Ground Broken for Center Near Auschwitz

A Catholic cardinal and a Polish government minister turned the first spadefuls of earth Monday to build an interfaith center near the Auschwitz death camp in a move intended to end a bitter Jewish-Catholic dispute.

The center will be a new home for Carmelite nuns whose convent beside the walls of the World War II Nazi camp has soured relations between the Roman Catholic Church and Jewish groups.

Also Monday, Edgar M. Bronfman, president of the New York-based World Jewish Congress, met with Polish Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki in Warsaw.

After the meeting, Mazowiecki hailed the start of construction as a major step toward ending the dispute and improving Poland’s relations with Jews worldwide.

“We expressed the conviction that today’s laying of the cornerstone for the Auschwitz center marks the beginning of solving this problem,” Mazowiecki said.

At Auschwitz, Cardinal Franciszek Macharski of Krakow and Cabinet Minister Jacek Ambroziak symbolically dug spadefuls of earth to launch the project. There were no Jewish representatives among the 20 people at the ceremony.

Mazowiecki said the ceremony showed his government’s total opposition to anti-Semitism.

“The position of the Polish government on anti-Semitism and fighting any forms of it is clear: We are totally opposed to it,” he said.

Bronfman, who will visit Auschwitz today, said there are signs of a rise of anti-Semitism in Poland but added that “there are no outstanding problems between the Jewish people and Poland.”