Sister Cecylia Maria Roszak passed away at a convent in Cracow on November 16 at the age of 110, the archdiocese of Cracow reported. She was probably the oldest Catholic nun in the world at the time of her death. She was also a Righteous Gentile who harbored Jews in Nazi-occupied Vilnius, including writer and partisan leader Abba Kovner.

Maria Roszak was born March 25, 1908, in Kiełczewo and joined the Dominican order at the Gródek monastery (named after an old fortification and now neighborhood, adjacent to the Church of Our Lady of the Snows) in Cracow at the age of 21. In 1938 she and several fellow nuns were sent to Vilnius, then Wilno under Polish control, or more precisely to Naujoji Vilna outside the city, where the order had a wooden house and chapel on five hectares of land and intended to set up a monastery under Anna Borkowska, aka Mother Bertranda. World War II cut short these plans.

Vilnius came under Soviet occupation and then Nazi occupation. During the Nazi occupation Roszak and fellow nuns under Mother Bertranda hid 17 members of the Jewish resistance at their convent, including future ghetto underground leader, partisan and writer Abba Kovner.

The World Holocaust Remembrance Center reports Jews who found refuge at the convent were members of the illegal Jewish Zionist underground movements:

“Despite the enormous difference between the two groups, very close relations were formed between the religious Christian nuns and the left-wing secular Jews. The pioneers found a safe haven behind the convent’s walls; they worked with the nuns in the fields and continued their political activity. They called the mother superior of the convent Ima (“mother” in Hebrew).” Kovner apparently wrote his manifesto “Let Us Not Go as Lambs to the Slaughter” at the small convent.

In 1941 the Jews decided to leave the convent to enter the Jewish ghetto and establish the resistance. Borkowska initially pleaded with them to stay, then asked to join them in the ghetto, and then helped smuggle in food and weapons to them. Kovner later wrote Borkowska wanted to join the resistance movement, but he talked her out of it. Borkowska smuggled the first hand grenades into the ghetto.

In September 1943, Mother Bertranda was arrested and tortured, the Vilnius convent was closed and the nuns were dispersed. Roszak returned to Cracow where the Gródek monastery had been closed. Roszak and the other nuns in the Dominican order re-entered Gródek in 1947 and Roszak worked as a porter, organist and hymnist there, as well as serving as superior several times after Borkowska left the community.

Long after the war Abba Kovner learned some of the sisters had survived and he contacted the monastery in Cracow in 1984. Sister Cecylia answered the call and was reportedly initially hesitant to say much at all, fearing a Communist trap. Kovner on the other end asked about “the sisters who lived in Vilnius in the 1930s.” Roszak asked for his name, he gave it to her and then Roszak identified herself as one to the nuns who had given him and other Jews shelter. Kovner reportedly replied: “Sister, I have been looking for contact with someone from your community for a long time. Thanks for saving my life!” He said he was calling from Israel, she gave him their postal address and they said good-bye. A small package arrived from Israel a few weeks later containing a bronze crucifix inscribed with “Jerusalem” at its base.

Yad Vashem awarded Borkowska aka Mother Bertranda and her sisters at the Naujoji Vilna convent including Roszak the distinction Righteous among the Nations in 1984, at the request of Abba Kovner. Kovner participated at the tree-planting ceremony at the Alley of the Righteous at Yad Vashem and then travelled to Warsaw where he personally presented Borkowska the award and a vessel of soil from the planting ceremony. Abba Kovner traveled to Warsaw to present Anna Borkowska with the medal.

“Why do I deserve this honor?” Borkowska asked. Kovner answered: “You are Anna of the angels. During the days when angels hid their faces from us, this woman was for us Anna of the Angels. Not of angles that we invent in our hearts, but of angels that create our lives forever.”

Catholic media sources report the crucifix Kovner sent was at Sister Cecylia aka Maria Roszak’s bedside when she passed away on November 16, 2018, in Cracow at the age of 110.