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In July, 1941, a prisoner escaped.  Although this prisoner ended up drowning later on, ten other people back at the camp were sorely going to regret his decision to do so.

In Auschwitz, the commandants had a way of controlling the prisoners.  This was by  punishing several other people if one person did wrong.  On this occasion,  the deputy camp commander, Karl Fritzsch, decided he would like to starve ten people.  He lined up all the prisoners and chose entirely at random which ones would die.  For all of the chosen ones, the pain must have been unbearable, but for one man, Francis Gajowniczek, it was too much.   "My poor wife," he cried out desperately, "my poor children!  What will they do?"

Kolbe, at this point, volunteered to take the place of Gajowniczek, stating that he was a Catholic priest.  Fritzsch allowed the swapover to occur.  To him, it didn't matter who died, he just wanted his sadistic ambitions fulfilled. 

As Kolbe and the other nine prisoners were marched to Bunker 11, one guard snidely remarked that they would "come out like dried up tulip bulbs".  For the next twenty days, Kolbe prayed aloud with the others and comforted them in their trials.

One prisoner who survived Auschwitz spoke about what he saw of Kolbe when visiting the cell to do jobs:

"At every inspection, when almost all the others were now lying on the floor, Father Kolbe was seen kneeling or standing in the centre as he looked cheerfully in the face of the SS men.  Father Kolbe never asked for anything and did not complain, rather he encouraged the others, saying that the fugitive might be found and then they would all be freed. One of the SS guards remarked: this priest is really a great man. We have never seen anyone like him."

However, after that period of twenty days, the camp executioner, Bock, was brought in to finish them off.  Kolbe and three other remaining companions died on August the 14th (now his feast day), just before the Feast of the Assumption, after being injected by carbolic acid.

Although Kolbe was now dead and gone, his story spread around the camp like wildfire.  A former prisoner noted that it was "a shock filled with hope, bringing new life and strength ... It was like a powerful shaft of light in the darkness of the camp."

Maximlian Kolbe was canonized on the 10th October, 1982, by Pope John Paul II, and declared to be a martyr of charity.  Miracles credited to him include cures of tuberculosis and calcification of the arteries.  He is the patron saint of drug addicts, prisoners, families, journalists and the "pro-life movement".