Doves rose to heaven when these nuns perished in wartime Warsaw

The convent of the Benedictine Nuns of the Most Blessed Sacrament and the Church of St. Casimir in Warsaw, Poland, are seen in an undated photograph after the buildings were destroyed during the Second World War by German bombing amid the Warsaw Uprising, burying 34 sisters, four priests and a thousand civilians in the rubble on Aug. 31, 1944. (OSV News photo/courtesy Nuns of the Most Blessed Sacrament) EDITORS: BEST AVAILABLE QUALITY

“Apparently, it is God’s will that we die here,” said Mother Janina Byszewska, the superior of the Benedictine Nuns of the Most Blessed Sacrament community, which found itself in the midst of the fighting of the Warsaw Uprising in August 1944.

Shortly thereafter, 34 nuns, four priests and a thousand civilians died under the rubble of their own convent.

“People ask us if our sisters have been beatified,” Mother Maria Blandyna, the current superior of the community, told OSV News. “No, because it is extremely difficult. All the documents, the monastery chronicle, were destroyed,” she said.

The wartime story of the heroic nuns from Warsaw begins during the uprising in August 1944, when their convent became a site of both faith and tragedy. On Aug. 1, 1944, the Polish underground Home Army launched the uprising against the German occupiers, who had controlled the country since 1939. The resistance hoped to liberate the city before the Soviet Red Army arrived.

Fierce street fighting soon surrounded the Benedictine convent. On Aug. 6, the feast of the Transfiguration, one of the commanders asked the sisters to open the convent for use as a military base. The date is considered the beginning of their martyrdom that the sisters were well aware of.

A convent born of royal thanksgiving​

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