Maximilian Kolbe was a;Franciscan friar imprisoned by the Nazi Gestapo at Auschwitz in 1941 because of his work as a Catholic publisher. ;Because he was a priest, he was treated with particular savagery by the prison guards and given the dirtiest, heaviest work. ;He ministered to his fellow prisoners, encouraging them to forgive their persecutors and to overcome evil with good. ;He constantly sacrificed himself for others to the point where a Protestant doctor later testified, "In Auschwitz, I knew of no other similar case of such heroic love of neighbor."
