Cardinal Franciszek Macharski, the Archbishop of Cracow, has reportedly agreed to suspend construction of the Carmelite convent being built on the site of the Auschwitz death camp in Poland.
The Cardinal gave this pledge at a meeting Tuesday in Geneva attended by high-ranking Catholic leaders and French, Belgian and Italian Jews.
While in Israel last week, Macharski visited Yad Vashem. He said his voluntary decision to freeze the construction work “would show the temporary nature of the convent.”
Some Jewish organizations have responded with anger to the establishment of the convent on the site where millions of Jews and non-Jews were exterminated. They claim the convent is an insult to their memory.
Western European Jews were irked by the Polish Catholic Church’s fund-raising campaign for the construction in Belgium, France and Italy.
A small group of Carmelite nuns established the convent in 1984 when they began living in an unused theater just outside the camp fence. The theater was once used during the Holocaust to store gas cylinders used to exterminate the inmates and possessions taken from the prisoners.
The convent sought money to renovate the structure in a fund-raising campaign launched last year in Europe. Macharski received permission from the local authorities to turn the theater into a convent.
The Geneva meeting was held behind closed doors and no official communique was issued.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
