Documentary

Edith Stein: Echt and the Truth

In 1998 Edith Stein (1891-1942) was canonised by Pope John Paul II. A German philosopher of Jewish descent, Stein converted to Catholicism in 1922 and lived as nun in the Carmelite Convent of Echt in the south of the Netherlands. During World War II she was deported and died in Auschwitz. Director Frederieke Jochems worked for nine years to bring Edith Stein's story to life and to illuminate the controversy surrounding the canonisation. Featuring Holocaust survivor Max Hamburger, Carmelite nun Maria Amate Neyer, Stein’s American niece Susanne Batzdorff, feminist theologian Thalia Gur-Klein, American philosophy professor Marianne Sawicki, secretary of the Edith Stein comittee Jenny Stassen-Muyrers, Rabbi Tzvi Marx, assistant bishop Everard de Jong and Catholic theologian Marcel Poorthuis.