At a memorial Mass in Auschwitz last week, Archbishop Emeritus Ludwig Schick of Bamberg called on politicians to pray for Ukrainian-Russian reconciliation and a just peace on the eighty-second anniversary of St Maximilian Kolbe’s death there.
“Holy Maximilian Kolbe, patron of reconciliation, reconcile Russia and the Ukraine and bring peace to all peoples and nations in Europe and the whole world,” Schick prayed.
Schick is the head of the board of trustees for the Maximilian-Kolbe-Foundation, which held its fourteenth annual workshop at Auschwitz on 11-16 August to promote healing and reconciliation in Europe.
There were 30 participants from 11 European countries, who shared and exchanged their different experiences and perspectives on overcoming violence and on reconciliation.
The annual workshop aims to strengthen European discourse based on healing and reconciliation and to encourage European networking for peace. The Maximilian-Kolbe-Foundation was founded in 2007 with the support of the bishops’ conferences of both Germany and Poland.
Schick paid tribute to Kolbe’s Christian love and altruism when he was imprisoned in Auschwitz. The Polish priest, a Conventual Franciscan friar, ministered to his fellow prisoners throughout his time in the concentration camp.
In July 1941, a fellow-prisoner escaped and the SS camp commander said ten prisoners would be killed as a deterrent to prevent further escape attempts. When one of the selected men cried out that he was married and had children, Kolbe volunteered to take his place. Kolbe and the other nine men were given lethal injections and died on 14 August.
He was canonised and declared a martyr by St John Paul II in 1982. The man he saved had survived the Holocaust and was present at his canonisation.
“Every year I am shattered and lost for words by the Kolbe story,” said Schick.
“How was it possible that people could treat their fellow-human beings with such cruelty? But at the same time I marvel at the fact that St Maximilian Kolbe was able to preserve his humanity.”
Kolbe had shown that even when faced with barbarity, humanity in the spirit of Jesus Christ was possible, he said.
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