A Testimony to Her Loved Ones
by Kristen West McGuire
For the next year, My Secret is Mine newsletter will be centered on the autobiography of Dr. Edith Stein, Life in a Jewish Family. Canonized in 1998, she is now known by her Carmelite name of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, co-patroness of Europe. Many apostolates today have St. Teresa as their patroness, including My Secret is Mine. This series will explore the Jewish roots of the Catholic faith found in the Old Testament and Magisterial teachings. All of our interviews, Bible studies, and book reviews will explore the themes of conversion, family relationships and the effect of anti-semitism in the world.
In 1932, Dr. Edith Stein finally achieved a lectureship at a university, seventeen years after she received her doctorate in philosophy. She participated in multiple academic conferences across Europe, and distinguished herself well in the male-dominated discussions. A Catholic convert, she frequently was asked to give lectures on the role of women in society and the Church. Her academic star was rising.
Until it wasn’t.
When the Nazis took control of the German government in 1933, Dr. Stein lost her teaching position because she was of Jewish descent. Even though she had bravely served in the First World War as a Red Cross nurse near the battlefields. Even though she had served as a personal assistant to Dr. Edmund Husserl. Even though her family had been proud German citizens since the 1820’s.
Dr. Stein finished out the semester at Műnster and went to her family home in Breslau. She had an offer to teach at a college in Argentina, but she declined as another path forward beckoned to her. She decided to follow the desire of her heart, to apply to enter the cloister as a Carmelite at Cologne. She was accepted.
Her Jewish family was devastated, as Edith knew they would be. Her conversion in 1922 had been hard enough, but to enter the convent meant she would never again see them face to face, including her elderly mother. All of her correspondence would be read by a superior. Why would she do such a thing, especially in a time of severe persecution for Jews in Germany?
She wrote an impassioned letter to Pope Pius X, asking him to denounce Hitler’s ethnic ideas. (He never responded.) The German government’s lies about Jewish people were falling on ignorant ears, and persecution was rampant. Edith recounts the heartfelt cry of a Jewish friend of hers, “If only I knew how Hitler came by his terrible hatred of the Jews!”
In the months prior to her entry, Edith Stein lived with her family and tried to assure them of her love. This volume, Life in a Jewish Family, was suggested to her by a priest friend who noted that many Germans were ignorant of real Jewish families like hers. Stein herself said, “We who grew up in Judaism have an obligation to give our testimony,” but her work had another dimension—to show her own family that she was proud of her heritage.
Siegfried and Auguste Stein had 11 children, and seven survived to adulthood. Her father died when Edith was two, and her mother took over his lumber business and built it up so well that the family was considered wealthy. Of the seven siblings, only three were able to escape murder in the concentration camps set up by the Nazis. Edith Stein, the Carmelite nun who was born on Yom Kippur, died in Auschwitz with her sister, Rosa, on August 9, 1942.
Who was this special daughter of Zion, this unique member of the Chosen People? It was a busy household and, as the youngest child, she was much beloved. Multiple cousins, aunts, and uncles move in and out of the picture. She mentions only briefly the distinctive practices of their faith: the Seder, the Sabbath, the fasting and synagogue visits for the High Holy Days. Yet, Auguste Stein was firmly orthodox, and extremely devout. Story after story recounts tension between her siblings and their mother over such issues as keeping a kosher kitchen and raising children outside the faith.
Edith’s mother is a heroic figure: a widow with seven children, competent businesswoman, tender grandmother, family confidante, stern taskmistress, and above all, a devout Jewish mother. Edith’s intellectual pursuits were the pride of her family, and she credits her own character and perseverance to them. I imagine her writing this in longhand on folio sheets with myriad emotions stirred by the memories.
Despite her love and pride in her family, Edith Stein discovered in Jesus Christ her vocation and calling. Her family could not understand her decision. How could they?
So, this autobiography is as much about Edith as her mother and siblings. In her last will and testament written in Echt, she instructed that it should not be published until her siblings had all died. (Indeed, her surviving siblings had feedback on Edith’s frank observations.) Auguste Stein died in 1936, before the devastating Kristallnacht accelerated the genocidal plans of the Nazis.
Life in a Jewish Family ends abruptly after she defended her dissertation, summa cum laude, in Freiburg in 1916. It does not include her conversion in 1922, nor her time as a frustrated academic, teaching at a high school in Speyer. Nor does she detail her entrance into Carmel, becoming Sr. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. She had other books to complete, including a study of St. John of the Cross, which was found on her desk after her arrest.
And yet, despite the danger of keeping a journal centered on her Jewish family, Sr. Teresa persevered. At times, Sr. Teresa and her Carmelite sisters moved the manuscript to safer locations, including burying it underground. If the Nazis found it in a surprise search, the sisters would pay dearly. After Edith’s death, one Carmelite, Sr. Pia, courageously safeguarded the manuscript, and delivered it to the Husserl archive after the war.
We must never forget.
St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, pray for us.
Edith Stein, daughter of Zion, pray for us.
