The Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth had arrived in
Nowogródek, then part of the
Second Polish Republic, in 1929 at the request of Zygmunt Łoziński, the
Bishop of Pinsk. The Sisters became an integral part of the life of the town. In 1939, Nowogródek, located at that time in the
Kresy-part of interwar Poland (nowadays central Belarus), was annexed by the Soviet Union and incorporated into the
Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. In 1941, the town was occupied by the German army as part of the
Operation Barbarossa. During the Nazi and Soviet occupations of Nowogródek, the Sisters invested great effort in preparing the residents of the town for religious services – as
liturgical prayer became a beacon of hope amid the hopelessness of the occupation. The Nazi terror in Nowogródek began in 1942 with the extermination of the town's Jewish population as part of
Operation Reinhard. Of the town's pre-war population of 20,000, approximately half were Jews. The Germans murdered about 9,500 of the Jews in a series of "actions" and sent the remaining 550 Jews to slave labor camps. This was followed by
a surge in Polish arrests, then the slaughter of 60 people, including two
Catholic priests. This situation was repeated on 18 July 1943, when more than 120 people were arrested and slated for execution. At a secluded spot in the woods about from the town, the eleven women were machine gunned to death and buried in a common grave. Before reporting to the police station, Sister Stella had asked one member of the community, Sister M. Malgorzata Banas, C.S.F.N., who worked as a nurse in the local public hospital, to stay behind at the convent, whatever happened, to take care of the church and their pastor. She was the best candidate for that among the community as she wore civilian clothing due to her job. It was days before she and the townspeople knew that the Sisters had been killed. Eventually, Banas located their grave, quietly tending to it and the parish church during the war years and during the post-war Soviet occupation, until her death in 1966. The Church of the Transfiguration, known as
Biała Fara (or White Church), now contains the remains of the eleven Sisters. == Martyrs ==