In 1953, Sister Grace, a novice nun and kindergarten teacher in Chicago, receives a letter informing her that her mother, who was sent to Dachau when Grace was five years old, is alive.
Saving Grace is about moments of moral clarity when, at risk of death, one still chooses to act.
In 1953, Sister Grace, a novice nun and kindergarten teacher in Chicago, receives a letter informing her that her mother, who was sent to Dachau when Grace was five years old, is alive.
Based on a true story, Saving Grace documents the harrowing journeys of Grace, her mother Sarah and those who helped them survive the Holocaust.
After the Gestapo ransack her home and abduct her husband, Sarah and her five-year-old daughter find shelter in a Munich convent that operates an infirmary and orphanage. By 1938, desperate Jewish families are leaving babies and children in the care of the Sisters. Like these other children under the protection of Reverend Mother, Sarah’s daughter assumes a new identity. The nuns name her Grace.
Sarah continues designing dresses for the appreciative wife of a powerful German officer. The jealous dress shop owner turns Sarah in to the Gestapo who arrest and send her to Dachau. Enraged, the Colonel’s wife engineers Sarah’s release and hides Sarah in her home. Sensing defeat, the Colonel and his wife flee. Sarah is rearrested and sent to Bergen-Belsen.
Meanwhile, little Grace grows close to Sister Frances, the convent medic, who nurses children by day and saves wounded resistance fighters by night. One of these fighters, Joel, falls in love with Sister Frances.
With Gestapo stepping up inspections of the orphanage, Sister Frances and Joel pack up four girls and trek the long perilous journey to Italy. Chased by Nazis who capture, torture and hang two of the children, the remnant reaches protection in an Assisi convent. Released of her vows, Frances and her beloved Joel secure passage to America for the two surviving girls. Grace is one of them.
Since convent communities are her only family, Grace joins the religious life. Years later, when she realizes her mother is alive, Grace departs for Germany to find her.
Saving Grace is about resistance – acts that resist, quietly or audaciously, with tools anchored in personal gifts. Leaders strategize, nuns mother and heal, artists forge, writers condemn, clergy denounce, seamstresses mend, and musicians play for their lives. Gifts save, and though it often requires tremendous courage and endurance, love wins.
A young widow parenting two grieving sons and coping with Lymphoma discovers that the finest healing medicine is love.
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MARY-FRANCES SCHNEIDER 