‘World’s oldest nun’ who rescued Jews during the Shoah passes away aged 110

A 110-year-old woman, believed to be the world’s oldest nun and a rescuer of Jews during the Holocaust, has died.

Father Pawel Rytel-Andrianik, spokesman for Poland’s Roman Catholic Church, on Thursday confirmed the death of Sister Cecylia Roszak last week at a Dominican convent in Krakow.

He described her as “probably the oldest nun in the world” and someone remembered as saying that “life is so short and passes so quickly”.

Born on March 25 1908, Sister Cecylia joined the convent aged 21.

During the German occupation of Poland during the Second World War, when she was in her 30s, she was one of several nuns who set up a new convent near Vilnius, today in Lithuania, sheltering Jews who had escaped the ghetto there.

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