Theology 1.0: Who is Maximilian Kolbe?

Stained glass of St. Maximilian Kolbe. His feast day is assigned to be on 14th August

"Obviously a suicide is the opposite of a martyr. A martyr is a man who cares so much for something outside him, that he forgets his own personal life. A suicide is a man who cares so little for anything outside him, that he wants to see the last of everything. One wants something to begin: the other wants everything to end." -- GK Chesterton

War does terrible things to people. Despite his best efforts to hide the Jews from the Nazis, Roman Catholic priest Maximilian Kolbe was caught by the Gestapo. Assigned to the concentration camp at Auschwitz as Prisoner #16670, Kolbe volunteered to take the place of a man (Franciszek Gajowniczek) who was assigned to be executed.

After two weeks of starving him, the prison guards discovered he was still alive. They gave him a lethal dosage of carbolic acid to finish him off on 14th August, 1941.

Conclusion
In my university days, one of my colleagues often dismissed that martyrs hated life and was merely glorified suicide. But in Kolbe's story I see a person who loves life so much that he was willing to give up his to save the life of another.

And that is something beautiful.

"Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends."
-- John 15:13
For further reading
Wikipedia