By Brad Miner
Poland has suffered much over the centuries, and that suffering has strengthened the Polish people, in the spirit of what Ernest Hemingway wrote in A Farewell to Arms:
The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.
The Holy Spirit moved in the conclave that elected St. John Paul II on October 16, 1978, as a reward to Poland for its suffering and courage, especially in the 20th century. And the Pope, who raised hundreds to the altars, canonized many Poles, including Faustina Kowalska and Maximilian Kolbe.
A new dramatic film, Triumph of the Heart, about this great saint, written and directed by Anthony d’Ambrosio, is about to be released. It focuses on Kolbe’s two weeks of imprisonment with nine other men in the Hunger Bunker, an underground starvation chamber in the Auschwitz extermination camp in Poland, where Kolbe died. This means the film is, at times, claustrophobic. I don’t see how it could be otherwise. (The most commonly used term is Starvation Bunker).
For those who don’t know: in late July 1941, a prisoner escaped from the camp, and the Nazi commander decreed that, as a warning to the other inmates, ten prisoners would be sent to the Bunker to die of starvation. One of them, Franciszek Gajowniczek, pleaded because he had a wife and children, which moved Father Kolbe, who offered himself in his place.
Through flashbacks, we see aspects of Kolbe’s life and of the other men with whom he shared the confinement. But since they all died, do we know how they interacted with each other? Yes. On the one hand, because a janitor periodically entered the Bunker. And other camp staff listened to conversations from outside the barred window. Even so, much of the dialogue is recreated.
For example, Kolbe (masterfully played by Marcin Kwasny) and another prisoner, Albert (Rowan Polonski, also brilliant), share an imaginary cigarette and talk. Albert, a soldier, wonders why Kolbe does not doubt the existence of God after all that they and Poland have suffered. Kolbe acknowledges his anger about it all, essentially evoking the old idea that Poland was crucified between “two thieves”: Russia and Germany. But Kolbe quotes the Lord’s words on the Cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (from Psalm 22). Kolbe affirms that God has come to be with them in the suffering.
Triumph of the Heart recalls Jonathan Glazer’s extraordinary 2023 film, Zone of Interest, about the last commander of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss, and his family, who lived idyllically in a house right on the edge of the extermination camp. Glazer never takes us inside the camp. In Triumph of the Heart, there are brief scenes of that same house, occupied in Kolbe’s time by the then commander, the SS Lagerführer Karl Fritzsch (icily played by Christopher Sherwood), but most of the film takes place in the Bunker.
And in a scene that recalls the great La Marseillaise moment in Michael Curtiz’s 1942 classic, Casablanca, a woman in Auschwitz begins to sing a patriotic Polish song while the German guards chant what sounds like a tavern song. A Nazi officer shoots her, but her singing is taken up by the men in the Hunger Bunker, and then by others throughout the extermination camp. A fleeting moment of triumph.
Is D’Ambrosio’s intention to counter Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, the 1935 pro-Hitler film? Undoubtedly, it is timely. Later, in the Bunker, the prisoners huddle together against the cold of starvation and sing the Salve Regina.
The scenes of brutal depravity are hard to watch. Of course, this was the reality of Auschwitz and it had to be shown. But seeing men capture, kill, and eat a rat is repulsive, as are the guards’ taunts suggesting that they will inevitably resort to cannibalism.
D’Ambrosio maintains a firm pulse. And he needs it. An exception is a fictional scene in which the Lagerführer Fritzsch tells Kolbe that the prisoner who supposedly escaped actually did not: he tried to flee through a latrine and died there. Fritzsch enjoys adding one more spiritual burden on the priest.
The truth, however, is that Zygmunt Pilawski did escape and was recaptured in 1942, ten months after Kolbe’s death.
Toward the end, the suffering Christ and the Blessed Virgin appear in the midst of a sepia tableau with the faces of the dead prisoners. All except Kolbe’s. But on the 14th day of the ordeal, the guards enter the Bunker and Kolbe receives a lethal injection of carbolic acid. He dies thinking of the words of St. Paul: I have fought the good fight…
I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing. (2 Timothy 4:7-8)
As a child, Kolbe had a vision of the Virgin in which she held two crowns: one for a life of heroic virtue and another for martyrdom. He had to choose one, she said; he chose both.
The film ends, apparently, in Heaven: a Polish home in winter, where people dance joyfully and there is vodka – or is it simply holy water for those who had been so thirsty? All the former prisoners are there, Catholics and Jews: a beautiful and deeply moving scene.
Psalm 22 does not end with more suffering (I am a worm and no man; / scorn of men and despised of the people), but with a surrender to God’s love:
I will tell of your name to my brothers;
in the midst of the congregation I will praise you:
You who fear the Lord, praise him!
Glorify him, sons of Jacob!
Fear him, sons of Israel all!
And all you, sons of Rome!
About the author:
Brad Miner, husband and father, is senior editor of The Catholic Thing and senior fellow of the Faith & Reason Institute. He was literary editor of National Review and had a long career in the publishing industry. His latest book is Sons of St. Patrick, written with George J. Marlin. His successful The Compleat Gentleman is available in a third revised edition and also as an audiobook on Audible (narrated by Bob Souer). Mr. Miner has been a member of the board of Aid to the Church in Need USA and also of the advisory board of the Selective Service System in Westchester County, New York.