Blessed Julia Rodzińska was a religious, a teacher, and a martyr of the Nazi regime. Stanislawa Rodzińska was born in 1899 in the village of Nawojowa in southern Poland. Her father Michael worked at a bank and was a church musician. When she was eight, her mother died. Michael was unable to take adequate care of the children, and they barely survived. He died within two years of losing his wife. Since none of the relatives were willing or able to take the children in, the boys were accepted by a local family and the girls were taken to a Dominican orphanage. Stanislawa grew fond of the nuns and had a respect for their dedication to their work and their lives as religious and readily participated in their work. After completing her education with them, she began training to be a teacher at Nowy Sącz. Soon afterward, she suspended her studies and entered the Dominican order at Tarnobrzegu-Wielowski, where she took the name Maria Julia in 1917. After a year of formation, she resumed her studies in Kraków and graduated in 1919. Sister Julia started her work as a teacher by tutoring orphan children. She professed her final vows with the Dominicans in 1924 and furthered her studies to receive an Advanced Teaching diploma, which she completed in 1926. She was hired to be the director of the State Primary School in Vilnius, which was then part of Poland. She was known to be a dedicated and inspiring teacher, and she had a special affection for the orphans. She especially enjoyed teaching them to recite the Rosary. In 1934, she was chosen to be the superior of the Dominican house in Vilnius. Once the Nazi regime had captured Vilnius, the ruling government forcibly closed the monastery, causing the dissolution of the school and the orphanage, and the nuns to have to fend for themselves. Sister Julia and most of the other Dominicans remained in Vilnius but had to wear secular clothing. She did some clandestine teaching, trying to preserve and pass on the cherished Polish culture and language, as well as the truths of the Faith. The Nazis made practicing the faith extremely difficult, and scores of priests, bishops, nuns and monks were routinely arrested, some even executed on the spot. While she was still able to do so, Sister Julia assisted the local archbishop in his efforts to protect Jewish people from the Gestapo. One ministry that she was very dedicated to was to find food and shelter for retired priests whose pensions had been cut off. In July of 1943, Sister Julia and some other Dominican nuns were arrested and sent to Lukiškės Prison in Vilnius, where many Polish people had been executed. Sister Julia spent a year in solitary confinement in a cold, dark, damp concrete cell so small, she could not stretch her arms and legs, nor even stand up. She was subjected to the mental anguish of having to clean the bloody torture chambers. In July of 1944, she was put in a packed cattle car and taken to the Stutthof concentration camp near the city of Gdańsk. There, she was put in the Jewish section of the camp, which was subject to the most cruel treatment. The women were given gynecological exams in front of the soldiers. They were tortured, mocked, and nearly starved. Despite this atrocious situation, Sister Julia formed and led a prayer group. She found a way to trick the guards into allowing a priest in so that he could hear confessions and bring Holy Communion. With morals in the camp mostly thrown by the wayside, she constantly encouraged her fellow prisoners to hold fast to hope and to the good morals they believed in. She was often known to give away her starvation food allotment to others who were more needy. In November of 1944, an outbreak of Typhus occurred in the camp. It only grew worse due to the malnutrition of the prisoners and the filthy environment. In keeping with her selfless ways, Sister Julia tended to the suffering, contracting the disease herself. She died February 20, 1945, at age forty-five and her naked body was thrown in a pile of corpses. The camp was freed by Soviet troops just two months later. Blessed Julia Rodzińska, as a teacher, was known as “The Apostle of the Rosary” and “The Mother of Orphans”, having a special affinity after being an orphan herself. As a prisoner, she was respected and appreciated by her fellows for her faith, her encouragement, and her compassion. There were numerous posthumous testimonies to her heroic virtue. One person she persuaded away from suicide by secret notes of encouragement. Another, presumed dead, was thrown into a pile of corpses, only to be pulled out by Sister Julia and who survived the camp. Others, including the clandestine priest, testified to her holy death. Blessed Julia was beatified as part of a group of one hundred eight Polish martyrs of World War II.