I’m (pictured left) wedged in the back of a Toyota Corolla on the outskirts of Warsaw, Poland, next to Sister Honorata, (pictured right) an 83-year-old, five-foot-tall, extremely plump nun. We’re headed to a small town a few hours away. After endless traffic snarls, we turn onto a highway. The sister driving us turns up the Read more
Several summers ago, my younger son and I went to Berlin. For me, the most meaningful experience of my time in that city was the morning that we visited the campus of Humboldt University. That was the location of the infamous book burnings by the Nazis in 1933. We spent a few moments at the Read more
A Polish nun who was honored by Israel for helping to hide Jews in her convent during World War II died last week. Sister Cecylia Maria Roszak OP, who was aged 110, is believed to have been the oldest nun in the world. During the war, Roszak and eight other sisters were living in Vilnius Read more
An Irish priest who saved thousands of Jews and Allied soldiers during World War II has been honoured at the Vatican. Msgr Hugh O’Flaherty disguised himself from Nazi secret police and set up safe houses in Rome between 1943 and 1944. One of the safe houses was right next to the secret police’s main headquarters Read more
Today is the seventieth anniversary of the execution of the German Lutheran pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Along with Bonhoeffer, six other members of the German resistance, including Hans Oster, Karl Sack, and Wilhelm Canaris, were killed by the Nazis at the Flossenbürg concentration camp on April 9th, 1945. Although seventy years have passed, Bonhoeffer’s Read more
They left at night, thousands of Jewish families, setting out by car, bicycle, streetcar or train. They left the Danish cities they had long called home and fled to the countryside, which was unfamiliar to many of them. Along the way, they found shelter in the homes of friends or business partners, squatted in abandoned Read more