“Greater love has no one than this,
that one lay down His life for His friends.”
-John 15:13
It was 3pm in one of the last days of
July 1941 at the Auschwitz concentration camp. The sirens began to shriek and
German sentries shouldered their guns. There had been an escape. Silently the
men of Block 14 prayed that the escapee had not been from their block. That
evening their worst fears were confirmed. The missing prisoner had been from
Block 14.
The next day, the remaining 600 men
from Block 14 were forced to stand on the parade ground under the broiling sun.
Those who collapsed were left to die where they lay. At the day’s end, the
deputy commander, Fritsch, arrived to announced the fate of the terrified men.
“The fugitive has not been found,”
barked Fritsch. “In reprisal for your comrade’s escape, 10 of you will die by
starvation. Next time it will be 20.”
The ten were selected. One of those
men, Franciszek Gajowniezek, a Polish army sergeant, was sobbing, “My wife and
my children.” Suddenly, a Polish Fransciscan priest, Maximillan Kolbe, pushed
his way to the front as guards sighted their rifles on his chest. “I want to
talk to the commander,” he said, looking Fritsch straight in the eye. “I want
to die in the place of the prisoner,” he said pointing to the sobbing
Gajowniezed.
Maximillan Kolbe died in place of a
man who bore the sentence of death. In all probability, God will never ask you
to make the decision Kolbe made. Yet He does ask you to make a decision – for
to love demands sacrifice for someone else. None of us has the right to live
selfishly, for all of us have been the recipients, in some way, of the love
that prompted Maximillan Kolbe to give up his life.
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