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us Detroit Jewish News
The World
Stein's canonization has sparked
criticisms from Jewish leaders, who say
she was killed because she was a Jew, *
not a Catholic.
Stein was born into an Orthodox
Jewish family in Breslau, now the
Polish town of WroclaW, on Oct. 12,
1891 — Yom Kippur of that year.
In her unfinished autobiography,
"Life in a Jewish Family," Stein wrote
that as a child she was convinced she
was "destined for something great and ,*
that I did not belong in all the narrow,
bourgeois circumstances into which I
had been born."
The brilliant, passionate Stein offers
little insight into her decision to con-
vert — "It is my secret," she wrote —
but she does describe a visit to the
widow of a friend who had been killed
during World War I.
The widow attributed her compo-
sure and serenity, despite the loss she
had suffered, to her recent embrace
of Christianity. It was to be the
most influential encounter of Stein's
life. She soon set about devouring
Catholic literature. On Jan. 1,
1922, at the age of 31, Stein was
baptized a Catholic. Eleven years
later she adopted the name Teresa -IP-
Benedicta a Cruce — Teresa, Blessed
of the Cross — and entered the
Carmelite Convent of Cologne in
Germany.
But even as a converted Catholic
nun, she was not safe from the Holo-
caust.
After she first entered the convent,
Stein wrote about the Nazi measures 4
being taken against the Jews. "The
fate of this people will also be mine,"
she wrote prophetically.
After fleeing in 1938 from Ger-
many to a Dutch convent in Holland,
Stein was arrested at the convent on
Aug. 2, 1942. She died in Auschwitz
exactly one week later.
Rabbi Daniel Farhi, a leader of
France's Reform movement, said the
canonization was an "ultimate injury
to Holocaust survivors and the descen-
dants of victims."
"How can one not understand
that it is a Jew converted to Catholi-
cism that is being shown as an
example to the Christian people?" he
said.
Eleanor Michael, a London writer*
who has spent five years tracing the
life of Stein, said categorically that
Stein was "murdered by the Nazis
because she was Jewish."
"What had she done to provoke the
Nazis who murdered her, other than
being born Jewish?" Cl