There are two places in Poland where crutches pile up. One is the Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa, a site of miraculous healings; the other is Auschwitz, a site of unspeakable horror. Death and life are wound tightly together in Poland, separated by only 70 miles to the west of Krakow.
I have been in Krakow for two weeks now, living in an old seminary (still in use but mostly empty) while studying the life and thought of Pope John Paul II, the history of his home country, and the Church’s social teaching. In these days, I have been able to visit both Czestochowa and Auschwitz. These sites, though markedly different, are close to the heart of the Polish nation.
The Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa houses the famous icon of the Black Madonna, which depicts Mary holding the child Jesus. The icon first came to Poland in the 14th century, and the Black Madonna miraculously saved the town several centuries later when a meager force of 250 monks and townspeople held 4000 Swedish invaders at bay. In gratitude for Mary’s protection of the painting’s town of Czestochowa, the king proclaimed Our Lady queen of Poland in 1656.
After this miracle, the floodgates of grace opened. As Poland grew in devotion to their patroness, pilgrims began flocking to Czestochowa. Nothing stopped these pilgrimages — not even Nazi occupation. And during Soviet occupation, the shrine became a symbol of anti-communist resistance. When Polish Solidarity leader Lech Walesa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983, he placed the prize before the icon of the Black Madonna, paying tribute to the Queen of Poland.
In addition to caring for the Polish nation, Our Lady also cares for the pilgrims who ask for her intercession. Inside the church, the walls are covered with a fine grating that suspends now-abandoned crutches, rosaries, and small medallions hung in gratitude for answered prayers. Stories of miraculous healings after visiting Czestochowa abound. Men, women, and children come with injuries or terminal illnesses, experience inexplicable healing, and leave their crutches in gratitude. The shrine displays these crutches as a testament to the power of God and a witness to others of the power of faith. (RELATED: ‘She Looks Like She Just Went to Sleep’: Thousands Travel to Visit Incorrupt Nun)
Seventy miles south, crutches are not hung so much as they are piled, one on top of another, jumbled and caught at awkward angles. This is Auschwitz, where crutches were taken rather than left. While pilgrims to Czestochowa leave crutches and walk into a new life, injured or disabled men and women at Auschwitz were killed upon their arrival to the camp.
The sheer mass of the pile is overwhelming. Similar piles are on display in other rooms within the same brick barrack used by the Nazis to house and humiliate prisoners. One room holds discarded Zyklon B gas cans, formerly used in the camp’s still-intact gas chambers. Another room shows a mound of human hair, still in plaits, shorn from the prisoners after they were killed upon arrival. The hair was collected with German thrift for use in mattress, bomb fuses, felt, and other wartime goods. Down the hall, the room filled with 80,000 shoes is claustrophobic. Photographs taken upon Allied liberation show German storerooms filled from floor to ceiling with possession stolen from prisoners who had already lost nearly everything. What is on display for visitors to Auschwitz is only a small fraction of what was stolen.
As I walked throughout the orderly rows of brick buildings — this one used for the sterilization of female prisoners, this one home to starvation cells — the pile of crutches seemed to haunt my visit. Every inch of Auschwitz stands as a testament to the horrors of a culture of death — a heartless utilitarianism paired with ruthless efficiency.
One man stood at the intersection of Czestochowa and Auschwitz, shrouded in hope amidst horror. In Cell 18 of Building 11, a paschal candle stands unlit in semidarkness. This is the cell where St. Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish priest held in Auschwitz, was starved to near death, then killed by lethal injection. As a child, Kolbe had a great devotion to Our Lady of Czestochowa, undoubtedly like so many other Catholic prisoners in the camp.
When Kolbe was a boy, he asked Our Lady what his life would hold. In response, she showed two crowns to him. One was red, the color of martyrdom; the other was white, symbolic of purity of heart and love of God. Mary asked the boy which crown he preferred. “Both,” he told her.
Years later, Kolbe got his wish. When a man in his block escaped, the Nazis delivered the standard punishment: ten men from the block would be taken to starvation chambers and condemned to a slow death. One of the men selected to die cried out, “My poor wife; my poor children.” Kolbe came forward and offered himself in exchange for the life of the father and husband, sacrificially walking into certain death.
When he canonized Maximilian Kolbe in 1982, Pope John Paul II, a man raised in the shadows of both Czestochowa and Auschwitz, said of the saint:
The inspiration of his entire life was the Immaculate, to whom he entrusted his love for Christ and his desire for martyrdom. In the mystery of the Immaculate Conception, that wonderful and supernatural world of God’s Grace offered to man was manifested before the eyes of his soul.
In the place where the crutches of the sick and suffering had been seized and stockpiled, Kolbe relied upon the same faith that bears fruit in the miracles of Czestochowa. The Nazis had taken crutches and rejected the Cross, but Kolbe had heard the same Gospel command that rings throughout Czestochowa: “Rise and walk.”
In the midst of immense brutality — the kind of evil that preys upon the weak, seizes the crutches of the lame, and sends them to die — he walked into certain death. And, in doing so, he walked into eternal life.
Mary Frances Myler is a writer from Traverse City, Michigan. She graduated from the University of Notre Dame. Follow her on Twitter at @mfmyler.
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