Senior Catholic officials have pledged that the Carmelite nuns occupying a theater building at Auschwitz will vacate their convent shortly, probably by the end of March, but indicated that right-wing nationalists continue to threaten the plan and consider it an affront to Polish national sensibilities.
In a meeting last week with Jewish representatives, Cardinal John O’Connor, archbishop of New York and moderator of Catholic-Jewish affairs for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, said that the nuns’ new convent is complete and ready to be inhabited.
But Catholic officials are not indicating any firm date for the move into the convent, for fear of provoking right-wing nationalists in Poland and France who have said they may try to block the move.
The new cloistered convent is part of a complex of buildings under construction since February 1990, across the road from the Auschwitz death camp, where 1.6 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis.
The complex includes a conference center and library, which have already been completed, and a hostel for conference attendees, which is still being constructed.
THEATER BUILDING TO BE RESTORED
Once the nuns are out of the theater building on Auschwitz grounds which they have occupied since 1984, the building will be restored to its original state, according to Rabbi Mark Winer, who participated in the meeting with O’Connor.
Winer is co-chairman for interreligious affairs of the Synagogue Council of America, which, as part of the International Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultations, is the official representative of the Jewish community in dialogue with the Vatican.
Few of the nuns from the theater building are likely to move into the new convent, but they will be sent elsewhere and 24 other members of the Carmelite order will live in the new facility.
The nuns’ mother superior, Sister Marie Therese, told Rabbi Leon Klenicki, director of interreligious affairs for the Anti-Defamation League, that she did not intend to move to the new convent.
But senior members of the Catholic hierarchy, both in Poland and in the United States, have assured Jewish representatives that the nuns will vacate the site and that their objections are not an obstacle to fulfilling the pledge that was made in 1987, when a group of European cardinals signed an agreement with representatives of the Jewish community to relocate the nuns within two years.
The project has been beset by political, ideological and pragmatic delays ranging from the nuns’ refusal to leave, at one point, to halted construction because of bad winter weather.
The most recent threats by right-wing nationalists in Poland, aided by France’s Jean Marie Le Pen, to try and interfere with the nuns’ leaving, complicate the already-delayed conclusion of the commitment.
“They may picket or demonstrate,” said Rabbi A. James Rudin, director of interfaith affairs for the American Jewish Committee, who also participated in the meeting with O’Connor. “They say this is Catholic sensibility being trampled on.”
“From a Polish perspective, Auschwitz is a sacred place, because before it was a death camp for Jews it was a concentration camp for Poles. It is a powerful place in Polish consciousness,” said Winer, of the Synagogue Council.
“They don’t want to feel pushed out, though the church has recognized that moving the nuns out is a sacred commitment,” he added.
According to ADL’s Klenicki, also at the meeting with O’Connor, “Both Jewish and Polish Christian leadership should be very cautious at this point in order to complete the move. Church leadership wants to avoid a confrontation” with the nationalists.
While in Poland late last year, Klenicki said he read articles in the right-wing Polish press which said that “Jews once again want to suffocate Poland.”
Said Winer, “There’s a lot of commitment from the Catholics on this thing, a lot of good will, but it’s not finished.
“It’s important that the Jewish world know that the church is keeping its word. This is a test for how serious the church is about building a new relationship with the Jewish people. It looks like we’re almost there,” he said, “but ‘almost’ doesn’t count.”
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.
