Blessed Marianna Biernacka was a lifelong lay woman in the diocese of Lomza, Poland. She had little education; she may have been able to read a little, but she could not write. Raised in the Orthodox church, she converted to Catholicism at age 17. Married to Ludwik Biernacki, a farmer, at age 20. Mother of six, only two of whom survived infancy, her daughter Leokadia, and her son Stanislaw. Widowed, she moved in with Stanislaw and helped raise her grandchildren, in part by setting an example of personal piety.

When the Nazis and Soviets divided Poland between them in World War II, Marianne’s town came under German control. When local resistance groups did anything to fight back against occupying forces, the Nazis would have reprisal executions, rounding up random citizens and killing them as a warning to the resistence. On 1 June 1943 the Nazis arrested Marianna’s son Stanislaw and his wife Anna, who was pregnant, and put them in the group to be murdered. Marianna pleaded to take the girl’s place, and Anna was freed; Marianna asked to take one thing with her – a rosary. The mother and son were briefly imprisoned and then executed. Martyr. She was born in Lipsk , Podlaskie, Poland as Marianna Czokala and died shot by firing squad on 13 June 1943 in Naumovichi (a.k.a. Naumowicze), Hrodzyenskaya voblasts’, Belarus.∼Blessed Mariana Bernadskaya
Mariana Bernadskaya was born in 1888. God, His Law and love towards the family became for Mariana the values much more important than her own life. She sacrificed herself instead of her pregnant daughter-in-law. Kneeing before a German soldier she pleaded: "How can she go? I will go instead of her". The woman came back home and Mariana was shot up on July 13, 1943 in Navumavichi near Grodno. Waiting for death she had the only request - that she would be given the Rosary.