Venerable Sára Salkaházi

Sára Salkaházi, SSS (born Sarolta Klotild Schalkház; 11 May 1899 – 27 December 1944) was a Hungarian Catholic religious sister who saved the lives of approximately one hundred Jews during World War II. Denounced and summarily executed by the pro-Nazi Arrow Cross Party, Salkaházi was beatified in 2006. She was a member of the Sisters of Social Service. Salkaházi was born in Kassa (now Košice, Slovakia) on 11 May 1899 to Leopold and Klotild Schalkház, owners of the Hotel Schalkhaz in Kassa. The family was of German origin. Her father died when she was only one years old. Her brother described her as "a tomboy with a strong will and a mind of her own." She earned an elementary school teacher's degree, and later worked as a bookbinder's apprentice, and in a millinery shop. She became a journalist and edited the official paper of the National Christian Socialist Party of Czechoslovakia. At this time, she was far from devout, and at times, even flirted with atheism. Before becoming a religious sister, she was once engaged to be married, but she soon broke off the engagement. The Sisters of Social Service, founded in by Margit Slachta in 1912 were at first reluctant to accept the chain-smoking woman journalist. She joined the congregation in 1929, and took her first vows on Pentecost 1930. Her first assignment was at the Catholic Charities Office in Kosice, where she supervised charity works, managed a religious bookstore, and published a periodical entitled Catholic Women. At the request of the Catholic Bishop's Conference of Slovakia she organized all the various Catholic women's groups into a national Catholic Women's Association, and established the National Girls' Movement. As national director of the Catholic Working Girls' Movement, Salkaházi built the first Hungarian college for working women, near Lake Balaton. To protest the rising Nazi ideology Salkaházi changed her last name to the more Hungarian-sounding "Salkaházi".