Three hundred women from 27 countries held a peaceful demonstration outside the Auschwitz death camp on Monday to protest the continued presence of a Roman Catholic convent on the site.
Organized by the Women’s International Zionist Organization, or WIZO, the protest was held in front of the former Nazi storehouse used by 14 nuns of the Carmelite order.
The nuns’ presence and the construction of a 23-foot high cross at the former death camp has angered international Jewish groups, who feel the site is of unique Jewish significance.
Calls to move the convent were renewed this year when church leaders missed a February deadline by which they had agreed to transfer the sisters to an Interfaith Prayer and Education Center planned at an undetermined site farther from the camp.
The women, who held a moment of silence, carried an Israeli flag and banners reading, “Leave alone the memory of the millions of Jewish victims” and “Remove the convent — Don’t de-Judaize the Holocaust.”
Raya Jaglom, world president of WIZO, planned to meet with Wladyslaw Loranc, the Polish minister of religion, to discuss the possibility of removing the convent.
Catholic officials have assured Jewish groups that the nuns will be moved off the site, a former storehouse for the Zyklon B gas used by the Nazis to kill Jews, but that the new convent for the nuns is not yet ready.
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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.
