B’nai B’rith Leader Appeals Directly to the Pope to Intervene to Have a Convent at Auschwitz Relocat

Seymour Reich, international president of B’nai B’rith, appealed directly to Pope John Paul II Wednesday “to intervene” to have a Carmelite convent being established on the site of the Auschwitz death camp relocated to another site not marked by Jewish suffering.

Reich, in a letter to the Vatican Ambassador to the U.S., Archbishop Pio Laghi, referred to the group of Carmelite nuns who have occupied a building on the site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp since 1984 and with permission of the Polish government intend to establish a convent there.

Reich noted that “World Jewry — along with much of the rest of the world — recognizes Auschwitz, in fact and in symbol, as the ghastly emblem of Hitler’s genocide against European Jewry.” He added that the presence of another religious group there “distorts” the unique experience of the Holocaust.

“Recently, one of our European representatives — Samuel Hoffenberg of Paris, a French citizen of Polish birth — met with Church leaders in Poland in hope of resolving this problem. He was not encouraged by what he heard,” Reich wrote.

“I am therefore appealing directly to the Vatican — and to His Holiness John Paul II — to intervene directly so that the Carmelite convent can be relocated outside the Auschwitz grounds.”

A 1972 UNESCO Convention — signed by Poland and 13 other countries — requires “the Auschwitz site to remain unchanged as an historic reminder of what took place there during World War II,” Reich noted. He added: “To permit the convent to remain in its present location is to do a monumental injustice to the memory of six million Jewish martyrs. We sincerely hope the Holy See will recognize how deeply world Jewry feels about this and take steps to correct the situation.”