Trying to get this under the wire.
1 August is the Feast of Blessed M. Stella and her Ten Companions, the The Martyrs of Nowogrodek, in Nazi occupied Poland in 1943. Now in Belarus.
I wrote about them HERE.
Our battle for the Church in these troubled time, The Present Crisis, has to be fought on many levels.
What might not be wrought through the intercession of these Eleven Sisters?
The artwork for the Beatification image painted by Jerzy Kumala (1998).
Coat of Arms by D Burkart
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Thank you for this!
What a time their city of Nowogrodek had of it during the Twentieth century, even going by its English Wikipedia article, “Novogroduk” (cum grano salis of whatever proportions)!
After the Germans had both occupied it two-and-a-half years and made their deal with Lenin cum suis during W.W.I, they seem to have handed it over to the Communists on 25 March (!) 1918.
“During the Polish–Soviet War, Novogrudok changed hands several times. […] Ultimately captured by the Poles in October 1920, it was confirmed as part of the Second Polish Republic by the Peace of Riga.”
But when the Germans and Russians joined up together again in 1939, the Russians got it as part of their share of the carve-up of Poland: “On 18 September 1939 Novogrudok was occupied by the Red Army and, on 14 November 1939, incorporated into the Byelorussian SSR. Many residents of the city and region were repressed and exiled to other regions of the USSR, and the region was subjected to severe Sovietization.”
But, when the Nazis and Communists split up again on German initiative (to put it ironically), on 4 July 1941, “Novogrudok was occupied by the Wehrmacht”, but on “8 July 1944, the Red Army reoccupied Novogrudok” and after “the war, the area remained part of the Byelorussian SSR”.
Since a few days short of 34 years ago (25 August 1991) it has been a part of the independent Republic of Belarus.
Apparently, the twelfth nun was absent when her sisters were arrested, and the Germans seem to have forgotten about her, and so she survived, for a whole lifetime, and remained in that town for the rest of her life, discreetly remaining at her post and bearing witness to Christ; she was, obviously, the only one also who remembered all the circumstances of the time and was able to give her testimony after the official fall of communism. For this lifetime of constant fidelity, I think she is also quite as heroic as her sisters…