Saint Grigol Peradze

Grigol Peradze (Georgian: გრიგოლ ფერაძე; 13 September 1899 – 6 December 1942) was a prominent Georgian ecclesiastic figure, philologist, theologian, historian, and professor of patristics in the interwar period. After providing help to Jews in Poland, he was arrested and sent to Auschwitz, where he was ultimately killed. He was canonized by the Eastern Orthodox Church as a martyr in 1995 and is celebrated on December 6. Grigol Peradze was born in the village of Bakurtsikhe, in what is now the Kakheti region, in Eastern Georgia. The second of three sons of Romanoz Peradze, the local Orthodox priest, and the former Mariam Samadalashvili. Young Grigol was named in honor of the 11th-century Georgian Saint Gregory of Khandzta – Grigol being the cognate of Gregory. His father died when he was six, and the family moved to Tiflis (now Tbilisi), then the provincial capital, and later that of independent Georgia. He attended an Orthodox parochial school, and from 1913 Tbilisi Theological Seminary. In 1918 Peradze graduated near the top of his class, and afterwards studied at the Tbilisi State University until 1921. In the years 1919–21 he also served in the army. He fought against the Bolsheviks in defense of the Democratic Republic of Georgia. Later, for a short time he was a teacher in a small village near Gori. On 25 February 1921 Georgia was occupied by Soviet Russia. Grigol Peradze went into exile in Germany in November the same year. However, he would retain the fallen government's passport for the rest of his life. Unlike many who left after the Soviet takeover, Peradze had actually secured legal permission to leave the country through the efforts of one of his former professors. Despite this, he was twice refused permission to return to Georgia in 1921 and 1927. Upon the last rejection he wrote "do not know why. I do not belong to political parties. I have not worked against the Soviet government.