Chapter 5
The Saint of the Concentration Camp: Maria Skobtsova's Radical Faith
Saint Maria of Paris (1891-1945), born Elizaveta Pilenko and known by various names throughout her life, was a Ukrainian aristocrat whose extraordinary journey defied conventional religious categories. Like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, she was brilliant, eschewed mere pietism, and lived her faith radically. After beginning as a poet among St. Petersburg's literary elite, she became a town mayor, then moved to Paris after the Russian Revolution where she became an unconventional nun who smoked, drank, and considered the whole world her monastery.
Born in 1891 in Riga, Latvia, to a wealthy Ukrainian aristocratic family, Elizaveta (Liza) Pilenko was raised in a devout Orthodox Christian household. Her religious fervor manifested early-at seven she asked about joining a convent, at eight she wanted to journey with religious pilgrims. After her father died when she was fourteen, Liza declared herself an atheist, unable to reconcile his death with a just God.
Her family moved to St. Petersburg, where she encountered poverty for the first time and developed compassion for the suffering. At sixteen, she met influential poet Alexander Blok and became involved in revolutionary politics, marrying a Bolshevik at eighteen. Their apartment became a hub for Russia's literary elite, and she published her first poetry collection. Eventually, her passion for justice led her back to faith after praying before the icon "Mother of God, Joy of All Who Sorrow."
When the Russian Revolution erupted in 1917, she joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party and was elected deputy mayor of Anapa, soon becoming mayor. She used her position to protect locals from the Bolsheviks. During the civil war, she narrowly escaped execution on a train by bluffing about connections to Lenin's wife. Later arrested by the anti-Bolshevik White Army, she was saved by the judge, Daniel Skobtsov, whom she soon married.
As the Bolsheviks gained control, Elizabeth fled with her mother, daughter Gaiana, and while pregnant with her son Yuri. The family eventually settled in Paris among Russian emigres. They struggled financially, with Daniel working as a taxi driver and Elizabeth earning money through sewing and designing. Their hardship intensified when their four-year-old daughter Anastasia contracted tubercular meningitis and died. This devastating loss transformed Elizabeth completely: "Into the grave's dark maw are plunged all hopes, plans, habits, calculations, and above all, meaning," she wrote.
After Anastasia's death, Elizabeth felt called to minister to poor and outcast Russian emigres. Her marriage to Daniel ended, and she began traveling throughout France with the Russian Student Christian Movement. She had a mother's heart that allowed people to bare their souls to her. Though often invited as a speaker, she readily adapted to immediate needs, even scrubbing floors when necessary.
In 1932, with her spiritual advisers' blessing, she pursued monastic life despite being twice-married with children. Metropolitan Evlogy encouraged her to become "a revolutionary nun." She was tonsured and took the name Maria, after Saint Mary of Egypt. Visiting traditional monasteries left her dissatisfied-"No one is aware that the world is on fire." She chose to "create a new tradition" rather than deny the needs of the time. "Today there is only one monastery for a monk-the whole world," she declared.
Mother Maria established a home at 9 villa de Saxe in Paris for young Russian women without work, sleeping on a basement cot beside the boiler after giving up her room. Within two years, she moved to a larger but dilapidated house at 77 rue de Lourmel, which became legendary as a place of hospitality. Thousands passed through its doors, finding rest, healing, and community. She rose before dawn to bargain for discounted food at Les Halles market, carrying provisions back in large sacks.
Her unconventional approach-smoking cigarettes, dressing shabbily in old men's shoes and secondhand cassocks, drinking beer at cafes in full monastic robes-shocked many. "At the Last Judgment," she told a friend, "I shall not be asked whether I satisfactorily practiced asceticism... I will be asked whether I fed the hungry, clothed the naked, visited the sick and the prisoner."
When Paris fell to the Nazis in 1940, Mother Maria and her son Yuri increasingly worked with the French Resistance. Lourmel became a haven for countless Jews needing hiding and transport to safety. She was fearless in her defiance, tearing down Nazi recruitment posters and challenging a German pastor: "How could you be both a Christian and a Nazi?" Father Dimitri Klepinin joined her, producing forged baptismal certificates for Jews by the dozens. When 13,000 Jews were rounded up in July 1942, she went to the Velodrome d'Hiver to help, smuggling four children out in trash cans.
Eventually, the Gestapo arrested Yuri as a hostage, then Father Dimitri, and finally Mother Maria herself. At Ravensbruck concentration camp, she organized prayer groups, shared smuggled food with those in greater need, and created embroidery including a visualization of the Normandy Invasion. On Good Friday, March 30, 1945, she was taken to the gas chamber-some say she deliberately took another prisoner's place. She died the next day, Holy Saturday.
In 2004, the Orthodox Church canonized her as Saint Maria of Paris, alongside her son Yuri and Father Dimitri. Like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, she understood that serving Christ with one's whole being, even unto death, is what it means to be the true church.
