GRANDMOTHER MARTYR

 

Our next martyr for Lent, is a laywoman, mother and widow.

MARIANNA BIERNACKA (nee Czokała) was born in 1888 in Lipsk, Poland. She is also one of the beatified 108 Martyrs of World War II.

Marianna married a farmer named Louis and  they had six children, only two of them surviving infancy. In 1943, during the Second World War, her son Stanisław and his pregnant wife Anna were arrested by German soldiers. In retaliation for the death of other German soldiers that had been killed in a nearby village, the husband and wife were singled out to be shot, though they were innocent of any wrong-doing.

Marianna offered to take the place of her pregnant daughter in-law (the couple already had a two-year-old daughter named Genia), and the soldiers agreed. The Nazis took Marianna and her son to the prison in Grodno.  

While in the prison, she only requested a pillow and a rosary.   After two weeks in prison in which she spent much of her time praying, Marianna was shot and killed on 13 July 1943 in Naumowicze (Belarus) along with her son.   Their bodies were thrown into a common grave. Around that time, Anna gave birth to a son, naming him Stanislaw after his father. Anna lived to age 98 and descendents still live in the area. 

 Bishop Jerzy Mazur, Bishop of Elk, said on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the death of Bl Marianna Biernacka that “Staring at her ordinary life, we see that it was imbued with faith, love, prayer, work and suffering.  Each day began with prayer and common singing Hours. Everyday life was filled with a difficult job in summer in a field and in winter, spun flax and hemp and weaving on a loom.   Recitation of the Rosary prayer and devotional singing songs allowed the dignity to endure the pain of bereavement, hard work and daily poverty.”