January 27, 2013
Holocaust survivors, politicians and religious leaders marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day Sunday with solemn prayers and warnings to never let such tragedies happen again.
Events took place at sites including Auschwitz-Birkenau, the former Nazi death camp in southern Poland liberated by Soviet forces on January 27, 1945.
At least 1.1 million people were murdered in Auschwitz, mostly Jews. In Warsaw, prayers were also held at a monument to the fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943.
Pope Benedict warned that humanity must always be on guard against a repeat of murderous racism.
U.S. President Barack Obama vowed to prevent genocide while honoring "the six million Jews and millions of other innocent victims whose lives were tragically taken during the Holocaust." He called Holocaust Remembrance Day a "time for action."
One of those who died at Auschwitz was a woman who was related to Tom through his mother's family and who, at the time of her death, was a Carmelite nun who belonged to the Discalced Carmelite province to which I once belonged. Edith Stein (St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross), whose canonization I attended, was a remarkable woman, one whose pleas to Pope Pius XI to intervene to help the Jews suffering under the Nazis. Her pleas apparently were noted but no actions were taken. The many questions about the Vatican's actions and inactions during those troubled times caused many people to question why the Catholic church chose to honor Edith/Teresa as a martyr. Some believed that the church was co-opting the suffering of Jews and misusing the memory of the holocaust for its own purposes. I met members of Edith Stein's more immediate family when I was in Rome, Jewish and Christian, and all of them had mixed feelings about the ceremony.
At any rate, she was a truly remarkable woman, and I remember her most especially today, along with her sister Rosa who died with her in the camp.
And the children ...
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