Maximilian Kolbe's Bunk Number 18

In the starvation bunker of Auschwitz, Block 11, a Franciscan priest named Maximilian Kolbe spent his final days doing something the guards had never witnessed. He sang hymns. He led prayers. He comforted the nine other men condemned to die beside him. Kolbe was not selected for death. When the SS chose ten prisoners for the starvation bunker in July 1941 — retaliation for one man's escape — a Polish sergeant named Franciszek Gajowniczek cried out that he had a wife and children.…