Her monastery hid 17 Jews, among them the famous poet Abba Kovner

Cecylia Maria Roszak: farewell to a 110 year old Polish nun who helped save Jewish lives

I just learned, via Infocatólica, about the death of the second oldest nun in the world, the Polish Dominican nun Cecylia Maria Roszak, who has gone to the House of the Father with 110 years.

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A Catholic woman born in Poland occupied by the Prussians

I have been searching Polish websites for more information about this nun's life. Daughter of Jan Roszak and Maria Hofmann, Maria Roszak was born in 1908 in Kiełczewo, a small town in the Greater Poland Voivodeship, in the part of the country that came under Prussian rule after the Third Partition in 1795. In 1926 she graduated from the School State Trade and Women's Industries in Poznań. In 1929, aged 21, she entered the Dominican monastery of Gródek, in Kraków. She made her first vows on February 7, 1931, taking the monastic name of Cecylia, and perpetual vows in 1934.

Maria Roszak in a photo of her childhood (Photo: Siostry Dominikanki)

In 1938, together with a group of Dominican nuns, he arrived in Vilnius, the current capital of Lithuania and then part of Poland, with the aim of establishing a new monastery there, with the support of the archbishop of the city, Monsignor Romuald Jałbrzykowski, who had been named that same year. There the conditions of life were very difficult, since the nuns worked in a farm of five hectares located 17 kilometers from the city. While waiting for the construction of the monastery, they lived in a wooden house with a small chapel.

The nuns hid 17 Jews with the risk of their own lives

Sister Cecylia was surprised in Vilnius by the outbreak of World War II. According to the agreement in the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, with which Germany and the USSR took Poland, Vilnius was occupied by the Red Army on September 19, 1939. In October of that year the Soviets ceded control of the city to Lithuania. The situation became difficult because the protector of the convent, Monsignor Jałbrzykowski, was Polish and the Lithuanians rejected him (they even asked the Vatican to remove him from office). In June 1940 the USSR invaded Lithuania and occupied Vilnius, arresting tens of thousands of people and sending them to the Gulag. A year later Germany invaded the USSR.

Sister Cecylia after her arrival in Vilnius in 1938 (Photo: Gerontology Wikia)

The forces of the Third Reich occupied Vilnius on June 25, 1941. Before the war some 60,000 Jews lived in that city. In the weeks following the German occupation a brutal persecution against the Jews was unleashed, with thousands of murdered. Cecylia and her sisters, at the risk of their own lives, hid a group of 17 Jews, among them Abba Kovner, Arie Wilner, Chaja Grosman, Edek Boraks, Chuma Godot and Izrael Nagel, who later became part of the Jewish resistance of the Ghettos of Vilnius and Warsaw. The plan to hide these Jews was an idea of ​​the Superior, Sr. Bertrand Anna Borkowska, and it development was not without difficulties, beginning with the great differences between the two groups: a group of contemplative catholic nuns and a group of secular Jews, but finally very close bonds were formed between them. The Jews helped the nuns to work in the field and even referred to the superior as "Ima", which means "mother" in Hebrew.

In that monastery the spark of the Jewish rebellion against the Nazis was kindled

One of the Jews hidden by those nuns, the famous poet Abba Kovner, played a very important role in the war, being one of the first Jewish leaders who warned that the intention of the Nazis was to exterminate the Hebrew people. In December 1941 Kovner read to friends a manifesto entitled "Let us not die as sheep led to the slaughter!", which would serve to encourage the Jews to the resistance and warn them of what was coming. The manifesto was printed in the monastery where Cecylia and her sisters had taken refuge, and it was the spark that ignited the Jewish rebellion against the Nazis. That same month the Jews hidden in the Dominican monastery decided to abandon it and enter the Vilnius ghetto to form a Jewish resistance movement there. Sister Bertranda tried to convince them to give up that they did not leave, without success. A few weeks later Abba Kovner was called to the gates of the ghetto. It was a surprise for him: Sister Bertranda had come to visit him, and when he saw her she told him that she wanted to join the Jews of the ghetto: "God is in the ghetto," the nun told him. Kovner refused to let her stay, convincing her that the Dominican sisters could help them better from the monastery, providing them with weapons and ammunition.

Members of the Jewish resistance of Vilnius. Abba Kovner is the young man who appears in the center in the second row (Photo: Wiki of Israel / Wikimedia)

The arrest of Sister Bertranda and the closing of the Vilnius monastery

Between August and September of 1943 the Germans began to liquidate the survivors of the ghetto of Vilnius, some 12,000 people between men, women and children. On September 1 the Jewish resistance began an armed uprising in the ghetto, which was quickly crushed by the Nazis. That same month the Gestapo arrested Sister Bertranda. They sent her to Kaunas concentration camp, where she was tortured. "She paid a high price for her activities," Sister Cecylia recalled. The Germans closed the monastery and the sisters dispersed. Some hid and others returned to the Gródek monastery in Kraków. After the war, Sister Bertranda abandoned the monastic life and regained her civil name of Anna Borkowska, remaining a faithful and devout Catholic. In 1984 the Yad Vashem of Israel awarded her with the title of Righteous among the Nations. The poet Abba Kovner, who was still alive, gave it to her personally in Warsaw. Upon receiving the award, which Anna accepted on behalf of the sisters who were part of her community in Vilnius, she asked: "Why do I deserve this distinction?" Kowner replied: "You are Anna of the angels," and added: "In the days when the angels hid their faces from us, this woman was for us Anna of the angels. Not the angels we invent in our hearts, but the angels who create our lives forever."

The return to Krakow, a phone call and a cross

In 1944 Sister Cecylia was named prioress, and after the war returned to Krakow, where the Dominicans were staying in the monastery of the Poor Clares, having been expelled from Gródek's monastery during the war. In 1946 Cecylia became the superior of her community and a year later they returned to the Gródek monastery. One day the monastery phone rang. Sister Cecylia was the one who answered. A man started asking him questions about "the sisters who lived in Vilnius in the 1930s." At that time Poland was under a communist dictatorship and Cecylia was very cautious, but after a moment, the nun, moved by curiosity, said: "Excuse me, could you give me your name?" After some hesitation, the man replied: "My name is Abba Kovner." He was the Jewish poet that Cecylia and her sisters had saved in Vilnius. When the nun told him that she was one of the nuns of Vilnius, Kovner, moved, replied: "Sister, I have been looking for contact with someone from your community for a long time. Thanks for saving my life!" Kovner told him that he was calling from Israel, where he managed to flee after the failure of the Vilnius Ghetto Uprising. They talked for a while, the poet asked him for the address of the monastery and they said goodbye. A few weeks later a small package addressed to Sister Cecylia and sent from Israel arrived at the monastery. In it there was a small bronze crucifix with the word "Jerusalem" at its base. A curiosity: before the war, and due to its large Jewish population, Vilnius was known as "the Jerusalem of Lithuania".

The sisters of the Gródek Dominican monastery, in Krakow, showing the Yad Vashem recognition to the sisters of the Vilnius monastery as "Righteous among the Nations". Sister Cecylia appears on the right, holding the medal that recognizes her for saving Jews in Lithuania occupied by the Germans (Photo: Siostry Dominikanki)

"Life is beautiful but short"

Cecylia spent the rest of her life devoted to religious life. In the Dominican monastery of Kraków he worked as concierge, organist and singer. For many years he was also in charge of the international correspondence of the monastery, since in addition to Polish he mastered English, German, French and Latin quite well. She was participating in community prayer until her health prevented her, a few years ago, and in spite of her age and while she was strong, she continued to visit her sick sisters, helped by a walker. She was known for her good humor and was very interested in current affairs. Paradoxically, a few years ago she told her sisters: "Życie jest piękne, ale krótkie" (life is beautiful but short). Until the end of her days, Sister Cecylia kept two objects as her personal treasures: a medal from Israel, recognizing her as "Righteous among the Nations", and the small crucifix that Kovner had sent her. God took her to His side last Friday, November 16.

Rest in peace.

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