The World - News from Sept. 27, 1989

Vandals damaged the remains of a 13th-Century Carmelite monastery in northern Israel, apparently to protest a controversial Carmelite convent at the Auschwitz death camp in Poland, an Israeli official said. Shalom Yankelevitch, commissioner of antiquities for the city of Haifa, said the vandalism followed reports that Jewish religious extremists had threatened Carmelite nuns working at the monastery. A group of American archeologists and nuns has been excavating for two years at the one-acre site on biblical Mt. Carmel. Roman Catholic leaders agreed to move the convent away from Auschwitz to an interfaith center after some Jews said its presence at the camp was offensive.