NEWS STORY: Orthodox patriarch decries Holocaust `icon’ of evil

c. 1997 Religion News Service WASHINGTON _ More than 50 years after the end of the Holocaust, the first ecumenical patriarch of the Orthodox Church to directly address it called Nazi persecution”the singular icon of our century’s evils”and said Israel was the”guarantor of the Jewish people’s existence.” Patriarch Bartholomew, speaking Monday (Oct. 20) at the […]

c. 1997 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ More than 50 years after the end of the Holocaust, the first ecumenical patriarch of the Orthodox Church to directly address it called Nazi persecution”the singular icon of our century’s evils”and said Israel was the”guarantor of the Jewish people’s existence.” Patriarch Bartholomew, speaking Monday (Oct. 20) at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum also noted the failure of many Christians _ Orthodox and others _ to oppose the Nazis’ plan to exterminate European Jews.”The bitter truth for so many Christians of that terrible time was that they could not connect the message of their faith to their actions in the world,”he said.

Bartholomew, 57, heads the Greek Orthodox Church worldwide and is considered the”first among equals”of the leaders of 15 autonomous, ethnic Orthodox churches. An ethnic Greek whose patriarchate has been based in Istanbul since it was known as Constantinople and was the center of the eastern Christian world, Bartholomew serves as a mediator of the various churches and, as such, is acknowledged as a spiritual leader of the world’s more than 250 million Orthodox Christians.


Bartholomew’s statement came on the second day of his month-long visit to the United States, home to from two to six-million Orthodox Christians, most of whom are of Greek or Russian descent.

While individual Orthodox church officials have condemned the Holocaust, Bartholomew is the first ecumenical patriarch to directly address it. His previous comments on the Holocaust had been limited to indirect statements about”genocide”and”racial hatred”contained in written documents issued on the occasion of a 1993 Jewish-Christian dialogue in Greece and the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II in 1995.

Bartholomew’s comments on the Holocaust follow a recent admission by the Roman Catholic Church in France of its moral failure to address the persecution of Jews during World War II. A long-awaited Vatican statement on the Holocaust also is expected soon.

Jewish reaction to Bartholomew’s comments, spoken after he toured the Holocaust museum, was mixed.

Rabbi A. James Rudin, interfaith director for the American Jewish Committee, called Bartholomew’s talk”extremely important.” Rudin, who is also a columnist for Religion News Service, singled out the patriarch’s mention of Israel’s importance to Jewish survival as particularly noteworthy in view of the 120,000 Greek Orthodox Palestinian Arabs who live in Israel and the West Bank.”It took some political courage on his part to say that,”said Rudin.

However, Rabbi Leon Klenicki, the Anti-Defamation League’s interfaith official, took issue with Bartholomew’s statement that”all who died in the Holocaust are martyrs, witnesses that point the way for us to God’s love.””I don’t need to have my family gassed at Auschwitz to point to God’s love,”said Klenicki, whose organization is in the process of writing a statement on religious tolerance with the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.”Jews didn’t die out of love for God … I understand that he was speaking in Christian theological terms. But we defend our right to be ourselves. I’m uneasy. He could have chosen his language more carefully.” Klenicki also said he”would have preferred a paragraph saying that Nazi paganism was rooted in 2,000 years of Christian teaching of contempt for Judaism.” In 1995, Bartholomew visited Israel, where he made a stop at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. However, he said nothing publicly at that time about the Holocaust.

The Rev. Philomen Sevastiades, an ecumenical officer for the American Greek church, said Bartholomew waited until coming to Washington to speak about the Holocaust”as a way of acknowledging the unique place of the American Orthodox world and its interfaith interaction that elsewhere in the Orthodox world has yet to come about.” In his tour of the museum, Bartholomew paused at exhibits that explained the efforts of some Orthodox Christians to save Jews marked for death by the Nazis, as well as some that detailed the complicity of other Orthodox Christians in the mass killings.

During World War II, for example, Bulgaria, an Orthodox nation, refused to deport its Jewish citizens to the Nazi death camps as Adolf Hitler had demanded. In another instance, Greek Orthodox Bishop Chrysostomos of Zante, when asked by the Nazis to provide the names of all Jews living within his jurisdiction, instead turned in just one name _ his.


At the same time, however, Ukrainian Orthodox Christians participated in the slaughter of nearly 33,000 Jews at Babi Yar in September 1941.

At exhibits marking all these events, Bartholomew _ stroking his long grey beard and leaning on the pastoral staff that symbolizes his office _ listened to the explanations of museum officials, interrupting to ask questions, but saying little else. At his side was Archbishop Spyridon, head of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.

Following the 90-minute tour, Bartholomew spoke to Jewish representatives, church officials and others gathered in a museum auditorium and led a brief Orthodox prayer service in front of the museum’s eternal flame burning in memory of the Holocaust’s victims.”This place,”the patriarch said of the museum,”resolves us to assure all humankind that the unfathomable, unspeakable terror of genocide will never again enter into the realm of human action.” Jews and Christians, he continued, have a”special responsibility”toward preserving”a common memory of this Holocaust and of others as well, that they might be avoided.” Later in the day, Bartholomew participated in an interfaith service held in his honor at Washington National Cathedral.

On Tuesday, Bartholomew is scheduled to receive a Congressional Gold Medal at the Capitol and give separate addresses to representatives of the U.S. Roman Catholic Church and the Muslim community. Wednesday, Bartholomew is scheduled to meet President Clinton at the White House before heading for Baltimore and New York to continue his cross-country tour, which will take him to California and back to the East Coast before he returns home to Istanbul.

DEA END RIFKIN

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