Maria Skobtsova

Maria Skobtsova
Maria with Nikolai Berdyaev, 1930
Born	Elizaveta Yurievna Pilenko December 20, 1891 Riga
Died	March 31, 1945 (aged 53) Ravensbrück concentration camp
Cause of death	Poison gas
Residence	Paris
Other names	Mother Maria, Mother Mary, Marie Skobtsova
Home town	Paris, France
Title	mayor of Anapa
Political party	Socialist-Revolutionary Party
Children	Gaiana, Iuri, Anastasia
Awards	Righteous among the Nations

Maria Skobtsova (20 [8 Old Calendar] December 1891, Riga — 31 March 1945, Ravensbrück concentration camp, Germany), known as Mother Maria (Russian: Мать Мария), Saint Mary (or Mother Maria) of Paris, born Elizaveta Yurievna Pilenko (Елизавета Юрьевна Пиленко), Kuzmina-Karavayeva (Кузьмина-Караваева) by her first marriage, Skobtsova (Скобцова) by her second marriage, was a Russian noblewoman, poet, nun, and member of the French Resistance during World War II. She has been canonized a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Born to an aristocratic family in 1891 in Riga, Latvia, then part of the Russian Empire. She was given the name Elizaveta Pilenko. Her father died when she was a teenager, and she embraced atheism. In 1906 her mother moved the family to St. Petersburg, where she became involved in radical intellectual circles. In 1910 she married a Bolshevik by the name of Dmitriy Kuz'min-Karavaev. During this period of her life she was actively involved in literary circles and wrote much poetry. Her first book, Scythian Shards (Скифские черепки), was a collection of poetry from this period. By 1913 her marriage to Dimitriy had ended and the latter subsequently became Eastern orthodox.

Through a look at the humanity of Christ — "He also died. He sweated blood. They struck his face" — she began to be drawn back into Christianity. She moved—now with her daughter, Gaiana—to the south of Russia where her religious devotion increased.