Human life can be likened to a constant trek up or down stairs. We all have a choice which way we go.
"We cannot stop on the stairs halfway". This was the message of the nuns of the Congregation of the Sisters of St Catherine, who worked at the Olsztyn Municipal Hospital during the years of the Second World War. At the beginning of 1945, together with their patients, they experienced the incursion of the Red Army. They did not want to turn back from the path they had chosen. They consciously stayed with the helpless people because they could not imagine leaving the sick and needy behind.
When the Russians captured the city, most of the patients stayed at the railway station waiting to be evacuated. The last group of patients and 20 sisters of st Catherine, no longer able to leave the hospital because of the shelling, took refuge in the basement. After the soldiers forced their way in, they were all beaten, tormented and cruelly harassed, and many died.
Sr Krzysztofa Klomfass , an operating theatre instrumentalist. She put up a heroic and courageous fight in defence of chastity. She received several dagger blows and died in the shelter.
Sister Tiburtia Mischke was repeatedly abused by soldiers, beaten and humiliated, and was later deported deep into the Soviet Union. She died in Osanova, helping others to the end.
Sister Maurice Margenfeld, hospital dietician. After experiencing harassment and assault by Soviet soldiers in a hospital shelter, she was deported to the Tula camp, where she cared for the most seriously ill prisoners.
Sister Leonis Müller, an administrative worker at the hospital. She was forcibly dragged into an empty hospital room, where soldiers carried out a gang rape. She was then sent to the camp in Ciechanów. The last station of her martyrdom was the Soviet gulags. Before her death, she offered her sufferings as reparation to God for the sins of the world.
Sister Liberia Domnick and a group of small patients stayed in a shelter at the railway station. Due to the hunger and cries of the terrified children, she attempted to go outside to get them some food and water. She died receiving a shot to the head.
The sisters who died in Olsztyn were buried in a nearby cemetery, which was turned into a park after the war. In 2020, in cooperation with the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), their bodies were exhumed and moved to the monastic cemetery at the convent of the st Catharine sisters in Braniewo.
All the sisters mentioned above received their religious formation at this convent. Here they also took the vows of chastity, poverty and obedience.
They climbed the stairs of life all the way to the top floor because they put the good of others, boundless charity and fidelity to their vowed values first. Today we wait for their beatification.