Church at Auschwitz Spurs Protest
A U.S. Jewish group is suing to prevent Israel from sending Jewish students to visit the Auschwitz death camp until a church is removed from the site, the group’s leader said.
The Coalition for Jewish Concerns, a New York-based Jewish advocacy group, will ask the Israeli Supreme Court to block annual trips for Israeli high school students to the Nazi camp in Poland, Rabbi Avi Weiss said Monday.
Weiss said he hopes that, by withholding hundreds of thousands of dollars in tourism revenue, Israel will pressure the Polish government to remove the church.
“I have great respect for all religions of the world, but there is no room for a church in a place like Auschwitz,” Weiss said.
He said the church, which was built in 1983, violates a 1972 U.N. declaration ordering that the camp be left intact. Weiss has been arrested at the site several times for trespassing.
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