Edith Stein was born from a prominent Jewish family in Breslau, Germany – now Wroclaw, Polad. As a student, she became fascinated in Philosophy, specifically Phenomenology. Excelling as a protégé of the famous philosopher, Edmund Husserl, she earned a Doctorate in Philosophy in 1916, but her academic career was impeded because she was a woman.
Reading the autobiography of Saint Teresa of Ávila brought about her conversion to Catholicism and she was baptized on 1 January 1922.
She entered a Carmelite monastery in Cologne and took the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. Her order moved her to the Netherlands to keep her safe from the growing Nazi threat. But later on, she was taken to Auschwitz and killed on 9 August 1942.
