Pope renders homage to Soviet, Nazi victims
Pontiff honors those killed in occupations
VILNIUS, Lithuania — Pope Francis warned against historical revisionism and any rebirth of the anti-semitism that fueled the Holocaust as he marked the annual remembrance Sunday for Lithuania’s centuries-old Jewish community, which was nearly wiped out during World War II.
Francis began his second day in the Baltics in Lithuania’s second city, Kaunas, where an estimated 3,000 Jews survived out of a community of 37,000 during the 1941-44 Nazi occupation. He ended it back in the capital, Vilnius, to pay his respects to Lithuanians who were deported to Siberian gulags or were tortured and killed at home during five decades of Soviet occupation.
Francis honored freedom fighters at the former KGB headquarters where anti-soviet partisans were detained and executed, solemnly touring the underground chambers, which have now been turned into a haunting museum of occupation atrocities.
Francis paid equal tribute to victims of both Nazi and Soviet atrocities on the 75th anniversary of the final destruction of the ghetto in Vilnius, which had been known for centuries as the “Jerusalem of the North” for its importance to Jewish thought and politics. Each year, the Sept. 23 anniversary is commemorated with readings of the names of Jews who were killed by Nazis or Lithuanian partisans or were deported to concentration camps.
Francis prayed silently in the former ghetto and warned against the temptation “that can dwell in every human heart” to want to be superior or dominant to others again.
His warning came as far-right, xenophobic and neo-fascist political movements are making gains across Europe, including in Lithuania, and closer to his home in Italy.
Lithuania is 80 percent Catholic; Lutherans and Russian Orthodox count more followers in Latvia and Estonia, where Francis visits on Monday and Tuesday.