The Life of ST. MARIA SKOBOTSOVA
“Before and after her, there were many people with courage and heroism. But Mother Maria was a martyr who suffered voluntarily. In her were resurrected the legendary martyrs of early Christianity. Mother Maria accepted the wreath of martyrdom not to save somebody close to her by blood or conviction but to save unknown and, to her, strange human beings.”
—Mark Vishniak
Many people outside of the Orthodox Church think of Orthodoxy as being more mystical than practical. Orthodoxy’s image is often of otherworldly icons, incense, and saints withdrawn from the world into prayer. The fact is, though, that many Orthodox saints have been deeply immersed in the outside world. Even a desert father like Saint Anthony, who spent years as a hermit, emerged from seclusion to attend the First Ecumenical Council and defend St. Athanasius. This spring a little-known saint who lived in Paris before and during World War II was canonized in France. Mother Maria Skobtsova, a Russian nun, was nothing if not deeply practical. Throughout her extraordinary life, Mother Maria worked to help the many suffering people she encountered at first in Russia and later in France. Eventually she would die in a Nazi concentration camp for the crime of aiding and sheltering Jews.
Mother Maria was born Elizabeth Pilenko in 1891 in the town of Anapa, on the shores of the Black Sea. From childhood she was known as “Lisa” by her family and friends. Lisa’s father Yuri was a well-off landowner who nevertheless believed strongly in social reform. When the family first moved to Anapa, the town had no public sanitation and no hospital. When Yuri Pilenko could not convince the town council to improve conditions, he used his own funds to build a hospital and sanitation system. Lisa’s father’s example of charity had a profound effect on his daughter’s values.
Lisa was a serious student who especially loved poetry. Throughout her life, reading and writing poetry was a personal consolation. She was taught at home by a governess until the age of eleven when she entered an elite private school. Lisa’s life changed profoundly at age fourteen when her beloved father, Yuri, died. Lisa decided at that moment that “this death is unjust. Therefore there is no justice. But if there is no justice there cannot be a just God. If there is no just God then there is no God at all!”
After losing her faith, Lisa threw herself into her two passions: poetry and social reform. She and her mother and brother moved to St. Petersburg where Lisa entered the Bestayev Institute Philosophy School. She attended poetry readings in her spare time and became a devotee of Alexander Blok. After hearing the well-known poet read one evening, Lisa impulsively went to his house and stayed to talk with him for hours. Soon after he wrote a poem for her entitled “Letter.” Along with her passion for poetry, Lisa believed strongly in helping the many “have nots” of St. Petersburg. Despite her busy student schedule, she taught an evening literacy course for workers at a city factory. As Lisa became more and more dedicated to liberal social ideals, she began to socialize with other like-minded young people. It was through these circles that she met another student, Dimitri Kuzmin-Karavaev, a Bolshevik whom she married after turning eighteen.
As Lisa grew into her twenties, she slowly became disenchanted with the values of her friends. She especially felt the emptiness of the agnosticism rampant among her fellow students and intellectuals. Lisa made a tentative move back toward the Orthodox Church when she approached the rector of the Ecclesiastical Academy at Alexancer Nevsky Monastery about letting her take a theological course. At first the rector was shocked because no woman had ever taken a class at the academy (this was 1913). However, seeing Lisa’s sincerity he eventually let her take the course independently.
At this time Lisa was twenty-one years old and at a crisis point in her life. She had recently become pregnant, but was drifting away from her nonbelieving husband, Dimitri. Lisa decided to leave her husband and moved to Moscow, alone. Her daughter, Gaiana, was born there in October, 1913. Lisa struggled with her life as a single mother but was blessed by a strong spiritual experience that sustained her throughout her trials. She had entered a small city chapel that contained a well-known icon of the Theotokos surrounded by the sick and the lame. Praying before this icon, Lisa experienced a strong sense of God’s presence which she described in the words: “Jesus is over all, unique and expiating everything!”
Lisa’s return to the Church did not stop her involvement in politics. She became a Social Revolutionary delegate to the Party Congress in 1917. Lisa was upset, though, as she saw how her moderate party’s ideals were increasingly crushed by the radical Bolsheviks. After the Bolsheviks seized power on October 25, Lisa and her close friend Zhenia decided to leave for Lisa’s childhood hometown of Anapa. Zhenia was on the wanted list of the Cheka, the Bolshevik secret police. Lisa and Zhenia disguised themselves as an aristocratic lady (Lisa) traveling with her maid (Zhenia). The two experienced a harrowing journey as their train passed scenes of massacre in villages along the way. Lisa and Zhenia were almost shot themselves by Bolshevik soldiers. Lisa just managed to bluff her way to safety by claiming that Krupskaya, Lenin’s wife, was a close personal friend. After the women arrived safely in Anapa, Lisa stated gratefully, “I have known the mercy of Christ.”
Lisa did not have a personality that would allow her to live quietly in Anapa during the tumultuous years of the Russian Revolution and Civil War. In 1918, at the age of twenty-seven, she was asked to serve as the town’s deputy mayor. When the mayor resigned soon after taking office (he was fearful of both Red and White leaders who were fighting near Anapa), Lisa took on the main post. Lisa thought that her main duty as mayor was to provide aid to the many refugees from other parts of Russia who were flooding her region. She would greet the arriving homeless personally, providing them with food, tea, and emergency lodgings. She did not ask the refugees about their politics, but saw all who arrived as deserving of help. Even the local Bolshevik leader, Comrade Protapov, respected Mayor Pilenko for her charity: “She is a good Russian, the Mayor,” he said, “It is a pity she is not on our side.”
Lisa’s position as mayor was a very dangerous one. This became dramatically evident later in the year when a gunboat full of mutinous Bolshevik sailors arrived in Anapa. After murdering the town harbormaster, they ordered Lisa and the town council to hand over to them 20,000 rubles, a huge sum. Lisa flatly refused. Astonishingly, the sailors seemed to respect the mayor for her courage and agreed to leave Anapa.
In the summer of 1918, Anapa was taken over by the White Army. Because of her evenhanded treatment of both Red and White refugees, some in the town informed the White Army authorities that Mayor Pilenko was a Bolshevik sympathizer. Lisa was brought to trial before Danilo Skobtsov, the local White Army leader. After listening to the accusations against the mayor, Skobtsov decided that they were frivolous and let her go. Soon after, Lisa and Skobtsov began a whirlwind courtship that ended in their marriage (Lisa had divorced her first husband several years before).
As the fighting in their region intensified, Danilo Skobtsov decided that it was no longer safe for Lisa and her daughter Gaiana to remain in Anapa. He was especially concerned because Lisa had just become pregnant. Lisa, Gaiana, and her mother managed to board an old Italian steamship that was heading for the relative safety of Georgia. The ship was crammed with refugees fleeing the Russian civil war. Conditions on board the ship were horrendous. The few toilets on board were constantly overflowing. The groaning of the many soldiers on board filled the air. Though pregnant and tired, Lisa managed to bring a little comfort to her fellow passengers by brewing tea in the samovar she had brought on board and distributing it to anyone who wanted it.
When it proved impossible to stay in Georgia, Lisa and her family moved on to Constantinople where they joined Skobtsov. While living in Constantinople, Lisa gave birth to her son Yuri. Soon after another daughter, Anastasia, was born. Since Skobtsov was unable to find steady employment in Constantinople, the family soon decided to relocate to Paris. Lisa’s husband found a part-time teaching job in the city. Unfortunately, though, the position paid very little and the Skobtsov family suffered from severe poverty. They lived together in one basement room, slept on mattresses without sheets, and even had to share one set of dishes and cutlery amongst themselves. Lisa tried to add to the family’s meager income by painting scarves that she sold through a small French workshop. Later, as Mother Maria, Lisa would recall the misery of this time: “In every period of my life there was a different transfixing sorrow. When we first came to France we were in terrible need. I was working ten and twelve hours a day and losing my eyesight. I earned almost nothing.”
Lisa became very depressed because of her family’s sufferings. The one bright spot in her life was brought to her by a friend from the scarf-painting workshop. Seeing Lisa’s sadness, the friend introduced her to the Russian Christian Student Movement that was just becoming active in Paris. The Movement’s members included many well-known Russian intellectuals who had fled the civil war. The organization sponsored many lectures and discussion groups on topics that interested Lisa. These stimulating events and the like-minded people she met slowly lifted Lisa’s spirits.
Sadly, just as life was brightening, a new tragedy came to test Lisa. Her four year-old daughter Anastasia died of meningitis. Though grief-stricken, Lisa looked on her daughter’s death as a sign that she must commit herself wholly to the Church: “At Nastia’s side,” she wrote, “I feel how all my life my soul has wandered through little, narrow alleys, Now I want a real and cleared path . . . ”
After Anastasia’s death, Lisa was drawn more and more into the life of the Church. She became certain that her true vocation was to be a nun. She managed to convince her husband that he and she should separate so that she could become a monastic. Skobtsov finally consented and Lisa was consecrated a nun in 1932. Now known as Mother Maria, Lisa stated “I want to create a new form of nun life, a life in the world. I would like to become mother to all the poor things of the earth.”
Mother Maria’s mission as a monastic was to help the poor as directly as possible. Her first project was to open a hostel for needy young girls that also served meals to the homeless. Soon after, she set up another homeless shelter and soup kitchen at 77 Rue de Lourmel in Paris. Mother Maria’s life was taken up with the hard work of running these institutions. She was constantly scrambling to find food and necessities for those in her care. Mother Maria did not complain of her exhausting life. Instead she stated: “At the Last Judgment I will not be asked whether I practiced asceticism, nor how many bows I made before the altar. I will be asked whether I fed the hungry, clothed the naked, visited the sick, and the prisoner in his jail . . .”
As the 1930s drew to a close, it was clear that war was looming. It became more and more difficult for Mother Maria to run her charitable institutions. Food was scarce and she constantly worried about providing for those in her care. In 1940, the German army approached Paris and millions of French fled the city. Mother Maria refused to leave, though, stating that she could not abandon the many helpless people (especially the elderly) who were dependent on her.
After the Germans occupied Paris, Jews and others seen as “undesirable” by the Nazis began to be arrested. A friend of Mother Maria’s, Igor Krivocheine, asked if she would be willing to help smuggle food and supplies to Jewish prisoners who were suffering cruelly in newly opened concentration camps. Mother Maria agreed to help. In addition, she began to hide Jews at her Lourmel shelter in order to eventually smuggle them out of Paris into the Unoccupied Zone. Through a friend at the French Prefecture, Mother Maria was also able to provide false Aryan papers to many Jews in her care. All of these actions could have led to her immediate imprisonment.
In July of 1942, Mother Maria took an even greater risk when she entered the Vel d’Hiv, a huge Parisian sports arena that was being used to imprison Jews before their transfer to concentration camps. In the Vel d’Hiv, Mother Maria was confronted by a terrible scene of misery. Thousands of adults and children, many who were ill and had been torn from their hospital beds, were suffering from hunger and thirst. Mother Maria managed to locate a friend of hers, a Jewish woman with four children. The woman said she could bear her fate if she knew the children were saved. Mother Maria came up with the daring idea of smuggling the children out of the prison in garbage cans. Several courageous French garbage collectors agreed to help her and the children were saved.
In early 1943, Mother Maria was warned by her friend at the French Prefecture that she was in imminent danger of arrest. Someone had informed against her and the Nazis knew that she was sheltering Jews. Again, Mother Maria refused to seek safety. On February 8, her son Yuri was arrested. Yuri was living at Lourmel with his mother and heavily involved in her “illegal” charity work. A few days later, Mother Maria was arrested also.
Soon after her arrest, Mother Maria was sent to the infamous Ravensbruck concentration camp. The women prisoners were in constant torment from hunger, lice, and sickness. Twice daily they also suffered through sadistic camp roll calls which forced them to stand without moving for up to several hours. This was a terrible trial for women already weak from starvation and illness. If the prisoners moved or talked during roll call, they were cruelly whipped about the face and head with a metal belt-buckle. This happened to Mother Maria.
Already weakened by her exhausting life before her arrest, Mother Maria quickly sickened. Friends would have to drag her to roll call and support her to the last possible moment in order that she not collapse. Despite this suffering, Mother Maria did her best to raise the spirits of those around her. She would gather young Russian prisoners around her and teach them about the Gospel. She also organized discussion groups about various topics to try to distract the prisoners from their miserable lives.
In January, 1945, Mother Maria was sent to the dreaded “hunger camp” within Ravensbruck where “useless mouths” who could no longer work were sent to die. Food rations were only a small percentage of those in the “regular” camp and the sick prisoners died in huge numbers. Even in this terrible place, Mother Maria acted as a beacon of hope to her fellow sufferers. She managed to trade some of her meager food ration for colored thread and began to work on an embroidered icon of the Theotokos holding the crucified Christ. Many of the other prisoners watched her progress with interest and asked that she give it to them on completion.
A rule of the Ravensbruck “hunger camp” stated that a woman who could no longer stand during roll call would be taken away to be killed in the gas chambers. On Good Friday, March 30, 1945, Mother Maria collapsed during roll call and was sent to be gassed. She died on Holy Saturday. Her courageous years in the concentration camp bear out what she had once prophetically stated: “I submit completely to suffering, even to the sacrifice of my life. If I die I shall see in this a Blessing from Above.”