ROME – The Jewish reaction to the death of Polish President Lech Kaczynski and dozens of other senior Polish officials in an air tragedy highlights a remarkable change in how the Jewish world views Poland.
The prayers, public statements, and personal tributes, including a special remembrance during the March of the Living, were normal expressions of grief and solidarity for a close friend and ally — in short, heartfelt sentiments that probably could not have been made 20 or even 15 years ago.
Poland looms large in the collective Jewish consciousness. Huge numbers of North American Jews trace their ancestry to Poland, and before World War II Poland was Europe’s Jewish heartland. Some 3 million Polish Jews were killed in the Holocaust.
ROME – Austrians will go to the polls on Sunday to vote for president after a volatile campaign that focused in part on right-wing extremism and raised the ghosts of Austria’s Nazi past.
Incumbent President Heinz Fischer, a Social Democrat, is expected to win a landslide victory over his main rival, Barbara Rosenkranz, a regional leader of the far-right Freedom Party (FPO), which once was led by the late Joerg Haider.
Two weeks ahead of the election, two public opinion polls showed Fischer, 71, with more than 80 percent of voter support, compared to 12 to 14 percent for Rosenkranz and 4 to 6 percent for Rudolf Gehring of the small Austrian Christian Party.
PRAGUE – The radical far-right Jobbik party is poised to emerge in this month’s elections in Hungary as a potent force in Parliament, and the prospect is ringing alarm bells in Central Europe’s largest Jewish community.
“It’s scary,” said Vera Szekeres-Varsa, a Holocaust survivor and former chair of the Hungarian branch of Amnesty International. “It’s not like 60 or 70 years ago, but it’s still scary.”
ROME – Over the past few days I’ve been watching online videos of “Il Duce,” Italy’s World War II fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.
There are hundreds on YouTube, and some of the clips have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times.
Most are taken from the fascist-era newsreels that were part of Mussolini’s powerful propaganda machine. They show military parades and motorcades, or Il Duce, with his jackboots and jutting chin, orating before enormous adoring crowds. Quite a few are pro-fascist tributes posted by admirers who even today regard Mussolini as their ideological guide.
ROME – When Pope Benedict XVI visited this city’s main synagogue, sparring between the pope and Jewish leaders over Pope Pius XII’s role in the Holocaust grabbed headlines.
But the emotion-charged visit Sunday held broader significance, as Jewish leaders and the German-born pontiff sought to mend strained relations and reaffirm a commitment to Christian-Jewish dialogue.
“Despite a dramatic history, the unresolved problems, and the misunderstandings, it is our shared visions and common goals that should be given pride of place,” said Rome’s chief rabbi, Riccardo Di Segni, speaking to packed sanctuary from in front of the ornate ark. “The image of respect and friendship that emanates from this encounter must be an example for all those who are watching.”
ROME – On the same day next week, Israeli President Shimon Peres will address the German Parliament and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel will appear before a special session of the Italian Chamber of Deputies in Rome.
The timing is not coincidental.
The events are focal points of international Holocaust Memorial Day, an annual observance on the anniversary of the Soviet army’s Jan. 27, 1945, liberation of Auschwitz, which is marked by the United Nations and more than two dozen individual countries.
ROME – For at least the third time in his papacy, Pope Benedict XVI is doing the Jewish dance that takes him one step back, one step forward.
The step back came when Benedict made a move in mid-December to bring Holocaust-era Pope Pius XII a bit closer to sainthood. The step forward — the penitence, some might say — will come in mid-January, when Benedict visits Rome’s main synagogue.
The question is whether this bid to smooth over Catholic-Jewish relations will work.
“It is an important event, a milestone in the dialogue,” Rome’s chief rabbi, Riccardo Di Segni, told Vatican Radio about the planned synagogue visit. “We have great expectations for what it can mean in terms of the general climate.”
VILNIUS, Lithuania – A week after the Swiss referendum banning the construction of new mosque minarets in Switzerland, I flew to Vilnius, Lithuania, for a seminar that focused on the destruction of Jewish heritage in Lithuania during the Holocaust.
The timing was coincidental. And I realize that the Swiss voters who overwhelmingly approved the minaret ban were responding to scare tactics that raised the specter of an extremist Islamic takeover in their country.
Yet in a certain way, the Swiss vote Nov. 29 and the Lithuanian seminar were connected.
Swiss voters may have been taking aim at Islam, but Jewish and Catholic leaders are among those crying foul.
Jewish organizations have joined Muslims, the Vatican, and other groups in warning that a Swiss referendum banning the construction of mosque minarets could fuel hatred, jeopardize religious freedom, and further polarize an already divided society.
“Discriminatory laws like a ban on minarets are likely to alienate rather than ease integration,” the Board of Deputies of British Jews said in a statement following the Nov. 29 vote. “They also give succor to the unacceptable politics of unlimited hate being peddled around Europe by right-wing extremists.”
Under communism, Jewish suffering in World War II generally was treated as a footnote to the overall losses in what the Soviets called the “Great Patriotic War.”
Public monuments existed at some Holocaust sites in Eastern Europe, such as Auschwitz, the Paneriai forest near Vilnius where at least 70,000 Jews were killed, and Babi Yar, where tens of thousands of Jews were killed in ravines outside Kiev. But these usually commemorated generic “victims of fascism” and did not acknowledge the involvement of local collaborators.
Since the fall of communism 20 years ago, however, a host of new Holocaust memorials have gone up in post-communist states while Communist-era monuments have been revamped by state authorities, local civic groups, and Jewish organizations, giving the Jewish tragedy of World War II more prominence.
