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| You are here: 2000 / Workshops, Panels and Seminars / Workshops on Education / Workshop 5 on Education, "Religious and Ethical Teachings and the Holocaust" / Presentation by Dr. Stanislaw Obirek | |||||||||
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Report from Workshop 5 on Education: "Regigious and Ethical Teachings and the Presentation by Rabbi Irving Greenberg Presentation by Dr. Franklin H. Littell Presentation by Dr. Elisabeth Maxwell Presentation by Dr. Stanislaw Obirek Presentation by Dr. Didier Pollefeyt Presentation by Professor John K. Roth Presentation by Dr. Stanislaw Obirek Obirek, Stanislaw Presentation by Dr. Stanislaw Obirek As a Catholic priest and a Jesuit, my awareness of the Holocaust were affected by a calculated amnesia that permeated Polish society, especially the post-war generation. The founders of ”the best system” took care that Polish young people would remember only the martyrology of the Polish nation with a strictly limited remembrance of Jews and others. Thus, although I was born in 1956, I heard about the Holocaust for the first time when I was 18. I learned about Narol, the small, typically Polish-Jewish-Ukranian town where I was born, from the books of Isaac Bashevis Singer. Since then I have been indebted to many others who have written about Jews, Judaism and the Holocaust: among them, Jan Gross, Hanna Krall, Wilhelm Dichter, Daniel J. Goldhagen, Raul Hilberg, Peter Novick and Jacub Goldberg. These people are mentors, and more importantly, some of them are my friends. In recent years the Catholic Church of Poland has made some positive initiatives : many of the efforts of Pope John Paul II regarding Jewish-Christian dialogue are in print; a document of the Polish Bishops asking forgiveness for anti-Semitic acts of omission and commission was published in 1990; and in December of 1998, the first international congress of Jesuits working in the field of Jewish-Christian relations was held in Cracow. Also, we are witnessing the revival of the Jewish heritage in Cracow because of the efforts of a small but active Jewish community, and there is an annual Month of Jewish Culture organized in Kazimierz, the ancient Jewish quarter of Cracow. Also, almost every publisher in Poland, including the Catholic ones, does its planning with Jews and Judaism in mind. Our Jesuit publishing house, WAM, published Jewish Rituals and Symbols by Rabbi Simon Ph. De Vries last year and it became a bestseller. Other books in the pipeline include The Polish Church Facing Antisemitism, 1989-1999 (the offshoot of a conference organized in Los Angeles by Bohdan Oppenheim), and John Paul II and Inter-Religious Dialogue by Rabbi Byron Sherwin. Spiritual Life, the review I edit, will also publish a text by Rabbi Sherwin. The ”Ignatianum,” our Jesuit University School of Philosophy and Religious Pedagogy, maintains a Jewish-Christian documentation center, Shalom, with an extensive library accessible via the internet. Znak, another publisher in Cracow, has a special web page forum where young Poles can dialogue about the Holocaust. There are other initiatives as well. A collective amnesia no longer governs our psyches. Yet the process of mutual understanding between Christians and Jews follows its own internal timetable. In the meantime the most compelling reality check for me regarding the Holocaust and Holocaust Children are those people who have spoken about my country and my city as a vast cemetery and those who say they are not able to re-visit my homeland because of scars and memories. Because of their voices, I have learned to be suspicious of initiatives which are difficult to free from ideological involvement. For me, the question concerning how religion and ethics can help us understand the Holocaust asks what it is we learn about God and human beings through this horrible event in our history. I defer to master teachers, to Elie Wiesel and Wilhelm Dichter, for answers. And I find it is their capacity to love, to bring children into the world, to remember evil but to recognize a power greater than any evil that convinces me that both God and humanity survived the Holocaust and that only God will help us write our common future together. >> Back to top |
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Introduction Opening Session: Messages and speeches Plenary Sessions: Messages and speeches Workshops, Panels and Seminars
Other Activities |
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| For information about this production and the Stockholm International Forum Conference Series please go to www.humanrights.gov.se or contact Information Rosenbad, SE-103 33 Stockholm, Sweden | |||||||||