The Prisoner Who Took Another Man's Place

In July 1941, a prisoner escaped from Auschwitz. As punishment, the SS deputy commander Karl Fritzsch selected ten men from Block 14 to die by starvation. When Franciszek Gajowniczek heard his number called, he cried out for his wife and children. A small, bespectacled Polish priest stepped forward from the ranks. Maximilian Kolbe, Franciscan friar, prisoner 16670, asked to take Gajowniczek's place.

Fritzsch, momentarily stunned, agreed.

For two weeks, Kolbe led the condemned men in prayer and hymns in the starvation bunker beneath Block 11. Witnesses reported that his calm transformed that concrete tomb into something almost sacred. When the guards finally entered on August 14th, Kolbe was the last man still conscious, his arm extended for the lethal injection, his face peaceful.

Gajowniczek survived the war. He lived to see his wife again, attended Kolbe's beatification in 1971, and spent the remaining decades of his life telling anyone who would listen what the priest had done for him.

This is the gospel in miniature. Peter writes that Christ suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring us to God. What Kolbe did for one man in one death camp, the Holy One did for every soul across all of history. He stepped forward. He took our place. And because He was made alive in the Spirit, the exchange holds — not just for a few more years of earthly life, but forever.