Raymond Mary Kolbe Raymond Mary Kolbe was born on January 8, 1894, in Zdunska Wola, near Russian Occupied Poland. Father Kolbe created a life of good deeds which he voluntarily ended to prolong another man’s. Because he was involve in sickness as well as enemy threat, St. Maximilian lead a life with a constant chance of death, just like the Whiskey priest from the novel The Power and the Glory. Already proficient in virtue, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to Kolbe in 1906A.D., about the time of his first communion. She offered him the graces of virginity and martyrdom and asked him which he wanted. Filled with zeal,