Mother Maria of Paris Mother Maria of Paris
On the occasion of OXI Day, when we commemorate the
occasion when a tiny, run down nation had the guts to stand up against the
bullying of the Nazi/fascist juggernaut, I want to bring up another underdog
who deserves some recognition. No, she isn’t Greek, although she is Orthodox
Christian. She isn’t American either. She probably never even stepped foot in
Greece. But she is a heroine. She displays the ideal of “philotimo” (or doing
the honorable thing for the honorable thing’s sake). She too had the courage to
say “NO” to the Nazi murder machine. For her sacrifices to her immigrant
community and the poor and the stranger, and ultimately in her ultimate
sacrifice of her life, she is recognized as a saint in the Russian Orthodox
Church. Her name is Maria Skobtsova or more simply Mother Maria of Paris.
I can’t summarize her entire life story in one short
article as this would not do justice to the complexities of her thought and her
being. (But you can get a more detailed account by reading Jim Forest’s bio of
her at http://incommunion.org/2004/10/18/saint-of-the-open-door/). Suffice it
to say that she was a character; she, like Dorothy Day, her Catholic
counterpart, believed that Christ took the guise of the poor, the wretched, the
ill, and that instead of glorious towering temples,the Church could be found
“in the streets.”
Here are some life notes:
she was born
in Riga, Latvia, then part of Russia to a family that included politicians and
the last governor the Bastille in Paris
a socialist
sympathizer, she would spend nights writing poetry and arguing about a “just
society” with the radical literary groups she frequented, which included
symbolist poet Alexander Blok
although
raised devoutly Orthodox, the death of her beloved father died at 14 caused her
to have a lapse of faith. As a result, she went through several years of her
life a sworn atheist.
she married
a Bolshevik and was a member of the Social Revolutionary Party, much more
democratic than the Bolsheviks. , but her marriage ended in divorce
she
published books of poetry in the Symbolist School and later many theological
essays
she applied
to an all-male theology school in St. Petersburg and was accepted as the first
female student
she escaped
execution by a Bolshevik for being in the wrong party but using her gift of gab
convinced him that she was a friend of Lenin’s wife
she became
deputy mayor of her home town of Anapa during the onset of the Russian Civil
War in 1918, and was surprisingly able to sustain it with vital services
when the
opposing side in the civil war, the White Army took over her small town she was
put on trial and would have been executed for looking too much a “red” except
that her judge at the trial, a former schoolteacher she knew, fell in love with
her and had it dismissed. She fell in love with him and married husband number
2 a few days after the trail
she and her
family went into exile after the Bolsheviks took over by taking a perilous
journey through the Black Sea through the mountains of Georgia, to Turkey
through Yugoslavia that finally ended in Paris. Two years abd two newborn
children later, they arrived as refugees in Paris
she lost her
daughter to the flu and meningitis, an experience that changed her life forever
causing her to take on the calling as a “mother to all”
very
unconventionally, she smoked and drank beer in a nun’s habit in Parisian coffee
shops
after her
second marriage fell apart, she founded a spiritual/social work house that
connected spiritual life to service for the most needy, serving thousands of
impoverished refugees, the mentally ill, and the poor of Paris
But what would garner her a golden medal on OXI Day
deals with her bravery in smuggling out Jewish children headed for the death
camps in an undercover operation aptly titled “The Trash Can Rescue” (the story
is described vividly in the children’s book Silent as Stone: Mother Maria of
Paris and the Trash Can Rescue, also by her biographer Jim Forest and founder
of the Orthodox Peace Fellowship. You can purchase your own copy on Amazon).
Mother Maria and the Trash Can Rescue Mother Maria and
the Trash Can Rescue
The story occurs after Mother Maria had established
the house with the blessing and help of her bishop, Metropolitan Evlogy
Georgievsky, on rue de Lourmel. Word got out that something was happening at
the stadium, not far from the house. “. . .There was a mass arrest of Jews —
12,884, of whom 6,900 (two-thirds of them children) were brought to the
Velodrome d’Hiver . . . Held there for five days, the captives in the stadium received
water only from a single hydrant, while ten latrines were supposed to serve
them all. From there the captives were to be sent via Drancy to Auschwitz.
(http://incommunion.org/2004/10/18/saint-of-the-open-door/)
Mother Maria of Paris wrote both poetry and religious
essays in addition to running a soup kitchen and community center in a ghetto
of Paris
Because Mother Maria was well-known to the police and
sanitation crews as she would scour the back alleys of Paris and the central
market gathering day old food and recyclables for the poor of her community,
she was granted access into the stadium. She quickly sized up the situation.
The stadium had become a central transfer and processing hub for the thousands
of Jews of Paris.
She prayed for assistance. The idea came to her. By
employing the confidence of the local sanitation workers in charge of hauling
the garbage from the stadium, Mother Maria perpetrated a plot that would at
least save the children from the gas chambers: stuff them into the garbage
bins, haul them out on the trucks from the stadium, and then under the cover of
night, sneak the children to the house on rue de Lourmel where she then could
orchestrate their continued passage to the south of France, an area outside of
Nazi control, and to safety.
As her biographer recounts, “It would have been
possible for her to leave Paris when the Germans were advancing toward the
city, or even to leave the country to go to America. Her decision was not to
budge. “If the Germans take Paris, I shall stay here with my old women. Where
else could I send
them?”(http://incommunion.org/2004/10/18/saint-of-the-open-door/)
No one is sure how many children Mother Maria and her
garbage crew saved. But what is certain is that she eventually was found out by
the Nazis. The priest, Father Dimitri Klepinin who had served alongside her in
the “monasticism in the world” and her son Yuri were arrested. They had been
guilty of forging fake baptismal certificates for Jews who came begging for help.
Yuri and Father Dimitri eventually died in Buchenwald camp while Mother Maria
was sent to Ravensbruck.
Even while undergoing unspeakable torment, Mother
Maria still saw hope in the smoke stacks that plumed from the crematoria. “But
it is only here, immediately above the chimneys, that the billows of smoke are
oppressive,” Mother Maria said. “When they rise higher, they turn into light
clouds before being dispersed in limitless space. In the same way, our souls,
once they have torn themselves away from this sinful earth, move by means of an
effortless unearthly flight into eternity, where there is life full of joy.”
Even in the camp, she would give away her own meager portion of bread to others
more needy.
The Russian Orthodox Church took a long time to
declare Mother Maria a saint probably because of her unorthodox ways and
thinking
She too found escape through the smoke stacks of the
gas chambers. It was Good Friday, March 30th, on the eve of the liberation of
Paris, 1945, that Mother Maria was one of those chosen for death. According to
other accounts, she took the place of another prisoner who was marked for the
gas chamber that day.
This little-known wayward nun who downed vodka and
scribbled poetry had the courage to risk her life to do the Christ-like thing.
(When Nazis interrogated her about whether she had seen any Jews, she would
point to an icon of the Mother of God or else point to the body of Christ on
her crucifix.) To stand up against injustice and hatred, not just in the
abstract as she had criticized the early revolutionaries and even the
ultra-nationalistic Church leaders, but in the real, the here-and-now. In the
shiny-black-boots-ringing-at-the-doorbell-come-to-take-you-away real type of
terror and injustice. The monster of barbarism that has mass appeal and seems
unstoppable. It is in front of this monster that a tiny woman dressed in black
stood up and said “NO!” No, that is not right. And it didn’t matter that those
she risked her life for weren’t Russian or Greek or even Orthodox, she did it
because it was the right thing to do. It was what Christ would have done. The
same way the pathetic, no shoes, no power Greeks did to Hitler and Mussoulini.
All they did was stand up and say “NO!” It takes courage to stand up and say
“No!” when you are deemed puny and powerless. But it is that act that makes you
powerful and makes all the difference; it is small acts of kindness and truth
that echo down the annals of history and the alleys of Paris.
greekamericangirl.com
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