A prominent Polish cardinal and the country’s chief rabbi warned against silence in the face of hatred and called for peace at the central celebration of the 29th Day of Judaism in the Catholic Church in Poland on Jan. 15.
“Too much pain, too much tragedy, too much death. We pray for peace,” Chief Rabbi of Poland Michael Schudrich said during the event in Płock, a city in central Poland where most of its prewar Jewish population of 9,000 was murdered or deported during the Nazi occupation.
Schudrich recalled the words of Holocaust survivor Marian Turski that “Auschwitz did not fall from the sky,” noting that the Shoah would not have happened without the silence of good people. He underlined the need to combat antisemitism and all forms of racism and hatred.
Cardinal Grzegorz Ryś, the archbishop of Kraków and chairman of the Polish Bishops’ Conference’s Council for Religious Dialogue, called for Catholics and Jews to “listen to each other, because the other perspective is important for each side.”
“It is not the case” that the loss of Płock’s Jewish community “changes nothing in the community of citizens who lived together,” Ryś said, noting that the Day of Judaism — observed this year under the theme “Your people will be my people and your God my God” (Ruth 1:16) — serves to remember them.
The cardinal added that “all Church documents since the Second Vatican Council” have demonstrated the connections between Christianity and “living Judaism.”
“The whole history of salvation boils down to this: God gathers people, and the evil one scatters them,” Ryś observed. “You will never be happy if you want to be happy alone.”
Israel’s ambassador to Poland, Yaakov Finkelstein; local Bishop Szymon Stułkowski; and Płock Mayor Andrzej Nowakowski also attended the Jan. 15 celebrations.
Events took place at multiple locations, including the Płock Cathedral, the Benedictine Abbey, and the Museum of Mazovian Jews, which is housed in a former synagogue. The day included joint prayers, a commemorative walk through sites linked to Płock’s Jewish history, and exhibitions including one titled “Some Were Neighbors: Choice, Human Behavior, and the Holocaust,” produced by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Sister Katarzyna Kowalska, co-chair of the Polish Council of Christians and Jews and vice president of the International Council of Christians and Jews, said the Church today calls the faithful to “sit down at one table” and explore important issues.
“We discussed memory, hope, and the promises made to the chosen people, in which we are also included and which we share in,” Kowalska said.
The Day of Judaism is traditionally observed on Jan. 17 in Poland’s liturgical calendar, coinciding with the eve of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. Similar days of Jewish-Catholic remembrance and dialogue are celebrated by the Catholic Church in a number of European countries.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.