Franciszek Gajowniczek: the man saved by Saint Maximiliano Kolbe in Auschwitz

On July 29, 1941, in Auschwitz, a heartbreaking cry left the throat of Franciszek Gajowniczek: “I am very sorry for my wife and my children!”

Prisoner number 5659 had been selected, along with nine others, to die of hunger, as punishment for the escape of another prisoner of the field.

Moments later, an extraordinary event occurred. Among the prisoners, the Franciscan priest convent Maximilian Kolbe emerged: “I am a priest; I want to die for him!” His offer was accepted. Gajowniczek survived war, but his life was marked by pain and suffering.

Thirty years after the death of Gajowniczek, on March 13, 1995 at the age of 93, it is worth telling his remarkable story.

A fighting generation

Gajowniczek came from a polish family with low resources. He was born on November 15, 1901 in Strachomin, a town about 100 kilometers east of Warsaw. Attracted by the Army, it served in the 36th Infantry Regiment of the Academic Legion in Warsaw, and was even injured in 1926 during a political coup in Poland. At that time, the army was his entire life.

Fr. Maximiliano Kolbe, a few years older than Gajowniczek, was born on January 8, 1894 in the industrial city of Zduńska Wola. His novitiate began in 1910, with the name of Maximiliano. When the opportunity was presented for Poland to recover independence, he intended to abandon the order to fight for a free homeland, but Providence decided otherwise.

A peacetime

Gajowniczek soon found Helena, the wife of her heart. After her wedding, the young couple settled in the Prague neighborhood, in Warsaw. Helena had two children: Bogdan (1927) and Juliusz (1930). They looked imposing in family photos: he, proud with the Polish soldier uniform; She, looking at the distance with the traditional outfit; Already around, two bright children. Both were very talented: the elder stood out in mathematics; The youngest, with talent for trade.

While Gajowniczek formed a family and enjoyed domestic life, Fr. Kolbe launched the first run of 5,000 copies of a monthly Marian magazine. Before World War II, the devotional publication of the Immaculate, with a circulation of more than 700,000 copies, not only served the militia of the Immaculate, Marian Organization that he founded while studying in Rome and that had almost a million members, but also reached innumerable Polish families.

The war

When World War II broke out in 1939, Gajowniczek, now sergeant, defended Wieuń – the first Polish city attacked by the Germans – before fighting with courage as a explorer in the strength of Modlin. His exceptional courage earned him a nomination for the cross of value.

After the disintegration of his unit, he fell into German captivity, but escaped to join the clandestine resistance. The Gestapo captured him when he tried to get to Hungary. Before arriving at Auschwitz, he endured seven months of interrogation brutals, entering the field in September 1940.

Helena only knew that her husband was in a field, without knowing what her destiny would be. Meanwhile, in the middle of the war, the Poles expelled from Poznań and the West of Poland, including 1,500 Jews, sought refuge in the Nipokalanów monastery, where Father Maximiliano Kolbe dedicated himself to helping those in need, regardless of his faith. But his prominence as a religious leader, who influenced millions of Poles, made his arrest inevitable. In February 1941, he was sent to Pawiak prison and, subsequently, Auschwitz.

Saved in an instant

In block 14, the destinations of Fr. Kolbe and Gajowniczek intertwined.

The tragic moment, in particular the intervention of Saint Maximilian, which could have lasted only 50 seconds, stunned all prisoners. What did this mean to Gajowniczek?

It was not his first salvation in the field, nor the last one. A few months earlier, he was among the 300 prisoners chosen to be executed in retaliation for the destruction of a train carrying German soldiers by partisans, but the order was revoked at the last moment.

Then, in 1942, Tifus contracted. A 40 -degree fever used to mean the execution in the countryside, but his prison companions refused to let Gajowniczek die, forcing him to survive as living testimony of the sacrifice of San Maximiliano. This time, a doctor who knew from the army administered injections to lower his fever, saving his life.

“Even more, I wanted to live so that Father Kolbe’s sacrifice was not in vain,” he said years after the war. “I protected myself with twice a string of.

The desire to live from Gajowniczek were extraordinary. He survived Auschwitz and Sachsenhause, another Nazi concentration camp. He survived a death march two weeks before the end of the war: 12 days without food or water, subsisting based on dry grass and orgas. I still didn’t know that tragic news awaited at home.

Mourning

In the fall of 1945, Gajowniczek returned to Poland. In Rawa Mazowieckka, a small town about 80 kilometers from Warsaw, met with his wife. Minutes later, they were next to their children’s tombs. His deaths were a tragedy that should not have happened, which aggravated Gajowniczek’s own story. Their loved ones had almost survived war, but the children perished in a bombing of the Red Army on January 17, 1945 about the people, a place on the war route. His mother had gone to send a package to her husband in the field; Upon returning, he found his bodies among the fallen; Gajowniczek was saved just to cry to his children.

They could not stay in Warsaw. The Ruinosa “City of the Dead” reminded them of a cemetery and their children. In 1946, they moved to Brzeg, near Breslavia. They had no more children and once they considered adopting a girl, Tereska, although they did not get it. He got a job in a municipal office; She worked in a store. His home on Lwowska Street was mired in silence. Gajowniczek raised otters (a type of rodent) and rabbits, and took care of bees. After work, they walked to the Park of La Libertad, where they talked about their children.

“If I had not lived, my wife would not have left them to send me a package. It would have been better for me to have died and they lived, but such is the divine will that I resurrected in their name, and they perished,” he reflected years later.

Shortly after the war, the Knight of the Immaculate published the first stories of the death of Father Kolbe, along with a warning looking for anonymous “family” for whom San Maximilian had sacrificed his life.

It is unknown how Immaculate Knight until Gajowniczek. The truth is that, in May 1946, he published his testimony, “the survivor’s voice.” His last passage emphasizes: “I grew up in a religious environment; I kept my faith in the most difficult moments; religion was my only sustenance and hope at that time. The sacrifice of Father Maximilian Kolbe further intensified my religiosity and devotion to the Catholic Church, from which such heroes arise.”

In 1949, Father Kolbe’s beatification process began. Pope Paul VI beatified him as a confessor in 1971 and Pope John Paul II canonized him as a martyr in 1982. Gajowniczek attended all these events, and his life was increasingly marked by this extraordinary story.

His last years

Helena died in 1982, year of Kolbe’s canonization, and was buried with her children. Gajowniczek stayed alone. At the end of the 1980s, Gajowniczek, with more than 80 years, married his caregiver, Janina. His home became a visiting center, including a memorable pilgrimage of religious superiors in Japan. Gajowniczek and Janina frequently traveled through Europe and the United States, where, in 1989, he met with President George Hw Bush in the White House.

Gajowniczek visited Navokalanów frequently, especially on August 14 and 15, dates related to the death and feast of Father Kolbe. On March 13, 1995, he died in Brzeg at age 94, accompanied by Janina. According to his desire, he was buried in the Cemetery of Nivalanów. At the funeral, the bishop said: “It was a living relic that remained after Father Maximiliano.”

Translated and adapted by the ACI Press team. Originally published in the National Catholic Register.