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Blessed Mrs. Marianna Biernacka
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The Pope John Paul the Second beatified on June 13th, 1999, in
Warsaw, Mrs. Marianna Biernacka (1888-1943) who died to save life of
her unborn grandson.
To understand her deed, you have to remember that Poland was under
German occupation by that time (world war two).
Germans were working systematically to extinguish Poles in the occupied
country. According to the information on the WWW page
http://www.holocaustforgotten.com/ :
"On August 22, 1939, a few days
before the official start of World War II, Hitler authorized his
commanders, with these infamous
words, to kill "without pity or mercy, all men, women, and children
of Polish descent or language.
Only in this way can we obtain the living space [lebensraum]
we need".
Heinrich Himmler echoed Hitler's decree: "All Poles will disappear
from the world.... It is essential
that the great German people should consider it as its major task
to destroy all Poles.""
Average Polish citizen did not know these plans. The family Biernacki
was poorly educated (Mrs. Marianna even couldn't write), were never
politically active, neither before nor during the world war two.
Hence you can imagine their deep surprise when German soldiers knocked
at their
door to arrest the son and the daughter-in-love of Mrs. Marianna
Biernacka.
According to the WWW page
http://www.kai.pl/pielgrzymka99/
"God and His law were for Marianna the most important values,
even more valuable than freedom. During an retaliation action
of Gestapo [Gestapo, the Geheime Staatspolizei was German secret police;
Poles that wanted to escape executions were hiding in the woods and
fighting
against Germans looking for them; if Germans lost soldiers in action,
then they
made revenge on civilians]
she sucrified her life instead of her pregnant daughter-in-love and
the unborn child. She begged the commander of the troop to be allowed to
replace her daughter-in-love. So the daughter-in-love could return home,
and Marianna was imprisoned, and [two weeks later] on July 13th, 1943,
she was shot to dead in Naumowicze near the town Grodno.
While waiting for the execution she had only one wish,
to be provided with a rosary."
