From Danuta Czech,
The Auschwitz Chronicle for year 1941:
JULY 29 . . .
In the afternoon, the Polish prisoner Zymunt Pilawski (No. 14156) escapes. The telegram informing all appropriate departments of the escape is signed by Camp Commander Fritzsch in the absence of Commandant Höss.
APMO, IZ-8/Gestapo Lodz/2/88/33; D-AuI-12/2, Bulletin, p 5.
Camp Commander Fritzsch probably chooses 15 hostages—this number is written in the Bunker Register—from among the prisoners in Block 14 in retaliation for the escape. He condemns them to death by starvation in the bunker of Block 11. During the selection, a Polish prisoner who is a Franciscan monk and missionary, Maksymilian Raimund Kolbe (No. 16670), steps out of line and asks Camp Commander Fritzsch to take him instead of the desperate selected prisoner Franciszek Gajowniczek (No. 5659). After a brief dispute with Father Kolbe, Fritzsch agrees to the substitution, especially when he finds out that Kolbe is a Catholic priest. The 15 selected prisoners are led off to Block 11. In the Bunker Register, the admission of the 15 prisoners is merely noted without listing names, numbers, day of admission, or day of death.
APMO, D-AuI-3/1a Bunker Register, p. 21; Mat. 605/47a Materials on Father Kolbe. Accounts of Former Prisoners Franciszeck Gajowniczek, Mieczysław Kościelniak, and others
p. 76
AUGUST 14
After spending two weeks in the bunker of Block 11 and surviving—his fellow sufferers all died—the priest Maksymilian Rajmund Kolbe is killed with a phenol injection by Hans Bock (No. 5). Hans Bock is the Block Senior in the prisoners' infirmary.
APMO, D-AuI-2/3574, Death Certificates; Mat. 605/47a, Accounts of Former Prisoners Brunon Borgowiez and Maksymilian Chlebik.
p. 80
Two things leap out in this as curious.
First, note the discrepancy of numbers. Pretty much all the other accounts of the Kolbe story (and I've looked around the web at about a dozen now) put the number of prisoners "selected" for starvation at ten, not fifteen. My suspicion is that that's also the number given in the "Accounts of Former Prisoners Franciszeck Gajowniczek, Mieczysław Kościelniak, and others"--namely, the number that has come down in the "oral tradition" of the camp, and been spread abroad since. But Czech of course is writing from within the heart of the Matrix itself, the Archives of the National Museum at Auschwitz (APMO), and so she has access to--and feels compelled to use--the available German documentation as well. And since the Bunker Register (APMO, D-AuI-3/1a) says "15" ("this number is written in the Bunker Register . . . ") she writes "15," hedging it with "probably" since she knows that that number is contradicted by the alleged eyewitness accounts that the rest of the entry is based on.
Of course, someone could try to argue that it's the Bunker Register that's at fault here, but really which is more likely: that the Germans doing the head count
at the time of the incident would get the number wrong, or that prisoners "reconstructing" the event later from memory would? It's not significant in the larger picture, perhaps, but it's an interesting example of conflicting evidence, and how the gatekeepers of the myth try to finesse it away. ("Probably.")
More important is this: "In the Bunker Register, the admission of the 15 prisoners is merely noted without listing names, numbers, day of admission, or day of death." That seems pretty callous, and you might be forgiven for imagining that the Germans could have miscounted after all if they were going to be that sloppy in recording other important details. Except, notice this too, from the entry for August 14: "After spending two weeks in the bunker of Block 11 and surviving—his fellow sufferers all died—the priest Maksymilian Rajmund Kolbe is killed with a phenol injection by Hans Bock (No. 5)."
So we do in fact know the name, and more importantly, the "day of death" of at least one of the fifteen prisoners allegedly condemned to death by starvation, namely, Maximilian Kolbe. And how do we know these alleged facts? Well, once again there are "Accounts of Former Prisoners" to draw on, but in an extraordinary blunder, Czech also indicates an official German source: "APMO, D-AuI-2/3574, Death Certificates."
Why is that a blunder? Just this. Maximilian Kolbe is famous--a "saint"--only in retrospect;
there's absolutely no reason why the Germans at the time would or should have taken any more care to record his death than the deaths of the other fourteen prisoners who supposedly died before him. In other words, there should be fourteen more death certificates, with names and day of death and all the other details that Czech claims earlier, in the entry for July 29, that we do not have. So where are they? The traces shouldn't be hard to locate: fourteen men who died between July 30 and August 14, 1941 (though their deaths presumably should be clustered toward the end of that period), all originally from the same block. We know the name of the man who was "saved" (Franciszeck Gajowniczek) and we know the name of the man who "saved" him (Maximilian Kolbe), but why do we not know the names of any of the others? Surely they too are worthy of the historian's interest: willingly or not, they shared the same terrible fate, they were innocent victims of a cruel regime, they deserve their place in the historical sun. Who were they? What were their names? And why don't any of the people busily promoting the legend of Saint Maximilian of Auschwitz seem to give a damn about finding out?
Is it possible that, somewhere in the Auschwitz archives, there are indeed fourteen (or for that matter, nine) death certificates, all of prisoners from Block 14, all of whom died in the first two weeks of August 1941? Of course I can't rule that out. But on the other hand, I'll only believe it when I see it.
In the meantime, the obvious inference is inescapable:
there was no mass starvation of condemned prisoners in the "bunker" of Block 11 in August 1941. Yes, there may indeed have been a punishment action whereby a group of prisoners was placed on reduced rations (that much would be par for the course, after all, in many penal contexts) as an example after an escape. And the notation in the Bunker Register, assuming it's genuine, may well refer to this. The Germans (or prisoners, or both) may even have referred to this punishment as time in the "starvation cell"; and for prisoners already in a weakened condition, it could well have been fatal. But whatever the case, that it was
not in fact fatal for fifteen men in August 1941 is clearly indicated by the fact that the documents proving it--which you can be sure Industry Representatives would be only too happy to show us if they had them--simply are not there.
We have a death certificate for Maximilian Kolbe. Where are the other fourteen?
Todesursache: Myocardinsuffizienz (Cause of Death: Heart Failure)
The rest is legend. I'll believe it when I see it.
