Pope honors Slovak victims of Holocaust
BRATISLAVA, Slovakia – Pope Francis honored Slovakian Holocaust victims and atoned for Christian complicity in wartime crimes as he sought to promote reconciliation Monday in a country where a Catholic priest was president of a Nazi puppet state that deported tens of thousands of its Jews.
“Your history is our history, your sufferings are our sufferings,” Francis told members of Slovakia’s small, remaining Jewish community, standing in the shadow of the country’s Holocaust memorial.
Even though St. John Paul II made three trips to Slovakia, he never met here with the country’s Jews, evidence of the strained local Catholic-Jewish relations that endured in the post-war decades even with a Polish pope known for his outreach to Jews.
As a result, Francis’ welcome by the community – during the solemn 10-day period of repentance stretching from Rosh Hashana to Yom Kippur – was a significant step forward and was hailed as historic by local Jewish leaders who said it was chance to look to the future.
Francis is on the second day of a four-day pilgrimage to Hungary and Slovakia.
He was solemn on Monday afternoon, listening intently via headphones providing simultaneous translation as he heard testimony from a Holocaust survivor about the horrors of the Shoah and the enduring pain of the Jewish community.
“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,” Francis said.
While Francis’ visit marked a new step in Catholic-Jewish relations, it also served to remind Slovaks that Catholics also saved lives.
A Holocaust survivor, Tomas Lang, cited a Vatican embassy official at the time, Monsignor Giuseppe Burzio, as someone who “unceasingly tried to halt the antisemitism of the murderous regime of the time.”
And a Slovak Orsoline nun, Sister Samuela, told Francis of the instances of Jewish children and their families who were hidden in Slovak convents and even the Vatican embassy itself.