August 14 is the feast of St. Maximilian Kolbe, martyr. Kolbe, a 47-year old Polish Franciscan, gave his life in substitution for another man in Auschwitz’s starvation bunker. To recap: Kolbe was arrested by the German occupiers of Poland in February 1941 and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. In July, a prisoner escaped. According to camp rules, if an escaped prisoner was not recaptured, ten other prisoners would be punished in his place by being sent to the “starvation bunker,” a basement where they were left without food or water until they died. As the commandant selected men for the bunker, one — Franciszek Gajowniczek—lamented his fate, as he had a wife and child. Hearing that, Kolbe stepped forward and volunteered to take Gajowniczek’s place. He did, and was the last of that group to die, being killed with a lethal carbolic acid injection after two weeks in the bunker, on the eve of the Assumption. His body was cremated.

Kolbe’s act was risky. No one had ever done anything like that nor was there any guarantee the Germans would consider a substitute. They might even take an “extra” volunteer and kill eleven. Only after volunteering did Kolbe identify himself — “I am a Catholic priest” — when asked who he was.

The very fact of a man laying down his life for another is rare. Jesus says there is “no greater love” (John 15:13), without specifying how frequent such charity is found. Paul does: “Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man; yet perhaps for a good man, someone might dare to die” (Romans 5:7). In both instances, the sacred writers are invoking Christological allusions: John speaks those words at the Last Supper, while Paul uses them to demonstrate the depths of God’s Love by dying for sinners. 

Kolbe may have known nothing of Gajowniczek other than his lament, that he was leaving behind a wife and child. Yet, despite that ignorance and on the basis of those simple family ties, Kolbe stepped out of rank to volunteer in charity to try to let that man live. He did — long enough to be present at Kolbe’s canonization.

Kolbe’s act was extraordinary, new. But I also never realized how novel was his canonization. I only came to realize it when talking with a canon law professor at the Catholic University of Lublin during the first summer I spent in Poland in 1987.

As Father Józef Bakalarz pointed out to me, martyrdom traditionally involved the element of in odium fidei, i.e., hatred of the faith. But in what sense did the events surrounding Maximilian Kolbe being sent to the starvation bunker involve hatred of the faith?

As I have previously noted (here), the commonplace American caricature of Hitler as “baptized Catholic Austrian housepainter” and of Nazism as primarily anti-Jewish is incomplete. Yes, Hitler was baptized, but there are lots of lapsed Christians in the world; is the Church to blame for them? And Auschwitz, despite its association with the Jewish Final Solution, was also the death site of many non-Jews. Its first inmates were Polish Catholic political prisoners and the main thrust of the Final Solution was still in the future when Maximilian Kolbe’s ashes went up the crematorium chimney. Nazism tried to promote an ersatz Christianity, a quirky blend of Christian elements with Nordic paganism, but in the end German fascism like Russian communism was at root atheistic and hostile to religion. Both saw in religion illegitimate competition for their claims of people’s absolute allegiance.

Did the commandant make Kolbe’s wish come true because he said he was a “Catholic priest” (Priester and Pfarrer were useless objects of contempt)? Did Kolbe’s armband give him away before he said a thing? Would he have been sent regardless of his clerical status? Was it determinative or just icing on the cake?

I do not have the Positio to say how Rome dealt with the case during his 1971 beatification and 1982 canonization. Some parallels might be drawn to the case of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, Edith Stein, also an August martyr (see here). She died in Birkenau, Auschwitz’s female camp, less than a year after Kolbe. She was sent to death in retaliation against the Dutch Bishops, who had publicly issued a statement condemning Nazi racism. The Germans responded by arresting Jewish converts, previously exempt in Holland, including Stein. Was she killed because she was a Jew or, as her canonization positio states, because the formal and immediate cause for her deportation was hatred of the faith because of its opposition to Nazi racial policies?

I see in these events something of the anthropological turn that is so prominent in John Paul II’s writings. Quoting Vatican II, he emphasizes that Jesus not only reveals God to man but He reveals man to himself. Jesus shows man what he was supposed and ought to have been. That is why John Paul also places a great value on human dignity, because that dignity comes from being made in the image and likeness of the Triune God. And, for a man whose Archdiocese included Auschwitz, it’s hard to deny Wojtyła looked at that phenomenon through a theological lens.

That’s why I would perhaps try to tackle the Kolbe “martyrdom” question this way. Over the course of time, the Church’s understanding of baptism grew beyond just actual immersion in water. What about those catechumens in ancient Rome who were killed for wanting to be Christians, even if they died before they were baptized? The Church came to speak of “baptism of blood.” Later, as the Church’s awareness of just how broad “the ends of the earth” were to which Jesus sent her to teach and baptize, it realized that people, who through no fault of their own for never having heard the Christian Gospel, could be saved if they sincerely held to what was right and good. Such convictions are not wholly subjective because God has “written His Law on our hearts” (Heb 10:16), i.e., natural law. Man has an awareness of good and evil, at least in its general principles. If a man does not put an obstacle in the way of God’s grace, i.e., if a man knew that God wanted him to do X, he would, the Church spoke of that as “baptism of desire.”

Can we not draw similar conclusions with regard to martyrdom? To act out of supernatural charity in defense of good which is threatened by evil, such as in charity being willing to give one’s life for a family man unjustly condemned to death, is not something “purely natural.” It is a defense of good and all good is at least a partial reflection of the Highest Good (Summum Bonum), i.e., God. The motivation here is to defend that good out of love of the Highest Good, i.e., God. That motivation in love is one of supernatural charity. And, perhaps invoking Lucia the Seer of Fatima’s observation that the “final battle” would be over marriage and the family, must one pick between the commandment’s odium towards two polnische Schweine: a pig with family versus a priestly pig?

I recognize my speculations could be open to abuse. If a murderer kills someone out of hatred, that hardly makes every victim a “martyr.” On the other hand, when a Nazi commandant considers himself the faithful servant of a bigger system that deliberately and violently poised itself against the whole Judeo-Christian order of truth, goodness, and value, there seems to be some odium to the “things of God” on the part of such little German (or Soviet or Communist Chinese) Caesars. When we consider the martyrs of the 20^th century — men and women slaughtered at levels that would have made Nero, Domitian, Decius, Valerian, and Diocletian jealous — the question of “what makes a martyr” is certainly worth exploring.