According to some accounts, St. Maksymilian Maria Kolbe’s last words before his death in 1941 at the hands of the Nazis were “Hail Mary!” A Franciscan priest born in what is now Poland in 1894, Kolbe had a strong devotion to the Virgin Mary throughout his life. In 1941 he was arrested by the Gestapo for his anti-Nazi activities, including sheltering 2,000–3,000 Polish refugees at his religious center and aiding Jews and the Polish underground. Kolbe was sent to Auschwitz, where he was starved for weeks and injected with carbolic acid on August 14, 1941. He was declared a saint in 1982.
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