Rose

Eight-year-old Rose had everything a girl needed growing up in Vienna, Austria before World War II. She was christened as Rose Edith Irene Frances Brezcina, after several Catholic Saints and, although she did not know it then, she would need all of the divine intervention she could get in the years that followed. She and her extended family lived peaceful ordinary lives in a typical working class Viennese neighborhood, but there was nothing ordinary or typical about Rose. She possessed a spiritual awareness beyond her years, and she brought a spirit of confidence and joy into every situation. Whether she was sitting with her grandmother who was dying of colon cancer, and trying not to gag from the stench of the colostomy bag, or enjoying a fun-filled summer in the Austrian countryside with her cousins on her aunt and uncle's farm, Rose lived her life with a deep sense of faith and purpose that would serve her well in the days ahead. Her faith would soon be tested, though, as the Nazi army moved into Austria in 1938 and war came to her city. Before she would even reach her teens, Rose would be among top gymnasts selected to perform for Hitler and, afterwards shake his hand and receive his personal congratulations; she would witness her best friend, Marta, a Jew, seized from her classroom by the Gestapo and taken to a concentration camp, never to be seen or heard from again; she would willingly accept her uncle's invitation to join him in an underground effort to hide Jews, by providing him food that she managed to sneak from her mother's pantry; and, as a result of her efforts, she would suffer painful torture on two separate occasions by Gestapo and SS soldiers who were determined to force her to reveal the whereabouts of her uncle and his underground activities. But, despite their torture, she did not betray her uncle's trust. As if that was not enough, Rose experienced the death of her only sibling, her three-year-old brother, in an air raid bombing. In th