09/08/2025
9 August 1942 | Edith Stein, St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, Discalced Carmelite nun OCD, patron of Europe, was murdered in a gas chamber of the German N**i Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp.
Edith Stein was born on 12 October 1891,. She was a German Jew from Wrocław, doctor of philosophy specialising in phenomenology. A teacher of the girls’ colleges in Speyer and later in Münster. Converted to Christianity in 1922, she joined the Carmelite convent in Cologne in 1933. With the attacks on the Jews intensifying in Germany, Sister Theresa Benedicta was moved to the Carmelite convent in Echt in the Netherlands. There she studied the works of St John of the Cross. In 1942, after protests of Roman Catholic Church against the persecution of the Jewish citizens of the Netherlands, the German occupying powers ordered detaining Catholic clergy of Jewish origin. Edith Stein was arrested on 2 August 1942 and taken to Amersdoort and later to Westerbork. A few days later, a transport of 987 Jews from Westerbork was sent to Auschwitz. Their number included Edith Stein and her older sister, Rosa Stein. After a selection on the ramp in Birkenau, both were sent to the gas chamber, where they were killed, most probably on 9 August 1942. Pope John Paul II beatified Edith Stein in 1987, and canonised her in 1998. A year later the nun became one of the six patron saints of Europe.