The expected transfer of Carmelite nuns from a convent at Auschwitz to a location nearby has not yet taken place, despite indications from Catholic officials over the last several weeks that the move was imminent.
Polish Catholic officials reiterated Tuesday that the relocation of the 14 nuns living at the convent would take place within a matter of days.
But Jewish officials here, who had hoped the move would happen before commemorations of the 50th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising begin in the Polish capital next week, say they are concerned by reports that the nuns are resisting efforts to have them vacate the premises.
“Everybody in the Vatican, from the pope on down, has long been committed to this, and the (Polish) episcopate is, but the nuns are complaining they’ve not been consulted,” said Rabbi A. James Rudin, director of interreligious affairs at the American Jewish Committee.
The nuns have the sympathy and support of some local Catholics, who regard the transfer of the Carmelite convent to a new facility across the road and off the grounds of the death camp as an affront to Polish dignity, he said.
In sermons, a local priest has preached that the nuns should not leave and that to do so would be to submit to outside pressure, according to Rudin.
The Polish Catholic newspaper The Word recently ran an editorial charging that the only time convents have been closed has been under occupiers of Poland — the Russians, the Prussians and the Austrians. From the Polish point of view, “this is the worst company anyone could be in,” Rudin said.
And in a letter to the editor recently reprinted in another, secular newspaper, a senior member of the Polish Catholic hierarchy wrote “if and when the nuns move,” according to Rudin, who termed the language “ominous.”
RABIN GOING TO WARSAW REGARDLESS
It is up to the Polish episcopate — their version of a bishops conference — to initiate the move, and it may be paralyzed by an internal debate over whether transferring the nuns is the correct thing to do.
“Inside the church in Poland there’s a struggle going on,” said Rudin. “What’s disturbing is this main obstacle has been played out now for six years,” since the issue of nuns living and praying at Auschwitz first came to widespread public attention.
“I know the nuns will move, but the question is when,” he said.
The Vatican reportedly sent a letter of instructions for moving the convent to Tadeusz Rakoczy, the bishop of the area that includes Oswiecim, the Polish town where Auschwitz is located. According to Rudin, the bishop received that letter.
But Rabbi Avi Weiss, president of Amcha, the Coalition for Jewish Concerns, said he doubts the letter’s existence. “No one we have contacted, whether Catholic or Polish officials, has been able to produce the text” of the letter, Weiss said.
According to Rudin, the 50th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising provides a “natural deadline” for the nuns transfer, though he doubts they will be out by then.
The anniversary of the uprising will be marked by official ceremonies involving members of the Polish government, a state visit by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and commemorations in churches and synagogues across Poland.
According to Rudin, Rabin has said that the problem with the convent and commemorations of the uprising should not be linked, and that he will go to Warsaw regardless of whether or not the convent problem is resolved.
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