Marytown houses Holocaust exhibit

The New Testament quotes Jesus as saying: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me."

Raymond Kolbe, a Polish priest in the Conventual Franciscan Order, took up his cross in the form of a lethal injection of carbolic acid.

Theologian, evangelist and publisher of a daily Catholic newspaper, Kolbe was captured, tortured and eventually killed by the Nazis at the Auschwitz death camp in 1941.

And nearly 70 years later, a little-known exhibit about his life exists in the basement of Marytown. The Franciscan friary in Libertyville is the national shrine to St. Maximilian Kolbe.

A replica of Kolbe's prison cell is the centerpiece surrounded by hundreds of photographs chronicling his life and mission in Poland and his ordeal in the German concentration camp.

Canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1982, Kolbe is venerated for his self-sacrifice in volunteering to die in place of a fellow prisoner.

According to Kolbe historians, one of the captives escaped from the camp. Good for him, but bad for the remaining inmates.

Ten men would be executed as punishment for the successful escape.

When the guards picked a man named Francis Gajowniczek, he cried out, "My poor wife, my poor children, what will happen to my family?"

When Kolbe heard that, he said, "I am a Catholic priest from Poland. I would like to take his place because he has a wife and children."

The Nazis obliged, threw Kolbe into a starvation bunker and waited for him to die. He clung to life for two weeks until the guards grew impatient and injected him with poison.

Gajowniczek was eventually freed and lived to be 93 years old.

The patron saint for journalists, prisoners and the chemically addicted, Kolbe is quoted as saying, "Sanctity is not a luxury but it is an obligation, and is not difficult."