong Side of the Hill
Nagasaki, Japan, 1931
Day 4 · The Arrest — They Came in February
Niepokalanów, 17 February 1941
Day 5 · The Number — Prisoner 16670
Auschwitz, block 14
Day 6 · The Selection — They Chose Ten Men
The roll-call square, end of July 1941
Day 7 · The Exchange — I Want to Take His Place
The square, before the deputy commandant
Day 8 · The Bunker — They Sang
Block 11, the starvation cell
Day 9 · The Vigil — The Eve of the Assumption
14 August 1941