Jews Welcome Pope’s Remarks on Holocaust

Pope John Paul II’s sorrow for the Nazi-era extermination of millions of Jews--expressed in a letter made public this week--has been generally received as timely and gratifying by Jewish groups.

Several Jewish leaders said that the letter eases the way for a Sept. 1 papal meeting with Jewish representatives to discuss tensions resulting from the audience the Pope granted this summer to Austrian President Kurt Waldheim.

An outcry arose over that Vatican reception and the pontiff’s public silence on charges that Waldheim was implicated in Nazi crimes during his World War II service in the German army.

The Pope’s letter, released Wednesday, was addressed to St. Louis Archbishop John L. May, president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, thanking May for sending him a book. The volume contained the pontiff’s previous statements on Jews and Judaism. It was compiled by the B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation League and sent under the auspices of the Synagogue Council of America.

Aimed at Clarification

The letter makes no mention of the Waldheim meeting, but a U.S. Catholic spokesman said it was aimed at “correcting the misperceptions and clarifying the confusion arising from the Waldheim controversy.”

“We Christians approach with immense respect the terrifying experience of the extermination, the Shoah , suffered by the Jews during the Second World War, and we seek to grasp its most authentic, specific and universal meaning,” the Pope wrote.

Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League said in New York, “It is particularly gratifying to note that the Vatican is beginning to show sensitivity to the uniqueness of the Jewish experience during the Nazi years and why Jews are disturbed by attempts to universalize the Holocaust.”

Some Jewish spokesmen said they felt that the Jewish Holocaust experience was played down when the Pope failed during a visit to the Maidenek extermination camp in Poland to mention that the camp’s victims were overwhelmingly Jewish and when the Pope beatified Edith Stein, a German Jew who became a nun and died at Auschwitz.

Rabbi Gilbert Klaperman, president of the Synagogue Council of America, noting the letter was “cast in such personal terms,” said the Pope’s attention to the significance of the Holocaust “encourages me to feel that the Vatican is on the verge of confronting directly the full implications of the efforts to exterminate my people.”

Klaperman is the only person scheduled to address the Pope at a meeting Sept. 11 in Miami of about 200 U.S. Jewish leaders--an event that was imperiled by the Waldheim incident.

Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum, director of international relations for the American Jewish Committee, who also applauded the papal letter, has said that a boycott of the Miami meeting is now unlikely unless something unforeseen occurs at the Vatican session.

However, Burton Levinson of Los Angeles, national president of the Anti-Defamation League, said that each Jewish organization will make a decision independently after Sept. 1. “The Jewish committee is not monolithic,” he said. He nevertheless indicated that the prospects are now good for dropping the boycott.

The strongest “wait-and-see” voice came from Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, the largest U.S. center for the study of the Holocaust.

“We hope these kind words (in the Pope’s letter) will be transferred to concrete deeds,” Hier said.

He said he hopes that the Pope will establish a commission to study whether the Vatican should establish full diplomatic relations with Israel, a long-standing complaint of Jewish leaders.

Also, Hier said, “lost in the shuffle is that the Pope has accepted an invitation to visit Austria next year when there is no question he will meet with Waldheim again.”

Told of Hier’s remarks, Levinson said the hope for improved Catholic-Jewish relations “should not held hostage to the Pope’s travel plans” or to what the Vatican says about Holocaust-related issues.

Most Los Angeles Jewish leaders have said that they now plan to participate in an interfaith meeting with the Pope in Los Angeles on Sept. 16. Hier said his center will wait until Sept. 1 to decide.