Edith Stein was a German philosopher and Catholic nun who converted from Judaism to Christianity. Born in Wrocław in 1891, she became a student of phenomenology and worked as a university teacher and translator. Following her conversion, she joined the Order of Discalced Nuns of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel, taking the religious name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. Due to Nazi persecution of individuals with Jewish ancestry, she was arrested and eventually murdered in the gas chambers of the Auschwitz II-Birkenau concentration camp in 1942.