Teresa Benedicta was born Edith Stein at Wroclaw (now in Poland but then in the German province of Silesia) in 1891. She was the eleventh child of a Jewish family. She showed great ability in her philosophical studies and became a popular lecturer and writer. After reading the autobiography of St Teresa of Avila, she sought baptism in 1922 and eleven years later, joined the Carmelites at Cologne. She was moved to the Carmel of Echt (Netherlands) to avoid the growing Nazi threat but was eventually arrested, and gassed at Auschwitz on 9 Aug 1942. – CTS New Daily Roman Missal 2012, p 2894
