June 6^th this year is a very special day of celebration for the Sisters of the Holy Family in Poland.  It all began on Trinity Sunday exactly 75 years ago when the first Holy Family Sisters came to the Poland to establish a new foundation. As history shows us, the beginnings were not easy...

It is spring in 1934 in
Lodz.  In the aftermath of the First World War there is still great poverty and unemployment as well as huge material and spiritual needs.

A few Sisters of the Holy Family arrived, at the invitation of Bishop Vincent Tymieniecki, who was concerned by the lack of medical care in the diocese. He began the building of a Catholic hospital, which was to be run by nuns.  An opportunity arose in April 1934, when a failed Unitas clinic, located in the city centre, was put up for sale.  However, before the Sisters could begin their ministry, many repairs had to be carried out.

Trinity Sunday 1934 is regarded as the beginning of the Holy Family Foundation in Poland.  During the first Mass celebrated by an Oblate priest, Fr Teofil Nandzik, sisters and postulants, gathered in the Chapel of the
Holy
Family
Hospital, heard these words: “Dear sisters today, you have begun to write a new chapter in the history of your religious family. In coming here you are the carriers of Jesus Christ.  That is what God and your religious Family expect from you”. (Archives). 

The first superior of the
Holy
Family
Hospital and of the first community was Mother Paul Lazar.  Her assistant, Sr. Veronica Majnusz, was a very experienced nurse.   Many Polish sisters came directly from France and Spain, where they were working as nurses. Until 1936 the first community of the Holy Family had 26 sisters, most of whom were engaged in nursing.  Later, others took on administrative and organisational tasks.

The first community in
Lodz was also involved in relief work during the terrible times of the Second World War.  During this time of food shortages and consequent hunger, Sisters organized a secret kitchen, delivering hot meals to more than 80 people a day.  Pots of soup were lowered on washing lines from the first floor to the basement where people gathered to eat.  People were also able to bring food home to their families.   These secret food programmes operated for some time before eventually being discovered by the authorities.   The Sisters continued to deliver aid and organised celebrations of Christmas during wartime.  The Holy Family hospital was made available to refugees: Poles, as well as foreigners; priests who escaped transportation to the concentration camps; two married couples who were to be sent to work camps in
Germany.  The Sisters also raised a little girl who had been abandoned at the convent door on the 6^th September 1939.

The Sisters delivered food, clothing and documents to people in need of assistance.  They sent food parcels - up to 200 a month - to prisoners in the camps and by their generous service, they helped many people to survive the horrors of war and the dark era of communism.

For about 23 years, the hospital was the only Holy Family institution in Poland.   Then as the years passed, the Sisters gradually took on other apostolic activities.  They undertook educational and catechetical work among children and youth in state schools and kindergartens; they engaged in work with the needy in Caritas and they began to work in the parishes and local environments, and on the missions.

So this is who we are today.  We owe a debt of gratitude to the brave women who have gone before us and who gave their lives to God Alone in the service of the people.   With hearts full of joy and gratitude we look to the future with hope and we pray together:

“Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

 Sr. Beata Malecka.