Praying at Auschwitz
Klenicki, Leon
Late that night, I'm awake; I cannot sleep. I think of a word that I mentioned at the meeting this morning. I think of triumphal- ism. I am in a rage because of Polish anti-Semitism that prepared...
...It is the synagogue where Moses Isserles, the great codifier of Jewish religious law, prayed and taught...
...They're on the loose...
...Yes, indeed, it can...
...The Polish bishops' new pastoral letter on Catholic-Jewish relations is a step forward...
...Jerzy and I agree that both Catholics and Jews require a reckoning of the soul...
...Suddenly there comes to my mind the words of Pope John Paul II in his speech to the European bishops: The war itself with its immense cruelty, a cruelty that reached its most brutal expression in the organized exter- mination of the Jews, as well as of the Gypsies and of other categories of people, revealed to the European the other side of a civilization that was inclined to feel superior to all others...
...We go back to Krakow in silence...
...Anti-Semitism is still a reality in Poland even though there are so few Jews in Polish society...
...God, why were my family, my people taken away by a devastating wind, the Shoah...
...Mere neophytes...
...And, quite plainly, life must be a beach for these women...
...I look forward to the comments of the readers...
...He apologizes through Father Stanislaw Musial who just came back from the United States...
...Monday, April 8. A young Jesuit, a very intelligent young man, volunteers to show me historic Krakow...
...We are still in awe from the visit to Auschwitz...
...Not at all...
...But for us, more than for any other nation, Jews were more of a problem, a challenge that we had to face...
...The community is a community of old people and memories of those days, 1939-45, come back to them, to me...
...We take a long walk through the city...
...I feel, strangely enough, at home...
...Cardinal Macharski is detained in Rome for the meeting of the Episcopal European Council...
...Catholics have to go over and reckon with the twentieth- century anti-Semitism that prepared the atmosphere for the exter- mination of the Jews...
...We visit the market, the cathedral, very old buildings, and several bookstores...
...Living on the crest of the moment...
...Cardinal Macharski hopes that this special place will become a synagogue...
...A Polish Christian reckoning of the soul is needed to complete our own reconsideration of Poland...
...ednesday, April 10...
...A casual observer might take these two for college students cutting a class on Friday for a long weekend at the beach...
...Saturday morning, April 6--Shabbath morning...
...My Jesuit friend and I have lunch together...
...A priest comes to visit me and we go to a cafe in downtown Krakow...
...I think about my feelings for Poland...
...I think of all these days in Krakow, their meaning...
...Why don't I try to talk with them...
...What will never leave is the memory of the past, of family, my people...
...I do realize that despite my anxieties, the experience of my people, recent history, Poland is part of my home, that Poland is in my bones though I was not born here...
...The rest of the center will have a library, a section for administration, a church, a hotel, and a place for prayer and meditation for non-Catholic visitors...
...Jan Blonski in Tygodnik Powszechny expressed that need of a Christian reckoning...
...Is Poland, is he, ready for pluralism...
...I can only perform my religious duties, which include accepting the other in faith: "May it be your will, God, our God and God of our ancestors, that you lead us to peace, emplace our footsteps toward peace, and make us reach our desired destination for life, gladness, and peace...
...What does it have to do with his political ideas...
...I point out to Jerzy that all the political ads for Tadeusz Mazowiecki that I saw in Krakow had a Star of David graffitied on them...
...I take a long walk through the streets of Krakow...
...At the same time, I am concerned that this pain might become an end in itself...
...The plane is leaving Warsaw...
...We are sad, but hopeful that both the new Carmelite convent and the center will help to heal wounds and pains...
...The evil was and is still there and needs a reckoning of the soul...
...Saturday afternoon...
...Perhaps in no other war in history has man been so thoroughly trampled upon in his dignity and fun- damental rights...
...I think of the Poles and their negative atti- tudes to my people...
...Nowadays, we can talk openly on the street, criticizing the government or praising it, there is freedom...
...We com- municate in Yiddish...
...He tells me that I'm the first Jew that he has met in his life...
...It will be published in the form of a booklet and be distributed through the dioceses all over the nation...
...I attend ser- vices at the small synagogue in the Krakow ghetto...
...There are no services at the synagogue...
...This responsibility is, indeed, our common responsibility...
...By chance, I meet Father Jozef Tischner who attended our 1988 theological colloquium...
...I cannot talk about God after Auschwitz...
...It is present there in Auschwitz, as well as on the walls of Krakow...
...I meet Jerzy Turowicz, editor-in-chief of the weekly Tygodnik Powszechny (Universal Weekly), and an old, dear friend...
...Mazowiecki was "accused" of coming from a Jewish family...
...He's a brave man who fought the Nazis and the Communists and has been involved in Catholic-Jewish dialogue for many years...
...We recount the Passover ceremony we celebrated at my home and the many good memories of the Seder gathering...
...Why do I look back at them so aggressively at times...
...This is not easy...
...At evening I recite Havdalah, the prayers to say goodbye to the Shabbath: "Hine El Yeshuati...
...Poland, which centuries ago welcomed and protected Jews, became, for many reasons, a bastion of anti-Semitism, especially in the 1930s...
...tJ SCREEN OVER THE EDGE...
...I start laughing and remind him of our con- versation in a hotel three years ago when he suddenly changed the subject of our political conversation because he realized that somebody was listening to us...
...I was not born here but all my family had been...
...What do I, a person born in Argentina, educated and living in the United States, totally com- mitted to the Jewish faith, feel toward Poland...
...Experiences of racism were a common fact, and yellow benches were assigned to Jewish students in the university...
...But because I believe, I know we have to work together, Catholics and Jews, for the future, a future to be built here in Poland and everywhere in the world...
...We started talking about literature and the young fellow, who was standing nearby, a member of the secret police, left after awhile...
...I pray by myself, in my room...
...They do it slowly...
...It might come as a surprise for them that a Jewish person studies Christianity for reasons beyond confrontation...
...He feels that we need to go beyond talking, to an encounter of the heart to overcome the pain of the past...
...An echo of the humiliation and even des- peration caused by such an experience could be heard in the questions often repeated after the war: How can we go on living after Auschwitz...
...I am in pain for my family who were gassed in Auschwitz, in October 1943...
...I do not want to talk about God...
...Is anti-Semitism part of the collective unconscious of Poland...
...Whether what was demanded of us was or was not beyond our ability to render, God alone must judge and historians will continue to debate...
...I doubt it...
...Game for anything...
...Anti-Catholic Polish feelings are in our hearts because of what happened in the thirties...
...I fear the possibility of the triumphalism of pain entailing a use and abuse of this hurt that eventually might lead me to self-righteousness...
...I speak to some of the members of the community...
...He was born many years after the war...
...Thus Thelma, who has just committed armed robbery...
...The fact that I am here in search of meaning in my Polish roots, the fact that I accepted Cardinal Macharski's invitation, prove my desire, even need, to dialogue and consider together our relationship...
...unday, April 7. Meeting at the episcopal palace to discuss the study guide...
...It is the end of Passover and there will be a service of remem- brance for the dead...
...They chug little bottles of Wild Turkey whiskey, bang on wheel and dashboard to the beat of the country and western music that blares from the car radio, and sing along raucously when they're not making spontaneous whoops of joy...
...I am in a rage because of Polish anti-Semitism that prepared the atmosphere for the Final Solution...
...I meet some dear old friends and we talk about many matters of mutual religious concern, as well as family matters...
...Frolicsome...
...I do not want to accept this...
...We feel that this publication and others will allow for a process of mutual understanding...
...Consequently, we had the greatest moral obligation toward the Jewish people...
...The arch- diocese hopes that the building will be inaugurated with the visit of an Israeli youth delegation...
...THELMA & LOUISE' carfed and sunglassed like Jackie Onassis, the two women drive their Thunderbird convertible through the Southwest toward Mexico...
...I point out that real democracy entails pluralism...
...But it hurts very deeply to realize that Jews are not here anymore: We Jews are a shadow in Poland...
...Even after the war, Polish anti-Semitism still flourished and led to the Kielce pogrom in 1946 when forty-two Jews who survived the concentration camps were murdered by fellow Poles...
...Sometimes another question presented itself: Is it still possible to speak about God after Auschwitz...
...No more questions...
...Am I anti-Polish in my reactions...
...I say Kaddish, the prayer for the dead, for Myriam, my beloved daughter, who died in an accident, and for all the members of our family who were massacred in World War II...
...I feel so strange...
...Its reading in every church is a way of popular imple- mentation that will be reflected in teaching and preaching...
...Crazed feminists, as some of the critics of Thelma and Louise seem to think...
...His father has told him several times about the Jewish community but never spent much time describing the situation of Jews in Poland before, 13 September 1991:511 kitchens, one kosher, and a common dining room...
...We cannot talk...
...We embrace and his first question is, "Do you find any difference now in Poland...
...Why do I resent the way people stare at me and at the yarmulke on top of my head...
...The whole day is devoted to the study guide and the consid- eration of the purpose of the Auschwitz Center...
...Thursday, April 11...
...Carefree...
...But the accusation of being Jewish is still a source of shame for Polish non-Jewish society...
...But this is the reality and I know that despite history I have to continue here or in any part of the world in my covenantal obligation to witness God...
...Psychopaths...
...Two old men are reciting the prayers...
...The following day, Cardinal Macharski asks ADL's Braun Center for Holocaust Studies to prepare a study guide for the Auschwitz Center that will be adapted to Polish realities and conditions...
...We talk about Catholic-Jewish relations in Poland...
...But I cannot pray...
...He wrote that: A question arises immediately whether this [the Poles' failure to act in defense of Jews] could be said not only of the Poles but equally well of the French, the English, the Russians, of the whole of the Christian world...
...Thus Louise, who left a man dead in Arkansas...
...Why do I assume that they are anti-Semitic and not just curious...
...Behold God is my salva- tion...
...I confess negative feelings...
...This is not going to be easy...
...Well, they do blow up a fuel truck because its 13 September 1991:513...
...I open the prayer book and pray...
...We Jews have to overcome the weight, the pain, the burden of memories...
...Happy...
...Poland will soon be behind me...
...Early in the morning...
...There are represen- tatives from Poland and other countries...
...Perhaps I'm the only Jew praying here in the city...
...Christians have to overcome centuries of prejudice...
...Hardened criminals...
...On the plane to New York, I open my prayer book but cannot concentrate...
...One of them breaks down, and there are tears in many eyes...
...He seldom thought about Jews in his town, though it had a Jewish community before the war...
...The language comes back to my lips, the language of my youth, of conversations with my parents...
...But it cannot be denied that it was in Poland that the greatest number of Jews lived...
...I need to act with God for a time of peace, of respect for others differently committed...
...Stanislaw Musial and I meet to consider the publication of my paper on a Jewish understanding of Christianity...
Vol. 118 • September 1991 • No. 15
