Jewish representatives who met this week with Vatican delegates to discuss removal of a convent from Auschwitz now think it highly likely the Catholics are backing out of an agreement signed last year to remove the convent.
As a result, members of the World Jewish Congress reaffirmed Wednesday a resolution not to partake in a conference on anti-Semitism scheduled for February, unless the Vatican ensures that the convent at Auschwitz is removed to a site outside the camp. Rabbi Wolfe Kelman, chairman of the American Section of the WJCongress, emphasized Wednesday the failure of Johannes Cardinal Willebrands, Vatican secretary of state for religious relations with the Jews, to appear Tuesday in Paris for a meeting with Jewish officials to discuss the issue.
Not knowing the reason for the prelate’s absence, members of the WJCongress said that it looked “very unlikely” that the convent would be removed by the Feb. 22 deadline.
Professor Leon Feldman, American representative of the International Jewish Committee for Interfaith Consultations, reported from Paris Tuesday that the talks on removing the convent had not materialized.
Vatican delegates signed an agreement Feb. 23, 1987, in Geneva to create a Catholic center “for information, education, meeting and prayer to be established outside the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp grounds.”
The signed agreement further stipulated that “there will be no permanent Catholic place of prayer on the site.”
Signatories included the cardinals of Brussels — home of the Carmelite order of nuns now living in the Auschwitz convent — Lyon, Paris, Krakow and four other high Catholic representatives.
“I take this as a very serious breach,” said Kelman.
The conclave between Catholic and Jewish delegates has been scheduled to take place in Zurich Feb. 20 through 24, conditional on the convent’s removal. The gathering was to be the beginning of work on a document on the history of anti-Semitism and the Church.
“I told you not to run to the goyim,” yelled Rabbi Zvi Zakheim, a member of the WJCongress attending Wednesday’s meeting here.
He was using the admission of probable failure to show the futility of holding dialogues on theology with the Christians, a position taken by many Orthodox Jews.
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