The Holocaust, a horrific genecide of millions of people happened during World War II on the orders of Adolf Hitler, Nazi leader of Germany. The Genocide began with the Jews, 6 million died; 1 million of them children. But also, Polish, Serbs, Gypsies, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Communists, and the Disabled. Maximilian Kolbe is a Roman Catholic martyr of the Holocaust. Click here to learn more about the Holocaust.

The 2nd son of a weaver Julius Kolbe, and his wife, Maria Dabrowska, at a young age Maximilian had a supernatural experience that forever altered his life and followed a calling to become a Franciscan priest. Although suffering from T.B., he had become a leading Catholic publisher and head of a Franciscan house, which under his care grew from one of the smallest, to be one of the largest in the world.

1930-1936, Kolbe undertook a series of missionary trips to East Asia. By 1931 he had founded a monastery on the outskirts of Nagasaki (it later gained a novitiate and a seminary). It was built on a mountainside that according to Shinto beliefs, was not the side best suited to be in harmony with nature. When the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Kolbe's monastery was saved because the other side of the mountain took the main force of the blast. The monastery remains prominent in the Roman Catholic Church in Japan.

1936, Kolbe returned to Poland. In 1939 Germany invaded. As far as possible Maximilian dispersed the Franciscan brothers for safety reasons. Kolbe was one of the few brothers who remained in the monastery, where he organized a temporary hospital. They took in refugees. The German army closed the friary in September 1939 and detained some of the friars. They were released in December and engaged in helping the numerous refugees and the sick from the fall of Warsaw. The refugees included 2,000 Jews who he hid in the monastery.

Kolbe was still publishing, and some of the material was critical of the Third Reich, so it came as no surprise when he was arrested in February 1941. He was taken first to Pawiak in Warsaw. Continuing to act as a priest, to his fellow prisoners he suffered extra harassment and abuse at the hands of his guards.

In May he was transferred with a group of 300 to Auschwitz. He again ministered to the other prisoners, always sharing his rations, and offered himself to be beaten in the place of others. At the end of July 1941, some prisoners escaped from Auschwitz. The camp commandant instituted the usual reprisal: 10 prisoners were to be starved to death in an underground bunker. One of the selected victims was Franciszek Gajowniczek who cried out, "My wife! My children. At that moment, Maximilian stepped forward and said, “I am a Catholic priest. I wish to die for that man; I am old; he has a wife and children.” Surprisingly, the German officer accepted the exchange. In his last days, with prayer and psalms, he prepared himself and those with him for death. Maximilian Kolbe was one of the last of the 10 to die, being finally despatched with an injection by a camp doctor. The man he replaced Gajowniczek, survived to be present at the Vatican in 1982 when Kolbe was officially declared a saint.

BORN: 8 January 1894, Zduńska Wola, Poland, Russian Empire

DIED: 14 August 1941 (aged 47), Auschwitz concentration camp, Nazi (Germany) occupied Poland.