The Carmelite Nuns at Auschwitz

Metzger says, “It is uncommon to receive an invitation (such as she received) to the Auschwitz convent.” I do not think, however, that there is any mystery about the reason for this invitation. The nuns obviously knew beforehand that she would write in support of their refusal to leave Auschwitz.

That death camp is the burial ground of some 3 million murdered Jews. It is a symbol uniquely connected with the Jewish people. For the nuns to have converted the building where the Zyklon-B gas was stored into a convent is to have desecrated the sacredness of soil on which Jews were slaughtered by the millions. To have done this is an abomination, not to some but to all Jews.

Beyond that, Metzger apparently did not see fit to mention the fact that in February, 1987, four European cardinals, with the approval of the Papacy, signed an agreement with a group of world Jewish leaders, in which they pledged that the convent would be removed from the grounds of Auschwitz no later than February, 1989. Nothing has been done, the nuns refuse to move, a Polish cardinal supports them, and the Pope has washed his hands of the whole affair.

Metzger excuses this violation of a solemn agreement by saying that a convent located elsewhere “would not respond to the commonly felt need for a spiritual presence at the site of such horror.” That is pure nonsense. What the nuns want, which Metzger supports, is to bury over time, by universalizing Auschwitz, the truth that this was the place where the Jewish people were enveloped by hell.

SOL MODELL

Woodland Hills