Skobtsova Yelizaveta (Pilenko)

Skobtsova, Yelizaveta (Mother Maria) Klepinin, Father Dimitri Having immigrated to Paris from Russia, Yelizaveta Skobtsova (née Pilenko) took religious vows in 1932, at the age of 40, becoming Mother Maria. She immediately devoted herself to social action, which received great impetus in 1935, with the construction of the Intercession of the Holy Virgin Orthodox Church on Rue de Lourmel in Paris. The church maintained an extensive center for community activity. Dimitri Klepinin, who had also emigrated from Russia, was ordained as a priest in 1937 and joined the action of Mother Maria. These two members of the clergy objected vehemently to the anti-Jewish measures taken in France after the German occupation, and opened the doors of the Lourmel center to the victims of persecution. Father Klepinin issued a large number of false baptismal certificates, while Mother Maria did wonders in finding long-term hiding places for the persecuted Jews whom she had sheltered in the Lourmel center. On July 17, 1942, the day after the mass arrest of the Jews of Paris, she entered the Winter Sports Stadium where the Jews were detained, using her status as a member of the clergy to get past the police. She was able to offer only moral support to a young friend who had been detained there, another emigrant from Russia. However, using her ingenuity, she enabled her three children, two boys and a girl, to escape, for she had secured the cooperation of the street cleaners who were working in the stadium. Mother Maria and Father Klepinin organized a group to put together cartons of food for people held in the Compiègne camp, most of whom were Russian Jews. Among the detainees in the camp were Jewish hostages, and the parcels saved them from starvation between December 1941 and March 1942. One of the hostages, Georges Wellers, testified to this operation. On March 26, 1942, Father Klepinin gave Wellers’ wife, Anne, a false baptismal certificate. As a consequence,” wrote the historian Wellers, “I was not deported [before June 30, 1944], nor was my wife nor our children.” Mother Maria, together with her son Yuri, and Father Dimitri, were arrested and interrogated in February 1943. Dimitri Klepinin and Yuri Skobtsov were transferred to Buchenwald camp and then to Dora, where Klepinin died of pneumonia and exhaustion on February9, 1944. Yuri Skobtsov was apparently murdered. Mother Maria was deported to the Ravensbrück camp, where she perished on March 31, 1945. On January 14, 1985, Yad Vashem recognized Yelizaveta Skobtsova (Mother Maria) as Righteous among the Nations. On July 16, 1985, Yad Vashem recognized Father Dimitri Klepinin as Righteous among the Nations.