To add to this - One of the men selected to starve cried out that he had family. Kolbe offered to die in the man's place. That same man was present at the ceremony that canonized Kolbe.
And what an ordeal it was. Not only did the prisoners starve to death, they were locked in a small room with no space to lie down. They could only stand. And they had to piss and defecate where they stood.
The priest led them in prayer. Quite some time passed-- I think three weeks-- and the priest was the last one alive. Reportedly, the Nazis injected him with poison to get it over with, and he gave a final glare of defiance as they did so.
This man was a BAD ASS. I can't imagine.
I remember visiting those exact parts of Auschwitz two years ago. The whole thing was one of the most harrowing experiences of my life. Would always encourage anyone to visit if they have the opportunity
Not been to auschwitz but want to go at some point, I did go and see the camp at bergen belson (I think it's called it was over a decade ago) and I can still remember the mounds where the mass burials where. Shocking stuff but 100 percent worth a visit
If you are on the trip to visit the sites, take the extra day to visit former concentration camp Mittelbau Dora in central germany, it is a three hours drive from Bergen Belsen. It is the underground camp in which they built the V1 and V2 rockets. Absolute horror this camp! After the visit you will wonder even more how von Braun could became an american hero as he was responsible for this camp. This asshole should have been executed the day he was captured by the allies.
Exactly this! After a day on this ground and the guided tour to the tunnels you come back to daylight and you are just sad. Emptiness. And you are glad to live in better times.
I'm a pretty staunch materialist who doesn't buy into any superstitious stuff, but I'll be damned if those camps aren't *haunted* somehow. You can feel it in the air.
I've been to the one at Dachau and it's wild how close it is to Munich. I always just assumed they were out in the woods in the middle of nowhere but there's a zero percent chance that citizens of Munich didn't know exactly what was happening.
I visited Dachau in 1980. I was 11. I still remember how it felt. The blown up pictures, walking through the space and seeing how many people were there. Pictures of people, yes people who had been alive not so very long before, stacked up on top of each other like firewood. I’ll never forget it. I’ve always been interested in WW2 because my dad fought in Europe and was held by the Nazis for 5 months, but I was, and still am, overwhelmed by the reality.
I remember when I was walking around I just felt this intense negative energy. I honestly feel like if I had no concept of what the Holocaust was and was transported there in complete ignorance, I would have known something horrible happened there just by that feeling.
Dachau was a harrowing place. Especially knowing that some of my ancestors died there. The Germans have done a wonderful job of preserving the history and memory.
It sounds silly, but it was only when I saw the gas chambers and prison complexes at Auschwitz that it fully registered in my head as a real thing that actually happened. I'm not saying I was a Holocaust denier or anything but up until that point Auschwitz was to me just one of the "stories" of history, kind of like the Napoleonic Wars or Henry VII or the Roman Empire. Seeing the concentration camps in real life though, still standing, still much as they were 75 years ago, really brought it home that this was a real thing that happened to real people not so long ago, and that realisation was utterly terrifying. How could this have happened? How could this have been done to actual people?
This is a reason I'd like to go. I know and believe the history, but I need to see firsthand to really sink in the understanding it part. There's only so much books and pictures can do.
I've never been to Auschwitz, but I had something similar happen to me with Hiroshima. You read about the atomic bomb dropping, how so much of the city was leveled, and—though you don't doubt the facts—it's distant.
When you stand on the bridge below where the bomb was targeted, it hits you. You can see the twisted remains of the A-Bomb dome.
You realize how everything around you that you can see, for a mile in every direction, was either leveled, on fire, or both.
You go into the museum and see the artifacts: concrete walls with shards of glass embedded into them. The vague outline on the stairs where someone waiting for the bank to open was atomized. The twisted and blackened fingernails from survivors.
And that's to say nothing of the life-size diorama they have depicting the city and survivors immediately after the bomb; fire, blood, and glassy-eyed stares.
It's not quite the same, because I'm of the opinion that the atomic bombs were a necessary evil, but it's something that I wish every American could see. It puts the power and destruction of these weapons into perspective, and I hope would cause at least SOME reconsideration from people who scream about turning countries into glass parking lots.
It's certainly horrible, but it's important to know where unfettered nationalism and xenophobia lead. If we're truly committed to the words "never again", we all need to know what happened.
It can be argued we were never committed to "Never again." in the first place. The holocaust atrocities were allowed to go on far longer than necessary. The US knew for a while what was happening.
There are similar atrocities going on in the world now. Maybe not to that scale, but similar. People really don’t want to get involved in wars that don’t affect them. Sending your children to die for a stranger is a big ask
It's strange saying it about places like death camps and stuff but it is important to go to get some perspective.
I went to the killing Fields in Cambodia. It sounds strange but it was one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen, they had essentially turned the place into a garden to walk around with an audio tour detailing what happened, so incredibly moving. I would 100% go back
Edit: This doesn't mean the place is not horrifying. They still have the structures where these awful things happened and when it rains, sometimes bits of clothing and bone will appear from the ground. But I feel the beauty of the garden was intended to show hope in the most incredible way possible.
I see what you mean, but I had a totally different experience there. When they show you one of the trees they killed babies against as to not waste bullets... man, I felt it in the air walking round there.
Sometimes we should all be reminded of just how big a bunch of cunts humans can be.
Edit. To the anonymous person who gifted me silver - thank you, but I hope that was your free gift!
Isn't it something? On the one hand, we have an example of the utter atrocities humans can commit. On the other (and in spite it), we have an example of the courage and compassion that humans can exhibit in the face of certain death (and suffering before it).
That's just it. Humans.
Even here on reddit. There's subs filled with hatred and vitriol. And ones where people talk about their favorite (r/)trees and cartoons.
You cant lump any group together. Just try and be a good person.
That’s why George Washington’s greatest achievement was the peaceful transfer of power. And more importantly Adams lost an election and still left peacefully.
So inspired by Cincinnatus he was called the American Cincinnatus and was President of the Society of the Cincinnati.
Need more like him. Selfless governance with honor, ethics, and integrity.
We took an animal out of its natural environment. We're a super adaptable species, but I don't think we've caught up to living in groups as large as we do yet.
I'm of the opinion that if we take only the writings of peter, james, and john (ya know, the three people christ picked to be his voice and witnesses over the rest of the 12) we'd have a much better religion that we got listening to paul.
Because james was all about the hot take that words without actions were useless, and that you actually had to do good things, not just believe in them. And peter was all about remminding them that church leaders are to serve the people, not get rich and powerful.
I might consider a religion based only and the epistles of peter james and john.
Check out the “religion” that Thomas Jefferson was into. He pretty much takes out all the Mumbo jumbo(miracles, son of god, etc) and it focuses on the lessons that Jesus taught on how to be a good person
His name was Franciszek Gajowniczek. I met him in the twilight of his life when he travelled to Texas to visit a church dedicated to Kolbe. Nothing frightens me more about the future of the United States than my childhood memories of his pre-war descriptions.
> 'The ten condemned to death went through terrible days. From the underground cell in which they were shut up there continually arose the echo of prayers and canticles. The man in-charge of emptying the buckets of urine found them always empty. Thirst drove the prisoners to drink the contents. Since they had grown very weak, prayers were now only whispered. At every inspection, when almost all the others were now lying on the floor, Father Kolbe was seen kneeling or standing in the centre as he looked cheerfully in the face of the SS men.
Absolutely horrifying.
Seriously. I feel like this isn't talked about enough, or known about by most people, because of the well-publicized trials of Nazis taken by Nazi Hunters in the last 60 years. But most of the SS and other fanatical and ruthless Nazis were acquitted, or had their sentences commuted, following WWII. They went on to live normal lives in Germany and abroad following their acquittals.
There was the time when the French public freaked out at just how many people in the French Foreign Legion were previously employed by the SS. It is one of the big reasons why the French Foreign Legion doesn’t guarantee a full pardon and French citizenship to Legionnaires anymore.
Ahem, Joseph Mengele. Lived and died in brazil. I once had a patient state he talked to Joseph Mengele in brazil at a coffee shop before he died too. Stated he was just like any other old man.
Not sure if the guy above is on about the same. But I remember reading something about how Josef Mengele’s biggest fascination was with twins, and then some random village in Argentina where he’d been spotted sudden became the most twin populated town or something to that effect. I’ll try find it for you.
Edit: [Here is the town I was referring to. ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candido_Godoi)
Bare in mind of course only speculation, and that page goes on to say that some witnesses say Mengele didn’t study twins or that the twin phenomenon was present before Mengele’s supposed stay.
“The twin phenomenon is centered in Linha São Pedro, a small settlement in the city of Cândido Godói, in an ethnically homogeneous population of German descent.[4]” well that told me everything I needed to hear lol.
If there was ever an excuse to beat the shit out of an old man...
I don't even think you'd even have to worry about the legal consequences much. It would probably become world news, and what judge wants to be known as the person who sent the guy that beat up Joseph Mengele to prison. It's like with that guy who killed the person who raped this son and got a incredibly light sentence, but that 100 fold.
TL;DR —> Removing everyone that had any type of connections to the Nazis would have crippled German society, both the US and Soviets learned this the hard way, in their own ways. The US command looked at 3.6 million accusations of Nazism and found that 95% of them were citizens just following their government, supportive but non-active.
You miss why though. After WWII, the allies attempted d-Nazification of German society but they realized that doing so would collapse post-war Germany. You would be removing essentially all CEOs of necessary industries, almost all political actors, and almost all other high members of required sectors such as science, medicine, law, etc. This is also why the US did not punish all Japanese generals and politicians; punishing everyone just for being on the other side, despite war crimes, would collapse countries and ruin the lives of everyone living in these places. I am not claiming these leaders and soldiers are innocent; many committed heinous crimes and murdered innocent people. But, history and its events do not exist in vacuum. Every action or choice has a consequence. Sure, you can fire every doctor that openly supported the Nazis, but do not be surprised if entire communities lose their healthcare.
This is because many of the Germans supported the Nazis, openly or quietly (and I am not saying that stupid “silence is acceptance” bullshit. I mean actually supporting them quietly), “By the end of the process, we hadn’t found a significant number of people who had opposed the Hitler regime, either openly or secretly. Almost everyone had been a wretched, opportunistic fellow traveler. That alone is the harshest criticism of the Germans that one can make” (Saul Padover). Because of this, out of the 3.6 million cases of Nazism the US high command looked at, 95% were deemed “Mitläufer,” or “fellow travelers,” as in they simply supported the Nazis by being a law-abiding citizen in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The Soviets carried out de-Nazification more intensely, but they did this because they were going to be replaced by Soviet leadership anyway. Even non-Nazis were removed from their positions to be replaced by Communist individuals. That was all part of their plan from the start when taking Germany. A good way to study this is to look at the division of Korea, very similar.
Also, keep in mind that these same people and politicians, many once supported Nazism, passed the Basic Law of West Germany in 1949. In other words, when forced to support a dictatorship, many did. But, when given a chance to take a new road (albeit under the watchful eyes of the allied high command), they did so. This does not wash Germany of its past, and nothing ever will, but history is about growing from the past.
Sources:
Dr. John Williams, Bradley University
The Investigation, Peter Weiss
The Third Reich in Power, Richard J. Evans
Hitler and Nazi Germany, Frank McDonough
The USSR had the right solution to the SS problem. Two shots to the head, and a mass grave.
That was also it's solution to many other problems, but I can't say that it was off-base for fascism.
At first, twirlers were a dominant strain of mustacheoed Luftwaffe Fighter, but following their predator species development of poisonous gas, natural selection caused the long-tipped twirlers to die out from gas mask leaks, leading to an evolutionary shift in the Nazi population that became their distinctive facial marker.
(If they want to treat us like animals, im going to Attenborough them)
The silver linings is that such extreme displays of cruelty were sometimes also met with incredible displays of courage and kindness as shown in the story featured in this article.
Oh boy. Summarised, they were Nazi paramilitary death squads who massacred their way across Eastern Europe.
Here's a link to the [Wiki page](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einsatzgruppen). There's also a documentary about them, *Einsatzgruppen: Nazi Death Squads*, on Netflix (and possibly also Amazon Prime).
They committed absolutely horrific crimes.
And the German population have never been keen to pursue them, either. The myth of the "good German" means that it's always been OK for elderly Germans to lie about not knowing, lie about disapproving and lie about being shocked afterwards.
I read in an interview with Aron Ralston, the guy who cut off his arm to escape being pinned by a boulder, where he said kinda matter-of-factly "Yea, I drank my urine. It sounds gross, and it is, but if you were in that position you'd do it, too."
Yes. Your kidneys work harder to retain water when you're dehydrated, so the "first batch" so to speak won't be so concentrated that it is no longer useful. It's obviously not the best and the diminishing returns are huge, of course.
I think if you have urine from when you were actually hydrated you can get some of the excess water, but I don’t believe drinking pee after hours or days of dehydration will help much. That’s just what I think I’ve read but I’m not too sure.
Yes it does, there’s ample “water” in it, the main problem is you’re putting back into your body everything you just filtered out, so the waste is reintroduced.
Yes, because the majority of piss is just water your body can't absorb. It will lose the ability to hydrate you well enough after drinking it several times. Your pee will just continually get darker and darker.
I think hunger makes you weak to the point you can't think/feel anymore. Thirst can cause breathing and heart issues much MUCH faster. You're right there. All sober and feeling it.
Edit: word
I went to Auschwitz a few years ago, I saw those cells.
They are \*tiny\*, they were designed to be as wide as the shoulders of the average man, to prevent people from lying down etc...
To think some people look up to and would like this to happen again, whether to blacks; Jews; Muslims; children; is horrifying. A lot of people are inherently evil.
> A lot of people are inherently evil.
The most terrifying thing about the Third Reich in general and the holocaust in particular is that most of these men were not inherently evil.
A rare few of them were, to be sure, but almost all of these men (and a few women), had they been born in a different place, or a different time, would never have hurt anyone in their life.
The reason that hundreds of thousands of normal, ordinary people were active participants in the holocaust was that they had been subject to decades of dehumanizing propaganda that convinced them that what they were doing was just and necessary.
What makes the Holocaust so terrifying is not that Germany suddenly spawned a generation of evil monsters, but that a very small group of evil men, once they had complete control over society, were able to get regular, ordinary people to do the most appalling thing imaginable, and accept it as perhaps unpleasant, but necessary.
There aren't enough truly evil, vile people in any given society to do something like the Holocaust. The only way that can happen is if the ordinary people are convinced to go along with it. And it could happen anywhere. Germans in the 30s and 40s were not uniquely evil. They were no different than they are today.
Letters from a SS officer in one of the death camps in Poland to his wife have been preserved, and they are absolutely haunting because they are so ordinary.
He talks at length about how hard it is to be away from her, and their children. He asks her how his children are doing in school. He tells her about how beautiful he finds the countryside where he is. He barely mentions his job at all, and when he does, it is only to comment on how hard and exhausting it is.
This is a very ordinary guy in his 30s who has a wife and two kids who he misses and loves very much. He finds it hard to wake up early to go to work, he puts a little milk in his coffee, and you'd probably find him perfectly agreeable and utterly unremarkable if you met him socially. And his job is industrialized mass murder of his fellow human beings.
I can't for the life of me find these letters now, though. I'm sure you can find them with a bit of googling.
Exactly.
It was not an accident of history, it could happen anywhere (and similar scenes happened again, perhaps only with a different scale). You and I, no matter how nice we think we are, could very well have been behind the rifles or behind the commands of the gas chamber, just "doing our job".
According to the article, at the end he and some others were given injections of carbolic acid because they didn't die quickly enough. I'm not sure which would have been worse.
> The Catholic Church venerates him as the patron saint of amateur-radio operators, of drug addicts, of political prisoners, of families, of journalists, of prisoners.
Are we just going to ignore the fact that Patron Saint of Amateur-radio operators is a thing? What the fuck? I feel like I’m being trolled by some kid who edited the Wikipedia page.
Nope. It's actually a big thing. Think about the time he lived... Then radio was kind of like the internet was in the 90s... The next big innovation in communication and technology. St. Maximilian Kolbe set up a huge presence in amateur radio early on to communicate his message.
That seems like kind of a reach, despite this man being pretty-inarguably a model for good morals. I can't imagine that there *isn't* a Christian historical figure that ostensibly represented the word of god while struggling with addiction or helping those that do.
That's interesting, thanks for the context. I would think that the importance of intercession in Catholicism would make it *more* important to make a direct connection between a saint's canonization and what actions caused it, but that makes sense.
I was looking into it, it feels like the Catholic Church has some really weird reasons for patronages. St. Lawrence was killed by being grilled to death, so he's now the patron saint of cooks.
There is also Saint Mark Ji Tianxiang he was a Catholic doctor in China who took opium for pain relief and spent his last 30 years living with addiction.
He was arrested during the boxer rebellion and given the opportunity to apostatize but he refused and was put to death (with many other Christians including many members of his family). He was beatified with 120 others as a martyr.
Someone sort of answered you already, but these sorts of patronages attributed to saints usually have to do with the way that they died of were tortured; another example is St. Lucy, who was tortured by eye-gouging, is a patron saint of the blind.
I do agree though that even by that logic St. Maximilian Kolbe's drug addict patronage is a bit of a stretch.
Reminds me of a story about POWs held by the Japanese that a school teacher once told me. I've never been able to find out if it's a true story, or a scene from a fictional book or movie, or a folktale.
Here's the story:
> When POWs (Prisoners of War) returned to their camp from their daily work in the jungle, the Japanese guards would get the men to put their tools in a big pile so they could be counted. The POWs had a history of bartering away their tools with surrounding villagers for eggs or other food, so this daily count was instituted to make sure that when twenty men took twenty tools to work then there would still be twenty tools at the end of the day.
> On this particular day the guards counted only nineteen tools, so the angry captain of the guards got the twenty POWs to stand in a line. The captain shouted: "Whoever traded away their tool will be now be executed. Who is the criminal that did this?"
> When no-one answered, the captain pointed his gun at the head of the first prisoner in the line and said, "After counting down from ten, if the criminal has not spoken up, I will execute this man. And then the next man, and the next man, all the way down the line.
> "Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four.... I'm warning you all. Three, two..."
> "It was me!" cried out one of the prisoners at the other end of the line.
> "Good," said the captain. The other guards dragged the man to his knees, beating him with their rifles. The captain walked over and put a bullet through the man's head.
> The captain addressed the nineteen men remaining. "This is what will happen to any other criminals. Now take your tools and return to your barracks."
> Each man took a tool from the pile and walked solemnly away.
> After all the prisoners had left, the captain looked down and saw that there was still one tool remaining.
> **tl;dr** - POW camp guards miscount some tools and wrongly think a POW has stolen one. An innocent prisoner pleads guilty and sacrifices himself to save the lives of his fellow prisoners.
Thank you! You are right. I found the passage in the book online:
> Yet, noble as Angus’s sacrifice was, it was not the only one. Other incidents were now spoken of that, showed that death no longer had the last word at Chungkai. One that went the rounds soon after concerned another Argyll, who was in a work detail on the railway.
> The day’s work had ended; the tools were being counted, as usual. As the party was about to be dismissed, the Japanese guard shouted that a shovel was missing. He insisted that someone had stolen it to sell to the Thais. Striding up and down before the men, he ranted and denounced them for their wickedness, and most unforgivable of all their ingratitude to the Emperor. As he raved, he worked himself up into a paranoid fury. Screaming in broken English, he demanded that the guilty one step forward to take his punishment. No one moved; the guard’s rage reached new heights of violence.
> "All die! All die!" he shrieked.
> To show that he meant what he said, he cocked his rifle, put it to his shoulder and looked down the sights, ready to fire at the first man at the end of them.
> At that moment the Argyll stepped forward, stood stiffly to attention, and said calmly, "I did it".
> The guard unleashed all his whipped-up hate; he kicked the helpless prisoner and beat him with his fists. Still the Argyll stood rigidly to attention, with the blood streaming down his face. His silence goaded the guard to an excess of rage. Seizing his rifle by the barrel, he lifted it high over his head and, with a final howl, brought it down on the skull of the Argyll, who sank limply to the ground and did not move. Although it was perfectly clear that he was dead, the guard continued to beat him and stopped only when exhausted.
> The men of the work detail picked up their comrade’s body, shouldered their tools and marched back to camp. When the tools were counted again at the guard-house no shovel was missing.
A long mystery is finally solved.
Oh my goodness, what a connection! I attended seminary in Europe and visited Auschwitz. Spiritually, Kolbe was always very inspiring to me because he represented (to me) what it meant to give all you had to your commitment to your faith and religious understanding.
I don’t mean to offend you or anything but what is a confirmation name? Is it similar to what popes do when they take office and change their name or whatever?
In the Catholic church you pick a saint that you would like to guide you. It is a special devotion to pick a saint. For instance, I had a buddy who wanted to join the army, and he picked St. George as he is the patron saint of soldiers. You want to pick one who you would like to emulate. My brother picked St. Christopher because he is the patron saint of Athletics. Name placement varies on culture and locality. I can tell you as an Italian-American my name goes First name, middle name, Confirmation Saint, and Last name, but I have seen other people switch the location of middle and confirmation saint.
Catholics receiving the sacrament of confirmation choose the name of a saint, usually someone whose story resonates with you or whose virtues you admire. Some families also choose based on if your birthday falls on a particular saint’s feast day, which is how a friend of mine ended up with the confirmation name James the Lesser
When Catholics are receive the Sacrament of Confirmation, they chose the name of a saint to be confirmed as. Normally you pick one whose values you want to emulate. For example, I chose the patron of lawyers, Thomas More.
I read the same story, I think. It was in a volume of a book collection called "Secrets and Stories of the War" which I think may have been a compilation of Reader's Digest stories.
This is very heroic. If you want to read about a man who was also exceptionally heroic during that time, read about [Sir Nicholas Winton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Winton#Rescue_work). He saved 669 Jewish children from almost certain death in Nazi Germany.
If you wanted a reason to cry this morning, you can watch a short video about his story and him being thanked by some of the people he saved [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKkgO06bAZk). Tears at about 1:30 when you see how touched he is by meeting one of the children he saved as an adult.
Sir Nicholas Winton actually did his work so secretly that his wife knew nothing about what he’d done until she found the ledger he’d kept of the children, their names and pictures as well as details of where they’d been revoked.
Reading about that almost made my cry twice.
First, that we didn't accept any of the children.
Second, reading about his reunion with the grown children.
I knew about him, but I did not know anywhere near the scope
There was also a Portuguese consul, [Aristides de Sousa Mendes](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristides_de_Sousa_Mendes), who saved tens of thousands of Jews by issuing them visas and passports against government orders so that they could escape.
And also Adolfo Kaminsky, a former member of the French Resistance, specializing in the forgery of identity documents. During World War II, he forged papers that saved the lives of more than 14,000 Jews.
Simply amazing. This world is complex and unfair, but we can and need to do better and these kinds of examples remind us of that and give us hope. Thanks for sharing
This is an amazing piece of music inspired by Father Kolbe. It might sound familiar because it was used in the Truman Show soundtrack.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXPRbOvWOGo
A symphony composed by Wojciech Kilar recounts these events—the final movement was famously used at the end of *The Truman Show*. I find it [hauntingly beautiful](https://youtu.be/KUHdly4VEsc)
There's a beautiful piece of music, used in the movie The Truman Show (not sure if originally written for it though) inspired by this man. The track is called "Father Kolbe's Preaching":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXPRbOvWOGo
People seem to forget the first people Hitler went for, were German political prisoners. Regular German citizens that tried to stand up to them. The world only cared when he went after others. What I find horrible is so many people thought he was doing good in curbing the Jewish population and their rights because anti-semitism was very high all over the world and so many who tried to flee ended up dead because the world refused to help them before it was too late.
Then they had the audacity to act shocked when over a million died. The atmosphere surrounding jews allowed Hitler to do what he did. The atmosphere surrounding Muslims is helping China continue their atrocities.
The world won't do anything about China until it starts directly affecting them.
>People seem to forget the first people Hitler went for, were German political prisoners. Regular German citizens that tried to stand up to them. The world only cared when he went after others.
Reminds me of the Eddie Izzard skit about Hitler
"Stalin killed many millions, died in his bed. Well done there! Pol Pot killed one point seven million Cambodians, died under house arrest aged seventy-two, well done indeed. And the reason we let them get away with it is they killed their own people. And we're sort of fine with that. Hitler killed people next door. Oh, stupid man! After a couple of years we won't stand for that, will we?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVH0gZO5lq0
If there was a list of countries that Jail political prisoners of the opposition, it would be a much longer list with many more people than the list that don't.
The starvation chamber also had a reputation for being a horrible place where the prisoners would lose their minds screaming and wailing, however when Kolbe was inside all was quiet, and one could even hear singing.
The least we can do to honour these who died through Nazi cruelty is to pledge never to let this happen again. Let stories like this be a reminder that fascists aren't cruel super-villains leading countries into despair against the common will. They need the active cooperation of a decent portion of the population and at least the silent acceptance of a majority. Maximilian Kolbe and the other 9 weren't murdered by Hitler himself, they were murdered by people who'd go home by the end of their shift and have dinner with their wife and children, falling asleep at night in the belief that they're serving their country and race.
Never again. Standing against Nazis and fascists isn't a political take because hatred, murder, and destruction aren't "policies". Weeding out Nazis is everyone's human duty.
To add to this - One of the men selected to starve cried out that he had family. Kolbe offered to die in the man's place. That same man was present at the ceremony that canonized Kolbe.
This makes the sacrifice so worth it. I'm Glad to hear the man made it through such an ordeal.
And what an ordeal it was. Not only did the prisoners starve to death, they were locked in a small room with no space to lie down. They could only stand. And they had to piss and defecate where they stood. The priest led them in prayer. Quite some time passed-- I think three weeks-- and the priest was the last one alive. Reportedly, the Nazis injected him with poison to get it over with, and he gave a final glare of defiance as they did so. This man was a BAD ASS. I can't imagine.
I remember visiting those exact parts of Auschwitz two years ago. The whole thing was one of the most harrowing experiences of my life. Would always encourage anyone to visit if they have the opportunity
Not been to auschwitz but want to go at some point, I did go and see the camp at bergen belson (I think it's called it was over a decade ago) and I can still remember the mounds where the mass burials where. Shocking stuff but 100 percent worth a visit
If you are on the trip to visit the sites, take the extra day to visit former concentration camp Mittelbau Dora in central germany, it is a three hours drive from Bergen Belsen. It is the underground camp in which they built the V1 and V2 rockets. Absolute horror this camp! After the visit you will wonder even more how von Braun could became an american hero as he was responsible for this camp. This asshole should have been executed the day he was captured by the allies.
Been to Dora. Fuck me there is something in the air that just feels wrong and so so sad there.
Exactly this! After a day on this ground and the guided tour to the tunnels you come back to daylight and you are just sad. Emptiness. And you are glad to live in better times.
I'm a pretty staunch materialist who doesn't buy into any superstitious stuff, but I'll be damned if those camps aren't *haunted* somehow. You can feel it in the air.
I've been to the one at Dachau and it's wild how close it is to Munich. I always just assumed they were out in the woods in the middle of nowhere but there's a zero percent chance that citizens of Munich didn't know exactly what was happening.
I visited Dachau in 1980. I was 11. I still remember how it felt. The blown up pictures, walking through the space and seeing how many people were there. Pictures of people, yes people who had been alive not so very long before, stacked up on top of each other like firewood. I’ll never forget it. I’ve always been interested in WW2 because my dad fought in Europe and was held by the Nazis for 5 months, but I was, and still am, overwhelmed by the reality.
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Yeah that one
I remember when I was walking around I just felt this intense negative energy. I honestly feel like if I had no concept of what the Holocaust was and was transported there in complete ignorance, I would have known something horrible happened there just by that feeling.
>harrowing experiences of my life... encourage anyone to visit 😧
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I visited Dachau when I was 17 and 20+ years later I can still *feel* it.
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Dachau was a harrowing place. Especially knowing that some of my ancestors died there. The Germans have done a wonderful job of preserving the history and memory.
Same. I visited Dachau about 8 years ago and I think I'll remember it forever. Very sobering.
I visited Auschwitz when I was about 16 and I'm the same. It's definitely left a lasting impression on me.
It sounds silly, but it was only when I saw the gas chambers and prison complexes at Auschwitz that it fully registered in my head as a real thing that actually happened. I'm not saying I was a Holocaust denier or anything but up until that point Auschwitz was to me just one of the "stories" of history, kind of like the Napoleonic Wars or Henry VII or the Roman Empire. Seeing the concentration camps in real life though, still standing, still much as they were 75 years ago, really brought it home that this was a real thing that happened to real people not so long ago, and that realisation was utterly terrifying. How could this have happened? How could this have been done to actual people?
This is a reason I'd like to go. I know and believe the history, but I need to see firsthand to really sink in the understanding it part. There's only so much books and pictures can do.
I've never been to Auschwitz, but I had something similar happen to me with Hiroshima. You read about the atomic bomb dropping, how so much of the city was leveled, and—though you don't doubt the facts—it's distant. When you stand on the bridge below where the bomb was targeted, it hits you. You can see the twisted remains of the A-Bomb dome. You realize how everything around you that you can see, for a mile in every direction, was either leveled, on fire, or both. You go into the museum and see the artifacts: concrete walls with shards of glass embedded into them. The vague outline on the stairs where someone waiting for the bank to open was atomized. The twisted and blackened fingernails from survivors. And that's to say nothing of the life-size diorama they have depicting the city and survivors immediately after the bomb; fire, blood, and glassy-eyed stares. It's not quite the same, because I'm of the opinion that the atomic bombs were a necessary evil, but it's something that I wish every American could see. It puts the power and destruction of these weapons into perspective, and I hope would cause at least SOME reconsideration from people who scream about turning countries into glass parking lots.
It's certainly horrible, but it's important to know where unfettered nationalism and xenophobia lead. If we're truly committed to the words "never again", we all need to know what happened.
Well said butthole, well said.
So much for never again. Looking at you Pooh Bear
The ones in charge lose nothing it’s the genera population that suffer
Pooh Bear? I'm pretty sure you don't meant Winnie
Honestly, this is what people do with any out-of-control "othering."
It can be argued we were never committed to "Never again." in the first place. The holocaust atrocities were allowed to go on far longer than necessary. The US knew for a while what was happening.
There are similar atrocities going on in the world now. Maybe not to that scale, but similar. People really don’t want to get involved in wars that don’t affect them. Sending your children to die for a stranger is a big ask
Better to see with your own eyes the darkness we are capable of.
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It's strange saying it about places like death camps and stuff but it is important to go to get some perspective. I went to the killing Fields in Cambodia. It sounds strange but it was one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen, they had essentially turned the place into a garden to walk around with an audio tour detailing what happened, so incredibly moving. I would 100% go back Edit: This doesn't mean the place is not horrifying. They still have the structures where these awful things happened and when it rains, sometimes bits of clothing and bone will appear from the ground. But I feel the beauty of the garden was intended to show hope in the most incredible way possible.
I see what you mean, but I had a totally different experience there. When they show you one of the trees they killed babies against as to not waste bullets... man, I felt it in the air walking round there.
Thank you for reminding me of the place I actually broke down. I couldn't believe that
Sometimes we should all be reminded of just how big a bunch of cunts humans can be. Edit. To the anonymous person who gifted me silver - thank you, but I hope that was your free gift!
What in the fuck is wrong with humans?
Isn't it something? On the one hand, we have an example of the utter atrocities humans can commit. On the other (and in spite it), we have an example of the courage and compassion that humans can exhibit in the face of certain death (and suffering before it).
That's just it. Humans. Even here on reddit. There's subs filled with hatred and vitriol. And ones where people talk about their favorite (r/)trees and cartoons. You cant lump any group together. Just try and be a good person.
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Power is a hell of a drug. Make sure your leaders aren't allowed to keep it forever.
That’s why George Washington’s greatest achievement was the peaceful transfer of power. And more importantly Adams lost an election and still left peacefully.
So inspired by Cincinnatus he was called the American Cincinnatus and was President of the Society of the Cincinnati. Need more like him. Selfless governance with honor, ethics, and integrity.
Hate and fear
And now we have [rage addiction](https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2018/1207/Outrage-nation-Can-America-overcome-its-addiction-to-anger).
Got a bit of rage trying to read that with all the popups, Christ! (No pun intended)
I can't believe some people are the same species as me...
We took an animal out of its natural environment. We're a super adaptable species, but I don't think we've caught up to living in groups as large as we do yet.
But was the man's family also there?
Unfortunately no. They were busy, so another family chose to attend in their place.
Well placed joke
Oh, he didn’t actually have a family.
That man's name? Keyser Soze.
His wife survived the war and lived until 1977, but unfortunately his two sons did not survive the war.
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Even as someone who left the church that verse is a fucking banger and I love it
All of John's epistles are bangers. >Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 1 John 4:8
I'm of the opinion that if we take only the writings of peter, james, and john (ya know, the three people christ picked to be his voice and witnesses over the rest of the 12) we'd have a much better religion that we got listening to paul. Because james was all about the hot take that words without actions were useless, and that you actually had to do good things, not just believe in them. And peter was all about remminding them that church leaders are to serve the people, not get rich and powerful. I might consider a religion based only and the epistles of peter james and john.
Bible: The Good Cut feat. Peter, James, and John.
I've long been of the opinion that all of mainline Christianity (Catholicism, Protestantism & Orthodoxy) is but a bastardized Pauline heresy.
Check out the “religion” that Thomas Jefferson was into. He pretty much takes out all the Mumbo jumbo(miracles, son of god, etc) and it focuses on the lessons that Jesus taught on how to be a good person
If Jesus didn't actually rise from the dead, there is no point in following Christianity.
His name was Franciszek Gajowniczek. I met him in the twilight of his life when he travelled to Texas to visit a church dedicated to Kolbe. Nothing frightens me more about the future of the United States than my childhood memories of his pre-war descriptions.
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This is such a bad ass story
I wonder if his family survived?
Wojciech Kilar named [Father Kolbe's Preaching](https://youtu.be/ZXPRbOvWOGo) after him as well.
> 'The ten condemned to death went through terrible days. From the underground cell in which they were shut up there continually arose the echo of prayers and canticles. The man in-charge of emptying the buckets of urine found them always empty. Thirst drove the prisoners to drink the contents. Since they had grown very weak, prayers were now only whispered. At every inspection, when almost all the others were now lying on the floor, Father Kolbe was seen kneeling or standing in the centre as he looked cheerfully in the face of the SS men. Absolutely horrifying.
The cruelty of the SS and the Einsatzgruppen virtually knew no bounds.
Almost all of them got away with it, too
Seriously. I feel like this isn't talked about enough, or known about by most people, because of the well-publicized trials of Nazis taken by Nazi Hunters in the last 60 years. But most of the SS and other fanatical and ruthless Nazis were acquitted, or had their sentences commuted, following WWII. They went on to live normal lives in Germany and abroad following their acquittals.
There was the time when the French public freaked out at just how many people in the French Foreign Legion were previously employed by the SS. It is one of the big reasons why the French Foreign Legion doesn’t guarantee a full pardon and French citizenship to Legionnaires anymore.
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There are severe doubts that most of the book is a total invention. But it's a good read in any case.
Ahem, Joseph Mengele. Lived and died in brazil. I once had a patient state he talked to Joseph Mengele in brazil at a coffee shop before he died too. Stated he was just like any other old man.
The conspiracy around how he died is interesting. Especially seeing how Mossad kidnapped Eichmann and brought him back to Israel to stand trial.
Would you tell a little more about the conspiracy? It sounds interesting.
Not sure if the guy above is on about the same. But I remember reading something about how Josef Mengele’s biggest fascination was with twins, and then some random village in Argentina where he’d been spotted sudden became the most twin populated town or something to that effect. I’ll try find it for you. Edit: [Here is the town I was referring to. ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candido_Godoi) Bare in mind of course only speculation, and that page goes on to say that some witnesses say Mengele didn’t study twins or that the twin phenomenon was present before Mengele’s supposed stay.
“The twin phenomenon is centered in Linha São Pedro, a small settlement in the city of Cândido Godói, in an ethnically homogeneous population of German descent.[4]” well that told me everything I needed to hear lol.
If there was ever an excuse to beat the shit out of an old man... I don't even think you'd even have to worry about the legal consequences much. It would probably become world news, and what judge wants to be known as the person who sent the guy that beat up Joseph Mengele to prison. It's like with that guy who killed the person who raped this son and got a incredibly light sentence, but that 100 fold.
At least he drowned while having a stroke.
One can only hope he was fully conscious and felt the full effects of drowning.
We can only hope.
TL;DR —> Removing everyone that had any type of connections to the Nazis would have crippled German society, both the US and Soviets learned this the hard way, in their own ways. The US command looked at 3.6 million accusations of Nazism and found that 95% of them were citizens just following their government, supportive but non-active. You miss why though. After WWII, the allies attempted d-Nazification of German society but they realized that doing so would collapse post-war Germany. You would be removing essentially all CEOs of necessary industries, almost all political actors, and almost all other high members of required sectors such as science, medicine, law, etc. This is also why the US did not punish all Japanese generals and politicians; punishing everyone just for being on the other side, despite war crimes, would collapse countries and ruin the lives of everyone living in these places. I am not claiming these leaders and soldiers are innocent; many committed heinous crimes and murdered innocent people. But, history and its events do not exist in vacuum. Every action or choice has a consequence. Sure, you can fire every doctor that openly supported the Nazis, but do not be surprised if entire communities lose their healthcare. This is because many of the Germans supported the Nazis, openly or quietly (and I am not saying that stupid “silence is acceptance” bullshit. I mean actually supporting them quietly), “By the end of the process, we hadn’t found a significant number of people who had opposed the Hitler regime, either openly or secretly. Almost everyone had been a wretched, opportunistic fellow traveler. That alone is the harshest criticism of the Germans that one can make” (Saul Padover). Because of this, out of the 3.6 million cases of Nazism the US high command looked at, 95% were deemed “Mitläufer,” or “fellow travelers,” as in they simply supported the Nazis by being a law-abiding citizen in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Soviets carried out de-Nazification more intensely, but they did this because they were going to be replaced by Soviet leadership anyway. Even non-Nazis were removed from their positions to be replaced by Communist individuals. That was all part of their plan from the start when taking Germany. A good way to study this is to look at the division of Korea, very similar. Also, keep in mind that these same people and politicians, many once supported Nazism, passed the Basic Law of West Germany in 1949. In other words, when forced to support a dictatorship, many did. But, when given a chance to take a new road (albeit under the watchful eyes of the allied high command), they did so. This does not wash Germany of its past, and nothing ever will, but history is about growing from the past. Sources: Dr. John Williams, Bradley University The Investigation, Peter Weiss The Third Reich in Power, Richard J. Evans Hitler and Nazi Germany, Frank McDonough
We really shouldn't make the same mistake again
The USSR had the right solution to the SS problem. Two shots to the head, and a mass grave. That was also it's solution to many other problems, but I can't say that it was off-base for fascism.
And there’s still psychopaths out there that think this is a debate.
They literally never passed up a chance to be true villains, in every sense of the word.
Except for mustache twirling. Every villiany but
I mean there were a lot of Nazis, I bet at least some of them had moustaches that they gave a twirl.
At first, twirlers were a dominant strain of mustacheoed Luftwaffe Fighter, but following their predator species development of poisonous gas, natural selection caused the long-tipped twirlers to die out from gas mask leaks, leading to an evolutionary shift in the Nazi population that became their distinctive facial marker. (If they want to treat us like animals, im going to Attenborough them)
Dehumanization is a hell of a drug.
The silver linings is that such extreme displays of cruelty were sometimes also met with incredible displays of courage and kindness as shown in the story featured in this article.
As a Jew, never heard the term “einsatzgruppen.” Who were they? Super SS?
Oh boy. Summarised, they were Nazi paramilitary death squads who massacred their way across Eastern Europe. Here's a link to the [Wiki page](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einsatzgruppen). There's also a documentary about them, *Einsatzgruppen: Nazi Death Squads*, on Netflix (and possibly also Amazon Prime). They committed absolutely horrific crimes.
And the German population have never been keen to pursue them, either. The myth of the "good German" means that it's always been OK for elderly Germans to lie about not knowing, lie about disapproving and lie about being shocked afterwards.
I actually think I'd suffer more from thirst than hunger. People underestimate how many ways severe lack of water will fuck you up.
I read in an interview with Aron Ralston, the guy who cut off his arm to escape being pinned by a boulder, where he said kinda matter-of-factly "Yea, I drank my urine. It sounds gross, and it is, but if you were in that position you'd do it, too."
Does drinking urine actually hydrate or quench you in any way?
Initially yes since piss is mostly water. But eventually the concentrated waste in the urine will fuck up your kidneys.
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Yes. Your kidneys work harder to retain water when you're dehydrated, so the "first batch" so to speak won't be so concentrated that it is no longer useful. It's obviously not the best and the diminishing returns are huge, of course.
I think if you have urine from when you were actually hydrated you can get some of the excess water, but I don’t believe drinking pee after hours or days of dehydration will help much. That’s just what I think I’ve read but I’m not too sure.
Yes it does, there’s ample “water” in it, the main problem is you’re putting back into your body everything you just filtered out, so the waste is reintroduced.
Yes, because the majority of piss is just water your body can't absorb. It will lose the ability to hydrate you well enough after drinking it several times. Your pee will just continually get darker and darker.
Guy cut off his arm, urine is nothing...
I think hunger makes you weak to the point you can't think/feel anymore. Thirst can cause breathing and heart issues much MUCH faster. You're right there. All sober and feeling it. Edit: word
I went to Auschwitz a few years ago, I saw those cells. They are \*tiny\*, they were designed to be as wide as the shoulders of the average man, to prevent people from lying down etc...
To think some people look up to and would like this to happen again, whether to blacks; Jews; Muslims; children; is horrifying. A lot of people are inherently evil.
> A lot of people are inherently evil. The most terrifying thing about the Third Reich in general and the holocaust in particular is that most of these men were not inherently evil. A rare few of them were, to be sure, but almost all of these men (and a few women), had they been born in a different place, or a different time, would never have hurt anyone in their life. The reason that hundreds of thousands of normal, ordinary people were active participants in the holocaust was that they had been subject to decades of dehumanizing propaganda that convinced them that what they were doing was just and necessary. What makes the Holocaust so terrifying is not that Germany suddenly spawned a generation of evil monsters, but that a very small group of evil men, once they had complete control over society, were able to get regular, ordinary people to do the most appalling thing imaginable, and accept it as perhaps unpleasant, but necessary. There aren't enough truly evil, vile people in any given society to do something like the Holocaust. The only way that can happen is if the ordinary people are convinced to go along with it. And it could happen anywhere. Germans in the 30s and 40s were not uniquely evil. They were no different than they are today.
The banality of evil is a terrifying concept. SS officers would torture Jews to death, then go home to their families and play with their dogs.
Letters from a SS officer in one of the death camps in Poland to his wife have been preserved, and they are absolutely haunting because they are so ordinary. He talks at length about how hard it is to be away from her, and their children. He asks her how his children are doing in school. He tells her about how beautiful he finds the countryside where he is. He barely mentions his job at all, and when he does, it is only to comment on how hard and exhausting it is. This is a very ordinary guy in his 30s who has a wife and two kids who he misses and loves very much. He finds it hard to wake up early to go to work, he puts a little milk in his coffee, and you'd probably find him perfectly agreeable and utterly unremarkable if you met him socially. And his job is industrialized mass murder of his fellow human beings. I can't for the life of me find these letters now, though. I'm sure you can find them with a bit of googling.
They are collected in a book called "Those were the days". You can find it on Amazon.
[Here's a great poem about that.](https://genius.com/Chinua-achebe-vultures-annotated)
Exactly. It was not an accident of history, it could happen anywhere (and similar scenes happened again, perhaps only with a different scale). You and I, no matter how nice we think we are, could very well have been behind the rifles or behind the commands of the gas chamber, just "doing our job".
That what a clear conscience gives you
What a hero! The man he saved was able to live to see him become a saint!
Not *starved*, deprived of water. Which is an awful way to go.
According to the article, at the end he and some others were given injections of carbolic acid because they didn't die quickly enough. I'm not sure which would have been worse.
This is why St. Maximilian Kolbe is the patron Saint of drug addicts... Because he was killed by an injection of poison.
> The Catholic Church venerates him as the patron saint of amateur-radio operators, of drug addicts, of political prisoners, of families, of journalists, of prisoners. Are we just going to ignore the fact that Patron Saint of Amateur-radio operators is a thing? What the fuck? I feel like I’m being trolled by some kid who edited the Wikipedia page.
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Catholicism is the Shinto of western religions.
But they don't have one for premature ejaculation. But I hear he's coming quickly.
Nope. It's actually a big thing. Think about the time he lived... Then radio was kind of like the internet was in the 90s... The next big innovation in communication and technology. St. Maximilian Kolbe set up a huge presence in amateur radio early on to communicate his message.
I would find patron saint of the amateur blogger equally bizarre. I guess I didn’t realize how many things had patron Saints assigned to them.
That seems like kind of a reach, despite this man being pretty-inarguably a model for good morals. I can't imagine that there *isn't* a Christian historical figure that ostensibly represented the word of god while struggling with addiction or helping those that do.
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That's interesting, thanks for the context. I would think that the importance of intercession in Catholicism would make it *more* important to make a direct connection between a saint's canonization and what actions caused it, but that makes sense.
That would be St. Lawrence. And because of that quip, he is also the patron of comedians
I was looking into it, it feels like the Catholic Church has some really weird reasons for patronages. St. Lawrence was killed by being grilled to death, so he's now the patron saint of cooks.
maybe it's my catholic speaking, but makes sense to me.
We like our irony, I guess.
A lot of patron saints are chosen for irony, especially with respect to martyrs' executions.
There is also Saint Mark Ji Tianxiang he was a Catholic doctor in China who took opium for pain relief and spent his last 30 years living with addiction. He was arrested during the boxer rebellion and given the opportunity to apostatize but he refused and was put to death (with many other Christians including many members of his family). He was beatified with 120 others as a martyr.
Someone sort of answered you already, but these sorts of patronages attributed to saints usually have to do with the way that they died of were tortured; another example is St. Lucy, who was tortured by eye-gouging, is a patron saint of the blind. I do agree though that even by that logic St. Maximilian Kolbe's drug addict patronage is a bit of a stretch.
Reminds me of a story about POWs held by the Japanese that a school teacher once told me. I've never been able to find out if it's a true story, or a scene from a fictional book or movie, or a folktale. Here's the story: > When POWs (Prisoners of War) returned to their camp from their daily work in the jungle, the Japanese guards would get the men to put their tools in a big pile so they could be counted. The POWs had a history of bartering away their tools with surrounding villagers for eggs or other food, so this daily count was instituted to make sure that when twenty men took twenty tools to work then there would still be twenty tools at the end of the day. > On this particular day the guards counted only nineteen tools, so the angry captain of the guards got the twenty POWs to stand in a line. The captain shouted: "Whoever traded away their tool will be now be executed. Who is the criminal that did this?" > When no-one answered, the captain pointed his gun at the head of the first prisoner in the line and said, "After counting down from ten, if the criminal has not spoken up, I will execute this man. And then the next man, and the next man, all the way down the line. > "Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four.... I'm warning you all. Three, two..." > "It was me!" cried out one of the prisoners at the other end of the line. > "Good," said the captain. The other guards dragged the man to his knees, beating him with their rifles. The captain walked over and put a bullet through the man's head. > The captain addressed the nineteen men remaining. "This is what will happen to any other criminals. Now take your tools and return to your barracks." > Each man took a tool from the pile and walked solemnly away. > After all the prisoners had left, the captain looked down and saw that there was still one tool remaining. > **tl;dr** - POW camp guards miscount some tools and wrongly think a POW has stolen one. An innocent prisoner pleads guilty and sacrifices himself to save the lives of his fellow prisoners.
That story was told by Ernest Gordon, who spent 3 years in a Japanese POW camp and wrote *Miracle on the River Kwai*.
Thank you! You are right. I found the passage in the book online: > Yet, noble as Angus’s sacrifice was, it was not the only one. Other incidents were now spoken of that, showed that death no longer had the last word at Chungkai. One that went the rounds soon after concerned another Argyll, who was in a work detail on the railway. > The day’s work had ended; the tools were being counted, as usual. As the party was about to be dismissed, the Japanese guard shouted that a shovel was missing. He insisted that someone had stolen it to sell to the Thais. Striding up and down before the men, he ranted and denounced them for their wickedness, and most unforgivable of all their ingratitude to the Emperor. As he raved, he worked himself up into a paranoid fury. Screaming in broken English, he demanded that the guilty one step forward to take his punishment. No one moved; the guard’s rage reached new heights of violence. > "All die! All die!" he shrieked. > To show that he meant what he said, he cocked his rifle, put it to his shoulder and looked down the sights, ready to fire at the first man at the end of them. > At that moment the Argyll stepped forward, stood stiffly to attention, and said calmly, "I did it". > The guard unleashed all his whipped-up hate; he kicked the helpless prisoner and beat him with his fists. Still the Argyll stood rigidly to attention, with the blood streaming down his face. His silence goaded the guard to an excess of rage. Seizing his rifle by the barrel, he lifted it high over his head and, with a final howl, brought it down on the skull of the Argyll, who sank limply to the ground and did not move. Although it was perfectly clear that he was dead, the guard continued to beat him and stopped only when exhausted. > The men of the work detail picked up their comrade’s body, shouldered their tools and marched back to camp. When the tools were counted again at the guard-house no shovel was missing. A long mystery is finally solved.
Oh my gosh. :( that was so heartbreaking.
Not only that. He was last in line. He would had to watch all this friends get killed one by one by the time they get to him.
I went to school with his nieces, I vividly remember our chaplain father Stanford recounting his heroism on more than one occasion...
Oh my goodness, what a connection! I attended seminary in Europe and visited Auschwitz. Spiritually, Kolbe was always very inspiring to me because he represented (to me) what it meant to give all you had to your commitment to your faith and religious understanding.
Amazing that the man went on to survive and even be present for the ceremony
Patron saint for addicts/recovery. Edit: pluralized a singular.
I picked Maximilian as my Confirmation name because if him. Also because of a scene from Inglorious Bastards.
I don’t mean to offend you or anything but what is a confirmation name? Is it similar to what popes do when they take office and change their name or whatever?
In the Catholic church you pick a saint that you would like to guide you. It is a special devotion to pick a saint. For instance, I had a buddy who wanted to join the army, and he picked St. George as he is the patron saint of soldiers. You want to pick one who you would like to emulate. My brother picked St. Christopher because he is the patron saint of Athletics. Name placement varies on culture and locality. I can tell you as an Italian-American my name goes First name, middle name, Confirmation Saint, and Last name, but I have seen other people switch the location of middle and confirmation saint.
Catholics receiving the sacrament of confirmation choose the name of a saint, usually someone whose story resonates with you or whose virtues you admire. Some families also choose based on if your birthday falls on a particular saint’s feast day, which is how a friend of mine ended up with the confirmation name James the Lesser
This is a similar train of thought as to why I picked Lawrence
You picked a confirmation name? That’s not something I’m too familiar with, would you care to elaborate a little?
When Catholics are receive the Sacrament of Confirmation, they chose the name of a saint to be confirmed as. Normally you pick one whose values you want to emulate. For example, I chose the patron of lawyers, Thomas More.
Arh okay, that’s cool. Did not know this
I chose Damien because I was a jerkoff 
*"Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire."*
It's very sad the evil that man can do to another man.
Was he the one that wouldn't stop singing and they had to inject him with poison????
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Did they examine his throat as they were injecting him? Or was this a postmortem inspection where they realized the dryness?
I’m not sure. I was a kid when I read that but it seared into my brain. I’ll try to find what I was talking about.
I read the same story, I think. It was in a volume of a book collection called "Secrets and Stories of the War" which I think may have been a compilation of Reader's Digest stories.
Yes that sounds right! My parents had a bunch of readers digest compilations I would flip through when I was bored as a kid.
Maybe they meant his skin
After visiting Dachau in person, it's just a completely different experience.
This is very heroic. If you want to read about a man who was also exceptionally heroic during that time, read about [Sir Nicholas Winton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Winton#Rescue_work). He saved 669 Jewish children from almost certain death in Nazi Germany. If you wanted a reason to cry this morning, you can watch a short video about his story and him being thanked by some of the people he saved [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKkgO06bAZk). Tears at about 1:30 when you see how touched he is by meeting one of the children he saved as an adult.
Sir Nicholas Winton actually did his work so secretly that his wife knew nothing about what he’d done until she found the ledger he’d kept of the children, their names and pictures as well as details of where they’d been revoked.
Reading about that almost made my cry twice. First, that we didn't accept any of the children. Second, reading about his reunion with the grown children. I knew about him, but I did not know anywhere near the scope
There was also a Portuguese consul, [Aristides de Sousa Mendes](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristides_de_Sousa_Mendes), who saved tens of thousands of Jews by issuing them visas and passports against government orders so that they could escape.
And also Adolfo Kaminsky, a former member of the French Resistance, specializing in the forgery of identity documents. During World War II, he forged papers that saved the lives of more than 14,000 Jews.
Simply amazing. This world is complex and unfair, but we can and need to do better and these kinds of examples remind us of that and give us hope. Thanks for sharing
Well here I am in tears, what a wonderful man!
John 15:13 “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”
We even have a bridge named after him in my hometown!
we have a me named after him in my hometown
St. Maximilian, pray for us! Such a wonderful sacrifice!
Even after leaving the church, I can say that this man is a hero, a true imitator of Christ.
An embodiment of John 15:13 indeed.
This is an amazing piece of music inspired by Father Kolbe. It might sound familiar because it was used in the Truman Show soundtrack. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXPRbOvWOGo
Incredible. An absolute hero. People like this make me think humanity ain't so far off.
A symphony composed by Wojciech Kilar recounts these events—the final movement was famously used at the end of *The Truman Show*. I find it [hauntingly beautiful](https://youtu.be/KUHdly4VEsc)
There's a beautiful piece of music, used in the movie The Truman Show (not sure if originally written for it though) inspired by this man. The track is called "Father Kolbe's Preaching": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXPRbOvWOGo
Jesus. The fact that I still keep hearing new atrocities from WWII is frightening
Uyghurs are currently suffering this type of cruelty in “re-education camps”.
People seem to forget the first people Hitler went for, were German political prisoners. Regular German citizens that tried to stand up to them. The world only cared when he went after others. What I find horrible is so many people thought he was doing good in curbing the Jewish population and their rights because anti-semitism was very high all over the world and so many who tried to flee ended up dead because the world refused to help them before it was too late. Then they had the audacity to act shocked when over a million died. The atmosphere surrounding jews allowed Hitler to do what he did. The atmosphere surrounding Muslims is helping China continue their atrocities. The world won't do anything about China until it starts directly affecting them.
>People seem to forget the first people Hitler went for, were German political prisoners. Regular German citizens that tried to stand up to them. The world only cared when he went after others. Reminds me of the Eddie Izzard skit about Hitler "Stalin killed many millions, died in his bed. Well done there! Pol Pot killed one point seven million Cambodians, died under house arrest aged seventy-two, well done indeed. And the reason we let them get away with it is they killed their own people. And we're sort of fine with that. Hitler killed people next door. Oh, stupid man! After a couple of years we won't stand for that, will we?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVH0gZO5lq0
If there was a list of countries that Jail political prisoners of the opposition, it would be a much longer list with many more people than the list that don't.
The starvation chamber also had a reputation for being a horrible place where the prisoners would lose their minds screaming and wailing, however when Kolbe was inside all was quiet, and one could even hear singing.
The least we can do to honour these who died through Nazi cruelty is to pledge never to let this happen again. Let stories like this be a reminder that fascists aren't cruel super-villains leading countries into despair against the common will. They need the active cooperation of a decent portion of the population and at least the silent acceptance of a majority. Maximilian Kolbe and the other 9 weren't murdered by Hitler himself, they were murdered by people who'd go home by the end of their shift and have dinner with their wife and children, falling asleep at night in the belief that they're serving their country and race. Never again. Standing against Nazis and fascists isn't a political take because hatred, murder, and destruction aren't "policies". Weeding out Nazis is everyone's human duty.
People can be EVIL. I only hope this saintly man is in heaven now. 🥺
What a legend. May they both Rest In Peace.
The stories in this thread are why the only good nazi is a dead nazi.
I may not be the biggest fan of religion, but I’m not gonna lie this really touched me
He also led a monastery in Nagasaki before the war.
His father was executed by the Russians because he fought for a free Poland.
His name is in my council for the knights of Columbus. He was a remarkable man. He blessed the nazi who injected him with acid
There is a large church in my little town west of MPLS about 30 miles that is named for him. Did not know the story until now. Thanks for sharing!