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An Abhorrence of Evil and a Yearning for Love
A seminar for Roman Catholic priests from Poland was held at the Yad Vashem Memorial Institute in Jerusalem from February 8 – 18. 30 priests attended.
Fr. Tomasz Adamczyk, secretary of the Commmittee for Dialogue with Judaism; Fr. Jan Nowak, director of the Center for Dialogue and Prayer in Oświęcim; and Andrzej Kacorzyk of the International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust were the organizers.
Agnieszka Magdziak-Miszewska, ambassador of the Polish Republic in Israel, lent her backing to the project. The group of priests who traveled to the seminar was selected thanks to the support and help of Bishop Mieczysław Cisło, chairman of the Polish Episcopate’s Council for Religious Dialogue and chairman of the Committee for Dialogue with Judaism.
Before leaving for Israel, the priests gathered in Oświęcim for a seminar organized by the CDP and the ICEAH, and intended to orient them in the history of Auschwitz, and the special characteristics and complexity of the issue. It was also important for the priests to get to know each other.
The Ambassador of Israel in Poland, David Peleg, and cultural attaché Michał Sobelman attended the Oświęcim seminar and met the priests, as did Bishop Kazimierz Nycz of the diocese of Koszalin-Kołobrzeg, Museum Director Piotr M. A. Cywiński, ICEAH Director Krystyna Oleksy, and Piotr Kadlcik, chairman of the Union of Jewish Religious Communities in Poland.
The participants, who included members of the Committee for Dialogue with Judaism, the organizers of Judaism Day in the Catholic Church in Poland, Catholic media people, researchers and lecturers, school principals, and catechism teachers, left for Israel on February 7.
The Yad Vashem International Center for Teaching the Holocaust prepared a highly interesting program that was especially adapted for the priests. Aside from lectures about Holocaust issues, it also featured lectures by Rabbi Pessach Schindler (What Is Judaism?), Levental (What Does It Mean To Be a Rabbi?), and Daniel Hartman (Religious Attitudes during and After the Holocaust).
Interesting, well informed discussions enlivened all the sessions. The priests showed their involvement and interest, and the talking often went on late into the evening.
Trips to places associated with the Christian tradition and religion accompanied the seminars, with Fr. Mirosław Jadłosz, a volunteer guide at Christian holy sites over the last three years, showing them around.
The Polish priests said mass at such important sites as the basilicas of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, the Divine Nativity in Bethlehem, the Annunciation in Nazareth, and the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor, as well as the Church of St. Peter in Jaffa.
The trip was also an occasion to meet people who have settled in Israel, such as Father Grzegorz Pawłowski, who met with the priests in Jaffa and told them his life’s story. Pawłowski was a Jewish child rescued by a Polish family during the war. Later, fully aware of his Jewish origin, he took Holy Orders as a Catholic priest and went to Israel to work in the 1960s.
The seminar could not have succeeded without Yad Vashem European Department Director Doron Avraham and the entire International School for Teaching the Holocaust and its director, Doris Novak.
At the final meeting, the priests also heaped plaudits on Orit Margaliot and Alex Dancyg, who made sure that nothing went wrong at any point in their schedule, and who showed them around Yad Vashem and filled them in on the intricacies of the history of Israel and Polish-Jewish and Polish-Israel relations.
At the last mass in Israel, Fr. Krzysztof Kontek, who now works in Ukraine, expressed his gratitude for all the hospitality by saying that “at the beginning, it seemed that a lot separated us, but we soon realized that those are only details and that it really isn’t important if someone writes from left to right or from right to left. In fact, we all feel the same abhorrence of evil and yearning for love.”
