Edith Stein

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Edith Stein (German: [ʃtaɪn]; religious name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross; 12 October 1891 – 9 August 1942) was a German philosopher who converted to Catholicism and became a Discalced Carmelite. She was murdered in the gas chamber at the Auschwitz II-Birkenau concentration camp on 9 August 1942, and is canonized as a martyr of the Catholic Church; she is also one of six patron saints of Europe. Stein was born into an observant German Jewish family, but had become an agnostic by her teenage years. After World War I broke out, she trained as a nursing assistant and worked in an Austro-Hungarian field hospital in 1915. After completing her doctoral thesis at the University of Freiburg in 1916, she obtained an assistantship to Edmund Husserl there. From reading the life of the reformer of the Carmelites, Teresa of Ávila, Stein was drawn to the Christian faith. She was baptized on 1 January 1922 into the Catholic Church. At that point, she wanted to enter a Carmelite monastery as soon as...

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