My pilgrimage to Poland took me to Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. The Polish names for these two unfortunate towns that were brutally annexed to the Third Reich by the Nazis were Oswiecim and Brzezinka.

The Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, which also included Monowitz, became the symbol of terror, genocide, and the Holocaust.

In his first visit to his native country, the Polish Pontiff, Saint John Paul II, gave a thought-provoking description of this dreadful place. In his homily at the Mass celebrated at Brzezinka concentration camp on 7 June 1979, the Holy Father said Auschwitz “was built for the negation of faith – faith in God and faith in man – and to trample radically not only on love but on all signs of human dignity, of humanity. A place built on hatred and on contempt for man in the name of a crazed ideology. A place built on cruelty. On the entrance gate which still exists, is the inscription ‘Arbeit macht frei’, which has a sardonic sound, since its meaning was radically contradicted by what took place within” (§ 1).

In that moving homily, John Paul rightly asked: “Is it enough to put man in a different uniform, arm him with the apparatus of violence? Is it enough to impose on him an ideology in which human rights are subjected to the demands of the system, completely subjected to them, so as in practice not to exist at all?” (§ 1). Years later, in 1982, at the canonization of Blessed Maximiliam Kolbe in Rome, an outstanding martyr in Auschwitz I, the Holy Father reiterated the same point when he said: “At the foundation of this holiness lies the great, deeply painful issue of humanity. This difficult, tragic epoch, marked by the horrible destruction of human dignity, gave birth to its saving symbol in Auschwitz. Love proved to be more powerful than death, more powerful than a dehumanizing system. The love of a person gained a victory at a place, where the hate and contempt of humanity seemed to triumph.”

Yes. Hate and utter neglect of the inalienable rights of the human person knew no boundaries and nationalities in Auschwitz. The various inscriptions that commemorate the victims of Oswiecim as represented by Polish, English, Bulgarian, Romany, Czech, Danish, French, Greek, Hebrew, Yiddish, Spanish, Flemish, Serbo-Croat, German, Norwegian, Russian, Romanian, Hungarian, and Italian language show the vast range of the criminal activity that was going on in this horrible place. As Saint John Paul II aptly affirmed: “Oswiecim is such a reckoning. It is impossible merely to visit it. It is necessary ... to think with fear of how far hatred can go, how far man’s destruction of man can go, how far cruelty can go” (§ 3).

However in the cruelty of Auschwitz seeds of hope are sown. In fact, Auschwitz represents an excellent opportunity for a Polish-German reconciliation. It is indeed very telling that among the distinguished guests at Pope John Paul II’s Mass in Auschwitz in 1979 there was also present the then Archbishop of Munich, Cardinal Josef Ratzinger. On that occasion Cardinal Ratzinger commented: “I have come here especially because I’m convinced that we Germans have a special reason to participate. From here reconciliation must come and the warning that something similar must never happen again.”

As Pope Benedict XVI, Auschwitz was a top priority on his papal agenda.

As a matter of fact he visited Auschwitz-Birkenau on 28 May 2006, a year and 39 days after he was elected to the See of Saint Peter. While acknowledging that he was “a son of the German people – a son of that people over which a ring of criminals rose to power by false promises of future greatness and the recovery of the nation’s honour, prominence and prosperity, … through terror and intimidation, with the result that [German] people was used and abused as an instrument of their thirst for destruction and power” Benedict hoped that Auschwitz “becomes … a plea for forgiveness and reconciliation, a plea to the living God never to let this happen again”.

Our talented tour guide Monika taught us that Auschwitz’s greatest lesson is “overcome[ing] evil with good” (Rom 12:21). What a fruitful moral to live by!

Fr Mario Attard OFM Cap

Paola