Blessed Martyrs of Nowogródek

The Blessed Martyrs of Nowogródek are eleven sisters of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth who in 1943 offered their lives for the arrested inhabitants of their town and were shot by the Germans. The Roman Martyrology commemorates them on August 1, the day of their death; in Poland their memorial is kept on September 4.

The congregation was founded by Blessed Franciszka Siedliska. In Nowogródek, then in eastern Poland and today in Belarus, the sisters taught children, visited the sick, and cared for the Church of the Transfiguration. Their superior was Sister Maria Stella of the Most Holy Sacrament, Adela Mardosewicz. The sisters were between 26 and 54 years old.

In 1939 the town was occupied by the Red Army. The sisters had to lay aside their habits and lost their house and their school, but they still met in the church every day, prepared children for First Communion, and comforted the families of those who had been deported. After the Germans arrived in 1941, they returned to their house and to their habits, and the church they watched over became the spiritual support of the town.

In July 1943 the Gestapo arrested about 120 inhabitants of Nowogródek, among them many fathers and mothers of families. Sister Maria Stella, expressing the mind of the community, said: “My God, if a sacrifice of life is needed, let them shoot us rather than those who have families.” The sisters were ready to give their lives also for Father Aleksander Zienkiewicz, the only priest in the town, who was in danger.

On the evening of July 31 they were summoned to the police station. They were neither questioned nor charged. They were driven out of town, but it was still light and there were farmers nearby, so they were brought back and locked in a cellar. They spent the night in prayer. At dawn on August 1 they were taken to a forest about five kilometers from the town. They asked not to be stripped of their habits, knelt to pray, received the blessing of their superior, and said goodbye to one another. They were killed one by one with a shot to the head beside a common grave prepared in advance.

The arrested inhabitants were not shot: some were released and the rest were sent to forced labor. Father Zienkiewicz survived the war. Of the whole community only Sister Małgorzata Banaś survived; the superior had told her to stay at home and look after the church. In 1945 she obtained permission for an exhumation and buried the sisters’ bodies beside the church, and from then until her death she watched over the church and their grave; in 2021 Pope Francis recognized her heroic virtues. The remains of the martyrs rest today in the Church of the Transfiguration.

John Paul II beatified them on March 5, 2000, in Saint Peter’s Square, together with 33 other martyrs, as the first blessed of the Jubilee Year. In his homily he asked where these women found the strength to give themselves in exchange for the lives of the prisoners, and he called them the inheritance of the whole Church.