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Augustinians visited the Auschwitz Memorail
Dozens of clergy, the major Superiors of the Order of St. Augustine from throughout Europe, visited the Auschwitz Memorial Site. A visit to the former German Nazi concentration and extermination camp was a part of a day of recollection organised during the conference of the European provincial Augustinians in Kraków.
“When you pass through here and see what was experienced by so many people who died here, it changes the perspective of everything else,” said Father Michael di Gregorio, Vicar General of the Augustinian Order. “What you see here, it helps to put everything in context, which makes a lot of our challenges and problems seem insignificant compared to what many of those in the camp experienced,” he stressed.
In the course day-long tour, the monks visited both sites of Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau. Historian Teresa Wontor-Cichy, who showed the community around the Memorial Site, also spoke of Augustinian individuals who died in Auschwitz – including Father Wilhelm Gaczka, Provincial Superior of the Augustinians in Kraków, who was arrested along with other priests and brothers in September 1941.
“This for us is a day when we remember the Augustinian Polish elite, who died in Auschwitz and Dachau,” said Father Wieslaw Dawidowski PhD., Provincial Superior of the Augustinians in Poland. “We are here in order to become aware of what is happening to the world, when the prophets - those who should speak out, to protest against injustice – are silent. We are here also to realise that despite this tragic past, there the hope for the world if human life is surrounded with concern,” said Father Dawidowski, who is also co-chairman of the Polish Council of Christians and Jews.
According to Father Dawidowski, a very important sign of today's visit to the memorial site is the presence of the brothers from Germany and Austria, who especially bear weight to the historical memory. “I recently spoke with one of our fathers in Germany about how he treats the history of the German nation. He told me that he considers his life after the Second World War as a life of penance,” he added.
