“Anti-Semitism is not compatible” with true christianity, Father Gordon F. George, superior of the Jesuit province of Upper Canada, declared here. He emphasized that true Christians “are spiritually Semites” and sharply scored the “merchants of hate” who are even today “eager” to spread anti-Semitism.
“It has always been a mystery to me, ” said Father George, “how an apparently genuine Christian can allow himself to indulge in the prejudice of anti-Semitism. ” The Jesuit leader, stating his opinions in an article in the daily newspaper Globe and Mail here, recalled that Pope John XXIII met with Label A. Katz, president of B’nai B’rith, at the Vatican, last winter, telling Mr. Katz: “You of the Old Testament and we of the New must come closer and closer as brothers under God, to work for peace throughout the world. “
Father George recalled that the late Pope Pius XI stated in a decree in 1928; “The Apostolic See condemns most emphatically the hatred directed against a people which was once chosen by God, that particular hatred which today commonly goes by the name of anti-Semitism.”
In the opinion of the Jesuit Priest, the forthcoming trial in Israel of Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi leader who directed the extermination of 6, 000,000 Jews, “will undoubtedly dramatize again the tragic history of the Jewish people. ” The Nazi holocaust, he said, “was such a nightmare of horror that our imaginations are not equal to the task of grasping it.”
He paid high tribute to the martyrs of the Warsaw Ghetto, “Their heroic resistance against all hope before a murderous oppressor is one of the glowing pages of human history, ” he stated, “No banal picture of the fawning, self-serving Jew can stand against the real-life courage and devotion to principle of those who chose death rather than timid surrender to tyranny,”
“Here in Canada, ” Father George pointed out, “there are about 250, 000 Jews who have made a splendid contribution to our national life in the arts, professions, sciences and in industry. The climate of religious and racial tolerance among Canadians, while far from perfect, is still something we can point to with a measure of pride. “
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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.
