Father Kolbe spent two weeks in the starvation bunker in Block 11, and eyewitnesses could hear him praying, singing, and calming his fellow captives. According to a janitor who worked in the block, Kolbe was always calmly standing or kneeling in the middle of the cell each time the guards checked on him. After two weeks, Father Kolbe was the only one still alive, but the guards were impatient to empty the bunker so it could be used for other prisoners. On August 14, 1941, he was killed by a lethal injection of carbolic acid. Kolbe offered his arm to the guard, and some say his final words were “Ave Maria.”

Maksymilian Kolbe was elevated to sainthood by Pope John Paul II on October 10, 1982. The man he saved, Franciszek Gajowniczek, was present at his canonization.

Maria Mandel (also spelled Mandl)

Born on January 10, 1912, in Münzkirchen, Upper Austria, Mandel served at Lichtenburg and Ravensbrück concentration camps, rising through the ranks until she succeeded Johanna Langefeld as SS-Lagerführerin of Auschwitz-Birkenau. She reported only to the kommandant and participated in selections and other abuses. It is estimated that she sent half a million women and children to die in the gas chambers. At Auschwitz, Mandel was known as the Beast. She was fond of Irma Grese, a guard whom prisoners nicknamed the Hyena of Auschwitz and the Beautiful Beast, and promoted Grese to head of the Hungarian women’s camp at Birkenau (Grese was accused of war crimes during the Belsen trial and hanged at the age of twenty-two). Mandel created the Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz and was awarded the War Merit Cross Second Class for her services.

In November 1944, Mandel was assigned to the Mühldorf subcamp of Dachau and Elisabeth Volkenrath replaced her at Auschwitz. The US Army arrested Mandel on August 10, 1945, then handed her over to the Polish People’s Republic in November 1946. She was tried in Kraków during the Auschwitz trial and in November 1947 was sentenced to death by hanging. The sentence was carried out on January 24, 1948. She was thirty-six years old.

Witold Pilecki

Pilecki was born on May 13, 1901, to a noble, devoutly Roman Catholic Polish family. He served as a captain in the Polish army during the Polish-Soviet War, the Second Polish Republic, and World War II. During the German invasion of Poland, he served in the Nineteenth Infantry Division as a cavalry platoon commander; then his division was incorporated into the Forty-First Infantry Division, where Pilecki served as second in command.

In October 1939 his division was disbanded and parts of it began to surrender, so Pilecki and his commander went into hiding in Warsaw, where they cofounded the Secret Polish Army, one of the first underground organizations in Poland. This resistance group was later incorporated into the Union for Armed Struggle, later renamed the Home Army. Pilecki later authored Witold’s Report, the first comprehensive Allied intelligence report on Auschwitz and the Holocaust.