St. Maximillian Kolbe (1894-1941)

Born Raymond Kolbe in Poland, at age thirteen he entered the Franciscan junior seminary in Lwow and was ordained in 1918. In January 1922 he began publishing the magazine Knight of the Immaculate. At its peak it had a press run of 750,000 a month. In 1927 he founded the monastery of Niepokalanow, which was the largest in the world by 1939. In 1935 Kolbe began printing a daily newspaper. In 1938, he started his own radio station. In 1930, Maximillian went to work in Japan, where he started a magazine and founded a monastery. In 1932, he left for India, where he founded another monastery, but poor health forced him to return to Poland. After the Germans invaded Poland in 1939, Maximillian and several brothers were arrested and briefly imprisoned. He was arrested again, however, and in 1941 he was transferred to Auschwitz, where he was assigned to a special work group of priests. In July there was an escape from the camp. The Nazis called for ten men to be killed for each escapee. Francis Gajowniczek, a married man with young children was chosen to die for the escape, and Maximilian volunteered to take his place.
(Adapted from Saints.sqpn.com)