Auschwitz and Hiroshima are thousands of miles apart and to walk the distance between them may take many months, but for some, the two places are linked by the suffering endured by the people there during World War II.
Hundreds of members of different faiths will commemorate that link next week at a convocation at the site of the Auschwitz death camp that will mark the beginning of an eight-month peace walk from Poland to Japan.
Participants will wend their way through the former Yugoslavia, Israel, Jordan, Iraq, India, Cambodia and Vietman, before ending up in Hiroshima.
A symposium on Aug. 14, 1995 in Tokyo will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States at the end of the war.
“This is an opportunity to both be a witness to the unique nature of what the Jewish people suffered at the hands of the Nazis, which Auschwitz symbolizes and is the center of, and to be in connection with other people and other traditions who have suffered,” said Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg, who will participate in the Auschwitz convocation, which begins Dec. 4.
Weinberg, spiritual leader of the Jewish Community of Amherst, a synagogue in Amherst, Mass., said she is looking forward to going to the former death camp in an interfaith setting because “anyone who is coming is coming with a pure heart.
“Hopefully, they are open to learning and I willing be as open as I can to learning,” she said.
She will be joined by hundreds of other participants from around the world and from various faiths, including Buddhists, Hindus and Catholics. The convocation and peace walk are both being organized by the Nipponzan Myohoji Buddhist Order.
At Auschwitz, where close to 2 million people were murdered, 90 percent of whom were Jews, Weinberg and other participants will light the eighth Chanukah candle, say Kaddish in memory of those who died and give a lecture on the rise of Nazism in Germany and throughout Europe.
“To me this is a pilgrimage,” said Weinberg, who has never visited Auschwitz before. “It is important that it (the peace walk) begins there and what happened there is acknowledged fully. To say that is the only example of violence and genocide in the world I don’t think is true.”
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