Glemp Calls for New Talks on Auschwitz; Jews Boycott Ceremony

Poland’s primate, Cardinal Jozef Glemp, called for renegotiations to try to settle the controversy surrounding the Carmelite convent near the Auschwitz death camp as leaders of many of the world’s religions--except the faith that suffered the worst half a century ago--took part Saturday in a procession of rememberance for the camp’s victims.

In a newspaper interview published in Rome on Saturday, Glemp was quoted as saying that the 1987 pact calling for the removal of the convent, located outside the walls at Auschwitz, must be renegotiated because it was handled in Geneva by “men who are not competent.”

The negotiators included Cardinal Franciszek Macharski, who led the rememberance ceremony at Auschwitz and the nearby death camp at Birkenau. Jewish leaders refused to participate in the observance to dramatize their anger over the Roman Catholic Church’s refusal to remove the convent.

Glemp told Italian reporters in the interview in Warsaw that Macharski “did not understand the people’s situation” at the time and signed the accord “because things were done in a little too much haste.”

“I want the accord renegotiated,” Glemp added. “It should be done by competent people and not by cardinals who don’t understand how things stand,” he was quoted as saying in the interview.

‘Only Krakow Church’

“Macharski has not understood the situation. . . . He represents only the Krakow church, the problem is much broader than that,” Glemp was reported as saying.

About 100 individuals representing the various faiths took part in the procession, held the day after the 50th anniversary of the start of World War II when Nazi Germany invaded Poland on Sept. 1, 1939. Jews held their own solemn ceremony by praying in the Warsaw synagogue Saturday.

Macharski, whose diocese includes Auschwitz now known by its Polish name, Oswiechim, told religious leaders who gathered for Saturday’s ceremony: “From this place we should say no to all hatred of Judaism, no to all contempt and racial prejudice, no to the will to dominate others.”

He added: “Here the Nazi hatred killed millions of men, women and children. Jews were destined for the extermination which is now called the Holocaust or (by its Hebrew name) Shoah. Gypsies and Muslims were condemned to expiration.”

‘This Horrible Place’

“In this horrible place, the decision must be strengthened (to fight) against the evil which dominated here,” he said.

A requiem by Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki played as participants laid flowers at plaques in memory of the 4 million people, most of them Jews, who perished in the camps.

Macharski declined to comment on the dispute over the convent. But he told Albert Assouline, one of only two Jews, neither a leader, who were present, “I hope that we will come to an agreement despite all the differences.”

But Macharski and Glemp have been the principal cause of the dispute for many Jews because of recent comments suggesting the nuns would stay despite the 1987 Catholic-Jewish agreement that called for the convent to have been removed by last February.

Jews contend the presence of the Carmelite nuns interferes with the special significance of the death camps to Judaism and with Jewish beliefs on prayer for the dead. Polish Catholics have argued that many of their own people, as well as others from other faiths, also were killed by the Nazis at the site.

Meanwhile, the Vatican on Saturday denied that it had told the World Jewish Congress that Pope John Paul II had instructed Polish church leaders to respect the 1987 agreement.

The WJC said Friday in New York that Vatican sources had told it the Pope had felt forced to intervene because of the growing international dispute over the convent.

No New Initiative

“There has been no recent new initiative on the part of the Holy See on this matter,” a Vatican spokesman said.