Gestapo empty the friary at Niepokalanow and take more than forty friars

NIEPOKALANOW, Poland, September 19, 1939 AD — The Gestapo emptied the friary at Niepokalanow this morning and drove more than forty friars away in two trucks. Their guardian, Saint Maximilian Kolbe, was taken with them, and the trucks went west.

St. Maximilian Kolbe, 45, is the Franciscan priest who built Niepokalanow out of a field at Teresin, outside Warsaw. The house was consecrated on the feast of the Immaculate Conception in 1927 AD and given the name Niepokalanow — the City of the Immaculata, the Blessed Virgin Mary under the title of her Immaculate Conception. He has been its guardian since he came back from Japan in 1936 AD. The friary’s printing house put out Mały Dziennik (the Little Daily), one of the largest daily papers in Poland. That had made the house an enemy of the German police, and he knew there would be reprisals for it. The army wanted the buildings as well, and was waiting for the friars to be gone.

The war reached the friary on its first afternoon. At three o’clock on September 1, twenty-five bombers with black crosses on their wings passed high over the buildings on their way to Warsaw. The Little Daily stopped going out that day. Work on the unfinished church stopped the next day, and the editorial offices closed on the fourth.

On September 5, back from seeing his provincial superior, St. Maximilian Kolbe told the community that the whole county was to be evacuated. Each brother was handed 5 zloty and dry provisions and sent to his family home or to the Polish Red Cross. Almost every brother went. At the refectory bell that afternoon he went up into the pulpit and said goodbye to them: “Niepokalanow is not these fences or these buildings. Where a man of Niepokalanow is, there is Niepokalanow… Many of you will not return here again. I too, it seems, shall not survive this war.”

A bombardment on September 7 sent more away, and a few dozen were left. St. Maximilian Kolbe had meant to go with them, but his provincial superior saw how the scattered brothers were struggling on the roads and told him to stay and take back any who came home. He and Blessed Pius Bartosik were the only two priests left in the house. Both were taken this morning.

The house filled up again around the men who had stayed. Polish troops and civilians moving past on September 8 were fed from the friary kitchen and given bread. On the 11th St. Maximilian Kolbe had the cells cleaned and the beds made up for whoever needed them. On the 12th wounded Polish soldiers were carried in.

German forces had been in Niepokalanow since September 13, and the friars had gone on living and working in the house. For days they burned back numbers of the Little Daily from morning to evening, so that no one would be put in danger if arrests came.

Warsaw had been under siege since September 8 and had not surrendered. Two days ago the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east. At night the friars heard gunfire around the buildings and saw the glow of fires on the horizon.

At morning prayer today, as usual, St. Maximilian Kolbe told the brothers to trust God and to accept his will in everything. They ate breakfast and went out to their work.

Brother Bonawentura was carrying food out in front of the kitchen for the refugees when a German soldier waved him over and spoke to him in a language he could not understand. Brother Wincenty spoke German, so he came over and translated the order: every friar in the house was to gather in one place. The brothers explained that at Niepokalanow they were called together by a bell, and asked to be allowed to ring it. The soldier agreed. Brother Bonawentura went to St. Maximilian Kolbe first, told him what the soldier had ordered and asked whether to ring. St. Maximilian Kolbe thought it over and told him to ring it. It was the first time the friary bell had been rung to call the brothers together at a soldier’s order.

The brothers came out into the open wondering why the bell was ringing at that hour. Many of them were in work clothes, wooden clogs and dirty habits. The soldier ordered them into ranks of five and told them they would be marched to the command post to have their papers checked. They asked for time to change first. He thought about it, allowed it, counted them, and warned that if one of them escaped the rest would be shot.

They came back in clean habits to the square beside the refectory, where the German commander in charge of the detail counted them again; the number was right.

Ten wounded men were lying in the house. The friars asked that three of their own be left behind: two to nurse the wounded, and one to watch the buildings. The commander told them the buildings needed nobody, but that two could stay with the wounded. For the first place the friars chose their infirmary brother. For the second they asked for St. Maximilian Kolbe. He refused it. He was going with them, he said, wherever they were taken.

They went out through the friary gate with soldiers around them, some on bicycles and some on foot. A young woman saw them, ran up to the escort in tears and begged that the friars be let go. St. Maximilian Kolbe comforted her and told her they would be back soon.

The road they were marched along was lined with German soldiers, waiting for the friary to be emptied so that they could move in. At the Warsaw highway the friars were ordered to unload two trucks of anti-tank shells. Then they were put into the same trucks.

The trucks pulled away toward the camp at Lamsdorf, across the German border. On the road St. Maximilian Kolbe told the friars riding with him that this might be the Immaculata’s way of founding a new City — in Germany, through them.