"Cardinal celebrates Mass at Auschwitz in memory of St. Edith Stein and his own grandmother"

Today is the feast of St. Teresa Benedicta (Edith Stein), the Catholic convert and intellectual who was murdered in Auschwitz 80 years ago today.

interesting article in the Jesuit publication America. hit the link for the whole article.

Cardinal Michael Czerny S.J., visited Auschwitz today to celebrate Mass at the convent of the Carmelite Sisters on the 80th anniversary of the death of Edith Stein, the German Jewish philosopher who converted to Catholicism, joined the order of Carmelite sisters, took the name Sr. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross and was put to death in a gas chamber in Auschwitz on Aug. 9, 1942. Pope John Paul II declared her a martyr in 1987 and canonized her in 1998.

The cardinal went to Auschwitz at the invitation of Marek Jędraszewski, the archbishop of Krakow. The Polish archbishop told him in a letter that the sisters have celebrated the feast of Sr. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross’ death at the convent for many years, and since she is the co-patroness of Europe, they invite participants from different countries to the celebration each year.

Since it was Cardinal Czerny’s first visit to Auschwitz, he was given a guided tour of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum yesterday afternoon, Aug. 8. This morning he participated in a prayer walk at Birkenau, together with the archbishop of Krakow and with other Polish and international participants. Bishop Bertram Maier of Augsburg, Germany, who represented the German Bishops’ Conference, concelebrated the memorial Mass in the afternoon.

At the Mass this evening, Cardinal Czerny delivered a very personal homily in which he surprised many in the congregation by telling them, “With Edith Stein, I share Jewish origins, the Catholic faith, a vocation to religious life, and several coincidences with my maternal grandmother, Anna Hayek née Löw (1893-1945).” Edith Stein and his grandmother “were about the same age and came to a similar end,” he said.

In an email exchange on Aug. 8, Cardinal Czerny told me that his grandmother arrived in Auschwitz on Oct. 22, 1944, but, unlike Edith Stein, she did not die there because, as the Russians advanced, the Nazis evacuated many prisoners from Auschwitz, including his grandmother, and transferred them to the Neustadt-Glewe concentration camp in Germany, which operated from Sept. 1944 to May 2, 1945. The cardinal’s grandmother, he said, was evacuated in January 1945. She was very ill with typhus and could not make the trip back to Brno. She died on May 21, 1945, and he does not know where she is buried.