Edith Stein was born in Breslau, Germany (now Wrocław, Poland) in 1891 of Jewish parents. She studied philosophy under Husserl, the leading phenomenologist of his day. Inspired by the writings of St. Teresa of Avila, she was baptized 1 January 1922. She taught in various schools from 1923 to 1933 until forced to resign due to anti-Semitic legislation. In 1933, she entered the Discalced Carmelite convent in Cologne where she received the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. At the end of 1939, she moved to the convent at Echt, Holland, on account of the Nazi persecution of Jews, but in 1942, during the German occupation of Holland, she was arrested, transported to Poland, and killed (9 August) at the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz. Her writings include Finite and Eternal Being: An Attempt to an Ascent to the Meaning of Being; Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities, and The Science of the Cross. Along with St. Catherine of Siena (29 April) and St. Bridget of Sweden (23 July), she was declared co-patroness of Europe by Pope John Paul II.