Interrupted Lives

Over the weekend, our community had the opportunity to preview a documentary that will be shown on September 13 on ABC (this may vary according to your location). The documentary is called "Interrupted Lives: Catholic Sisters Under European Communism" It was a powerful documentary on the situation faced by many women religious after WWII in the Communist occupied countries. Here is a description taken from their website:

Interrupted Lives: Catholic Sisters Under European Communism is a one-hour TV documentary that explores the oppression of Catholic Sisters in Eastern Europe under Soviet domination. This period began in 1948 after World War 2 ended and lasted roughly until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

During this 40-year period, the Catholic Church as well as other religions were harassed, suppressed and driven underground by the atheistic Soviet regimes across various European countries. However, this documentary will focus specifically on the plight of Roman Catholic and Greek Catholic Sisters whose schools, hospitals and motherhouses were seized; who were forbidden to meet publicly or privately and accept new members; who were forced to work on farms or factories when they were no longer allowed to serve as teachers or nurses for fear of “contaminating” others with their beliefs; who were imprisoned or sent in exile to Siberia and other camps as political punishment for resistance; who were forbidden to wear their community habits and veils; whose convents were seized by the state; who were forced to live secretly in ones and twos in apartments as laywomen; and who were kept segregated in “concentration convents” with limited access to family and friends. Many Sisters suffered imprisonment, exile, torture, deportations and surveillance during this period.

The program will make extensive use of interviews with the Sisters who endured this treatment for over 40 years. Many of these “Sisters Survivors” (now in their 80s and 90s) offer amazing stories of courage and fidelity in the face of this bleak political repression. The producers have made two trips to Eastern Europe, visiting Lithuania, Ukraine, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia to conduct interviews and shoot video footage at the convents, monasteries, schools, motherhouses, prisons and concentration convents where the experiences took place.

Concordia, Kansas Sisters of St. Joseph Margaret Nacke, CSJ and Mary Savoie, CSJ, who have been collecting testimonies and researching the experiences of Eastern European Sisters for about 5 years, serve as executive producers of the program. Sylvania, OH Franciscan Sister Judy Zielinski, a documentary filmmaker on staff at NewGroup Media in South Bend, IN, is writing and producing the program.

Interrupted Lives has been selected by the US Catholic Bishops’ Communications Department as one of its 2009 programs for the Interfaith Broadcast Commission TV series and is slated to air on ABC affiliates in the fall. Dates and air times have not yet been announced.

It is a difficult subject to watch but the story is one I am sure many people are completely unfamiliar with.