0718021835 (N) by Eric Metaxas

Author:Eric Metaxas
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2015-06-30T21:00:00+00:00

Two triangles, King David’s star.

No insult, this ancestral blazon.

It indicates a noble way.

It marks a chosen nation.

May you, stamped by this seal,

this star of David, by decree,

in your constrained response, reveal

that you are spiritually free.32

It was clear that the Christians at Lourmel would not lie down in the face of the Nazi evil. The number of Jews hidden at Lourmel and Mother Maria’s other houses cannot be counted. Maria and her colleagues did all they could to hide them and then to transport them to safety beyond France. The facilities were already crammed beyond capacity, but the need just grew.

In her fearlessness and defiance, she seemed to have made her peace with death. At one point, Mother Maria remarked that it was a miracle the Germans hadn’t come to Lourmel. If they did, she had a plan. “If the Germans come looking for Jews,” she once said, “I’ll show them the icon of the Mother of God.”33 Eventually when the Nazis did come to Lourmel—to hang recruitment posters, not arrest Jews—Maria promptly tore the posters down.

There was nothing of the diplomat in her. At one point she met several times with a German pastor named Peters, who was interested in her Christian social work, but when she found out he was a proud Nazi and part of the Nazified “Deutsche Christen”34 she challenged him: “How could you be both a Christian and a Nazi?”35

The year prior to the Nazi occupation, in October 1939, Father Dimitri Klepinin had come to Lourmel, replacing Father Kiprian Kern. As much as Father Kiprian and Mother Maria bumped heads and antagonized each other, Father Dimitri and she saw eye to eye. His friendship would be a profound comfort to her and to her son Yuri and the others at Lourmel. Father Dimitri was a mild-mannered and sensitive soul, but on this issue of what to do in the face of Nazi evil, he was clear and bold. He would joyfully lie to the Nazis and deceive them in any way necessary. After the Eichmann decree, many Jews came to Lourmel requesting forged baptismal certificates, and at the risk of his own life, Father Dimitri began producing them by the dozens. “I think the good Christ would give me that paper if I were in their place,” he said.36 To cover these tracks, in case the Nazis checked church rolls, he began forging the names of Jews into the congregational records of Lourmel.

On July 15–16, 1942, things took a sharp turn for the worse when the Nazis began mass arrests of the Jews. Nearly 13,000 were rounded up. Of those, 6,900 were taken to the Vélodrome d’Hiver; 4,051 were children. The enclosed sports stadium was a brief walk from Lourmel, and Mother Maria went to see what she could do to help. The guard at the entrance was French. To him Maria was any other nun—how much trouble could a nun cause? So after telling her to restrict herself to spiritual work, he let her pass.

What she saw inside was horrific.

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