Sr. Mary Imelda (Jadwiga Żak)

She was born December 29, 1892 in Oświęcim into a relatively wealthy family. Her father was a public official. Jadwiga finished grade six at a common public school then took to tailoring. At age nineteen she joined the Congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth and, after postulancy conducted partly in Wadowice and next in Vienna, she began her novitiate in Albano, Italy along with Sister Stella. After making her vows she was transferred to Lviv, where she spent six years working in a school. From a women’s seminary in Lviv she received a certificate of master gardener of a Fröbel-style garden. Imelda’s stay in Lviv occurred during an unusually difficult period for the city’s residents during World War I, and subsequently during the Polish-Ukrainian battles for Lviv. These difficult years spent in Lviv undoubtedly affected the later, deeply trusting attitude of Imelda. Among the sisters, she was considered very intelligent but scatterbrained, yet also a very humble person. After her perpetual vows taken in Rome in January, 1921 she returned to Poland and in December, 1922 she passed her high school equivalency exams as an extern student. She served in various facilities of the Congregation. In Warsaw, Stryj, Grodno, and Łuków she worked according to local needs, as a teacher in elementary and middle school, as a dorm mother, a childcare worker in an orphanage, and a sacristan. In 1936 she arrived in Nowogrodek where, until the start of World War II, she taught in the elementary school. During the war she took care of the sacristy in the Church of the Transfiguration, the Fara church. She had the gift of being thankful for everything she received.