Papal Address to American Jewish Organizations
"Shoah Was a Crime Against God and Against Humanity"
VATICAN CITY, FEB. 12, 2009 (Zenit.org).-
Here is the address Benedict XVI gave today upon receiving in audience
members of a delegation of the Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations.
* * *
Dear Friends,
I
am pleased to welcome all of you today, and I thank Rabbi Arthur
Schneier and Mr Alan Solow for the greetings they have addressed to me
on your behalf. I well recall the various occasions, during my visit to
the United States last year, when I was able to meet some of you in
Washington D.C. and New York. Rabbi Schneier, you graciously received
me at Park East Synagogue just hours before your celebration of Pesah.
Now, I am glad to have this opportunity to offer you hospitality here
in my own home. Such meetings as this enable us to demonstrate our
respect for one another. I want you to know that you are all most
welcome here today in the house of Peter, the home of the Pope.
I
look back with gratitude to the various opportunities I have had over
many years to spend time in the company of my Jewish friends. My visits
to your communities in Washington and New York, though brief, were
experiences of fraternal esteem and sincere friendship. So too was my
visit to the Synagogue in Cologne, the first such visit in my
Pontificate. It was very moving for me to spend those moments with the
Jewish community in the city I know so well, the city which was home to
the earliest Jewish settlement in Germany, its roots reaching back to
the time of the Roman Empire.
A year later, in May 2006, I
visited the extermination camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau. What words can
adequately convey that profoundly moving experience? As I walked
through the entrance to that place of horror, the scene of such untold
suffering, I meditated on the countless number of prisoners, so many of
them Jews, who had trodden that same path into captivity at Auschwitz
and in all the other prison camps. Those children of Abraham,
grief-stricken and degraded, had little to sustain them beyond their
faith in the God of their fathers, a faith that we Christians share
with you, our brothers and sisters. How can we begin to grasp the
enormity of what took place in those infamous prisons? The entire human
race feels deep shame at the savage brutality shown to your people at
that time. Allow me to recall what I said on that sombre occasion: "The
rulers of the Third Reich wanted to crush the entire Jewish people, to
cancel it from the register of the peoples of the earth. Thus the words
of the Psalm, ‘We are being killed, accounted as sheep for the
slaughter’, were fulfilled in a terrifying way."
Our meeting
today occurs in the context of your visit to Italy in conjunction with
your annual Leadership Mission to Israel. I too am preparing to visit
Israel, a land which is holy for Christians as well as Jews, since the
roots of our faith are to be found there. Indeed, the Church draws its
sustenance from the root of that good olive tree, the people of Israel,
onto which have been grafted the wild olive branches of the Gentiles
(cf. Rom 11: 17-24). From the earliest days of Christianity, our
identity and every aspect of our life and worship have been intimately
bound up with the ancient religion of our fathers in faith.
The
two-thousand-year history of the relationship between Judaism and the
Church has passed through many different phases, some of them painful
to recall. Now that we are able to meet in a spirit of reconciliation,
we must not allow past difficulties to hold us back from extending to
one another the hand of friendship. Indeed, what family is there that
has not been troubled by tensions of one kind or another? The Second
Vatican Council’s Declaration "Nostra Aetate" marked a milestone in the
journey towards reconciliation, and clearly outlined the principles
that have governed the Church’s approach to Christian-Jewish relations
ever since. The Church is profoundly and irrevocably committed to
reject all anti-Semitism and to continue to build good and lasting
relations between our two communities. If there is one particular image
which encapsulates this commitment, it is the moment when my beloved
predecessor Pope John Paul II stood at the Western Wall in Jerusalem,
pleading for God’s forgiveness after all the injustice that the Jewish
people have had to suffer. I now make his prayer my own: "God of our
fathers, you chose Abraham and his descendants to bring your Name to
the Nations: we are deeply saddened by the behaviour of those who in
the course of history have caused these children of yours to suffer,
and asking your forgiveness we wish to commit ourselves to genuine
brotherhood with the people of the Covenant" (26 March 2000).
The
hatred and contempt for men, women and children that was manifested in
the Shoah was a crime against God and against humanity. This should be
clear to everyone, especially to those standing in the tradition of the
Holy Scriptures, according to which every human being is created in the
image and likeness of God (Gen 1:26-27). It is beyond question that any
denial or minimization of this terrible crime is intolerable and
altogether unacceptable. Recently, in a public audience, I reaffirmed
that the Shoah must be "a warning for all against forgetfulness, denial
or reductionism, because violence committed against one single human
being is violence against all" (January 28, 2009).
This terrible
chapter in our history must never be forgotten. Remembrance -- it is
rightly said -- is memoria futuri, a warning to us for the future, and
a summons to strive for reconciliation. To remember is to do everything
in our power to prevent any recurrence of such a catastrophe within the
human family by building bridges of lasting friendship. It is my
fervent prayer that the memory of this appalling crime will strengthen
our determination to heal the wounds that for too long have sullied
relations between Christians and Jews. It is my heartfelt desire that
the friendship we now enjoy will grow ever stronger, so that the
Church’s irrevocable commitment to respectful and harmonious relations
with the people of the Covenant will bear fruit in abundance.
© Copyright 2009 -- Libreria Editrice Vaticana
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