Connections between Irish nuns in WW II resistance and the work of Standing Together

On Thursday 24^th of April citizens from Berlin and Donegal gathered in the community hall at the Franciscan Friary in Rossnowlagh, Donegal to commemorate 5 Irish women who were in the resistance against the nazis in World War II. These women were betrayed and imprisoned in Ravensbrück, a concentration camp for women. Four of them were liberated by the Red Cross exactly 80 years ago, at the end of April 1945 (together with 7,500 other women.

There was a unique mix of music, literature and poetry. La Voix mixte travelled  from Berlin to perform at this event and a choral evening with the Donegal Abbey Singers in Donegal town on the 25^th April. These choirs sang for peace and justice and their repertoire included an original composition to the words of Seamus Heaney on Hope and History by Uta Schlegel. Cathy Fleming read from her biography of Sister Kate Mc Carthy.  Winifred Mc Nulty, Donegal poet, read some information about Catherine Crean, Sister Kate Mc Carthy, Sister Agnes Flanagan Mary O’ Shaughnessy, and Mary Cummins whose names and details can now be found on the Irish Embassy website following a similar event in the Irish Embassy in Berlin. Margo Gorman shared her thoughts about the connection between these women and the struggles of ordinary people in Israel and Palestine for peace and justice today. www.standing-together.org.

Why commemorate 5 women out of the millions who had suffered during these times?

They were living and working as nuns, nannies and nurses in France or Belgium at the time of the invasion of the German troops. Ordinary people like us, the crowd in the hall in Rossnowlagh. They wanted to do something and used their skills and abilities to help Allied soldiers to get out of the occupied territory. In doing so they risked their own lives.

We are living in times of disruption, destruction and polarization. We often feel alone and powerless in regard to what is happening in the world and around us. Faced with despair and chaos, we need communication and connection between ordinary people like us and a sense of good things we can do.

Margo Gorman and Hans-Georg Rennert, an Irish-German couple (both with a background in Community work) and the main organizers of the event last Thursday are impressed by the work of Standing Together, a grassroots initiative that mobilizes Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel against the war and occupation, advocating FOR peace, equality and social justice. As Helen Yakoub, a 29 years old Palestinian activist says: “It turns fear into clarity, anger into action, loneliness into something communal.”

Margo and Hans-Georg invited the attendees to donate for the work of Standing Together. 350 Euros were collected and donated to Standing Together. As the organisation writes (in a newsletter dating from 11^th April): “Hope is not something we wait for, hope is something we build through collective action.” #gazaceasfuew #human rights

Margo Gorman and Hans-Georg Rennert, 27^th April 2025

The post Hope and History first appeared on Margo Gorman.

The photo of Andrée de Jongh (wikipedia), who organised and led the Comet Line to “assist Allied soldiers and airmen to escape from Nazi-occupied Belgium”, was taken after she received the George Medal in Buckingham Palace, London, in 1946. Stories of Irish women Mary Cummins, Catherine Crean and Agnes Flanagan who like Andrée de Jongh were  arrested in occupied Belgium and imprisoned in Ravensbrück Concentration Camp show how the actions of ordinary civilians helped undermine fascism with its racist, anti-semitic, anti-communist, anti-christian, anti-gay, anti-human ideology.

In 2005. a bike tour with my German partner, led me to the site of Ravensbrück Concentration Camp on the edge of Fürstenberg in former East Germany. Horror hit my solar plexus as one recording of a survivor told the story of a “Zigeuner/Gypsy” woman who had escaped into the woods near the camp. For several days the other prisoners in her block were punished – no rations of turnip soup or bread, standing for hours in the cold, on top of the usual daily round of heavy work, hunger, harassment, abuse and the threat of death. When the runaway was found and returned to the block as a beaten heap of humanity, the other prisoners in the block tore her to pieces. How could THEY do it? How do WE do it?

Sectarianism  in  my homeplace, Ulster with its polarisation and manipulation of Irish versus British identity plus years of working on children’s rights with Rom, Irish Travellers and many other ethnicities in England taught me to look more closely at US, THEM and the OTHER and how our common humanity is undermined. We can all be complicit with the polarisation of meglomaniacs, oligarchs and moguls, wittingly or unwittingly. How can we replace this complicity with commitment to our shared humanity?

Learning that five Irish women had been imprisoned in Ravensbrück inspired me. As there was limited information on them available at the time, I decided to create a fictional Irish woman, Bridget, in my novel Bone and Blood, to explore survivor silence and seek hope for future generations. Research by John Morgan of Escape Lines has brought more information on these Irish women. Catherine Crean was active in Luc, another Belgian resistance network and died of dysentery just weeks before the liberation. Mary Cummins told of her role “translating, passing messages, informing and smuggling arms – resulted in her being arrested at gunpoint by the Gestapo who walked into her Brussels apartment early one morning as she slept. Her landlady had given them the key”. She was interviewed on Irish radio when she was in her eighties and back living in Ireland. Agnes Margaret Flanagan testified in French to the UK Foreign Officein 1965 that she tended injured English soldiers; helped an English prisoner escape; and destroyed documents with information on the Belgian resistance. She was a nun but left the convent after the war and  took on Belgian nationality when she married Emil Depret.

Humans are capable of the worst but also of the best. These ordinary women under the banner of Fight without weapons used laughter to console the injured, flirted with German soldiers to conceal documents, and organised escape routes. They sought out humane connection against the odds. We CAN fight polarisation without weapons. We CAN support those like Standing Together in Israel www.standing-together.org and all those who join together in solidarity against meglomaniacs.

Margo Gorman Bone and Blood, a Berlin novel ISBN 978-1-78462-037-001099 https://www.books.ie
https://www.books.ie/bone-and-blood-a-berlin-novel

The post Resistance first appeared on Margo Gorman.