In the summer of 1941, after a prisoner escaped from Auschwitz, the camp leader picked ten men to die by starvation as punishment. One of them, Franciszek Gajowniczek, cried out that he had a wife and children. A Polish priest named Maximilian Kolbe stepped forward and asked to take his place, and to everyone’s shock the commander agreed. Kolbe died in the starvation bunker in August 1941. Gajowniczek survived the war and spent years telling people about the man who died so he could live.
