Sister Cecylia Maria Roszak, who saved Jews during the Holocaust, dies at 110
Published November 22, 2018
(JTA) — Polish Dominican nun Sister Cecylia Maria Roszak, who saved Jews during the Holocaust, has died at the age of 110.
Roszak, or Sister Cecylia, who was known as the “oldest nun in the world,” died on Nov. 16 at a convent in Krakow, the Archdiocese of Krakow confirmed, the Catholic News Agency reported.
Born Maria Roszak in 1908 in the town of Kielczewo in west-central Poland, she entered a cloistered convent of Dominican sisters in Krakow, at the “On Gródek” monastery, at the age of 21.
In 1938, she traveled other nuns to Vilnius, which is now in Lithuania, but then was a part of Poland, in order to establish a new convent. In Vilnius they hid 17 members of the Jewish resistance who had escaped the local ghetto, according to CNA.
In September 1943, the nun’s superior, Mother Bertranda was arrested, the Vilnius convent was closed and the nuns were expelled. Roszak returned to Krakow.
In 1984, Borkowska and the nuns who had been at her Vilnius convent, including Roszak, were recognized as “Righteous Among the Nations” by Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.
