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...but that does not drown out the Christian condition L AVIV, Israel (CNS) - Cardinal Lustiger, archbishop of Paris and convert from Judaism as a youth, told reporters that he was surprised by Israeli Chief Rabbi Israel Lau's bitter criticism of his participation in a Tel Aviv University conference on the Holocaust. Rabbi Lau, a Holocaust survivor, said that by converting to Catholicism, the cardinal had contributed to the destruction of the Jewish people, just as the Nazis had. He said that if all Jews had done as Cardinal Lustiger had, there would be no one left to say the Kaddish - the prayer for the dead - for the 6 million Jews murdered by Hitler's regime. "It is the first time I have heard such a thing," said the 69-year-old cardinal. "It's the first time that I've heard that being baptized is worse than what Hitler did." Rabbi Lau had been invited to the university conference but withdrew when he learned the cardinal would be a participant. Later, the former chief rabbi of Great Britain, Lord Immanuel Jakobovits, also declined to attend - bowing to Rabbi Lau's wishes. "As far as I am concerned this is rather bizarre," Cardinal Lustiger. "If I had been in Paris on Holocaust Memorial Day I would have been in the Great Synagogue. "Every year I participate in the ceremony because that history is my history," he said Cardinal Lustiger's visit caused a stir when the press reported that an invitation to the cardinal to attend the April 26 official Holocaust Memorial Day eve ceremony at Yad Vashem had been withdrawn. NNW
But university and Yad Vashem officials said he had not been invited in the first place because his concluding speech at the university conference was to be given at the same time. The cardinal visited the memorial on April 27. Cardinal Lustiger was born Aharon Lustiger to Jewish socialist parents who had immigrated to France from Poland. In 1940, when he was 14, and two months after Nazi forces overran France, he converted to Catholicism. The young Lustiger survived the war by hiding in a monastery in Orleans, France. His mother perished in the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz. His father survived and lived out his last years with his son in the cardinal's Paris residence. Cardinal Lustiger told the Tel Aviv University audience at the closing session that he still bears the name of his grandfather, Aharon, and the name which appears on his passport is Aharon Jean-Marie Lustiger. Israel's Culture and Communication Minister Shulamit Aloni, who attended the closing session, said she regretted that the chief rabbi, who was elected to his post in a democratic state, could not come to hear different opinions. Father Marcel Dubois, head of the Dominican Order's Isaiah House in Jerusalem and a professor at Hebrew University, said that "I understand Rabbi Lau's bitterness, but I am afraid that such an absolute reaction signifies a lack of security." Father Dubois said he believes Rabbi Lau's reaction comes out of "fear of the consequence such an
example would have on the education of Jewish youth in Israel." Cardinal Lustiger said he first hesitated about accepting the university's invitation because the Holocaust is still an open wound for him and he does not talk about it willingly. But he said he decided to participate because he wanted to be in Israel on the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camps. The names of all of the members of his family who died in the Holocaust are memorialized at Israel's Yad Vashem memorial, he said. Cardinal Lustiger said he feels as Jewish as his mother and his other relatives. He said that as a Christian, his roots are in Judaism. "One has to know where one is because the Jewish condition does not drown out the Christian condition," he said. "I know this is not the interpretation of all, but this is how I perceive it." In Paris, Grand Rabbi of France Joseph Sitruk told the French newspaper Le Figaro that "I have always had strong and sincere relations with Msgr. Lustiger and nothing should place his clarity and cordiality in doubt. "The sincerity of Jean-Marie Lustiger is not to be doubted, but there is in his spiritual journey an ambiguity," he said. At the same time there is "a moral and intellectual courage which all of us recognize." Rabbi SitTuk praised the role Cardinal Lustiger played in defusing tensions over a Catholic convent at Auschwitz. The French newspaper Le Monde said it would have expected "more generosity, more understanding" from Rabbi Lau.
'Positive echo' by German bishops BONN, Germany (CNS) - A national debate 50 years after the end of World War II has prompted Germany's bishops to take a firm stand that the end of Nazi rule marked freedom from tyranny. As the nation prepared to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Allied victory over Germany, the debate showed the country's still-sensitive feelings concerning its controversial past. Most Germans view May 8, 1945, as the date of liberation from tyranny. But others conservative legislators, veterans' groups and people whose families were displaced after the war - have described it as the starting point of Stalinist terror in East Germany. As the anniversary approached, the debate escalated.
A 10-page statement by the German bishops' conference sided with the majority view. It recalled German war crimes, aggression and genocide amid the passivity of a population that allowed these actions to go on. The church also failed to effectively intervene, said the bishops' statement. "Historical truth and responsibility for the future demand a view free from attempts to relativize or play down the facts," the statement said. Unconditional surrender to the Allies 50 years ago "brought liberation from a criminal regime whose dictatorship was also aimed against its own people," it added. Germans still face disturbing questions about the Nazi era, it said. "Where was the protest against lawlessness and violence?
Why was there no uproar throughout the land when the synagogues burned one night?" The statement was "an attempt to settle the spiritual disruption caused both by these conflicts and by the coming anniversary," said Rudolf Hammerschmidt, bishops' conference spokesman. "It was time to finally say something." In doing so, the bishops answered a manifesto issued earlier in April by 276 conservative parliament members and leaders of right-wing groups. They argued that the Cold War came on the heels of World War II and brought the forced removal of 12 million ethnic Germans from Central Europe. It is appropriate to dedicate the May 8 anniversary to their memory as well as to honoring the victims of the Nazi regime, said the manifesto.
The manifesto was sharply criticized in the mainstream media and attacked by most sectors of society as an attempt to recast history in order to relieve Germany of its burden of guilt. The bishops' answer to the manifesto was to recall the unpleasant truth of its own role during World War II. "Many Germans, also from our ranks, let themselves be fooled by the false teachings of Nazism," the bishops' statement said. "Many fostered crimes by their own behavior. Many became criminals themselves." Conference spokesman Hammerschmidt said the statement has "fostered a positive echo" in the national media and generated numerous supportive telephone calls from Catholics across the country.