Theresa Kugel


Sister Theresa Kugel, OP, was a Dominican nun of the Russian Catholic Church. Her birth name was Minna Rahmielovna Kugel.

Biography

Born in 1912 in Orekhovo in a family of an Orthdox Jewish rabbi. In 1929 Kugel graduated from high school in Yaroslavl, and returned to her parents in Kostroma, where she later met with Dominican sisters Stephanie Gorodets and Margarita Krylevskoy. In 1931 Theresa Kugel was baptized in the Catholic Church and in 1932 moved to Krasnodar, where she was tonsured a nun with the name Teresa. On 6 October 1933 in Krasnodar she was arrested and taken to Moscow, where she was placed in Butyrskaya prison. On 19 February 1934 she was sentenced to 3 years in a labor camp. Kugel was released on 16 November 1935. After December she lived in Bryansk and in October 1937 moved to Maloyaroslavets. During World War II she was in the zone occupied by the Germans. After Maloyaroslavets was liberated by Red Army, Kugel was arrested on charges of collaboration with the Germans. On 31 October 1942 she was sentenced to five years in labor camps and sent to Temlag. She was released on 25 March 1947 and returned to live in Maloyaroslavets. In the autumn of next year she moved to Kaluga. On 3 April 1949 Kugel she was arrested on charges of espionage for the Vatican. On 2 July 1949 she was declared mentally insane and 17 September forcibly treated in special hospitals. On 15 October 1952, Theresa Kugel was transferred into an ordinary psychiatric hospital. After her release in 1953, she lived in Vilnius and became part of the monastic revival of the Dominican community. She died during surgery in Vilnius in 1977.