Simply put, there has never been anywhere as horrific as Auschwitz. All the cruelty, sadism, indifference and psychopathy that our species is capable of reached its fullest expression between its walls, where 1.5 million people died pointlessly. Yet, even in the midst of this inferno, there were moments of humanity.
In 1941, three prisoners managed to escape the camp and consequently the deputy commander ordered ten prisoners to be starved to death in retaliation. When one of the randomly-selected men began to cry for his wife and children, another prisoner called Maximilian Kolbe stepped forward and offered to take his place.
Read that sentence again: in the middle of the most-notorious murder machine that’s ever existed, Kolbe was so moved by pity he volunteered to die in place of another man. And when the Nazis acquiesced and sent him into a bunker with the nine others, his spirit didn’t break. By all accounts, he spent the last two weeks of his life comforting the others with his Catholic faith and accepted his end with a dignity that should have been impossible in the circumstances. Nor was it a useless gesture: the man whose place he took—Franciszek Gajowniczek—lived another 53 years.
Source:
http://listverse.com/2013/05/27/10-heart-warming-tales-from-the-worst-places-on-earth/Linkback:
https://tubagbohol.mikeligalig.com/index.php?topic=73084.0
