The Four Glorified Together

The Ecumenical Patriarchate glorified Mother Maria in 2004 together with three companions of the rue de Lourmel: her son Yuri (George) Skobtsov, the chaplain Fr. Dimitri Klépinin, and the essayist Ilya Fondaminsky. This file introduces the three and how each came to share her martyrdom, so that the saint is seen, as the Church received her, in the company of her fellow-workers.

Tradition: Russian Orthodox (Paris émigré; glorified by the Ecumenical Patriarchate, 2004)

A Glorification of Four

When the Ecumenical Patriarchate glorified Mother Maria in 2004, it glorified four together: Mother Maria (Skobtsova), her son Yuri (George) Skobtsov, the priest Dimitri Klépinin, and the layman Ilya Fondaminsky (Ecumenical Patriarchate, 2004; Hackel, Pearl of Great Price, ch. 9–11; see Glorification 2004). The joint glorification is faithful to the history: the rescue was a common work, and the martyrdom was shared. Each of the three deserves to be seen in his own right and not merely as Mother Maria’s shadow.

St. Yuri (George) Skobtsov

Yuri (George) Skobtsov (1920–1944) was Mother Maria’s son by her second marriage, born during the family’s flight into exile (see From Russia to Paris). He grew up in the emigration and, as a young man, worked at the rue de Lourmel alongside his mother and Fr. Dimitri Klépinin, sharing in the rescue work under the occupation (Hackel, Pearl of Great Price, ch. 8–9). He was arrested in February 1943 — in some accounts he was the first of the household taken, the arrest of the son used to draw in the rest — and was implicated in the issuing of the baptismal certificates and the sheltering of Jews (Hackel, Pearl of Great Price, ch. 9; see Arrest 1943). Deported into the men’s camp system, he died early in 1944, still a very young man, of the disease and privation of the camps (Hackel, Pearl of Great Price, ch. 9). [Disputed: the exact camp and date of Yuri Skobtsov’s death in early 1944 are given with some variation (the Dora/Buchenwald complex is generally named, with the death placed in February 1944); Hackel establishes that he died in the camps in early 1944, the precise particulars being imperfectly documented.] His letters from prison, quoted by Hackel, show a young man who understood and embraced the meaning of what his mother’s household had done (Hackel, Pearl of Great Price, ch. 9).

St. Dimitri Klépinin

Fr. Dimitri Klépinin (1904–1944) was the priest of the rue de Lourmel from 1939 and, with Mother Maria, the central figure of the rescue (Hackel, Pearl of Great Price, ch. 6–9). A quiet, gentle, and steady man — a temperamental complement to Mother Maria’s restless energy — he threw himself into the sheltering of Jews and, above all, issued the baptismal certificates that could shield the hunted (see Sheltering Jews Under the Nazis). Arrested in February 1943, he refused under interrogation to promise to cease helping Jews, and by tradition held up his cross and spoke of the crucified Christ as “this Jew” whom his interrogator did not know (Hackel, Pearl of Great Price, ch. 9; see Arrest 1943). Deported to the camps, he died in early 1944 of the conditions there (Hackel, Pearl of Great Price, ch. 9). [Disputed: as with Yuri, the exact camp and date of Fr. Dimitri Klépinin’s death in early 1944 are reported with some variation (the Dora/Buchenwald complex, February 1944, is generally given); the fact of his death in the camps in early 1944 is firmly attested.] He too was recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations for his rescue of Jews (see Sheltering Jews Under the Nazis).

St. Ilya Fondaminsky

Ilya (Ilya Isidorovich) Fondaminsky (1880–1942) was one of the most eminent figures of the Russian émigré intelligentsia — a Socialist-Revolutionary of the older generation, a publicist and editor central to the émigré journal Sovremennye Zapiski (Contemporary Annals), and a longtime friend and supporter of Mother Maria’s work (Hackel, Pearl of Great Price, ch. 8–9). A Jew by birth and long a man of the secular left, Fondaminsky drew near to Christianity in his last years under the influence of the religious renaissance around him. Arrested in 1941 in the wave following the German invasion of the USSR, he was interned at Compiègne and then deported to Auschwitz, where he died in 1942 (Hackel, Pearl of Great Price, ch. 9; see Arrest 1943). By tradition he received Orthodox baptism in internment, entering by choice the faith of the community that had befriended him, at the moment when to be a Jew or a Christian of Jewish birth meant death (Hackel, Pearl of Great Price, ch. 9). [Disputed: the account of Fondaminsky’s baptism in the camp rests on the testimony of those close to him and is reported by his biographers as a cherished tradition rather than a documented fact; his death at Auschwitz in 1942 is firmly established.]

Fedor Pianov, the Survivor

One more member of the household must be named, though he was not among the glorified: Fedor Pianov, the administrator of Orthodox Action, arrested with the others in February 1943, who survived the camps (Hackel, Pearl of Great Price, ch. 9). His survival matters to the whole story: much of what is known of the community’s rescue work and of the prisoners’ last months rests on the postwar testimony of Pianov and of other survivors (Hackel, Pearl of Great Price, ch. 9–10). The Church glorified the four who died; the memory that lets us tell their story we owe in part to the one who lived.

See Also

References

  • Hackel, Sergei. Pearl of Great Price: The Life of Mother Maria Skobtsova, 1891–1945. London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1965; rev. ed. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1981. (Ch. 6–11 for Yuri Skobtsov, Fr. Dimitri Klépinin, and Ilya Fondaminsky; their rescue work, arrests, and deaths; Fondaminsky’s baptism tradition; and Pianov’s survival and testimony.)
  • Skobtsova, Mother Maria. Essential Writings. Trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky; introduction by Jim Forest. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2003. (Forest’s introduction for the companions.)
  • Plekon, Michael. Living Icons: Persons of Faith in the Eastern Church. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002. (Ch. 3, on the community and its members.)
  • Yad Vashem, The Righteous Among the Nations Database (records for Maria Skobtsova and Dimitri Klépinin).