At Death Camp, Pope Decries Nazi Ideology

Pope John Paul II, standing where the Nazis bought a granite quarry surrounded by rich, rolling farm land and made it hell, preached Friday against the “lunatic ideology” of totalitarianism.

The Pope’s two-hour visit to Mauthausen, a concentration camp where 122,766 people died, climaxed an emotional, contentious day in which he failed to mollify Jewish leaders angry at his meetings with Austrian President Kurt Waldheim, who has been implicated in war crimes as a German army officer in World War II.

During the second day of a five-day Austrian visit, the pontiff met Jewish leaders in Vienna, celebrated a Mass near the Hungarian border and visited the camp here en route to an overnight stop in the historic city of Salzburg.

Scars from the Holocaust marred the Pope’s meeting with leaders of the 6,000 Jews who have trickled back into Austria since World War II.

Noting Waldheim’s election two years ago, Jewish community leader Paul Grosz told the Pope that “many Austrians have still not come to terms with their past. It is considered patriotic to remain silent about the matter, unpatriotic to speak out. . . . With deep regret, we missed a public statement from Your Holiness concerning the nation’s relationship to its past.”

Only Protocol Contacts

Waldheim denies wrongdoing and has beaten back domestic critics who are demanding he resign. John Paul, who last year at the Vatican became the only Western leader to officially receive Waldheim, has only contacts required by protocol with him on this visit.

The Pope told the Jews that he was moved by the “suffering, the pain, the tears” that their community had endured. But he cautioned, “It would be unjust and untrue to lay the burden on Christianity for those unspeakable crimes.”

Austrian police dragged away a handful of American Jewish protesters as the Pope arrived by helicopter at the camp, which has been eerily restored, down to the guard towers and the five strands of barbed wire above forbidding gray granite walls. Mauthausen is maintained by the Austrian government as both a monument and a museum.

“Here in Mauthausen were people who, in the name of a lunatic ideology, set into motion a whole machinery of contempt and hatred of others,” the pontiff lamented. “They tortured them, broke their bones, cruelly abused their bodies and their souls . . . here . . . and in so many places under totalitarian rule.’ ”

John Paul called to the victims of Mauthausen: “You who have suffered torture worthy of the lamentations of Jeremiah, tell us, were we not too quick to forget your hell? Do we not delete from our memories and from our consciousness the traces of past misdeeds? Tell us which direction Europe and mankind should take ‘after Auschwitz’ . . . ‘after Mauthausen.’ ”

Spoke in German

Speaking slowly and with great emphasis in German, John Paul appealed to an audience of several thousand, which included survivors of the camp, to “pray for all victims of unjust violence, of yesterday and today--pray also for their executioners.”

If the Jews were disappointed at the pontiff’s failure to publicly admonish Waldheim, Austria’s chief rabbi, Chaim Eisenberg, was incensed by the Pope’s address at Mauthausen.

“It does not strike me as unreasonable to have expected some mention of Jews at a concentration camp,” Eisenberg snapped. “He didn’t mention the word. The only Jew he mentioned was Jesus Christ--and he didn’t die at Mauthausen.”

Prisoners from 17 nations died at the camp, built atop a quarry that had long provided Vienna with its paving stones. Thousands were shot, hanged or gassed in chambers that were starkly spotless for the papal visit.

Other thousands of Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, political prisoners and others as diverse as Soviet soldiers, Spanish Republicans and American pilots were literally worked to death carrying granite slabs up 189 steps from the quarry floor--the Stairway of Death--under the harassment of Nazi SS guards and dogs.

Jews in the Minority

“Up to the spring of 1941, Jewish prisoners were in the minority, but then the first consignments from abroad--mainly from the Netherlands--arrived. Most of these deported Jews were killed soon after they reached Mauthausen, if they had not taken their own lives already,” says an Austrian government commentary on the camp distributed to reporters accompanying the Pope.

One of the victims at the camp was a young Frenchmen named Marcel Callo, who gave his life to save others. He was beatified by John Paul last year, a step to sainthood.

An impressionistic cross of burnt wood, unveiled Friday to mark the papal visit, is complemented by a soaring menorah at the lip of the quarry to honor the Jewish dead of Mauthausen.

Before his visit to Mauthausen, the Pope celebrated an outdoor mass in Trausdorf, near the Hungarian border, where Waldheim received Holy Communion from the pontiff.

Meanwhile, the Pope urged Austrian Jewish leaders during a meeting Friday morning to accept the Vatican’s call for a Palestinian homeland.