The Sheepcat

Synagogue Receives Torah Recovered from Auschwitz

The New York Times carries the remarkable story of the recovery of a Torah that had lain underground for more than six decades after a sexton at a Polish synagogue buried it to protect it from invading Nazis. Four of its panels were smuggled into Auschwitz and eventually entrusted to a Jewish-born Catholic priest. Today, in recognition of Holocaust Remembrance Day, a synagogue in New York was to rededicate the restored Torah scroll. The Nazis have had their evil day; the God of Abraham is greater than they.

Attentive readers may have noticed signs of my long-standing interest in matters Jewish. With this post I'm adding a new TypePad category, Jews and Judaism, and I may eventually get around to tagging some older posts on the theme. They aren't all on the Holocaust, though that topic looms rather large.

Link thanks to TitusOneNine.

Day 8. Wadowice

After a very, very long hiatus, I'm taking the anniversary of John Paul II's death as a cue to get on with posting pictures from the rest of the central European pilgrimage from (gulp!) nearly two years ago. So here is the building in which Karol Wojtyła was born.

And next to it, the church where he was baptized.

We had a chance to pray in front of relics of his.

Totus tuus ("Totally yours").

I previously showed some of Wadowice's preparations for the visit Pope Benedict was then about to make.

Words cannot express my gratitude to John Paul II for his teaching and his example.

Servant of God John Paul the Great, pray for us.

French Priest Recovers Ukrainian Holocaust Stories

Fr Patrick Desbois has been travelling the Ukrainain countryside to hear and record the testimonies of witnesses to some of nearly a million and a half murders of Ukrainian Jews by the Nazis. Most were shot or buried alive. Fr Desbois has helped to locate many mass graves.

The Memorial of the Shoah exhibits some of these testimonies. Mykola Kristitch was six years old when he saw a mass execution in 1941. Perhaps it's my imagination, but I hear something of a six-year-old's voice as he speaks, as if part of him had been so seared by the experience that he never changed.

I'll stretch my central Europe category to include this. Link via T19.

Polish Man Awakens from 19-Year Coma

When Jan Grzebski fell into a coma after an accident in 1988, Poland was still under Communist rule. His wife cared for him at home, resisting some people's advice to have him euthanized. Now he can speak and hopes to walk again.

Link thanks to CAEI.

From Auschwitz to Nuremberg

I suppose the Holocaust denial conference in Iran has prompted this story about an Auschwitz survivor's encounter with Hermann Goering.

St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

Amy Welborn's open book has links on St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (whose memorial day was yesterday): "born and more well-known as Edith Stein, philosopher, Jewish convert to Catholicism, Carmelite nun, killed at Auschwitz."

Day 7. Auschwitz

Auschwitz. Site of unspeakable cruelty, horror, and degradation. A name that will live in infamy.

And yet for years I felt led to pay a visit there someday. To pay my respects to those who suffered and died there. To try to grapple, through my own limited and feebly symbolic gestures, with the depth of evil in this world. As much as anywhere else on our itinerary, it was Auschwitz that drew me to make this pilgrimage to central Europe.

I prepared for the day with much prayer, especially the Sorrowful Mysteries.

* * *

The death camp has been converted into a museum. Only specially accredited guides may lead groups. Photography inside the buildings is prohibited; but even aside from the rule I simply didn't want to take pictures in most places. A gift shop just outside the gates sells books and videos and other articles. After our tour I browsed in the shop but couldn't bring myself to buy anything. I can hardly condemn how other visitors might attempt to find meaning in their experience of the camp, but for my own part, I recoiled from the thought of buying something as a way of remembering. Rarely have I wished so strongly to consume nothing.

The signage was restrained. I appreciated that. The last thing I wanted was to have some trite or overblown interpretation imposed on what I would see. As a historian I don't believe that facts speak for themselves without interpretation, but some historical realities are so grave that we need to pause before trying to assimilate them in terms of our own familiar finite symbols and frame of reference.

Still, as a Catholic I eventually can't help but relate, in my own limited way, the suffering at Auschwitz to the Passion and death of Christ at Golgotha, the divine self-sacrifice through which all other suffering in the universe is transformed and given new meaning. Even the historical suffering of the Jews as unjustly targeted scapegoats for this cataclysmic crime cannot lie outside this transformative power. It cannot--although how God's steadfast love remained active and manifest even during the monstrosities of the Holocaust is a question that should humble any Christian who attempts to answer it.

* * *

The original death camp itself, Auschwitz I, is surprisingly small. Many more killings took place at Birkenau, also known as Auschwitz II, a larger camp a few kilometres away. From the infamous gate bearing the motto "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work makes one free), you can see the fence at the far end.

The buildings, which served as Polish army barracks before the war, are unassuming in appearance.

Inside each of the buildings were historical displays explaining different aspects of the camp, such as the trains that brought victims from across Europe, the looting of inmates' possessions, the rampant disease and malnutrition. In the early months of the camp's operation, inmates were routinely photographed upon arrival; one hallway exhibited such photos with the individuals' recorded dates of arrival, and of death.

Suitcases with names painted on the sides, pots and pans, wire eyeglass frames in a great tangle. Shoes. The physical artifacts left behind by the victims were as chilling as anything else we saw.

Then there was the Zyklon B. We saw empty cans labelled with the name of the poison. I wondered what kind of person could create such a system for killing other people with such ruthless efficiency. I thought of Modernity and the Holocaust, by sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, who synthesized for non-specialist readers the results of decades of scholarship on the Holocaust. Mainstream sociology has regrettably not really absorbed the idea that the Holocaust was no aberration from modernity but rather a "horrifyingly normal" expression of it.

Read Edward J. Santella's brief review on Amazon of Bauman's book. Violence was legitimated by the state. Violence was routinized and bureaucratized, so that no one person had to think too closely about his own responsibility for keeping the system of death running smoothly. And the victims of violence were dehumanized. That, Bauman argues, is what it takes for mass atrocity to occur.

I leave the application of these warnings as an exercise for the reader.

Day 6. Kraków (Cracow)

On the Sunday morning we first went to Łagiewniki in the southern part of Kraków to see the Divine Mercy Cathedral …

… with its airy, modern sanctuary.

In the old red-brick convent on the grounds, St Faustina Kowalska wrote a spiritual diary that has been published in at least a dozen languages. The image she painted of Christ with rays of light has been widely imitated.

The pale ray stands for the Water which makes souls righteous. The red ray stands for the Blood which is the life of souls. … Happy is the one who will dwell in their shelter.

St Faustina's painting includes the Polish for "Jesus, I trust in you."

And while I'm sure some people find these things meaningful, if you want to gawk at bad Catholic art, you can hardly do better than the Florentine collection inspired by the devotion to The Divine Mercy.

On a more uplifting note there is The Divine Mercy Chaplet itself, a prayer that has become quite popular in some circles. In it we repeat the cry "For the sake of His sorrowful Passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world."

Some members of our group would have preferred to spend the entire day at Divine Mercy, but instead we  agreed to return later in the day and rushed off to our appointment for a tour of Wawel Castle.

During the Nazi Occupation, the castle became the local headquarters and residence of the tyrannical governor Hans Frank. You may possibly recognize this courtyard from Schindler's List.

As we waited at the castle exit, a great procession arrived on its way into the cathedral.

One of the things that impressed me most about Poland was how many religious there were, and how young. Vocations are booming. (Now, I've since been told that there's a cynical side to this, in that having a priest in the family is seen as a form of economic security, but still.)

The more senior members of the Church were well represented too.

There's that Divine Mercy picture again.

And you can see four red hats here. I believe it was Cardinal Dziwisz, the longtime private secretary to Pope John Paul II, who greeted a member of our group. Incidentally, if you ever want to find out who's who among the cardinals and bishops of the Catholic Church at any time from the Council of Trent to the present, Catholic-Hierarchy is a terrific resource.

We clearly weren't going to get into the castle cathedral until after whatever event there was finished, so we walked down the ramp and out.

As we walked, it began to rain, soon heavily, and we sheltered in the doorway of a restaurant. I couldn't remember if this was the place that a Polish-born friend of mine in Toronto had recommended, so we went on to eat lunch elsewhere.

At the other cathedral, of course I had to get a picture of St Philip Neri, patron saint of the Oratory where our tour's spiritual guide, Fr David Roche, lives and works.

And look at this marvellous screen.

During one of the invasions of the city, a trumpeter perched high in this tower sounded the alarm before being shot dead by an archer.  Each afternoon, the tradition is re-enacted, and the musical signal ends abruptly to symbolize the original trumpeter's death in the line of duty.

A tiny chapel with this image of Jesus' burial is one of the oldest in the city.

As promised we returned to Divine Mercy. I went to a beautiful little side chapel for Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.

Day 5. Czestochowa (Shrine of the Black Madonna)

I was so looking forward to seeing the Black Madonna of Czestochowa.

On the Saturday morning we packed up and headed south. From then till we returned to Budapest nine days later, we travelled between cities by chartered coach.

Apple trees were in full bloom throughout the countryside south of Warsaw.

You might think roadside rest stops all look the same the world over (but wait till we get to Austria).

Because we arrived at Czestochowa on the Feast of Fatima (and the twenty-fifth anniversary of the attempt on the life of the Polish Pope), the Jasna Góra shrine was swarming with visitors.

Click to enlarge the panorama--I've been learning some new PhotoShop features.

For me the highlight of our tour was the advisedly grotesque Stations of the Cross painted by Jerzy Duda Gracz. The artist writes:

I am anxious to prevent the Golgotha of Jasna Góra from becoming a history of pictures dating back 2000 years, which we celebrate on Good Friday with a good frame of mind (believing that we are not the ones who crucified Jesus). This Golgotha is present today, now and here, in the Catholic Poland.

During our visit to the shrine, I felt cramped and rushed. We had time in the shop, where I did buy some holy cards and some artwork, and a beautiful amber rosary, but on the whole the commercial aspect of what I saw left me cold. Though I've largely gotten over my old Protestant suspicion of sacramentals, all the stuff for sale did precious little to help me feel any closer to Jesus, and only half-jokingly I wondered aloud, "Where's Martin Luther when you need him?"

In the afternoon we crowded into the chapel for Mass in the presence of the icon. The homily, by a deacon who had previously worked with nuclear weaponry, started out promisingly enough but fizzled out with a conclusion that had nothing to do with the lead-up to it. One member of our group became faint from the hot, stuffy air. After Mass was ended, a complete stranger thrust into my hand a photocopied information sheet telling me about a supposedly wonderful young Croatian priest who bears the stigmata. I found it terribly hard not to be cynical. Aside from a few moments of praying the Rosary with a group of U.S. pilgrims in the sacristy before the Mass, and the Eucharist itself, I found the visit hardly a meditative experience at all.

Back on the road south towards Kraków, we saw increasingly hilly terrain.

The canola fields were a brilliant yellow. The Photoshopped colour balance here looks pretty garish, but I think it's not too far off.

We missed an exit as we were entering the city, lost our way, and doubled back several times. Eventually, though, we got a magnificant view of the great Wavel Castle as we passed by the city centre on our way to the hotel.

Pilgrimage Pics

[Originally posted early June] Welcome, visitors from CAEI and elsewhere. I'll be posting more pictures as I have time, so please drop in again in a few days.

As you scroll down within the "Central Europe" category you'll find some thematic posts as well as this chronological series (latest at the top, as usual):

Day 1. Toronto
Day 2. Budapest
Day 3. Budapest (Part 1)
Day 3. Budapest (Part 2)
Day 4. Warsaw (Part 1)
Day 4. Warsaw (Part 2)
Day 5. Czestochowa (Shrine of the Black Madonna)
Day 6. Kraków (Cracow)
Day 7. Auschwitz
Still to come...
Day 7. Wieliczka Salt Mines
Day 9. Prague (Day 8 was pretty much a travel day)
Day 11. Salzburg (ditto for Day 10)
Day 12. Vienna
Day 13. Mariazell Shrine
Day 14. Vienna Oratory

I'll be selling a CD of pictures from the trip, including some good ones that won't appear here on the blog. Ordering information (probably PayPal) and pricing are still to be worked out--I'm new at this.

I'm dating this post to keep near the top of the blog. And now, enjoy the view!