by Dr. David Silberklang

The visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Poland aroused considerable attention across Europe, and in Poland in particular. Poland is a conspicuously Catholic country, and the visit was interpreted as a gesture of respect for the previous Pope, John Paul II, who was Polish by origin and greatly revered by his fellow Poles.

The Pope’s Polish itinerary included Warsaw—Pope John Paul II’s birthplace—and Auschwitz-Birkenau. The Pope prayed at several sites and addressed the crowds of devout Catholics who came in their droves to hear him. However, various ideas expressed by the head of the Roman Catholic Church—or rather failed to express—during the course of his speeches caused disappointment, even astonishment, in certain quarters. At Warsaw Ghetto Square, for example, next to the monument to Mordechai Anielewicz, a group of Jews, journalists and other interested parties had gathered, but the Pope passed them by without so much as acknowledging them. Members of many ethnic groups, including Jews, waited in vain during the Pope’s visit to Birkenau for the Pontiff—who is also German by nationality—to ask forgiveness for the anguish and loss suffered by so many during the Holocaust years. In his address, the Pope stated that Heaven was silent during those difficult times but said nothing about the silence of God’s “emissary on earth,” Pope Pius XII, during the same period.

Jews expected that, while standing at the very epicenter of the atrocity, at Birkenau, the Pope would also address the issue of antisemitism, a phenomenon largely driven over the generations by the Catholic Church. This hatred penetrated the hearts of many Christians, reaching its apex during the period between the two world wars. Antisemitism poisoned the Catholic masses across Europe, evolving into a full-blown cultural disease that even today has yet to be eradicated. The condemnation of, and struggle against, antisemitism are duties for which the Pope and the hundreds of millions of believers who hang on his every word must be held accountable.

The author is Academic Advisor to Yad Vashem.

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