Contemplation & controversy
Fleischner, Eva
CARMELITE MONASTERY AT AUSCHWITZ ...
...technology of industrial death...
...Dachau was opened in April 1933, expiation for crimes done by men in the past, men among primarily for political opponents of Hitler's regime, although whom there were also those who had been Christians before Jews also were interned and died there...
...overlooked...
...No doubt the leaders in reality, able to keep up an attitude of the completest Pretoria were, initially, oblivious to the cluster of Americans indifference, no matter what happens...
...Perhaps then we alone are not enough - certainly not between Jews and Chris- Christians may dare to ask the trust of Jews and become tians in our post-Auschwitz world...
...This shows another kind of insensitivity, and • Second, the language of the fund-raisers, headed by efforts to overcome it should be intensified...
...Such triumphalism seems strangely out of place in Franciscus Macharski, Archbishop of Cracow...
...The gate of hell becomes the gate of heaven...
...During the war the building had been used by the supreme place of witness of the Shoah [Shoah, Hebrew for the SS to store soap and cyclon B gas...
...Conference of Christians and Jews, addressed a letter to the • Finally, insensitivity to Jews...
...Some Jews simply merged in the pool of "suffering humanity" in general...
...a living monument of Carmel at Auschwitz...
...Writing in the March 4 New York the Scriptures...
...It is not surprising that, particularly in the United nity in Poland - nor any part of the Jewish community States with its large Polish-American population, accusations anywhere else - were informed, let alone consulted, with have been heard that the suffering of the Poles has been regard to the Carmelite foundation...
...cember 6, 1985, expressed the hope that "the rumors...
...no one is opposed to prayer, much less to prayer at and Belgium...
...The prosystem of apartheid...
...Specifically, I democratic society, denies the authority of the law in itself, had three objections to their protest...
...penalties...
...They would not go away...
...And This proposal, like Cardinal Macharski's letter, is evidence certainly every serious Christian can find within her or himself of a new and welcome sensitivity on the part of church leaders...
...who protested outside their embassy in Washington every George Orwell weekday...
...Is it any wonder that Jews, and some 1986, Doctor Victor Goldbloom, president of the International Catholics also, are profoundly shocked...
...confrontation, without detriment to Christian relations with One can only wish that it may be so...
...KTAV, 1977) and author of The View of Judaism in the immense martyrdom of...
...What attracted attention "catastrophe," is being used more and more today in place of to the Carmelite foundation was a 1985 fund-raising campaign "Holocaust," which through overuse has been emptied of its by a Belgian Catholic group called "Aid to the Church in meaning], that is to say, of the attempted extermination of the Distress," to renovate and enlarge the convent...
...It should also be remembered that many of the criminals continued to call themselves Christians throughout the Shoah...
...spiritual fortress and guarantee of the conversion of our strayed • First, Auschwitz is situated in the diocese of Cardinal brothers...
...alone were marked for total extinction...
...We seek to do Jewish people...
...It could never they came to protest...
...The cardinal's letter will not satisfy those who wonder whether it is appropriate for a church that remained so largely silent during the Shoah to establish a convent at Auschwitz forty-five years later...
...And if they regarded them at all, surely, it was as Inside the Whale misguided zealots or inveterate revolutionaries who were absolutely opposed to the continuation of their authority in South 0 vER A YEAR and a half ago, Americans began to assemble Africa...
...To be sure, the protestplacards with photographs of the victims of apartheid...
...Of victims of Auschwitz, and at reports that the present convent all the victims of Auschwitz, the Jews were unique in that they would he replaced by a larger, more obtrusive building...
...a living spiritual sign...
...No one questions the the Jewish people, without further offense or anguish to those good intentions of the Carmelite nuns...
...But good intentions who have already suffered too much...
...These protests from abroad did not disturb the leaders outside the South African embassy in Washington, D.C...
...Le Monde...
...I never joined the protesters outside the gressor is willing to accept the consequences of his or her South African embassy, and I realize now I was wrong...
...Other ill- The crux of the difficulty, in my view, has been an absence chosen phrases have already been mentioned: the convent as of listening, or at least of hearing...
...tamount to permitting any act of lawlessness, irrespective of Throughout most of that first year of the protest, I resided in the harm or damage it causes others, provided that the transWashington, D.C...
...apart from the sanctions established against its violation, and, might extend the privilege of lawbreaking to those affluent T.R...
...Auschwitz has become the symbol of the greatest Why would anyone find fault with this desire for prayer and catastrophe in Jewish history, perhaps of the greatest expiation...
...The World Jewish Congress passed a resolution on savagery which descended on Auschwitz was aimed in the first January 30, 1986 in which it urged the Carmelites not to build a place at the Jewish people, even though there were non-Jewish convent at Auschwitz: "No one group or faith should establish victims at Auschwitz...
...Why the "furor" over this convent...
...They were soon joined by Catholics in France...
...are Jewish opposition, not surprisingly, has been no less emwithout foundation...
...Auschwitz has become the symbol, ("It is not the camp that exists in the shadow of the Carmel, but more than any other camp, of the attempt to annihilate the rather the Carmel that lives in the shadow of the camp...
...do not object to the convent, on the grounds that 1.5 million Is it any wonder that some Jews are angry that, once again, non-Jews, mostly Polish Catholics, also died at Auschwitz (cf...
...Is it sign or counter-sign...
...The signers called upon Chrisraising literature referred to the convent as a "witness to the tians to engage in "a moral reflection about the Shoah" and to victorious power of the cross of Jesus," "a spiritual fortress seek genuine dialogue with Jews...
...It lacked credible foundation...
...Auschwitz...
...One third of all the Cardinal Macharski responded to Dr...
...To believe this is tanin American history...
...We must learn to know and credible witness to expiation, prayer, and reconciliation..' MISGIVINGS, FASHION, & PROTEST A witness to the world First of all, I regarded it as meaningless, an exercise in T. R. HEALY futility...
...tion...
...Neither the Carmelites nor cardinal on behalf of the ICCJ...
...In it he expressed the organizathe fund-raisers have shown concern for Jewish sensibilities, tion's concern at the omission of any mention of the Jewish or comprehension of the meaning Auschwitz has for Jews...
...in Pretoria who, like all authoritarians, are concerned only to demand that the Pretoria government dismantle its with the actual military strength of their opposition...
...The cardinal said: "For me, the Nazi phatic...
...the Jews which has marked this German Christian Theology Since 1945 (Scarecrow, 1975...
...ing, resentment, at a place that for the Jewish people will On December 12, six prominent French Catholics wrote in forever symbolize the tragedy of the Shoah...
...Auschwitz simply is not Dachau, which also founding the convent, the cardinal wrote, "We wanted only to has a Carmel, invoked recently by some in support of the set a sign...
...Be that as it may, the cardinal's letter is warm and sensitive in tone, beyond doubt a genuine attempt to respond to Jewish concerns...
...and guarantee of the conversion of our strayed brothers...
...Sometimes they would stand in silence...
...suffering is being overlooked, its specificity obliterated, or Not all voices that have spoken have protested...
...Nothing can efface the fact that Commonweal: 368 they died there because they were Jews, and, because they were failure to take account of the magnitude of the Jewish tragedy Jews, to the indifference of governments and religious hierar- at Auschwitz - a lack until recently in evidence in the camp chies...
...The memory of factors have contributed to the controversy...
...Sometimes they would pace back and forth chanting their A further objection concerned my skepticism regarding civil grievances...
...A look at some evil ever perpetrated in Europe . . . we cannot but of the major responses may provide clues to the conflict and, empathize with the feelings of most of the Jewish comperhaps, suggest a resolution...
...But the law is an intricate web, designed to hold 20 June 1986: 371...
...HEALY is a graduate of George Washington University Law members of society who are most able to afford to suffer the...
...this news is at first sight profoundly disturb- On March 13, the Representative Council of the Jewish Institutions of France addressed a letter to the Apostolic Nuncio in Paris, which said in part: "Others, we know, have EVA FLEISCHNER is professor of religion at Montclair State College, suffered, were killed and murdered there by the Nazis...
...H Ow does one sort it all out...
...Some Christians find it inspiring that the nuns Polish people was particularly brutal, clearly aimed at destroywill be praying for suffering humanity everywhere...
...you say you love me if you don't know what hurts me...
...Day after day test was futile...
...By the ers had the right to denounce the ignominious policies of the end of the first year, over three thousand protesters had been South African regime...
...She is the editor of Auschwitz: Beginning of a New Era...
...Times, Rabbi Zalman Schachter of Temple University wrote, In speaking of the unique meaning Auschwitz has for Jews, "It would be more constructive if the energy being used to care should be taken not to denigrate the fate suffered by oppose the Sisters of Carmel were invested in establishing a non-Jewish victims of the Nazis, of whom more than one yeshiva (place of study) devoted to mourning, contemplation, million also perished at Auschwitz...
...In a letter to her congregation of March 19, 1986, Sister Jewish groups began protesting the establishment of the con- Katherine MacDonald, Superior General of the Sisters of vent last October in an article that appeared in Le Soir, a Notre Dame de Sion, wrote: Belgian daily...
...Insensitivity toFather Winfred van Straaten, was highly objectionable...
...Two developments in recent "a witness to the victorious power of the cross of Jesus," "a weeks offer hope that this situation is beginning to change...
...But at violation...
...I was convinced that such a protest, despite its notoriThere you are, in the dark, cushioned space that exactly ety and duration, would have slight impact on the policies of fits you, with yards of blubber between yourself and the government in South Africa...
...Perhaps for both Jews and Christians a international commission to deal with the Carmelite founda- beginning would be to bring forth from their inmost spirits a tion at Auschwitz...
...munity who find it intolerable that a large convent and Let us first look at responses that date from what might be cross should be erected on what they hold as a "holy called the initial stage, up to March 1986...
...ing Poland as a nation: Polish religious, political, and intellectual leaders by the thousands were systematically murdered...
...However, the project seems to indicate a The Carmelites themselves have stated their intention in total lack of awareness of what Auschwitz is for the these words: "We perform a symbolic gesture...
...The Nazi attack on the and prayer...
...Cardinal Macharski conthan half of the four million victims were Jews...
...He is at work on a collection of autobiographical essays...
...seriously influence decisions made in Pretoria...
...She is place with the sign of unspeakable suffering of men, women, currently engaged in a study of Catholics in France who saved Jews and children who had been abandoned by humanity to the during World War II...
...At Auschwitz, more they embraced Nazi ideology...
...Second, talks have been held recently between church Commonweal: 370 leaders and theologians about the possibility of setting up an understand each other...
...It is this cluded by warmly inviting Jews to establish their own oratory [sic] at Auschwitz...
...Such an action, however wellsymbol of the attempt at the total extermination of the intentioned, would create profound anguish,, misunderstandJews...
...But still they would not go away, eventually violate American law so long as they were prepared to suffer forming one of the longest continuous political demonstrations the penalties for their transgressions...
...Such a commission would include Jewish response to Abraham Joshua Heschel's question: "How can members...
...The fund- Jews because they were Jews...
...their history may be "appropriated" by Christians, as hapThe Jewish Week, and Ben Helfgott, chairman in England of pened so frequently in the early church in its interpretation of Holocaust survivors...
...Goldbloom on April 3 world's Jews were murdered during the Shoah...
...an Amen to this conviction expressed by Sister Katherine Had such sensitivity been present from the first, the "furor" MacDonald...
...Sometimes they would light candles or hold disobedience in a democratic society...
...If Nazi barbarism was directed in this place against many men, women, and children who SINCE 1984 a small group of Polish Carmelite nuns has were not all Jews, it is a fact that the camp Auschwitzbeen living in a former theater just outside the camp of Birkenau has become for the world, and will remain in history, Auschwitz...
...But this did not excuse their violation of arrested, ordered to pay fines, or sentenced to short periods of American law...
...It is surely worrying that it does not seem penance, for it is up to Christians to expiate the evil perpetrated to have occurred to the Carmelite sisters, or to local by other Christians, some of whom had become atheists, in a authorities, to seek out Jewish feeling about this foundaChristian land...
...In Jewish people...
...School...
...Civil disobedience, condoned on this basis in a the time I believed the protesters were wrong...
...One of ward one group does not, however, make up for insensitivity the flyers shows the entrance to Auschwitz, with the caption: toward another...
...these non-Jewish victims has not always been honored suffi• First, no members of the remnant of the Jewish commu- ciently...
...together, we can bring this whole affair might never have erupted...
...But it is Upper Montclair, N.J...
...place" their memorial to the tragic annihilation of six Cardinal Decourtray of Lyon, in a radio interview of De- million Jewish people...
...of these, 2.5 in detail, assuring him that the convent would remain small million at Auschwitz...
...Today they are entitled to that silence from which they itself - that understandably aroused in Jews the fear that their suffered so deeply...
...On March 10, a post-Vatican II church...
...In my view, Auschwitz is the itself on this ground...
...The protesters maintained they had the right to confinement...
...Perhaps it can yet be laid to rest, if before God, praying that a solution may be found without Jews are listened to and involved in future discussions...
...CARMELITE MONASTERY AT AUSCHWITZ Contemplation & controversy EVA FLEISCHNER ing...
...It seems to me that at least three the rest of the population was to be enslaved...
Vol. 113 • June 1986 • No. 12
