The Aron Streit's Feast Day of St. Edith Stein, August 9

Edith Stein was born into a devote Jewish family  in Germany, 1891. By the time she was in her teens, she had decided to become an atheist. From there, she went to university and became a philosopher. This probably explains why, out of dozens of pictures of her available on-line, she looks sad/mad/pensive in all of them.

After reading St. Theresa of Avila's autobiography, Stein decided to become a Catholic, and then a discalced Carmelite nun in Cologne, Germany 1933. As the Nazi threat grew, she and her sister, Rosa, were transferred to the Carmelite monastery in Echt, Netherlands. Turns out she wasn't safe there, either...she and her sister were rounded up with another 987 Jews (the fact that she was a Catholic didn't hold water with the Nazis - she had been a Jew) and sent to the concentration camp in Auschwitz. She was put to death by gas in 1942.

So was she a Catholic martyr? The Church seems to think so. The Jews, on the other hand, argue that she wasn't killed for being Catholic, but for having been born a Jew. Meh.

In 1985, a little girl was born and named after Edith Stein's Carmelite name, Theresa Benedicta. When the little girl was 2, she overdosed on Tylenol and was near death. Her father asked everyone to pray for the intersession of Edith Stein. It worked, a miracle occurred, and Edith Stein became a saint in the Catholic Church. The little girl,  now 13 years old, attended the canonization in Rome in 1998.

Theresa Benedicta McCarthy