Oswiecim, Poland – Pope, At Auschwitz, Asks God To Forgive ‘so Much Cruelty’

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    Pope Francis walks through a gate with the words "Arbeit macht frei" (Work sets you free) at the former Nazi German concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau in Oswiecim, Poland, July 29, 2016.  REUTERS/Kacper Pempel Oswiecim, Poland – Hunched on a bench near the gate to the Auschwitz death camp site in Poland, Pope Francis prayed silently on Friday in tribute to 1.5 million people, most of them Jews, gassed there by Nazi occupiers during World War Two.

    Marking the third day of his trip to Poland for an international gathering of Catholic youth, Francis spent a few minutes speaking quietly and exchanging gifts with about 12 Auschwitz survivors, including a 101-year-old woman.

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    One of the male survivors gave the pope a picture of himself surrounded by other inmates in a bunk, and asked Francis to sign it. The somber-looking pope kissed each survivor.

    The Argentine-born pontiff, 79, made no statement as he proceeded to walk through the barely-lit corridors of the drab, brick building of Auschwitz Block 11 which had housed prisoners selected for special punishment.

    Before his trip, Francis said he had decided that silence in prayer was the best way to pay tribute to those who died.

    With aides using small flashlights to light his way, Francis visited the underground cell where Franciscan monk Maksymilian Kolbe was killed after offering his life to save a Polish man whom camp handlers had picked to die of starvation.

    In Auschwitz’s commemorative book, Francis wrote in Spanish: “Lord, have mercy on your people. Lord, forgiveness for so much cruelty”.

    German occupation forces set up the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp during World War Two in Oswiecim, a town around 70 km (43 miles) from Poland’s second city, Krakow, in the country’s south.

    Between 1940 and 1945 Auschwitz developed into a vast complex of barracks, workshops, gas chambers and crematoria.

    On July 29, 1941, the camp director, in reprisal for the escape of a prisoner, chose 10 others and sentenced them to death by starvation.
    This image made available  by the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum shows the inscription written in the guest book by Pope Francis when he visited the  Nazi German death camp of Auschwitz in Oswiecim, Poland, Friday, July 29, 2016. AP
    When the selection was completed, Kolbe stepped forward and volunteered to die in place of one of them, Franciszek Gajowniczek. Kolbe was later killed by lethal injection but the man he saved survived the war. He was made a saint in 1982 by then-Pope John Paul II, a Pole.

    On Friday, the 75th anniversary of Kolbe’s sacrifice, Francis also visited Birkenau, a part of the camp where most of the killings were committed in gas chambers.

    He walked solemnly past guard towers, barbed wire fences and remains of crematoria that the Nazis blew up before the camp was liberated by the Soviet Red Army on Jan. 27, 1945.

    Francis listened silently as Poland’s chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, and a priest recited Psalm 130 meters (yards) away from the end of the infamous single rail track where cattle cars brought hundreds of thousands of prisoners to the camp.

    During a visit to Rome’s synagogue in January, Francis appealed to Catholics to reject anti-Semitism and said the Holocaust, in which some six million Jews were killed, should remind everyone that human rights should be defended with “maximum vigilance”.
    Pope Francis meets concentration camp survivors in the former Nazi German concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau in Oswiecim, Poland, July 29, 2016.  REUTERS/David W Cerny
    Pope Francis arrives to visit Auschwitz's former Nazi death camp, Poland, July 29, 2016. Osservatore Romano/Handout via Reuters
    Pope Francis prays in front of the Memorial at the former Nazi Death Camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, in Oswiecim, Poland, Friday, July 29, 2016.  AP
    Pope Francis visits to Birkenau's former Nazi death camp in Oswiecim, Poland, July 29, 2016. Osservatore Romano/Handout via Reuters
    Pope Francis walks through the gate of the former Nazi German death camp of Auschwitz in Oswiecim, Poland, Friday, July 29, 2016. AP

     Former   Auschwitz concentration camp prisoner Naftali Fuerst (L) shows his camp picture to Pope Francis (R) in a yard next to the Death Wall in the former Nazi German concentration camp KL Auschwitz I in Oswiecim, Poland, 29 July 2016.  EPA


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    14 Comments
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    misslydia128
    misslydia128
    7 years ago

    Worthless man should be praying for,justice ,and not forgiveness, from G-d.

    Myrak
    Myrak
    7 years ago

    Vague sentiment. Forgiveness for the cruelty. Spell it out oh Father. Can there be forgiveness for the barbaric, depraved and systematic genocide of largely Jewish people and can there be forgiveness for those who stood and condoned or just passively looked on?

    Meloah
    Meloah
    7 years ago

    Anti-semite. He left ambiguous words to leave both meanings…The pope considers Christians to be “the people”, so he is asking for Hashem to have mercy on the Poles and Nazis for what they did, while he couldn’t care less about the Jewish people. If he didn’t mean that, then he shouldn’t have written ambiguously…

    “Lord, have mercy on your people. Lord, forgiveness for so much cruelty”.

    allmark
    allmark
    7 years ago

    What about apologizing for the centuries of Catholic antisemitism that made the Holocaust possible?

    Tzi_Bar_David
    Tzi_Bar_David
    7 years ago

    While far from an apologist for the pope, I took the comment as if he were asking Hashem to forgive humanity for allowing it to happen…not that he was seeking redemption for the Germans. I also appreciate that by going, he helps to debunk the deniers’ claims that it never happened.

    7 years ago

    “Lord, have mercy on your people. Lord, forgiveness for so much cruelty”.

    G-d will not forgive his people who committed such mind numbing cruelty. G-d, is a g-d of vengeance!

    Perhaps, the Pope would do better to swear that the Catholic Church will never stand by again while such atrocities are perpetrated for will never forget that they too were complicit in the barbarism of the Holocaust.

    misslydia128
    misslydia128
    7 years ago

    Worthless man should be praying for,justice ,and not forgiveness, from G-d.

    7 years ago

    You know, after reading the mean-spirited, small-minded comments above, I wonder why sincere non-Jews even bother. The not-so-secret secret (it’s not so secret anymore because in the Internet age you can’t hide anything) is that the frum world, especially the chassidish and yeshivish, hates non-Jews and believes that even if a non-Jew appears to be good and honest and sincere and charitable, we shouldn’t believe it. Either we’re being deceived, or there’s an ulterior motive, or the person is in fact really righteous because he’s actually not a goy but rather someone who doesn’t realize he’s a Jew by blood,etc. These are statements made by heliger rabbunim and parroted in our heimishe yeshivas. One can only imagine how, few frum Jews would risk their lives to shelter non-Jews from oppression. I’m not an apikores or a self-hater or Reform or Conservative. Just a simple Jew who knows that over the years a shamefully large number of shockingly hateful statements about 99.9 percent of Hashem’s human creations have been made by rabbis big and small.

    WakeUp2
    WakeUp2
    7 years ago

    God will never forgive or forget! Just like Amulek!

    Maimoni
    Maimoni
    7 years ago

    Bloody hypocrite!
    If not for his evil church this would never have happened!
    And where was the pope during the war?
    Does he want us also to “forgive” the Polish and Slovakian catholic priests who preached violent antisemitism during the war and fanned the flames of hatred?
    Christianity is the root source of western antisemitism. Antisemitism seems to be its only raison d’etre!
    As long as Christianity exists, Jewish people can never be secure.
    Bergoglio! If you really want to save humanity burn your anti-Semitic “new testament” and close your church.