Nazis dishonoured God, Pope tells Slovakia’s Jews
THE POPE has spoken of how the “name of God was dishonoured” by the Holocaust in a landmark meeting with the Jewish community on a visit to Slovakia.
In a powerful speech in Bratislava on Monday, Pope Francis said: “Your history is our history, your sufferings are our sufferings.
“Let us unite in condemning all violence and every form of antisemitism, and in working to ensure that God’s image, present in the humanity he created, will never be profaned.”
He was speaking in front of the capital’s Holocaust memorial, which is near the city’s cathedral and on the former site of a synagogue that was demolished in 1969, during the Communist era.
The Pope said: “Here, in this place, the name of God was dishonoured, for the worst form of blasphemy is to exploit it for our own purposes, refusing to respect and love others.
“In this place, our histories meet once more. Here let us affirm together before God our willingness to persevere on the path of rapprochement and friendship.”
The Pope listened as a Holocaust survivor, Tomas Lang, spoke via a translator to share memories of the horrors of the Shoah and the murder of his parents amid the wider suffering of the Jewish community.
The fate of Slovakia’s Jews is a dark chapter for the Catholic faith. After declaring independence from Czechoslovakia in 1939, it became a client sate of the Nazis, under the rule of president Jozef Tiso, a priest.
A raft of antisemitic laws were adopted by Slovakia before the country’s Jews were shipped to the Nazi death camps.
Vatican documents have revealed that Pope Pius XII intervened to attempt to stop the deportation of the Jews. Although he succeeded for a time starting in 1942, the deportations eventually resumed two years later.
Estimates for the numbers of those who were murdered range from around 70,000 to more than 100,000, or more than three-quarters of the Jewish population that existed in Slovakia before the war. Tiso was eventually tried for his crimes against humanity and was executed in 1947.
The Jewish community in a country with a total population of 5.5 million that is still largely Roman Catholic now numbers about 5,000.
Last week, Slovakia’s government apologised for the “Jewish Code” enacted by Tiso 80 years ago, which had denied Jews their human, civil and property rights.
Welcoming the Pope’s speech, one member of the Bratislava Jewish community, Daniel Feldmar, 19, said it was a recognition of “the tragedies of the Holocaust” but also acknowledged “that the Jewish presence in Bratislava and in Slovakia is still strong”.
Warning that antisemitism still exists in Slovakia, Mr Feldmar said: “People usually don’t know or have never met a Jew so, of course, they will be prone to those prejudices and they will be happy to find a scapegoat.
“That is one of the reasons why I am happy that the Pope came here today to meet with us.
“This dialogue will break the barriers between the Catholic Church and Judaism.”
Maros Borsky, secretary of the dialogue commission between the Central Union of Jewish Religious Communities and the Catholic Church, told the Associated Press he hoped the papal visit will improve community relations.
He said: “What happened in the past cannot be fixed, but it’s necessary to look into the future.
Pope’s speech will help to combat the antisemitism that still exists