Jewish communities in four Midwestern cities are bracing for a scheduled U.S. visit by Cardinal Jozef Glemp of Poland, whose recent anti-Semitic remarks regarding the convent at Auschwitz have outraged Jews around the world.
Though Glemp’s schedule has not been finalized, he is supposed to arrive in the United States on Sept. 21, where he is expected to spend approximately a week in Chicago, before continuing on to Cleveland, Milwaukee and Detroit for shorter visits.
There have also been reports that Glemp is planning to visit Washington and Boston, and that he will stay in the United States at least until Oct. 1.
Glemp, the highest-ranking Catholic official in Poland, caused a stir when he accused Jews of directing the international media against Poland and spreading anti-Polish propaganda.
He has also called for the renegotiation of an agreement by Catholic and Jewish leaders to relocate the controversial Auschwitz convent to a planned interfaith center located off the grounds of the death camp.
On Friday, a delegation headed by the Chicago Jewish Community Relations Council will meet with Cardinal Joseph Bernadin, the archbishop of Chicago, to discuss the Jewish community’s response to the Glemp visit.
Michael Kotzin, Chicago’s JCRC director, said the Jewish community is currently “pursuing an appropriate vehicle of expression” which “would be carried out with dignity and would be a unified response” to Glemp’s recent anti-Semitic statements.
Rabbi Shlomo Levine, president of the Chicago Board of Rabbis and a signer of the interfaith statement, declined an invitation to speak at an ecumenical service and reception for Glemp, scheduled for Sept. 25.
CANARDS OUT OF THE PAST
“Cardinal Glemp’s presence in Chicago after the statements he made represents the rekindling of ideas and images that are astonishing. After Vatican II and through the church’s own teaching, we thought the canards he proposed were way in the past,” Levine said.
“To stand before him and being to explain the nature of pluralism and the good work of Joseph Cardinal Bernadin would be an affront to the work of the archdiocese. It would also be inappropriate to receive him in the Jewish community given his rancorous statements.”
Jewish members of the Chicago Catholic-Jewish Scholars Dialogue group have also announced that they have declined an invitation to the ecumenical service.
The interfaith group recently issued a statement calling for the nuns at Auschwitz to relocate.
Rabbi Avraham Weiss of New York, who led the July 14 demonstration at the Auschwitz convent that precipitated the announcement that the convent would not be moved, said last week that he would protest against Glemp wherever he appears.
“If he’s going to be in Chicago, I’m gong to be in Chicago. Wherever he will be, I will be. I will confront him face to face,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in a telephone interview.
Weiss has also retained attorney Alan Dershowitz to investigate what legal action can be taken against Glemp.
“If he steps one foot in this country,” Dershowitz said, “we are going to serve him a summons and subpoena on a slander charge.”
‘I WANT TO PRAY FOR HIM’
In Milwaukee, Cleveland and Detroit, Jewish groups are meeting this week to plan their response to Glemp’s visit.
“We need to develop a strategy as events unfold,” said Judy Mann, executive director of the Milwaukee Jewish Council.
She said the council will work to create “opportunities for people in the Jewish community to express themselves.”
One Milwaukee rabbi has planned independent action.
Rabbi Francis Barry Silberg of Congregation Emanu-El B’ne Jeshurun said he and nine members of his congregation — some of them Holocaust survivors — would go to St. Josaphat’s Basilica at the time Glemp is scheduled to celebrate mass there on Sept. 27.
He said his group will “pray silently in our own way for an end to that hostility which results in anti-Semitism.”
Silberg said he intends to draw an analogy between the Carmelite nuns’ prayers for the souls of Holocaust victims and the prayers his minyan will offer for Glemp.
He emphasized that his plans do not involve any demonstration to interrupt the mass. He added that he informed Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland of his intent and received a “gracious response.”
Silberg added that he is not interested in meeting Glemp. “I don’t want to talk to him, I want to pray for him,” he said.
The communities which Glemp is scheduled to visit have all been coordinating their strategy through the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council.
‘NOT A WELCOME GUEST’
Albert Chernin, executive vice chairman of NJCRAC, said that while discussions with community leaders are continuing, a “general feeling” has emerged that “no productive result can be achieved through a meeting with Cardinal Glemp.
“Generally, our view is that such a meeting could be very troublesome,” Chernin said. “It’s not a question of minor differences or policies we disagree with — his statements were clearly and blatantly anti-Semitic.”
Chernin said that Jewish communities have been encouraged by the sympathy voiced by prominent U.S. Catholic officials toward Jewish sensitivities about the presence of the convent at Auschwitz.
Various Catholic leaders in Europe and the United States have called for the convent to be moved and have condemned Glemp’s remarks.
He said that while Jews will not be pressuring Catholics in their local communities to cancel Glemp’s visit, they will be conveying the message to Catholics that “for the Jewish community, Cardinal Glemp is not a welcome guest.”
(Contributing to this report were JTA correspondent Todd Winer in Chicago.JTA staff writer Allison Kaplan in New York and Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle staff writer Leon Cohen in Milwaukee.)
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
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.
