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Newsletter : 8fax1012.txt
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>Israel Faxx
>JN Oct. 12, 1998, Vol. 6, No. 181
Vatican Holocaust Files Incomplete
Israel Faxx Staff Report
Published Vatican records detailing the Catholic Church's role
during the Holocaust omit a key document showing Pope Pius XII knew
Jews were being slaughtered as early as March 1942, a new book by
Gerhard Riegner says. The Vatican's authorized 11-volume history
leaves out a World Jewish Congress telegram revealing the use of
gas chambers to exterminate Jews, according to Riegner's memoirs.
The Vatican clearly received the secret cable because the official
history includes the note sent with it from the papal nuncio in
Berne, Switzerland, Riegner writes.
Catholics Canonize First Jewish Convert in Nearly 2,000 Years
By Sabina Castelfranco (VOA-Rome)
Pope John Paul II said Sunday the example of the newly-declared St.
Edith Stein should serve to strengthen understanding between
Catholic and Jews. Stein is the first Jewish convert to Catholicism
to be canonized since the time of the apostles.
The canonization mass for Stein in the Vatican was attended by
thousands of the faithful, both Catholics and Jews. In the crowd
was the new saint's 77-year-old niece, Susanne Batzdorff, from
California.
"To me she is a person, somebody I remember, somebody I had a
relationship with and not somebody who is a symbol or a distant
figure that one can even envision venerating."
Germany's ex-Chancellor Helmut Kohl was also present, heading a
20,000-person delegation. There were also large groups from the
United States and the pope's native Poland.
Stein was born in what is today is Poland, the youngest child in a
large Jewish family. She abandoned her faith, and after many years
as an atheist, was baptized into the Catholic church in 1922.
She then joined the Carmelite cloister in Cologne, Germany. Alarmed by Nazi policies she requested transfer to a convent in Holland in 1938. But as Carmelite Father John Sullivan explains, she failed to escape the Nazis.
"She was rounded up as a Jew with other Catholic converts from
Judaism who were born Jews, but were then Catholics -- because the
Catholic bishops of The Netherlands very courageously sent out a
pastoral letter, which was read out on Sunday from all the pulpits
of the Catholic churches, telling the Nazis hands off the Jews."
Stein died in 1942 in the gas chambers at Auschwitz. Addressing the
thousands gathered in St. Peter's Square, the pope said in
celebrating the memory of the new saint, the church will also
remember the millions of victims of the Holocaust.
The pope said, "Never again should such a criminal initiative take
place against any ethnic group, people, or race, any place on
Earth."
French Assail Pope on Convert's Canonization
By IsraelWire
A leading Jewish campaigner for improved ties between Christians and Jews, Rabbi Daniel Farhi, said Pope John Paul II is wounding Holocaust survivors by canonizing a nun who converted to Catholicism from Judaism.
German-born Edith Stein, later Sister Teresia Benedicta a Cruce,
wrote books on philosophy and had a brilliant academic career
before being gassed in the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz
during World War 2.
"She was murdered because she was Jewish, not because she was
Christian, and it is probable her fate would have been of less
interest to those who beatified her and will canonize her if she
had died in her bed," Farhi said.
"Why will one of this Pope's last acts concerning the Holocaust be
to inflict a supplementary wound to the heart of the descendants of
the victims and of the survivors," said Farhi, head of the small
but socially prominent French Jewish Liberal Movement.
Farhi said in a Sabbath-eve message that most Christians would
interpret the Pope's elevation of Stein to sainthood as approval
for her abandoning the faith of her ancestors.
Stein went to the gas chambers two days after her arrival at the
death camp Farhi said, "The ambiguity of the Church decision will
shock Jewish sensitivities as it should shock all Christian
consciences. It is a new stumbling block in the dialogue between
Christians and Jews. It will not prevent those who favor this
dialogue from persevering but it will slow progress."
His organization, with ties to the Reform Judaism in the United
States, conducts joint activities with Christian groups. These are
sometimes viewed warily by the increasingly orthodox religious
leaders of mainstream French Judaism who fear assimilation and
conversion.
Farhi said he had great personal admiration for Stein as an
intellectual but, recalling the Pope was once Cardinal of the
Crakow area which includes the Auschwitz site, he said: "Could he
not have abstained from this ultimate wound inflicted on the
painful memories of the Jewish community?"
Stein, beatified in 1987, was born in 1891 in what was then German
Breslau but is now the Polish city of Wroclaw. She abandoned her
Jewish faith at the age of 14 and became an atheist for about 10
years. She eventually converted to Christianity and entered the
Carmelite order in 1922.
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