Correspondence
GRONDELSKI, DR. JOHN M. & BRUKS, FELIKS S. & BURKHART, MARIAN & Pawlikowski, John T.
CORRESPONDENCE The overly critical New York, N.Y. To the Editors: Having read the comments in the September 22 issue on Paul Dinter's article ["Standing in the Way of Worship," June 16], I find...
...Almost five of those six million perished in assorted concentration camps, jails, and ghettos...
...I do so with gusto because I want to serve God and my neighbor and because I am by nature a ham...
...Glemp failed to promote "the basic validity of the Jewish claim...
...For I certainly did not say, as he charges, that Jews alone have the right to determine what is appropriate memorialization of victims at the Auschwitz campsite...
...And this applies to Mr...
...It is precisely that claim and Pawlikowski's fundamental assumption that lie at the heart of the present controversy...
...Whatever their shortcomings-speaking too fast, singing off key, giving sermons too long or perfunctory-none has ever been other than humble when he allowed himself to be the means by which the bread and wine become Christ-the miracle at the center of the liturgy and my faith...
...For this Catholic, the shame is not that my faith wants to memorialize its victims where they, too, died...
...I clearly fault Jews for contributing to the crisis by failing to recognize that special role the campsite plays in Polish history as the primary center of the extermination of Polish leaders in the Nazi effort to reduce Poland to a "servant" state...
...There should have been Polish-Jewish consultation from the outset, not the unilateral act of opening the convent by the Catholic side...
...I trust the good Lord to separate the wheat from the chaff, to let my good will and his good news triumph over my narcissism...
...JOHN T. PAWLIKOWSKIolution itself...
...My criticism of Cardinal Glemp was based not on the belief that Jews have exclusive rights to Auschwitz, as Grondelski falsely claims, but that the Polish church failed to recognize Jewish rights at all...
...I could ask for more, but criticism so sharp as that of your commentators makes me well aware of how much I get...
...I entered the church by way of a pre-Vatican II Benedictine convent school, so I do know how beautiful the liturgy ought to be, and I do admit that I have participated in not very many Masses elsewhere that measured up, but I don't believe I know any priests like those Dinter castigates...
...Father Maximilian Kolbe had already made the ultimate sacrifice at Auschwitz before the Final Solution, with its Jewish transports to that camp, got into full swing...
...Such an effort is no sinister conspiracy but rather an effort to strike a more historically accurate balance...
...This is in stark contrast to Auschwitz, the premier Jewish camp, whose very name has come to symbolize the Final Solution itself...
...No one sees it as fraught with "potential to destroy a quarter-century of Catholic-Jewish relations...
...Whatever its faults, both the priests and the people they serve worship seriously, genuinely, and sufficiently as a community to be "home" to my children...
...To the Editors: I take vigorous exception to John Pawlikowski's analysis of the Auschwitz convent situation ["A Sign of Contradiction," September 22...
...To the Editors: Having read the comments in the September 22 issue on Paul Dinter's article ["Standing in the Way of Worship," June 16], I find it necessary to protest...
...Since I live in New York, I bear witness that things are not so bad here as Thomas Cahill opines...
...Pawlikowski's arguments depend upon the assumption that Jews alone are arbiters of the Holocaust, how it is defined, and how it is commemorated...
...But if-God forbid-my daughters leave the church, it won't be because of the parish...
...With our Jewish brothers and sisters, Poles can say "Zakhor," "remember...
...Perhaps parishes in San Diego are as grimly inadequate as Gertrud Mueller Nelson says, though I hope and pray there are a few more bastions of hope than she has found...
...Thus, he argues that Cardinals Glemp and Macharski "failed to consult with the international Jewish community before the convent was established...
...JOHN T. PAWLIKOWSKI...
...MARIAN BURKHART Holocaust memories Perth Amboy, N.J...
...That meaning is not some quirk of Polish provincialism, but it is based on the historical fact that Auschwitz was designed to exterminate the Polish nation as well...
...Pawlikowski calls the convent "a shame to Catholics...
...When almost every Polish home was touched by the Draconian occupation of the Nazis, when the ranks of the Polish clergy were decimated, when others-like Bishop Michal Kozal at Dachau-also gave their lives, when Poles, despite the fact that only in their country was assistance to Jews a capital crime, sought to help within their limited means, one cannot simply treat these aspects as but a footnote to the Holocaust...
...Professor Pawlikowski says that Jews must understand the special significance Auschwitz holds for Poles...
...A Carmelite convent has stood at Dachau since 1965...
...If those relations are so fragile that exposing -a constricted ideological reading of the Holocaust to the full historical record can destroy them, then one must ask just how secure their foundations are...
...To the Editors: I was pained to read John Pawlikowski's article calling the Auschwitz convent a "pain to Jews, a shame to Catholics" ["A Sign of Contradiction," September 22...
...The shame is in the Catholic leadership, intellectual and clerical, that is beating a hasty retreat over the bodies of the victims who were their fellow Christians...
...Pawlikowski cites Jewish fears about "Christianizing" the Holocaust...
...I find it only right to view the priests who serve my parish in the same way...
...As a former Catholic concentration camp inmate, I take offense at those who want to reduce the Holocaust to a purely Jewish affair...
...Do they, and does their faith, have no role in saying how they should be remembered...
...Polish Gentile losses in the Holocaust were great, too...
...FELIKS S. BRUKS Polish Association of Former Political Prisoners of Nazi and Soviet Concentration Camps The author replies: It is obvious that Dr...
...With respect to the convent at Dachau, we must recognize that the situation there is not a meaningful parallel to Auschwitz...
...I act as lector at the church my family and I have belonged to for some twenty years...
...At least 1.5 million Christians were murdered in Auschwitz...
...But they will never accept only a selective memory...
...Grondelski read my article more with emotion than with care...
...Poland lost over six million people: three million Jews, three million Christians...
...JOHN M. GRONDELSKI Pain not shame Westfield, N.J...
...More importantly, Dachau was one of the few Nazi camps in which Jews were a minority...
...First of all, if my understanding is correct, the convent is technically outside the camp grounds...
...Bruks's objections as well...
...From what I've said about our own parish, it is obvious that services there are less than perfect-those who lead the singing cannot always count and both the organ and organists, for the most part, leave something to be desired...
Vol. 116 • November 1989 • No. 19
