Embassy and PAHA invitation: Lecture and reception, Maximilian Kolbe and Janusz Korczak: Shared Ethical Legacy of Two Martyrs of World War II, Speaker: Professor Jacek Mostwin, February 24th, 2018.

Polish American Health Association
requests the honor of your company
at a lecture

Maximilian Kolbe and Janusz Korczak:
Shared Ethical Legacy of
Two Martyrs of World War II

Speaker:

Professor Jacek Lech Mostwin, MD, DPhil (Oxon)
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Department of Urology
Berman Institute of Ethics of the Johns Hopkins University

Welcoming remarks:
Mrs. Jolanta Chojecka
Head of Culture, Science and Information Section,
the Embassy of the Republic of Poland

Introduction of the Speaker:
Maria Michejda MD, DSc,
President of Polish American Health Association

Saturday, February 24th, 2018
2:30 p.m. until 5:00 p.m.
at the
Embassy of the Republic of Poland
2640 16th Street NW, Washington, DC 20009
R.S.V.P. by February 22th by e-mail
***

Jacek Lech Mostwin , MD, DPhil (Oxon)

Born in London 1949 to post-war political immigrant parents, he came with them to America in 1952. He completed basic education in Baltimore, graduating from Loyola High School in 1967.

After college at Tufts University and Medical Education and basic residency at the University of Maryland and University of Michigan, he completed specialty training in Urology at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1983 and received a doctorate in pharmacology at the University of Oxford in 1987.
He joined the faculty of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in the Department of Urology in 1983 and was promoted to Professor in 1997.

In 1992 he began traveling to Lourdes as a medical volunteer with the Federal Association of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.
He became a member of the Order and was the medical director from 1996-2012, the year in which he became a member of the International Medical Committee of Lourdes (CMIL).

He was co-chair of the Hopkins Hospital Ethics Committee from 2006-2012 and is now a member of the faculty of the Berman Institute of Ethics of the Johns Hopkins University and teaches introductory medical ethics in the medical school.
From 2014-2016 he traveled regularly to the Oxford Centre for Life Writing at Wolfson College of Oxford University as a Visiting Scholar concentrating on Lives in Medicine: the biographies and memoirs of patients and practitioners.

In 2014 he received the Cross Pro Merito Militensi of the Sovereign Order of Malta for services to the Lourdes Pilgrimage.

In 2017 The Polish American Medical Society presented him with an Honorary Membership “ for his outstanding contributions to Neurourology, Research and Surgical Education and for his Leadership in Humanistic, Ethical and Spiritual Dimensions of Life in Medicine.”

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Maximilian Kolbe (1894-1941) was born in Poland to a Polish mother and German father. He chose to enter the Franciscan Order early in life and distinguished himself by his learning and intelligence. He studied in Rome, receiving doctorates in Philosophy and Theology. There he resolved to commit himself to the Legion of the Immaculate. There he also experienced the first signs of pulmonary tuberculosis, which would remain with him all his life.
In Poland he became a writer, a publisher, an educator and the director of one the largest Franciscan monasteries in the world.

In the 1930s he traveled to Nagasaki, Japan to begin missionary work until he was recalled to Poland. The monastery in Nagasaki would become a field hospital after the second atomic bombing in 1945 .

At the outbreak of the Second World War, his monastery in Warsaw served as field hospital for Catholics and Jews. He was twice interred by the Nazis, the second time transferred to the concentration camp in Auschwitz where he continued to serve as a chaplain to prisoners, eventually offering to take the place of a man with a family who had been condemned to death.

He endured two weeks of starvation in a closed bunker sustaining the other prisoners and was finally put to death by phenol injection on August 14th, 1941, the vigil of the Feast of the Assumption. On October 10, 1982, Pope John Paul II canonized St Maximilian Kolbe declaring him a martyr of charity.

Like St Bernadette, who made it possible for others to see the presence of God, not in a church, but in a trash heap outside the small town of Lourdes in 1858, St Maximilian persevered in faith and inspired others to do the same. By his sacrifice he transformed the lives of many prisoners who endured Auschwitz and sanctified the death camp through his faith and holiness.

Maximilian Kolbe’s unique life as a Polish national, a Franciscan priest, an educator and moral witness, a victim of Nazi occupation and cruelty, and a witness to faith in the face of the world’s negative powers calls us to moral integrity and faith in our daily lives. He is truly a saint among us who inspires us to bear witness to the good in our own lives.
******

Maximilian Kolbe (1894-1941) was born in Poland to a German father and a Polish mother. He became a Franciscan priest, writer, publisher and monastic administrator. He obtained doctorates in philosophy and theology at the Pontifical University in Rome, then created several publishing presses of religious periodicals from Franciscan monasteries which he established in Poland. In Japan in the1930s, he established a monastery in Nagasaki, which survived the atomic bombing and served as a field hospital. In Poland just before the War, he started a radio station. After 1939, he continued to publish and provide medical care in his monastery hospital. He declined an offer to become Volksdeutsche, though his father was German. He was arrested by the Nazis February 1941 and sent to Auschwitz where he continued to serve as a chaplain to prisoners, eventually offering to take the place of a man with a family who had been condemned to death. He endured two weeks of starvation in a closed bunker sustaining the other prisoners and was finally put to death by phenol injection on August 14th, 1941, the vigil of the Feast of the Assumption. On October 10, 1982, Pope John Paul II canonized St Maximilian Kolbe declaring him a “martyr of charity”.

Janusz Korczak (1878-1942) was born Henryk Goldszmyt to an assimilated Jewish family in Warsaw. He became a famous pediatrician, pedagogue, writer, public figure and children’s advocate. He devoted his life to the care of children and orphans. He had served as a doctor in the Polish army during World War I. He ran a popular radio program advocating for children’s rights. He was decorated by the Polish government. His books were widely read. He traveled to Palestine during the 1930s to the kibbutzim. He ran a Jewish orphanage in Warsaw, forced to relocate to the Jewish ghetto by the Nazis in 1940. When the ghetto was liquidated in 1942, he declined offers of sanctuary so as not to abandon the 196 children under his care. He went with them to the Treblinka concentration camp. He died there with them at the age of 64.

Each man was highly educated and dedicated to his chosen vocation, emphasizing the care and protection of others. Each man was free to save his own life. Each went voluntarily to his death at the hands of his captors, Kolbe to save a family man, Korczak to stay with his orphans. Because of their martyrdom, each man has been highly celebrated in his own tradition, Korczak at Yad Vashem and Treblinka, Kolbe canonized a saint in 1985. The life and legacy of each man endures and grows beyond their lifespan. Their life histories as well as their ashes are inseparably mixed. As educators, leaders and moral witnesses in the face of the world’s negative powers, their lives, though different, open for us unique possibilities to consider the nature of their profound altruism, their traditions, and their respective professions. They call us to moral integrity and faith in our daily lives, to seek and recognize the good wherever it may be found.

Polish American Health Association (PAHA) is a Washington DC based, non profit charitable organization dedicated to bring together health professionals and biomedical scientists with the purpose of sharing mutual professional interests. More:

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By webmaster in Events on August 23, 2021