Pope Benedict Visits Auschwitz

Posted on May 29, 2006

Winding up his trip to Poland, Pope Benedict made an emotional visit to Auschwitz, in which he broke with tradition by asking the question "Why did God allow the Holocaust to happen?"

The sight of a German Pope crossing into the death camp beneath the infamously false Nazi sign, "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work Will Set You Free), is arguably the most striking image of Benedict�s 14-month-old papacy. Walking alone with his hands clasped in front of him, an utterly grim expression fixed across his face, the 79-year-old pontiff entered as both the leader of the billion-strong Roman Catholic Church, and a World War II-generation German citizen. "To speak in this place of horror, in this place where unprecedented mass crimes were committed against God and man is almost impossible � and it is particularly difficult and troubling for a Christian, for a Pope from Germany," he said.
With these words, Benedict set off on a rather remarkable theological meditation on the Holocaust. "Why, Lord" he asked, "did you remain silent?" It is of course an unanswerable question, but one that Benedict used to implore Catholics and non-Catholics alike to pray � and work � so that it never happens again. He unpacked the singular aims of Hitler�s Final Solution, and discovered universal religious and Christian theological lessons: "The rulers of the Third Reich wanted to crush the entire Jewish people, to cancel it from the register of the peoples of the earth," he said. "Deep down, those vicious criminals, by wiping out this people, wanted to kill the God who laid down principles to serve as a guide for mankind, principles that are entirely valid."
"If this people, by its very existence, was a witness to the God who spoke to humanity and took us to himself, then that God finally had to die and power had to belong to man alone � to those men, who thought that by force they had made themselves masters of the world." He concluded the point by returning to the specific question of Christianity: "By destroying Israel, they ultimately wanted to tear up the taproot of the Christian faith and to replace it with a faith of their own invention: faith in the rule of man, the rule of the powerful," he said. Benedict went on to say that the remains of cruelty on display at the extermination camps "don�t instill hatred in us; instead they show us the terrifying effect of hatred."
Almost as if on cue, as Benedict's voyage to Auschwitz drew toward its close early Sunday evening, the wind picked up and a cool rain began to fall. The final ceremony began with the Pope pausing to pray at memorials in the different languages of the 1.5 million killed. But by the time he reached the final plaque, the rain had stopped, the umbrellas were tucked away, and the pack of reporters noticed that across the broad field of half-standing brick barracks of Birkenau, a vivid rainbow had appeared. The editors of TIME, like those who A. M. Rosenthal worked for back in the 1950s, would surely not normally consider this news. But on a day that the German Pope came to Auschwitz to ponder God�s silence, that surprising explosion of colors seemed well worth reporting.

Stanislaw Krejewski of the Polish Council of Christians and Jews noted that it was a very Jewish speech: the Pope quoted the psalms which are part of the Jewish tradition and create a link between Christians and Jews.

"It was moving when he said clearly that the Nazis, by killing the Jewish nation, aimed to kill God," he said. "Linking Christianity's roots with Judaism is a strong argument against anti-Semitism," said sociologist Jadwiga Staniszkis. "I think this speech should be read."

Pope Benedict is certainly making his mark on the papacy: it was a moving speech. But how ever did he manage that rainbow?