The nun, Sister Paula, who had been Rachel, daughter of Feige and Simcha, died on Saturday, in her room at the Benedictine Convent on the Mt. of Olives

Paula, a woman short in stature, dynamic and smiling, with blue eyes and a face that never divulged her years. Last Saturday, when she returned her soul to her creator, she was just short of reaching her 90th birthday. There was a consensus among all who knew and loved her that she was a combination of endless purity and good-heartedness. She was one of those few people in our world for whom no one ever held a grudge, much less a grain of negativity towards her.

I believe all who knew her will also agree, that for quite a while already she wanted to close her eyes and go from here to other worlds.

Sister Paula, Rachel, daughter of Feige and Simcha who always smiled and was always good-hearted, carried an abyss of sadness within. Her yearnings for her Jewish family which she lost in the horrific war on the Christian continent, came to an end this week with her burial at the convent on the Mt. of Olives overlooking the capital of Israel, Jerusalem.

I cried together with many others present at the church who came to the burial mass, and I am grateful to the nuns who asked that I read the consoling verses of Isaiah, which I did with great emotion. It was no less important for me to say kaddish over her grave. I knew with certainty that this is what she would have wanted.

Two days after her burial a sheet of paper that she kept in her room was found, with a description of how Cardinal Lustiger (born Aaron Lustig, who also lost loved ones in the Holocaust and converted to Christianity) requested that kaddish be recited over his grave. This was my confirmation that this was indeed her wish too.

Her story was recorded by Be'er Tuito, the son of friends who was asked to write a paper in school about the Holocaust. I had suggested he write about the attitudes of Holocaust survivors to Christianity and I introduced him to Sister Paula and another Holocaust survivor with a charming personality, Tirza Dvir (of blessed memory), who did not convert, and whose wonderful books I warmly recommend reading. Thanks to the paper that Be'er wrote, I can share some of her life story here precisely in the way she told it to us one day in the small guest room at her convent on the Mt. of Olives.

Sister Paula on the roof of the Benedictine Convent on the Mount of Olives, Palm Sunday.

Sister Paula was born Rachel, in 1929 to affluent Jewish parents in the city of Łomża. Her mother, Feige, passed away a short time after her birth, and her father, Simcha remarried with a good woman who was maternal towards Rachel/Paula. Several years later, her younger brother, Isaac, was born. In September, the Nazis entered Poland. At the stage when there was still cooperation between the Russians and the Germans, when Paula was 10, her father was taken into the Russian army where he was wounded. His wife managed to visit him twice in the hospital. However, after the Germans dissolved their cooperation with the Russians, the Nazis apparently killed him, because upon his wife's third visit to the hospital he was no longer there.

The next stage was the ghetto: Paula, her stepmother and her little brother were crowded into a small space with relatives and close friends where they lived for about a year. "In the beginning, the Nazis took money and items of value from the Jews, and when nothing was left to take they would take Jews to"work" and in effect killed them in the forests. Such was a cousin's story."

How did you know?

"One day, I climbed the gate of the ghetto and observed the gathering of the elderly and then the children, but it still did not occur to me that they were being taken to their death."

When an escape from the ghetto was organized with the help of good Poles, she was caught by the Gestapo who interrogated her, 'where were you planning to go?'

"I told them I knew nothing. When they took me, I was sure they wanted to kill me, but they returned me to the ghetto. I was there for another two or three days and then the Polish family that was helping signaled that we could get out and helped us get to the forest – the whole family. It was cold and there were two meters of Polish snow. The Poles helped us with campfires and food. We were in the forest until they warned us there would be a raid and we would have to flee, each on his own. For every Jew extradited, they would get three kilograms of sugar or a food allowance."

So things were from November 1942 until January 6, 1943.

A 14-year old girl between death and a crucufix

"On January 6, 1943, I was with a friend. There was dry snow, and it was the holiday of the Epiphany. Polish hunters saw us on our way. I was wearing a coat of affluent people, so they understood we were Jews and began to throw snowballs at us. I looked at the road and saw a monument with a crucifix and said to my friend, 'If we kneel, they will think we are Christians.' This was a miracle for us, because they stopped immediately. I looked up and saw someone on the cross suffering. Like me. I don't know how to tell you what happened. It's hard to express. 'You're a Jew,' I said, 'You are suffering and so are we! If you are alive, you will save me!' In that very moment we were saved, and afterwards I hid for two months in a potato storage space and prayed to God: 'You know that I don't want to be a Christian. They are not good! But if I get out of here… then… you will watch over me!' The friend who was with me, Sarah, did not convert to Christianity, and she lives in Australia today."

They decided to part and each of them went separate ways. Twenty years later, Sarah contacted her.

"I got out alive but I wanted to die. I didn't want to say that I was Jewish. I went from one home to another and said that I was an orphan. I invented a new name, and finally there was a family which agreed to take me. I was with a German family, under the guise of a Polish orphan, and I had to go to church, celebrate holidays and go to confession… In order to take care of the baby in the family, we would take turns: one time the mother would go to church and one time I would go. They had a 12-year old daughter who was my friend, and in the end, I revealed to her that I was Jewish and that I want to be baptized. So she showed me what to do at the church and introduced me to the priest. I told him and he didn't believe I was Jewish because of my Slavic facial features. In the end, he spoke with the family and baptized me."

At the convent

"In 1945, I went into the Benedictine convent where I worked as a volunteer, but the convent refused to accept me as a nun. There, at the convent, relatives found me in 1949 after years of searching, but I didn't want them to find me. I wanted them to think that I had died. When they found me, I had to write and sign a paper saying that I want to live at the convent and not move away from it. Then, they decided at the convent to accept me as a nun. About thirty years later (1974), the convent gave me permission to leave for three months and I got a visa in Rome to come to Israel. Following Brother Daniel with whom I had corresponded (a Polish Jew who had survived in Poland, also became a monk and moved to Haifa), I went to Haifa but I couldn't stay there and I didn't want to live in a community, but in a convent like in Poland. I asked the convent in Poland to allow me another year and in the end, I came to the convent on the Mt. of Olives. It was a difficult life that I found here: it was colder and poorer. But the life of the Benedictine order is like the life of the Jews: prayer and regulations. We had not been Orthodox, but on the Sabbath, my father would come home and we lit candles and celebrated, and that's how it was in the ghetto too."

Compensation for Holocaust survivors
 

I, Yisca, have visited the Benedictine convent frequently for at least twenty years. Many of my students, my audiences, and tour guides have visited and admired the convent, learning about the nuns' lives from Sister Christine, the previous mother superior, and a wonderful, accomplished woman who always charmed those who heard her explanations with her special attitude towards the Jewish people. She was very close to Sister Paula and took care of her with tremendous affection.

In the absence of the previous mother superior, I was asked to assist with various matters, such as arranging compensation from the Fund for Holocaust Survivors. Sister Paula had refused this for many years, but recently, under pressure from the other nuns due to the dire situation of the convent, she agreed. Time and again, she would say to me that she wanted me to get the money, “that the money should go to Jews.”

Two months ago, I brought my sister, a doctor, to examine Sister Paula, in order to submit a request for an increased stipend from the Ministry of Health. A week before her death, Sister Paula called to tell me that a budget of another 200 shekels a month had been approved.

In any case, I was emotionally moved by the clerk at the Holocaust Survivors' Claims Committee when I began the process there about three to four years ago. Stuttering and hesitating, I presented the documents of a Holocaust survivor showing a photo of the nun residing in the convent. "Is it possible to ask for compensation payments for a woman who has become a Christian nun?" The answer was cutting and scolding: "Who are we to judge those who went through that period?"

Between Judaism and Christianity, between the convent and the State of Israel

How did you decide to become a nun and not return to Judaism?

“After the war, I was desolate. I wanted to live in the monastery, but every day I wanted to die! I was hurting – why aren't they looking for my brother and finding him? I feel guilty. That is my wound. And the decision was: if I am going to be a Christian, then a nun! And that is in order to pray for the Jewish people. I learned Hebrew at Ulpan Etzion here in Israel, but also in my childhood, we had two Hebrew lessons a week at the Jewish school in Łomża, while at home we spoke Yiddish. My father said that you have to learn Hebrew.

I always light two candles before Shabbat, I want more freedom on Shabbat and I always pray for the Jewish people. The meaning of the State of Israel: be proud and happy! That is the most important thing.”

in this picture I am to the left of Paula and on the right is Daisy - her closest relative that leaves in a Kibutz

I used to visit Paula on various occasions, both by myself and with my family.
She always waited with refreshments and flowers ...

On the right, Sister Paula with my niece and her spouse,
and on the left, Sister Paula with my youngest son.

Last Chanukah, I lit the sixth candle at the monastery together with a group of Israelis I was guiding at the Mt. of Olives. Sister Paula's face lit up! 

Epilogue
 

As a scholar of Christianity and a friend of the convent, I asked the Mother Superior, Christine, more than ten years ago, if I could come to the convent for the period of the Holy Week, a powerful week of religious intensity for Christians (and paradoxically, for Jews as well, in dark periods). This week which climaxes with the crucifixion of Jesus, includes a night vigil in the inner chapel at the monastery, in an area where guests are not permitted. The crucifix lies there and by its side there are candles and nuns kneeling in absolute silence. The Mother Superior Christine, allowed me to enter, to be there and observe in this intimate space laden with Christian significance and powerful silence as suited to the death of the Christian messiah. I, the Jewish woman, was allowed in. I knew that this was a rare moment honoring me as a friend of the convent for many years. However, within that silence, Sister Paula entered and asked me… if I wasn't hungry! Then she left and returned and asked me again about food, and then she left and returned and brought me a bag with food and insisted that I go to eat in the room that I was given for the week. This was embarrassing and inconsistent with the timing and the sanctity of the place.

I couldn't comprehend then what is clear to me today: Sister Paula made every attempt to keep me away from the crucifix.

Last Tuesday, at the burial mass, I read from Isaiah 60:

1. Arise, shine, for your light has dawned;

2. Behold! Darkness shall cover the earth, And thick clouds the peoples; But upon you the Lord will shine, And His Presence be seen over you.

3. And nations shall walk by your light, Kings, by your shining radiance.

4. Raise your eyes and look about: They have all gathered and come to you…

And by her grave, in the convent's cemetery I recited kaddish.

Rest in peace, Sister Paula, Rachel, daughter of Feige and Simcha.

I was born and will remain a Jew and my heart, as yours, will continue to embrace and include every individual, be his religion what it may, if he be pure and good and prayerful for the other.