
The services to commemorate the day were as always very moving, particularly the testimony of the survivors who still suffer the effects of that dreadful experience. It’s not possible to listen and not be filled with a deep sadness and puzzlement as to why the Nazis would systematically plan to exterminate Jewish people across 22 countries with the active participation of some of the citizens of those countries.
Twenty years ago I was privileged to be part of a visit to Poland to explore what had been and now was the place of the Jewish community. The group consisted of 14 Christians from different denominations and one person from the Reform Jewish tradition, whose presence gave an added and much needed dimension to the visit and did not allow us to forget the pain many British Jews still carry within them. There were two parts to the programme: lectures organised by the Centre for Jewish Culture with an opportunity to explore both the Jewish and Polish districts of Cracow and a field trip to several small towns in Galicia where there had been thriving Jewish communities. This included a day visit to Ukraine and a visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau. The whole experience brought back memories for me of much of what I had been taught at university about Jewish – Christian relations and of the shame I had felt ever since learning of the Christian treatment of the Jewish community throughout history which was given institutional expression in what was called the teaching on contempt for the Jews
The district of Kazimierz in which the Centre for Jewish Culture is situated is a different world from the main centre of Cracow. At its height Kazimierz was the intellectual and economic centre of Polish Jewry and was called the ‘Galician Jerusalem’. There is a medieval air about it and each day we passed monuments of Jewish life, the mikvah, the ritual slaughter house, synagogues, community centres, all of which evoked the vibrant Jewish community that thrived there for centuries from the Middle Ages to the Second World War until the community was forced into the ghetto on the other side of the city before its liquidation and the transportation of the remaining Jewish population to concentration and death camps where they subsequently died or were murdered.
The most difficult moment of the trip was facing up to the horrors of the Holocaust and of the death camps. The trip to Auschwitz-Birkenau exposed the reality of an evil that must lurk in the hearts of all human beings. The systematic degradation and humiliation of the Jewish community and the absolute squalor of what life must have been like in Birkenau seemed to be beyond evil. While the murder of the Jewish community was perpetrated by the Nazis many Poles were indifferent to it and in one place, Jedwabne, it was Poles who were responsible for the slaughter of 1,600 Jews. Some Poles betrayed their neighbours but there were many others who hid and helped their Jewish neighbours, and many Poles are included within the ranks of Righteous Gentiles.
The visit raised many questions and challenges. How are the Churches to cope with the anti- Jewish language of the scriptures? How do Christians deal with the question of supercessionism? How does humanity and Christianity cope with the reality of the Holocaust? Do we recognise just how traumatic it is still for the Jewish community who thought they had found a safe home in the State of Israel only to have that shattered on October 7th when Hamas invaded and killed 1,200 including babies and children and abducting 250 Jews. Even in their own land it would seem they are not safe.
For me this year’s Holocaust Memorial event included the pain of what happened in Israel in 2024 but also the pain of ordinary Palestinians caught up in a war that is not of their making. This was the backdrop for what I was witnessing as I shed tears over the testimonies of survivors of the Holocaust. While the Jewish community remembers the Shoah, the Palestinian community remembers the Nakba which also means catastrophe and refers to the displacement and dispossession of Palestinians in 1948. It so happened that on the news the day of HMD was the long march of Palestinians returning to the homes in Gaza to find them totally destroyed. Families travelling with joy and hope at coming home could not even find the street in which they lived. How could they set up home with the belongings they had managed to take with them when they left. How do we feel the pain of both people and recognise their different but legitimate stories and reading of history? How do we not in any way belittle the horror of the Holocaust and the events of 7th October while feeling the pain of a war in which Pope Francis would say there are no winners for there are never winners in war. Is it to refrain from taking one side against the other but to feel the pain of both and in doing so to honour that pain and long for and pray for its transformation in peace which even with the present cease fire seems a long way ahead?