God's Kingdom in Auschwitz

Thirteen-year-old Sigmund Gorson huddled against the cold and tried to still the freezing tremors of fear that rumbled within him. Caught up on the wrong side of Hitler's Nazi Germany, Sigmund's parents has been torn from the boy and murdered, while the new teenager was imprisoned in the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp.

Lost and alone in a hostile totalitarian world, the young man endured an existence devoid of family and overwhelmed by warlike oppressors. Everywhere he went, Sigmund asked the same questions: "Please, did you know my father? Did you know my mother? Is there anyone who was a friend of the Gorson family? A neighbor? Please..."

In Sigmund's mind, if he could find someone who had at least known his family before this hardship, then he wouldn't be so terribly, utterly alone.

One day he came across a man in the prison. Balding, thin, but round-faced, and with piercing eyes, the man stopped Sigmund.

"Please, did you know my father?" the boy began. The man shook his head sadly.

"No," he said. But instead of leaving, the man stayed. And listened. The man was named Maximilian Kolbe, and he was a priest. Sigmund Gorson poured his heart to the priest, asking for more than just someone with knowledge of his family. "Where is God?" he sobbed to Minister Kolbe. "Why did He let my parents get murdered? I've lost my faith. I've lost all my faith!"

Sometimes the priest would speak comfort to the boy, but most often he would reach out tenderly and wipe away the tears while weeping with Sigmund at the same time. Day after day, secret bible study after secret bible study, the priest and the boy determined to live - and to love in spite of the terror of their lives.

Sigmund Gorson survived Auschwitz, Maximilian Kolbe did not; he was murdered by starvation and lethal injection by his Nazi captors. Yet years later, Sigmund still thanked God for the man who brought the touch of The Lord Jesus and His Kingdom into the filthy, godless and cruel world of Auschwitz.

"He was an angel God sent to me." Gorson remembered. "Like a mother hen, he took me in his arms. He used to wipe away my tears. I believe in God more since that time. Because of the dead of my parents, I had been asking, Where is God? and had lost faith. Kolbe gave me that faith back with his love. He was a living example of Christ."

Sometimes we forget that God's kingdom often begins within the doors of our own homes. If we really take the gospel and live it out in every single aspect of life, we transform the culture and we stablish the Kingdom of God no matter if we are in the middle of hell.