The long-running dispute over the Carmelite convent at Auschwitz appears to be close to resolution, with 14 nuns expected within days to move out of the building where the Nazis stored poison gas at the former death camp.
Last-minute problems stemming from the nuns’ reluctance to move into the new $2 million building under construction for them nearby have been cleared away by explicit Vatican instructions to the nuns that reached Bishop Tadeusz Rakoczy of Oswiecim on Thursday, said Jewish officials involved in the negotiations.
This week’s move by the Vatican helps implement a 1986 agreement reached between church and European Jewish officials. And it caps nearly a decade of bitter controversy over the convent, located at the edge of the concentration camp, where 1.6 million Jews were killed.
A follow-up agreement reached in 1987 stated that no permanent Catholic place of worship would be installed within the boundaries of the camp and that the Carmelite nuns would vacate their convent within two years.
But the deadline came and passed and the dispute dragged on. The Vatican order this week appears to fulfill the wishes of both Catholic and Jewish leaders to put the issue squarely behind them before April 19, when the 50th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising will be marked with numerous ceremonies in Poland and around the world.
Kalman Sultanik, World Jewish Congress vice president, said in New York that Bishop Rakoczy phoned him Thursday to inform the WJC about the Vatican decision to formally close the convent and order the nuns to move.
Rakoczy said he was scheduled to meet with the nuns personally Friday and that they were expected to move out within the next few days, Sultanik recounted.
Both Catholic and Jewish sources had indicated in recent weeks that a written formal directive from the Vatican would be necessary because the nuns would not leave on their own.
“They feel they were not part of the decision process involved in the affair and so are being stubborn,” said a Jewish source.
NEW CONVENT NOT YET FINISHED
Stanislaw Krajewski, representative of the American Jewish Committee in Warsaw, said it seemed clear the Vatican realized the urgency of the situation and wanted to resolve it.
Polish government officials had said they, too, wanted to resolve the issue.
The WJC had considered boycotting the commemoration ceremonies at the site of the Warsaw Ghetto if the dispute over the convent were not resolved.
But WJC Executive Director Elan Steinberg said the organization had now decided to participate in those ceremonies.
The resolution of the dispute is the culmination of years of patient and secret diplomacy with officials of the Roman Catholic Church and the Polish government, led by Theo Klein, former president of the European Jewish Congress; Serge Cwajgenbaum, EJC secretary-general; EJC President Jean Kahn; and Sultanik.
The Rev. Mark Glownia, director of the church-run Center for Information, Meetings, Dialogue, Education and Prayer, of which the new convent is to be a part, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the church hierarchy all “agreed that this problem must be ended.”
Glownia said the nuns would be given a choice of moving to the new convent nearby, or to other locations elsewhere.
The new convent a few hundred yards away is ready and waiting.
The large red brick building, constructed behind a high wall and around a central courtyard, is far from complete. But a two-story wing including living quarters for the 14 nuns, common rooms and other facilities is finished.
Each nun will have an individual room — rectangular with a large window, wooden floors and a sink. The bedrooms are arranged along two corridors, with a common bathroom for each corridor.
CROSS REMAINS A PROBLEM
The convent’s chapel has not been completed, but Glownia said Mass would be celebrated in one of the common rooms.
Another wing containing nearly a dozen more bedrooms is still under construction.
Glownia said work on the incomplete parts of the building would continue after the 14 nuns had moved in.
While the main concern at the moment was the transfer of the nuns to the new convent, Glownia said he also foresaw problems regarding the removal and transfer of the huge cross set up next to the current convent by the wall of the death camp.
Changing the position of a cross of that size and importance will be a major event in the spiritual and civic life of the entire town, he said.
“We have already planned a place for the cross at the new convent,” he said. “But we must prepare the transfer with local Catholics. We must explain — and explain well — why the best place for this cross is next to the new convent.
“I feel that the best way to handle the transfer of the cross would be to make a great religious festival out of it, with a solemn procession from one place to the other, involving senior church dignitaries.”
The cross is currently situated outside the camp wall, near a place where many Poles were killed by the Nazis.
“There is a plan to replace the cross with a small monument to the people killed there and to open the area so that visitors can pray there and leave flowers,” he said.
(Contributing to this report was JTA correspondent Michel Di Paz in Paris.)
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