Maximilien Kolbe
1894-1941 20th century Feast day: August 14
A life offered in exchange for a stranger's, courage that turned a death camp into the site of the clearest possible love, a sacrifice witnessed and outlived by the very man it saved.
Who was Maximilien Kolbe?
A Polish Franciscan who ran a massive printing apostolate before the war, he was arrested by the Nazis and sent to Auschwitz, where in 1941 a prisoner was selected for starvation as punishment after an escape and cried out for his wife and children. Kolbe stepped forward and offered to take his place. The guards let him. He died there weeks later, and the man he saved lived to be an old man, attending Kolbe's canonization decades afterward.
In their own words
I am a Catholic priest. I am old. He has a wife and children. Let me take his place.