A saint's testimony

I'm reading Kolbe and the Kommandant, a biographical contrast of sorts between St. Maximilian Maria Kolbe, who was martyred at Auschwitz, and Rudolph Hoess, commandant of Auschwitz.

The Kolbe sections of the book are full of his writings, which reflect an incredible level of trust in the Immaculata's desire to intercede that the glory of her divine Son might be revealed. It is a little disconcerting in how closely he seems to border on Maryolatry. Yet the evidence of this saint's life cannot be denied. Time and again his single-minded desire to do his Mother's will in his life, to the glory of God, resulted in the obliteration of obstacles and incredible growth in the distribution of his monthly periodical, The Knight of the Immaculata, in different languages.

Would that I could be so focused and trusting.

I'm looking forward to reading the remainder of this book. Of course Hoess' story is a tragedy of how abandoning the faith can lead us to the depths of inhumanity.  The sections on him thus far have dealt with his abandonment of his father's desire that he become a missionary, his early enlistment, his (mostly political?) imprisonment, and have just begun to deal with his enrollment and indoctrination into Hitler's SS despite his earlier dismay at the toppling of the basic human rights of expression, private ownership, the privacy of communications, etc.  His nationalism apparently led him to conclude that Hitler's aims excused the infamous Fire Decree. But I understand that his atrocities may not be the end of his story.