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Icons of St. George (Yuri)
Skobtsov of Paris, + 1945
Feast: July 20
Icon is
of four recently-glorified Saints. Mother Maria (as she is still known
by many) appears the second from the left. Her son Yuri (George, in
English) is the Saint farthest on the right.
St.
Maria was born in 1891 in Latvia, and for some years in her youth she
embraced atheism. She married a Bolshevik in 1910 and published poetry.
By 1913 her marriage had ended. In 1918 she was elected mayor of Anapa
in south Russia. Put on trial for Bolshevism by the White Army, she was
acquitted by the judge, Daniel Skobtsov, a former teacher of hers. She
married Daniel. She fled to Georgia with her children and later to
Paris, where she arrived in 1923. Having turned to faith, she studied
theology and social work. She took the vows of a nun in 1932, with her
husband's permission, but was not secluded. Rather, Mother Maria rented
a house in Paris which she kept as a convent. It was open at all times
to refugees, the needy, and the lonely. It also became a centre of
theological discussion. When the Nazis took Paris, Jews approached the
apartment-convent asking for baptismal certificates (which would save
them from deportation and death). These were provided by St. Dmitri,
the priest who served the convent. Mother Maria's son, Yuri (in
English, this is the name George) was a great help to her in her
charitable work, which included smuggling Jewish children out of the
way of death in garbage cans, assisted by French garbage collectors.
This rescue work was reported to the Nazis and on Feb. 8, 1943, George
was arrested. Later his mother too was taken. They perished at the
hands of the German officials. These Saints were glorifed early in 2004
by the Oecumenical Patriarchate.
Top Icon: by the hand of
Maria Struve, who knew all four Saints.
Next
Icon: next to the image which is a detail of the above icon, there is
an icon which is by the hand of Olga Poloukhine.
Beneath
the icons is a photograph of St. George taken in 1939.
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