The Carmelite Nuns at Auschwitz
One can understand the anguish Metzger feels when, as a Jew on a pilgrimage to Auschwitz and Dachau, she finds no place to pray, no place to meditate to seek reconciliation for the evil her people had to endure.(The Times, Aug. 19) She finds that the secular exhibits, the photographs and the documents in the two camps, did not satisfy her. She needed more than this.
The nuns at Auschwitz and Dachau understand. They know that the secular is not enough. And so in their chapels they meditate and pray. Not just for Catholics but for Jew and non-Jew--for all those who have had to suffer and endure.
What the nuns are saying and what Metzger is saying is that we need the menorah and the cross, for we are all one in our humanity. Together we can meditate and pray and assure the world that there will never, never be another Dachau, another Auschwitz.
DON RADEMACHER
Los Angeles
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