Photo credit: Konstantin Volkov / Facebook
A plaque in memory of the participant of the French Resistance, the Martyr Mary (Elizaveta Skobtsova), an active representative of the Russian diaspora, was erected at the memorial to participants in the movement near Paris, at the Russian cemetery in Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois. Four years ago, one of the new streets of Paris was given the name of the Russian nun by a resolution of the mayor's office of the French capital, TASS reported.
The ceremony opened with a prayer service. Artyom Studennikov, Counselor and Envoy of the Russian Embassy in France, stated that Mother Mary was one of the prominent representatives of the Russian emigration. The diplomat called for preserving the memory of the feat of the Russian participants of the Resistance and the joint opposition to the fascism of Moscow and Paris.
During the Second World War, the nun rescued prisoners of war and others persecuted by the Nazis, sheltering them in her apartment. Thanks to her, a group of Jewish children escaped being sent to Auschwitz. In 1943, the nun was arrested, she was executed in a gas chamber, entering it instead of a Jewish woman.
Elizaveta Skobtsova had an eventful life. She spent her childhood in Crimea, and moved to St. Petersburg later, where she got acquainted with the leading poets of the Silver Age and wrote poetry herself. On the eve of the revolution, she sided with the Socialist Revolutionary Party, and later became the mayor of Anapa. Skobtsova became religious during the years of emigration.
Russkiy Mir
