Polish Primate Assails Pressure from Jews on Convent at Auschwitz

Echoes of classic Polish anti-Semitism were heard by Jewish leaders in remarks made Saturday by Cardinal Jozef Glemp, the highest-ranking official in the Polish Catholic Church.

Glemp had strong words regarding the controversy over the presence of the Catholic convent at the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp, an issue that has all but destroyed relations between Jews and the Catholic Church in Poland.

In his sermon, the Polish Catholic primate asked the Jewish people not to “talk to us from the position of a nation raised above all others, and do not dictate terms that are impossible to fulfill.”

“Don’t you see, esteemed Jewish people, that pronouncements against the Carmelite nuns sour the feelings of all Poles and violate our sovereignty that has been achieved at such pains?” he said.

Glemp also implied that Jewish influence was poisoning the international news media against Poland.

“Your power is the mass media at your disposal in many countries. Let them not serve to spread anti-Polonism,” Glemp said.

Glemp called on the Jews in the media not to glorify the “seven Jews from New York” who “launched an attack against the convent in Auschwitz.”

He was referring to a July 14 demonstration led by Rabbi Avraham Weiss of New York. When the protestors entered the convent grounds to protest its continued presence, they were beaten by convent workers and dragged off the grounds.

SURVIVORS DEPLORE VATICAN SILENCE

Jewish leaders in New York were troubled by Glemp’s remarks, which were made during celebrations in the Polish city of Czestochowa and reported by the official news agency PAP. Government officials, including the new Polish prime minister, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, attended.

“Unfortunately, the remarks exemplify the fact that anti-Semitism is still alive and well in Poland,” said Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith.

“It is really deeply upsetting to hear the Polish Catholic primate engage in an ancient practice of collective Jewish guilt,” said Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum, international relations consultant for the American Jewish Committee, who has long been involved in Catholic-Jewish dialogue.

He said references to Jewish control of the media reminded him of remarks made by Hitler.

Meanwhile, a group of more than 1,000 Holocaust survivors has called on the pope to expedite the removal of the convent at Auschwitz.

The American Gathering/Federation of Holocaust Survivors, meeting at Brown’s Hotel in New York’s Catskill Mountains, issued a statement Sunday deploring the Vatican’s silence on the issue, calling it reminiscent of the Vatican’s inaction during the Holocaust.

Benjamin Meed, the group’s president, said Holocaust survivors were “deeply pained and angered” by the actions of the Carmelite nuns, who “seized a building within the bounds of Auschwitz, converted it into a convent and set up symbols of faith holy to them but alien to most of those who perished at Auschwitz.”