If you wish to commemorate her in your prayers:

Die 9 Augusti
S. Teresiæ Benedictæ a Cruce

Virginis et Martyris

Oratio

Deus patrum nostrórum, qui beátam Terésiam Benedíctam mártyrem ad cognitiónem Fílii tui crucifíxi eiúsque imitatiónem usque ad mortem perduxísti, ipsa intercedénte, concéde, ut omnes hómines Christum Salvatórem agnóscant et per eum ad perpétuam tui visiónem advéniant. Qui tecuм.

God of our Fathers, who brought the blessed martyr Teresa Benedicta of the Cross to know your crucified Son and to imitate him even until death, grant, through her intercession, that the whole human race may acknowledge Christ as its Savior and through him come to behold you for eternity. Who lives.





Recommended reading:

- Finite and Eternal Being: An Attempt at an Ascent to the Meaning of Being, by St Teresa Benedicta
-  Edith Stein: The Untold Story of the Philosopher and Mystic Who Lost Her Life in the Death Camps of Auschwitz, by Waltraud Herbstrith

* * *

On August 9 the Catholic Church remembers St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, also known as St. Edith Stein. St. Teresa converted from Judaism to Catholicism in the course of her work as a philosopher, and later entered the Carmelite Order. She died in the nαzι cσncєnтrαтισn cαмρ at Auschwitz in 1942.

Edith Stein was born on October 12, 1891 – a date that coincided with her family's celebration of Yom Kippur, the Jєωιѕн “day of atonement.” Edith's father died when she was just two years old, and she gave up the practice of her Jєωιѕн faith as an adolescent.

As a young woman with profound intellectual gifts, Edith gravitated toward the study of philosophy and became a pupil of the renowned professor Edmund Husserl in 1913. Through her studies, the non-religious Edith met several Christians whose intellectual and spiritual lives she admired.

After earning her degree with the highest honors from Gottingen University in 1915, she served as a nurse in an Austrian field hospital during World War I. She returned to academic work in 1916, earning her doctorate after writing a highly-regarded thesis on the phenomenon of empathy. She remained interested in the idea of religious commitment, but had not yet made such a commitment herself.

In 1921, while visiting friends, Edith spent an entire night reading the autobiography of the 16th century Carmelite nun St. Teresa of Avila. “When I had finished the book,” she later recalled, “I said to myself: This is the truth.” She was baptized into the Catholic Church on the first day of January, 1922.

Edith intended to join the Carmelites immediately after her conversion, but would ultimately have to wait another 11 years before taking this step. Instead, she taught at a Dominican school, and gave numerous public lectures on women's issues. She spent 1931 writing a study of St. Thomas Aquinas, and took a university teaching position in 1932.

In 1933, the rise of nαzιsm, combined with Edith's Jєωιѕн ethnicity, put an end to her teaching career. After a painful parting with her mother, who did not understand her Christian conversion, she entered a Carmelite convent in 1934, taking the name “Teresa Benedicta of the Cross” as a symbol of her acceptance of suffering.

“I felt,” she wrote, “that those who understood the Cross of Christ should take upon themselves on everybody's behalf.” She saw it as her vocation “to intercede with God for everyone,” but she prayed especially for the Jєωs of Germany whose tragic fate was becoming clear.

“I ask the Lord to accept my life and my death,” she wrote in 1939, “so that the Lord will be accepted by his people and that his kingdom may come in glory, for the salvation of Germany and the peace of the world.”

After completing her final work, a study of St. John of the Cross entitled “The Science of the Cross,” Teresa Benedicta was arrested along with her sister Rosa (who had also become a Catholic), and the members of her religious community, on August 7, 1942. The arrests came in retaliation against a protest letter by the Dutch Bishops, decrying the nαzι treatment of Jєωs.

St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross died in the cσncєnтrαтισn cαмρ at Auschwitz on August 9, 1942. Blessed John Paul II canonized her in 1998, and proclaimed her a co-patroness of Europe the next year.

Source: http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/st.-teresa-benedicta-Jєωιѕн-convert-and-martyr-celebrated-august-9/

Indeed, and I rejoice in her canonization.  I am not sure I understand why she was canonized as a martyr. though.  She certainly died violently, but it seems to me that she was murdered because her parents were Jєωs, not becasue of her Catholic faith.  If anyone could enlighten me on this, i would be grateful.

Okay.  If that was at least part of the reason St. Teresa was killed, I can understand regarding her as a martyr.