Which saint volunteered to die in place of a fellow prisoner at Auschwitz?

Saint Maximilian Kolbe volunteered to die in place of a fellow prisoner at Auschwitz. In July 1941, after an escape from the camp, Nazi authorities selected ten prisoners to die by starvation as a collective punishment. When Polish prisoner Franciszek Gajowniczek cried out about his wife and children, Kolbe stepped forward and offered to take his place.

Kolbe was a Polish Conventual Franciscan friar and priest. He had been deported to Auschwitz in May 1941, where he suffered beatings and forced labor while ministering to other prisoners. In the starvation bunker, witnesses said he led the condemned men in prayer and remained calm as the group gradually died.

After about two weeks, Kolbe was still alive, so camp guards killed him with a lethal injection of carbolic acid on 14 August 1941. Gajowniczek survived the camp and attended Kolbe’s later canonization. Pope John Paul II canonized Kolbe in 1982, calling him a “martyr of charity.”

A common mistake is to describe Kolbe as having been executed immediately for replacing Gajowniczek. He instead died after the prolonged starvation punishment, making the episode both an act of substitution and a final example of his pastoral courage.