European Churches Highlight Ecumenical Effort on Auschwitz Commemoration

27th January marked the 60th anniversary of the Auschwitz death camp liberation, a day filled with mixed feeling of joy and sorrow.

On one hand, the day celebrated the arrival of the Soviet Union’s Red Army troops at the camp in Oswiecim, Poland in 1945 where about 7,000 ill and dying prisoners were freed.

On the other hand, world leaders and religious heads across the world joined together in solidarity to remember the 1.1 million innocents died at Auschwitz. Most of them were Jews; the others were Gypsies, Soviet prisoners of World War II, homosexuals, disabled people, Jehovah's Witnesses and etc. Auschwitz is the most notorious and devastating Nazi death camp during the Holocaust.

The Conference of European Churches (CEC) addressed the Auschwitz liberation anniversary on Wednesday after a meeting with the head of Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Alexis II in Moscow.

While the meeting has reaffirmed the Patriarch’s support and participation in the CEC’s ecumenical work, the General Secretary of CEC Rev Keith Clements stressed the importance of dialogue between different faiths in modern Europe, especially that with the Jews.

Dating back to the sorrowful history in Europe, endless wars were triggered by racism, religious hatred and human greed for authorities.

"Together with Catholic partners we are concerned about the dialogue between Christians and believers of other religions. We cannot forget that Christianity has Jewish roots and Jesus Christ was a Jew," he said.

The new CEC President Jean-Arnold de Clermont echoed, "It is very important that we are here on the eve of the celebrations of Auschwitz's liberation by the Red Army."

According to the president, "the hardest experiment of the concentration camps was the denial of the right to life when people were given numbers."

"Today the Christian churches should claim that the right to human dignity was given by God and our common mission is to give people His love," Jean-Arnold de Clermont emphasised.

The General Secretary of CEC Rev Keith Clements, who himself is a Baptist minister, has written an article to the Baptist Times based in London, UK, about his reflection on the Auschwitz tragedy. The article was published yesterday.

Looking at the railway track that had once brought hundreds of thousands of European Jews, and tens of thousands of others into the Auschwitz death camp, Rev Clements wrote that route to Auschwitz began far away and not just in a physical sense.

He wrote, "It began in the widely diffused anti-Semitism which shamefully has been so much part of European ‘Christian’ life and thought. It joined the railroad of nationalism, when nation began to replace God as an object of worship. It connected in turn with the track of racial superiority and the belief that differences of colour, culture and religion were inimical to a ‘pure’ society."

Rev Clement also condemned that Auschwitz is a product of murderous racism and cruelty, a consequence of moral evasion and absolutism.

Rev Clement quoted a prayer of confession written by the famous German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer in the Nazi prison cell, "We saw the lie raise its head, And we did not honour the truth. We saw brethren in direst need, And feared only our own death."

The lie refers to every act of injustice, each justification of oppression, each glorification of ‘race’, each manifestation of violence, according to Rev Clement. Sadly, "all these went unchallenged in society and by the Church" and "all these are rife in our world".

Rev Clement warned, "...tracks that ultimately led towards Auschwitz are still in place."

He further challenged Christians to reflect on Bonhoeffer’s last word and dare to ask whether it in fact describes their lives, "We learned to lie easily, To be at the disposal of open injustice; If the defenceless was abused, Then our eyes remained cold."

The head of the Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Alexy II said in a statement in memorial of the Auschwitz liberation, "Today we also remember the Jewish people whom the Nazis tried to wipe from the face of the Earth. Thanks be to God that He halted the hands of the executioners who planned the most monstrous genocide in history."

"Thinking of those who died during the years of war hardships, I offer my prayer that the tragedy of world war will not be repeated. For this, it is necessary to learn well the lessons of the past," he said.

The main commemorative ceremony commenced at 2:30pm (1330 GMT) on Thursday at Auschwitz camp site. Israeli President Moshe Katsav, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Polish President Alexander Kwasniewski, French President Jacques Chirac, US Vice-President Dick Cheney and UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw attended the event. An address from Pope John Paul II was also read out. Ecumenical prayers were also said as well as the Jewish prayer for the dead.

Prior to the ceremony, US Vice President Dick Cheney said education to the new generation is essential to prevent the repetition of Holocaust.

"We have to remind our youth that these great evils of history were perpetrated not in some remote uncivilised world but in the very heart of civilised Europe," he said, "We must teach the values of tolerance, decency and moral courage. In every generation the free nations must maintain the will, the strength to fight tyranny."