Blessed Marianna Biernacka

Blessed Marianna Biernacka was a simple woman from Lipsk on the Biebrza River, a wife, mother, and widow who, during the German occupation, went to her death in place of her pregnant daughter-in-law. She is one of the 108 Polish martyrs of the Second World War. The Roman Martyrology commemorates her on June 13.

She was born in 1888 in Lipsk, a town that now lies in Podlaskie Province. She lost both her parents early and received no schooling. She married Ludwik Biernacki, and together they ran a farm, which they had to rebuild several times after the destruction of war. She bore six children, but only two reached adulthood: her daughter Leokadia and her son Stanisław. She was widowed before the outbreak of the Second World War.

She was known as a good and kind woman, faithful to Sunday Mass, to the Rosary, and to the Little Office of the Immaculate Conception, which she sang at home. In July 1939 Stanisław married Anna, and the young couple came to live with Marianna. Years later her daughter-in-law recalled that the two of them lived in harmony and that her mother-in-law was a good woman.

On the morning of July 1, 1943, the Germans arrested several dozen inhabitants of Lipsk. The list included Stanisław and Anna, who was due to give birth in two weeks. Marianna begged the German to spare her daughter-in-law and offered herself in her place, saying: “I will go for her.” The German agreed. Together with her son she was taken to the prison in Grodno.

At the forts of Naumowicze near Grodno the Germans shot her together with her son and other inhabitants of Lipsk; about fifty people died there. Polish studies based on the accounts of witnesses give the date as July 13, 1943; the decree on her martyrdom gives June 13, 1943, and on that day the Roman Martyrology commemorates her. Anna survived the war and years later told of that morning.

The decree on martyrdom was promulgated on March 26, 1999; her name appears in the title of the cause alongside Archbishop Antoni Julian Nowowiejski and two priests. John Paul II beatified her on June 13, 1999, in Warsaw among the 108 martyrs, and in the homily he spoke of her as a heroic woman who “freely gave her life in exchange for her pregnant daughter-in-law.” The apostolic letter set June 12 as the day for the whole group. In the Diocese of Ełk, to which Lipsk now belongs, she is venerated as patroness of mothers-in-law, daughters-in-law, and widows.