Magazine. Rycerz Niepokalanej

„The Knight of the Immaculate” is a monthly Catholic magazine founded by Saint Maximilian Kolbe, who served as its editor-in-chief until March 1939. The first issue was published in January 1922. Until October of that year, the magazine was printed in Kraków, and later in Grodno. Since 1927, it has been published by the printing house of the Franciscan Monastery of Niepokalanów (a monastery and Roman Catholic religious’ community in the village of Teresin, Masovian Voivodeship), where a new pilgrimage center dedicated to the Virgin Mary was established at the time. The first issues had a circulation of 5,000 copies. By 1927, circulation reached 70,000, and in 1938–1939, it grew to about 800,000 units. Up to 1,600 tons of paper were used per year to produce it (approximately 60 million copies annually). Thanks to the zeal of Maximilian Kolbe, a Japanese edition of the magazine was launched in 1930. During World War II, before his arrest and imprisonment in the Auschwitz concentration camp, the spiritual father managed to print only one issue with a circulation of 120,000 copies. From 1952 to 1981, „The Knight of the Immaculate” was banned in communist Poland. Since 1971, a separate version of the magazine has been published for Polish emigrants in Italy.

This specific copy was found alongside a collection of other printed materials during construction work inside the wall of an old house in the city of Chortkiv (Ternopil region).