Speech at Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial
(March 23, 2000)
The words of the ancient Psalm rise from our hearts:
“I have become like a broken vessel.
I hear the whispering of many – terror on every side! –
as they scheme together against me, as they plot to take my life.
But I trust in you, O Lord; I say, ?You are my God’.” (Ps 31:13-15).
1. In this place of memories, the mind and heart and soul
feel an extreme need for silence. Silence in which to remember. Silence in
which to try to make some sense of the memories which come flooding back.
Silence because there are no words strong enough to deplore the terrible
tragedy of the Shoah. My own personal memories are of all that happened
when the Nazis occupied Poland during the War. I remember my Jewish friends
and neighbours, some of whom perished, while others survived.
I have come to Yad Vashem to pay homage to the millions of
Jewish people who, stripped of everything, especially of their human dignity,
were murdered in the Holocaust. More than half a century has passed, but the
memories remain.
Here, as at Auschwitz and many other places in Europe, we
are overcome by the echo of the heart-rending laments of so many. Men, women
and children cry out to us from the depths of the horror that they knew. How
can we fail to heed their cry? No one can forget or ignore what happened. No
one can diminish its scale.
2. We wish to remember. But we wish to remember for a
purpose, namely to ensure that never again will evil prevail, as it did for
the millions of innocent victims of Nazism.
How could man have such utter contempt for man? Because he
had reached the point of contempt for God. Only a Godless ideology could plan
and carry out the extermination of a whole people.
The honour given to the “just gentiles” by the State of
Israel at Yad Vashem for having acted heroically to save Jews, sometimes to
the point of giving their own lives, is a recognition that not even in the
darkest hour is every light extinguished. That is why the Psalms, and the
entire Bible, though well aware of the human capacity for evil, also proclaim
that evil will not have the last word. Out of the depths of pain and sorrow,
the believer’s heart cries out: “I trust in you, O Lord; I say, ?You are
my God’.” (Ps 31:14).
3. Jews and Christians share an immense spiritual
patrimony, flowing from God’s self-revelation. Our religious teachings and
our spiritual experience demand that we overcome evil with good. We remember,
but not with any desire for vengeance or as an incentive to hatred. For us, to
remember is to pray for peace and justice, and to commit ourselves to their
cause. Only a world at peace, with justice for all, can avoid repeating the
mistakes and terrible crimes of the past.
As Bishop of Rome and Successor of the Apostle Peter, I
assure the Jewish people that the Catholic Church, motivated by the Gospel law
of truth and love and by no political considerations, is deeply saddened by
the hatred, acts of persecution and displays of anti-Semitism directed against
the Jews by Christians at any time and in any place. The Church rejects racism
in any form as a denial of the image of the Creator inherent in every human
being (cf. Gen 1:26).
4. In this place of solemn remembrance, I fervently pray
that our sorrow for the tragedy which the Jewish people suffered in the
twentieth century will lead to a new relationship between Christians and Jews.
Let us build a new future in which there will be no more anti-Jewish feeling
among Christians or anti-Christian feeling among Jews, but rather the mutual
respect required of those who adore the one Creator and Lord, and look to
Abraham as our common father in faith (cf. We Remember, V).
The world must heed the warning that comes to us from the
victims of the Holocaust and from the testimony of the survivors. Here at Yad
Vashem the memory lives on, and burns itself onto our souls. It makes us cry
out:
“I hear the whispering of many – terror on every side!
– But I trust in you, O Lord; I say, ?You are my God’.” (Ps 31:13-15).
Sources: The Vatican |