Some years ago I watched a made-for-TV movie that I found provocative. Called Rescuers: Stories of Courage: Two Women, each story had its own separate title. The first story “Mamusha,” starred Elizabeth Perkins as Gertruda Babilinska, a Catholic housekeeper of a Jewish family. When the Nazi threat became imminent the Jewish couple asked Ms. Babilinska to take and protect their only child—a young boy– feigning that he was her Catholic son for as long as necessary.

As it turned out, the Jewish couple was killed in one of the Nazi death camps. What was so inspiring to me was not just that Gertruda agreed to hide the boy at great risk to her own life, but that after the war she continued to raise him — not as a Catholic, but as a faithful Jew. As an epilogue, the real life character, Michael Stolowicki, who was the young Jewish boy now a grown middle-aged man appeared on screen to pay tribute to Gertruda Babilinska. He expressed his undying love and respect for her. A practicing Jew, he expressed his awe and admiration for a Catholic woman whose depth and understanding of her own Christian faith motivated her to revere and guard his faith out of respect for his parents and out of love for him.

It is always moving to hear of someone who put their own life at risk to save the life of another. But it is also moving to imagine how radical and courageous was the act of a Catholic woman raising a child as a Jew in the 1940 and 50’s. How much easier, how much more typical it would have been for her to raise the boy as a Christian — or even to think that raising the boy as a Christian would have been the “right” thing to do. And yet, how much more Christ-like her action was. How refreshing and inspiring to see someone who lived by truths that are often espoused by religions but not actually lived because the practitioners of that religion mistake the religion for the truth itself when in fact, at its best, religions are but the bud of the full, flourishing reality of truth.

I was reminded of this inspiring movie and Gertruda Babilinska’s deep faith, wisdom, and loving action when I read the passage below from Jean Vanier’s Becoming Human. Vanier was making the distinction between healthy and unhealthy belonging, healthy belonging being the antidote to loneliness that cuts us off from others, ourselves, and God. Then Vanier’s comments reminded me of one of my favorite passages from Rabbi Heschel. Both of our wise guides speak of what Gertruda Babilinska positively and bravely embodied.

Vanier —

“When religion closes people up in their own particular group, it puts belonging to the group, and its success and growth, above love and vulnerability towards others; it no longer nourishes and opens the heart. When this happens, religion becomes an ideology, that is to say, a series of ideas that we impose on ourselves, as well as on others; it closes us up behind walls. When religion helps us to open our hearts in love and compassion to those who are not of our faith so as to help them to find the source of freedom within their own hearts and to grow in compassion and love of others, then this religion is a source of life.” (BH, 63)

Heschel–

“It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion—its message becomes meaningless” (GSM, 3).

All these years later, Gertruda Babilinska’s memory remains a noble testament to a radical, generous, Christ-like love that is a source of life for others.

Peace friends,

Dan