July: Political prisoner at Auschwitz, Maximilian Kolbe, Polish Conventual Franciscans friar, volunteers to replace another prisoner, a stranger, who was selected for starvation torture death in a notorious Nazi starvation chamber. The Nazis accept his offer.
There is a problem footnote with the Kolbe narrative, however. It is asserted in Constantine’s Sword (p. 4) that Kolbe, who rescued the non–Jewish prisoner, had been editor of an anti–Semitic Catholic journal prior to the war.