Mounting criticism of Pope’s Yad Vashem speech

May 12, 2009

Jewish leaders are criticizing Pope Benedict’s address at Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Memorial to victims of the Holocaust. Charlotte Knobloch, the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, called the speeech “half hearted.”

While calling the speech “moving,” Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, chairman of the Yad Vashem Council, said it lacked “an expression of empathy with the sorrow” and that “there certainly was no apology expressed here.” He continued, “Something was missing. There was no mention of the Germans or the Nazis who participated in the butchery, nor a word of regret.”

The former chief rabbi of Israel added on Israeli television, “There is a clear difference between ‘killed’ and ‘murdered’. There is a difference between saying millions in the Holocaust and saying six million. The word six was not said.” Six hours earlier, during the welcoming ceremony at Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv, Pope Benedict had said, “It is right and fitting that, during my stay in Israel, I will have the opportunity to honor the memory of the six million Jewish victims of the Shoah, and to pray that humanity will never again witness a crime of such magnitude.”

Rabbi Lau, a Holocaust survivor, also told Voice of America that many believe Pope Pius XII and Catholic bishops should have entered the concentration camps. “For many Jews, the fact that the Holy Father, that the bishops did not leave their churches and join the Jews there where they were, in the camps, being slaughtered, being burnt, only that would have been enough.”

 

---

For all current news, visit our News home page.

---

 
Further information:

• Pope Benedict: Address during visit to Yad Vashem Memorial in Jerusalem
• “His Mercies are not Spent”, Pope Benedict Writes at Yad Vashem (Vatican Radio)
• Welcoming ceremony at Ben Gurion International Airport of Tel Aviv
• Pope: Holocaust victims’ cry still echoes in our hearts (Ha’aretz)
• Benedict and us / Speaking to his own flock (Ha’aretz)
• Pope at Yad Vashem / Benedict’s speech showed verbal indifference and banality (Ha’aretz)
• Many Jews Resentful Over Vatican Response to Holocaust (VOA)
• Pope continues Middle East tour as criticism of Yad Vashem speech grows (Deutsche Welle)
• Pope in emotional Holocaust tribute (Belfast Telegraph)
• Rare Shas, Meretz unity in criticism for pontiff (Jerusalem Post)