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We are here together
Members of the International Council of Christians and Jews visited the Auschwitz Memorial for the first time in the history of the organization. On July 5, the group of more than a hundred people from 27 countries walked the Remembrance Trail on the grounds of the German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp Auschwitz II-Birkenau, which was marked by four symbolic stations. The visit to the Memorial was part of the three-day Council meeting, held in Cracow this year under the title Religion and Ideology: Polish Perspectives on the Future.
The participants, Jews and Christians of various denominations, walked from the main gate and along the camp ramp (unloading platform) to the crematorium ruins—the road along which deported Jews were once led to death in the gas chambers. At the foot of the memorial to the victims in Birkenau a joint appeal was issued: “We have come here today from different milieus, united in a desire to render our respects to the victims and in awareness of the obligation to work for a better future in which we can live together as brothers and sisters.”
After the Jewish prayer of mourning, El Male Rachamim, and the saying of the Kaddish, the participants lighted candles in silence.
Guests from 27 countries including Palestine and Saudi Arabia toured the grounds of the former Auschwitz German camp, visited the Franciscan monastery in Harmęże with its Labyrinths of Memory exhibition by former Auschwitz prisoner Marian Kołodziej, and took part in workshops and learned about the educational work of institutions gathered around the Memorial including the International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and the Center for Dialogue and Prayer, which played host to members of the Council.
The main ICCJ sessions were held in Cracow. The outstanding role of John Paul II in the Polish-Jewish dialogue was emphasized during the meetings. There was also discussion of the shaping among the younger generation of responsible attitudes in relation to Jews. Professor Stanisław Krajewski, a philosopher and co-chairman of the Polish Council of Christians and Jews, stated that the rise in the number of titles on Jewish issues from Catholic publishers was due to the position taken by John Paul II. “Poland has become the leader among countries trying to respond to a troubled history, and this makes it possible to build relations of trust. I see improvement in this dialogue because Poland is no longer associated only with Auschwitz, but is also seen as the place where the Polish Jews lived,” said Krajewski.
Referring to Dialogue of Tasks for a New Century, a document issued by the Conference of the Polish Episcopate, Archbishop Stanisław Gądecki of Poznań said that there is still too little shaping of responsible attitudes in relation to Jews in homilies and the teaching of the catechism. “We feel uneasy about the recurrence, time after time, of signs of associating Jews with all the worst things,” said Gądecki. “Such a harmful pattern remains rooted in the mentality of certain parts of the public and, what is worse, is passed on from generation to generation.”
Participants in the three-day conference included Rabbi David Rosen of Israel, Dr. Philip Cunningham of the United States, Father Professor Hans Herman Henrix of Germany, two former chairman of the Polish Episcopate Commission for Dialogue with Judaism, Archbishop Henryk Muszyński and Archbishop Stanisław Gądecki, and the current chairman of the Committee, Bishop Mieczysław Cisło. The Faculty of International and Political Studies at the Jagiellonian University was the co-organizer of the conference. Members of the Organizing Committee included both co-chairmen of the Polish Council of Christians and Jews—Father Wiesław Dawidowski and Professor Stanisław Krajewski—and Professor Zdzisław Mach of the Jagiellonian University.
The first meeting of the international Council of Christians and Jews was held in Warsaw in 1994.
The Stations of the Remembrance Trail in Birkenau
- Station I – The Righteous was dedicated to the memory of those who remained outside the camp: family and friends, and also people indifferent to the fate of the prisoners, and perpetrators. Above all, however, there was discussion in this place of the people who risked their lives to save others—the Righteous among the Nations of the World. There was a reading from the memoirs of Merka Szewach, a former Auschwitz prisoner who witnessed how an Oświęcim resident named Janek risked his life to help her and other people imprisoned in the camp.
- Station II – The Persecutors, located at the first guard tower, is a reminder of those who caused the killing and suffering. Father Manfred Dessaelers, a German priest who has worked at the Center for Dialogue and Prayer for many years, bore extraordinary witness here: “Who are those people who lost all humanity? And why did this happen? They came from Germany. I am a German. The majority of them were baptized. I am a Catholic priest. I do not bear personal guilt, but what happened here and the fact that my people perpetrated it fills me with sadness. I feel the deep wound that we inflicted on others, on you and your families, the relations between us and other peoples, and I am deeply, deeply sorry. I have hope in the depths of my heart and I wish to beg you for the renewal of relations that are human, friendly, and full of trust and love.”
- Station III – The Prisoners of the Camp, located halfway along the ramp, was intended to serve as a reminder of all the prisoners in the camp: Jews from all over the world, Poles, Roma and Sinti, Soviet POWs, and many others. The memoirs of Primo Levi were quoted here, and there was a citation that the words spoken by John Paul II during his visit to the site of the camp in 1979, when he said: “In this place of terrible suffering, which brought death to four million people from various nations, Father Maximilian Kolbe won a spiritual victory similar to the victory of Christ Himself, giving himself over voluntarily to death in the starvation bunker—for his brother.” The reflection at this station concluded with the prayer Our Father.
- Station IV – The Shoah, located between the ruins of the crematoria, recalled the approximately 900,000 victims who were brought to Auschwitz-Birkenau and taken straight to the gas chambers. There was a reading from the memoirs of Salmen Levental, a member of the Sonderkommando, the group of prisoners forced by the Germans to operate the crematoria and gas chambers in Auschwitz.
