Atheism in Auschwitz: Is Religious Morality the Only Morality that can Survive the Lowest of Human Depravity

As any individual with a devout religious belief—and in particular those of the Christian faith—knows, recent years have seen a strong rise in vocal challenges against believers from those within the atheist camp. Although this rise may be simply attributed to the loudness of certain “evangelical” atheists, it must be admitted that this revived atheist wave does raise various questions in the believer’s mind with which they must grapple. In particular, it is in the field of human morality where practical concerns develop. Many atheists point to the evils committed under a religious banner as a claim that religion, far from improving morality, actually perverts and distorts it. “Can we be moral without God?” these atheists ask. “Can we believe in and follow the tenets of kindness, compassion and the myriad of other virtues without an eternal overseer?” they question. For many individuals, the answer to these questions seems to be affirmative; not only have such individuals found that answering affirmatively to the question of morality without God is satisfactory, they also point to examples within our society where many who would call themselves atheists or agnostics live moral and law-abiding lives.

Yet, as I myself confronted these questions and seemed to arrive at the same conclusion as most of secular society does today, I stumbled upon a story that I had read as a child and had long since forgotten. This story illuminated some interesting doubts about the easy answer to secular morality as a self-assured and self-evident certainty; it is a story about Father Maximilian Kolbe, the Saint of Auschwitz.

Maximilian Kolbe was a Polish priest—Prisoner 16770—who died in the Auschwitz Concentration Camp. When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Father Kolbe and the other friars at his friary began to organize a shelter for Polish refugees, among who were numerous Jews. The friars shared everything they had—food, water and materials—with the refugees. Inevitably, due to its activities, the friary came under closer and closer scrutiny by the occupying Nazi authorities and in May 1941, the friary was closed down and Father Kolbe and four companions were taken to Auschwitz, where they were to work with the other prisoners.

Placed in a situation of indescribable hardship and suffering: the prisoners at Auschwitz were beaten, starved and worked to death. Their rations were so meager that not even a child could properly survive on the thin diet. When food was brought, everyone struggled to get his place and ensure that they received their portion. Father Maximilian Kolbe however, stood aside regardless of his hunger and quite often, there would be no more food left for him. At other times, he shared what he had with the other prisoners. No matter what happened in the camp, Father Kolbe maintained the true teachings and spirit of Christ. At night, he moved from bunk to bunk, saying: “I am a Catholic priest. Can I do anything for you?” A prisoner later remembered how he and others would sometimes crawl across the floor during the dead of night to be near the bed of Father Kolbe, so that they could make their confessions and ask for consolation. Father Kolbe begged his fellow prisoners to forgive their persecutors and to overcome evil with good. When he was struck by the guards, he never cried out and instead, he prayed for his attackers. A Protestant doctor who treated the patients in Block 12 later recalled how Father Kolbe waited until everyone else had been treated before asking for help.

In order to prevent escapes, Auschwitz had a rule that if one man escaped, ten men would be killed in his place as punishment. In July 1941, a man from Kolbe's bunker escaped and once this was discovered, the remaining men of the bunker were led outside. “The fugitive has not been found!” the commandant Karl Fritsch yelled. “You will all pay for this. Ten of you will be locked in the starvation bunker without food or water until they die.” It was a horrendous death sentence, for after only a few days in the bunker without food and water, a man’s intestines would dry up and his brain would burn with pain.

The ten were selected, including Franciszek Gajowniczek, imprisoned for helping the Polish Resistance. He could not help but cry out. “My poor wife!” he sobbed. “My poor children! What will they do?” When he uttered this in dismay, Father Kolbe stepped forward quietly, took off his hat, and stood before the commandant saying, “I am a Catholic priest. Let me take his place. I am old. He has a wife and children.”

Astonished, the Nazi commandant asked, “What does this Polish pig want?” Father Kolbe pointed with his hand to the condemned Franciszek Gajowniczek and repeated, “I am a Catholic priest from Poland; I would like to take his place, because he has a wife and children.”

All those watching in terror believed that the commandant would be furious and would refuse the request, or even order the death of both men. Yet the commandant remained silent. After a few moments, he agreed with the request. Apparently, for the commandant, a young worker was more useful than an old one. And so, Franciszek Gajowniczek was returned to the ranks, while Father Kolbe took his place.

Along with the other nine victims, Father Kolbe was thrown down the stairs of Building 13 and left there to starve. Hunger and thirst soon gnawed at the men. Some drank their own urine, others licked moisture on the dank walls. Father Kolbe encouraged his fellow prisoners with prayers, psalms, and meditations on Christ. After two weeks, only four were left alive. The cell, however, was needed for more victims and the camp executioner came in and injected a lethal dose of carbolic acid into the left arm of each of the four dying men. Father Kolbe was the only one still fully conscious and with a prayer and smile on his lips, he raised his arm for the executioner.

So it was that Father Maximilian Kolbe was executed on 14 August, 1941 at the age of forty-seven years, a martyr of charity. Father Kolbe's body was removed to the crematorium and was disposed of without any dignity or ceremony, like all the other bodies before and after his. The story of Father Kolbe echoed through the camp. Amidst all that he had endured, he had maintained his love for his fellow man. A survivor, Jozef Stemler, later recalled: “In the midst of a brutalization of thought, feeling and words such as had never before been known, man indeed became a ravening wolf in his relations with other men. And into this state of affairs came the heroic self-sacrifice of Father Kolbe.” Another survivor, Jerzy Bielecki, declared that Father Kolbe's death was “a shock filled with hope, bringing new life and strength...It was like a powerful shaft of light in the darkness of the camp.”

Now, Father Kolbe’s heroic deed is clearly a strong example of selfless love and sacrifice, which stands in fierce opposition to the claim often purported by various prominent atheists that “religion poisons everything”. Clearly, Father Kolbe’s deep faith did not poison him or the man he saved or the multitude of prisoners in Auschwitz to whom Father Kolbe brought unimaginable hope. At the same time, Father Kolbe’s story poses new questions concerning the certainty of the secular and atheist ethic, the core of which is this: when everything else but a man’s morality has been torn away from him, could or would an atheist act in the same way as Father Kolbe?

It is true that in the emerging field of evolutionary morality—a field that believes that morality emerged as an evolutionary survival trait—the idea of mutual reciprocity and the fear of personal shame or societal humiliation generate a great deal of incentive for individuals to be moral. And many atheists grab onto the idea of morality as simply an evolutionary trait because it seems to remove the need for a moral Law-Giver, thus helping atheists remove a further obstacle in their path towards showing that “the divine is not needed for morality”. In addition, there are clear examples of those with an atheist ideology fighting and risking their lives for a cause greater than themselves. But are such factors still relevant in a place like Auschwitz, where a person’s humiliation is total, where their existence has been reduced to that of the lowest animal, where there is no chance of material reciprocity from your fellow prisoners and where every moment is a struggle to survive. Is it possible to make the decision that Father Kolbe had made when, unlike the fighting atheist who balances the risks he takes with the rewards he might achieve, death is not just a possibility, but an absolute certainty? And instead of gaining even the smallest reward, one must lose everything except one’s morality and human dignity.

In fact, following the tenets of evolutionary morality, would the atheist not have been the very man who tried to escape regardless of the consequences to the other men that he condemned to death? Would he not have been the very first to become a Nazi collaborator, ready and willing to gain the material reciprocity and any amount of personal benefit from the only people that had any to give: the Nazi guards? Would this not have been his natural evolutionary and “survival-of-the-fittest” drive, superseding all other needs when placed in such dire circumstances? For the atheist, would not collaboration or escape, regardless of the consequences, have not only been morally permitted but also have been the morally correct action in such a case?

Thus, a final question must be contemplated by those that claim that a faith in the divine is an unnecessary impediment to morality: In a place of terror like Auschwitz, where the Nazi men were their own gods, where all aspects of human civilization had been stripped away and where all that was left was a man’s conscience, what would preclude the atheist—who holds to “evolutionary morality”—from doing whatever he needed to do to survive, regardless of those that he might destroy along the way? It seems to me that following such an evolutionary ethic, nothing would legitimately stop the atheist from doing so. And if this is the case, then when all pretenses are gone and when men are pitted against other men like animals, perhaps religion really is the last and only stand for morality against the horrors of unimaginable evil that men can bring upon themselves.