Stars: Edward Zentara, Christoph Waltz, Artur Barcis

Director: Krzysztof Zanussi

Summary: When Jan escapes from Auschwitz concentration camp to freedom in July 1941 the camp commandant, Fritsch, sentences ten men to starvation as revenge. One of the men is Maximilian Kolbe, a Franciscan priest, who gives his own life so that his fellow inmates may live. For Jan, the horrors of Auschwitz are over - only to be replaced by a crippling fear and guilt from which there is no escape.

St. Maximilian was born Raymond Kolbe in Poland, January 8, 1894. In 1910, he entered the Conventual Franciscan Order. He was sent to study in Rome where he was ordained a priest in 1918. Father Maximilian returned to Poland in 1919 and began spreading his Militia of the Immaculata movement of Marian consecration (whose members are also called MIs), which he founded on October 16, 1917. In 1927, he established an evangelization center near Warsaw called Niepokalanow, the "City of the Immaculata." By 1939, the City had expanded from eighteen friars to an incredible 650, making it the largest Catholic religious house in the world.
To better "win the world for the Immaculata," the friars utilized the most modern printing and administrative techniques. This enabled them to publish countless catechetical and devotional tracts, a daily newspaper with a circulation of 230,000 and a monthly magazine with a circulation of over one million. Maximilian started a shortwave radio station and planned to build a motion picture studio--he was a true "apostle of the mass media." He established a City of the Immaculata in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1930, and envisioned missionary centres worldwide.
Maximilian was a ground-breaking theologian. His insights into the Immaculate Conception anticipated the Marian theology of the Second Vatican Council and further developed the Church's understanding of Mary as "Mediatrix" of all the graces of the Trinity, and as "Advocate" for God's people.
In 1941, the Nazis imprisoned Father Maximilian in the Auschwitz death camp. There he offered his life for another prisoner and was condemned to slow death in a starvation bunker. On August 14, 1941, his impatient captors ended his life with a fatal injection. Pope John Paul II canonized Maximilian as a "martyr of charity" in 1982. St. Maximilian Kolbe is considered a patron of journalists, families, prisoners, the pro-life movement and the chemically addicted.

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Aspect Ratio:	4:3
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Subtitles On Or Off, Scene Selections, Web Link
Subtitles:	English
Year:	1991
Release Date:	October 6, 2008
Runtime:	90 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	E K A 40079
Keywords:	Subtitled, Life, General, Fit, German, Drama, Historical, Fur, Maximilian, Kolbe, Leben, Zycie, Za
Genre:	Drama