Jozef Cardinal Glemp of Warsaw and Franciszek Cardinal Macharski of Cracow have agreed to cosponsor with the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith the first Catholic-Jewish conferences in Poland to examine anti-Semitism, the meaning of the Holocaust, Judaism and current Jewish concerns, the ADL announced Wednesday.
The conferences, one in Warsaw and one Cracow, will bring together Catholic leaders and representatives of the small Jewish communities left in the two cities as well as ADL representatives and Jewish scholars from abroad.
Being planned for early next year, they were proposed last month to Glemp and Macharski by Leonard Zakim, ADL’s New England regional director, who was in Poland last month as one of four Jews invited to participate in a mission of 100 Catholics led by Bernard Cardinal Law of Boston.
Among the Jewish participants in the mission was Kitty Dukakis, wife of Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis. Kitty Dukakis and Zakim each received a telegram from Macharski last week expressing a “sense of horror and revulsion” at the terrorist attack on the Istanbul synagogue on September 6 in which 21 Jews were killed.
According to Zakim, Law made the issue of Catholic-Jewish relations a priority of the mission and arranged for the meetings with Glemp and Macharski. The mission participants visited remaining synagogues in Poland, held services at the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial and Auschwitz, and visited the Jewish Museum in Cracow.
At Sabbath services attended by the mission participants in the Cracow synagogue, Macharski discussed his recent trip to Israel and “the church’s special responsibility to address not just the Holocaust but anti-Semitism today.”
The Cardinal, who succeeded Pope John Paul II as head of the Catholic Church in Cracow, said it is “urgent for Jews and Catholics to meet not just for events such as Holocaust commemorations.” He added that “not enough is being done” in Poland to educate about the meaning of the Holocaust, and noted that the Catholic Church is “prepared to do more to address anti-Semitism, both within the church and the outside world.”
Zakim said that both Macharski and Glemp had agreed to the Catholic-Jewish relations conference “with enthusiasm.”
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.
