On July 29, 1941, at the roll-call square in Auschwitz, a piercing cry tore from Franciszek Gajowniczek’s throat: “I pity my wife and children!”

Prisoner No. 5659 had been selected, along with nine others, for death by starvation — a punishment for another prisoner’s escape from the camp.

Moments later, an extraordinary event unfolded. From the ranks of prisoners stepped Conventual Franciscan Father Maximilian Kolbe: “I am a priest; I want to die for him!” His offer was accepted. Gajowniczek survived the war, but his life was marked by pain and suffering.

Thirty years after Gajowniczek’s death March 13, 1995 at the age of 93, his remarkable story bears retelling.

A Generation of Struggle

Gajowniczek came from a poor Polish family. He was born on Nov. 15, 1901, in Strachomin, a village about 62 miles east of Warsaw. Drawn to the military, he served in the 36th Infantry Regiment of the Academic Legion in Warsaw and was even wounded in 1926 during a political coup in Poland. At that time, the army was his entire life.

Father Maximilian Kolbe, a few years older than Gajowniczek, was born on Jan. 8, 1894, in the industrial town of Zduńska Wola. He began his novitiate in 1910, taking the name Maximilian. When the chance arose for Poland to regain independence, he intended to leave the order to fight for a free homeland, but Providence decided otherwise.

A Time of Peace

Gajowniczek soon found Helena, the woman of his heart. After their wedding, the young couple settled in Warsaw’s Praga district. Helena bore two sons: Bogdan (1927) and Juliusz (1930). They looked striking in family photos — he, proud in a Polish soldier’s uniform; she, gazing into the distance in traditional folk attire; and around them two bright boys. Both sons were highly talented: The older excelled in mathematics; the younger showed a knack for trade.

While Gajowniczek built a family and savored domestic life, Father Kolbe launched the first 5,000-copy run of a Marian monthly. Before World War II, the devotional publication Knight of the Immaculata, with a circulation exceeding 700,000 copies, served not only the nearly 1 million-strong Militia of the Immaculate, a Marian organization he founded while studying in Rome, but also reached countless Polish families.

War

When World War II broke out in 1939, Gajowniczek, now a sergeant, defended Wieluń — the first Polish city attacked by the Germans — before fighting bravely as a scout at the Modlin Fortress. His exceptional courage earned him a nomination for the Cross of Valor.

After his unit was shattered, he fell into German captivity but escaped to join the underground resistance. The Gestapo captured him as he attempted to reach Hungary. Before arriving at Auschwitz, he endured seven months of brutal interrogation, entering the camp in September 1940.

Helena knew only that her husband was in a camp, unaware of his fate. Meanwhile, as war raged, Poles expelled from Poznań and western Poland, including 1,500 Jews, sought refuge at the Niepokalanów monastery, where Father Maximilian Kolbe devoted himself to aiding the needy, regardless of faith. But his prominence as a religious leader, influencing millions of Poles, made his arrest inevitable. In February 1941, he was sent to Pawiak Prison — and later to Auschwitz.

Salvation at the Square

At the roll-call square of Block 14, the fates of Father Kolbe and Gajowniczek intertwined.

The tragic roll call — particularly St. Maximilian’s intervention, which may have lasted just 50 seconds — stunned all of the prisoners. What did this mean for Gajowniczek?

It wasn’t his first salvation in the camp, nor his last. A few months earlier, he was among 300 prisoners chosen for execution in retaliation for partisans destroying a train carrying German soldiers, but the order was rescinded at the last moment. Then, in 1942, he contracted typhus. A fever of 104 degrees typically meant execution in the camp, yet fellow prisoners refused to let Gajowniczek die, compelling him to survive as a living testament to St. Maximilian’s sacrifice. This time, a doctor he knew from the army administered injections to lower his temperature, saving his life.

“Even more, I wanted to live so that Father Kolbe’s sacrifice wouldn’t be in vain,” he said years after the war. “I protected myself twice as hard. That’s how he saved me a second time. He gave me strength — I think from heaven. How could I waste his life? He offered it so I could live with my wife and enjoy my sons.”

Gajowniczek’s will to live was extraordinary. He survived Auschwitz and Sachsenhausen, another Nazi concentration camp. He survived a death march two weeks before the war’s end — 12 days without food or water, subsisting on dry grass and nettles. He didn’t yet know that tragic news awaited him at home.

In Mourning

In the fall of 1945, Gajowniczek returned to Poland. In Rawa Mazowiecka, a small town about 50 miles from Warsaw, he reunited with his wife. Minutes later, they stood over their sons’ graves. Their deaths were a tragedy that shouldn’t have occurred, compounding Gajowniczek’s own story. His loved ones had nearly survived the war, but the boys perished in a Red Army bombardment of the town on Jan. 17, 1945, a site along the warpath. Their mother had gone to send a package to her husband in the camp; upon returning, she found their bodies among the fallen — Gajowniczek was spared only to grieve his sons.

They couldn’t remain in Warsaw. The ruined “city of the dead” reminded them of a cemetery and their children. In 1946, they moved to Brzeg, near Wrocław. They had no more children and once considered adopting a girl, Tereska, though that did not transpire. He took a job in a municipal office; she worked in a shop. Their home on Lwowska Street was steeped in silence. Gajowniczek raised nutrias (a type of rodent) and rabbits and tended bees. After work, they strolled to Freedom Park, where they spoke of their children.

“If I hadn’t lived, my wife wouldn’t have left them to send me a package. It would’ve been better if I had died and they lived, but such is the Divine will that I was resurrected in their name, and they perished,” he reflected years later.

Soon after the war, Knight of the Immaculata published the first accounts of Father Kolbe’s death, along with a notice seeking the anonymous “family man” for whom St. Maximilian had sacrificed his life.

How Knight of the Immaculata reached Gajowniczek’s hands remains unknown. What is certain is that, in May 1946, it published his testimony, “The Voice of the Survivor.” Its final passage stands out:

“I was raised in a religious atmosphere; I kept my faith in the hardest moments; religion was my only sustenance and hope at the time. The sacrifice of Fr. Maximilian Kolbe further intensified my religiosity and devotion to the Catholic Church, which gives birth to such heroes.”

In 1949, the beatification process for Father Kolbe 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, his life increasingly defined by this extraordinary story.

Later Years

Helena died in 1982, the year of Kolbe’s canonization, and was buried with their sons. Gajowniczek was left alone. In the late 1980s, Gajowniczek, now over 80, married his caregiver, Janina. Their home became a hub for visitors, including a memorable pilgrimage of religious superiors from Japan. Gajowniczek and Janina traveled frequently across Europe and the United States, where, in 1989, he met President George H.W. Bush at the White House.

Gajowniczek often visited Niepokalanów, especially on Aug. 14 and 15, dates tied to Father Kolbe’s death and feast day. On March 13, 1995, he died in Brzeg at age 94, with Janina at his side. According to his wishes, he was buried at the Niepokalanów cemetery. At the funeral, the bishop said,, ”He was a living relic that remained after Father Maximilian.”

Krzysztof Kunert is a journalist for EWTN Poland. He is also an author and documentary filmmaker.