In April 1926, under the influence of her high school teacher Tamara Sapozhnikova, she converted to Catholicism of the Byzantine Rite and took vows as a nun of the community of Sisters founded by Mother Catherine Abrikosova.
Sergei Solovyov,[2] who offered the Divine Liturgy in the Old Church Slavonic liturgical language at the side altar dedicated to Our Lady of Ostrabrama inside what is now the Immaculate Conception Cathedral in Moscow.
[3] Rubashova later recalled, "Father Sergey said [Divine Liturgy] each day at this altar, and on the eve of major feasts he observed the All Night Vigil.
During World War II Maloyarolavets was occupied by Nazi Germany and, along with fellow Soviet Jewish Sister Theresa Kugel, Nora Rubashova survived the Holocaust in Russia by working as a nurse in a German military hospital.
Whenever possible, both sisters attended the Masses offered by Wehrmacht military chaplains and knelt at the Communion Rail alongside German soldiers who were fully aware of their Jewish ancestry.
[6] Many years later, Secular Tertiary Ivan Lupandin asked Rubashova why one of the Catholic chaplains, whom she jokingly called a Hochdeutsch for his staunch belief in German nationalism, never reported her or Sister Theresa's Jewishness to the Gestapo or the SS.
Her room became a meeting place for the sisters and the spiritual center of the new community, which later attracted young people, Moscow State University students, and Soviet dissidents.
Sergey Averintsev and Anna Godiner,[9] Furthermore, because Nobel Prize-winning Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn interviewed Rubashova in Moscow during his research process,[10] Mother Catherine Abrikosova and the persecution of her monastic community are mentioned briefly in the first volume of The Gulag Archipelago.
[13] In her final years, Rubashova rejoiced in the beginning of glasnost and perestroika, but often said cautiously and in Gulag slang about Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev, "I can believe any beast, but as for him -- I'll wait a bit.
"[14] Towards the end of her life, Rubashova often confided in fellow Dominican tertiary Anna Godiner, "I am alone a lot, and I simply sit and timidly talk with God.