Maria Roszak (Sister Cecylia, March 25, 1908 – November 16, 2018) was a Polish

nun A nun is a woman who vows to dedicate her life to religious service, typically living under vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience in the enclosure of a monastery or convent.''The Oxford English Dictionary'', vol. X, page 599. The term is o ...

, Dominican sister,

Righteous Among the Nations Righteous Among the Nations ( he, חֲסִידֵי אֻמּוֹת הָעוֹלָם, ; "righteous (plural) of the world's nations") is an honorific used by the State of Israel to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to sav ...

, and

supercentenarian A supercentenarian (sometimes hyphenated as super-centenarian) is a person who has reached the age of 110 years. This age is achieved by about one in 1,000 centenarians. Supercentenarians typically live a life free of major age-related diseases u ...

Biography

Sister Cecylia was born on March 25, 1908, as Maria Roszak in the town of Kiełczewo, German Empire, now in

Kościan County __NOTOC__ Kościan County ( pl, powiat kościański) is a unit of territorial administration and local government (powiat) in Greater Poland Voivodeship, west-central Poland. It came into being on January 1, 1999, as a result of the Polish local go ...

Greater Poland Voivodeship Greater Poland Voivodeship ( pl, Województwo wielkopolskie; ), also known as Wielkopolska Voivodeship, Wielkopolska Province, or Greater Poland Province, is a voivodeship, or province, in west-central Poland. It was created on 1 January 1999 o ...

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...

. Roszak graduated from the State Trade and Industrial School of Women in

Poznań Poznań () is a city on the River Warta in west-central Poland, within the Greater Poland region. The city is an important cultural and business centre, and one of Poland's most populous regions with many regional customs such as Saint John ...

. At age 21, she joined the convent of Dominican cloisters in

Kraków Kraków (), or Cracow, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city dates back to the seventh century. Kraków was the official capital of Poland until 1596 ...

, Church of Mary of Snow in Kraków. On February 7, 1931, she made her first religious vows, taking the name of Cecylia, and she took her final vows in 1934. In 1938, she went to

Vilnius Vilnius ( , ; see also other names) is the capital and largest city of Lithuania, with a population of 592,389 (according to the state register) or 625,107 (according to the municipality of Vilnius). The population of Vilnius's functional urb ...

to establish a new monastery with a group of Dominicans in Kolonia Wileńska. The sisters worked on a farm, away from the city. They lived in a wooden house with a small chapel. During the World War II occupation in Vilnius, with other nuns, she helped many refugees. The nuns also sheltered fifteen Jewish refugees from the

Vilna Ghetto The Vilna Ghetto was a World War II Jewish ghetto established and operated by Nazi Germany in the city of Vilnius in the modern country of Lithuania, at the time part of the Nazi-administered Reichskommissariat Ostland. During the approximatel ...

from the youth scouting group

Hashomer Hatzair Hashomer Hatzair ( he, הַשׁוֹמֵר הַצָעִיר, , ''The Young Guard'') is a Labor Zionist, secular Jewish youth movement founded in 1913 in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, Austria-Hungary, and it was also the name of the group ...

including

Abba Kovner Abba Kovner ( he, אבא קובנר; 14 March 1918 – 25 September 1987) was a Polish Israeli poet, writer and partisan leader. In the Vilna Ghetto, his manifesto was the first time that a target of the Holocaust identified the German plan to ...

Izrael Chaim Wilner Izrael Chaim Wilner, ''nom de guerre'' "Arie" and "Jurek" (November 14, 1917 – May 8, 1943) was a Jewish resistance fighter during World War II, member of the Jewish Fighting Organization's (ŻOB) leadership, a liaison between ŻOB and the Poli ...

Haika Grossman Haika Grossman ( he, חייקה גרוסמן, 20 November 1919 – 26 May 1996) was an Israeli politician and member of Knesset. In her youth, she was a Zionist leader in Europe, a partisan, and a participant in the ghetto uprisings in occupied ...

, Elye Boraks, Chuma Godot, and Izrael Nagel. The nuns' monastery became a base of the local Jewish resistance, where the Jewish resistance organization

Fareynikte Partizaner Organizatsye The Fareynikte Partizaner Organizatsye ( yi, ; "United Partisan Organization"; referred to as FPO by its Yiddish initials) was a Jewish resistance organization based in the Vilna Ghetto that organized armed resistance against the Nazis during ...

was formed. In 1943, the Germans arrested the mother superior and closed the monastery, but the nuns, though deprived of their main base, continued their activities. In 1944, Sister Cecylia became a prioress. That year she also took in two children whose parents were murdered during the war. After the war, due to the borders' change and the loss of Vilnius by Poland, she returned to Kraków. She had many functions in the Dominican convent in Kraków. She was a porter, organist, and cantor—she taught and initiated choral singing. She was also a prioress of the monastery several times. She learned foreign languages and took care of the monastery correspondence. In recognition of her merits, she was awarded the title of "Righteous Among the Nations" in March 1984, at age 76. On March 25, 2018, she celebrated her 110th birthday, and was called "the oldest living Cracovian" (inhabitant of the city of Kraków). Maria Roszak died in Kraków on November 16, 2018.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Roszak, Maria 1908 births 2018 deaths Polish supercentenarians Polish Righteous Among the Nations 20th-century Polish Roman Catholic nuns Dominican nuns Women supercentenarians 21st-century Polish Roman Catholic nuns