Genocide And The People Responsible

The Church of Saint
Blase of the Armenians
in Rome

FBI Director, James B. Comey sparked a diplomatic crisis last week when, in a speech at the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington DC, he said:

“In their minds, the murderers and accomplices of Germany, and Poland, and Hungary, and so many, many other places didn’t so something evil. They convinced themselves it was the right thing to do, the thing they had to do.”

Both the Polish President and the Prime Minister were quick to react with the assertion—and the broadly truthful assertion—that the Poles were victims of Nazi aggression and not perpetrators.  (I have to qualify “truthful” with “broadly” because while Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany, and while Poles themselves were treated as a captive nation and its people regarded as semi-slaves of the Nazi State, and while a million and a half Poles were sent to forced labor in Germany or in the Nazi Camps, and while hundreds of thousands of Poles were imprisoned in Nazi Concentration camps, and while almost 2 million Poles of non-Jewish blood were murdered by the Nazis in addition to the three million Polish Jews who perished, there were Poles who collaborated with the Nazi Regime.  While before the war only about 800,000 Poles claimed to be Germans, once the Reich had subjected Poland approximately 3 million Polish citizens who could prove German blood enrolled in the Volksdeutsche, identifying them with their German ancestry and exempting them from the discriminations imposed against their neighbors of Slavic blood.   Among Poles of Slavic lineage, only several thousand became active collaborators with the Nazis—perhaps he lowest rate among the various conquered nations.  On the other hand, a strong strain of anti-Semitism that had been woven into Polish culture over the centuries—and which had been enflamed in the 20^th century by many Polish Catholic sources including some of the publications under the editorship of Saint Maximilian Kolbe—did not encourage Polish Catholics to resist the genocide that happened in their midst.   The Poles were not responsible for the genocide but the question must remain: were they innocent of the blood spilt in their midst?

That sounds harsh—and I will admit it—perhaps it is time to rethink responsibility.

What brings this subject to the fore is that this past week Pope Francis used the word “Genocide” to describe the murder of one and a half million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks during World War I.  The Turks have reacted even more strongly to the Pope than the Poles had to FBI Director Comey.  It is a dicey subject. Due to Diplomatic Pressure and NATO politics, President Obama has yet “to grow a pair” and call the Armenian massacre for what it was.  That is a huge disappointment—akin to the disappointment many of us felt in Pope Francis for his refusing to receive the Dalai Lama earlier this year out of fear of repercussions from the Beijing government.  Even the best of leaders occasionally need a shot of testosterone.  Ironically, Angela Merkel of Germany is not backing away from the term Genocide—something that given Germany’s glass house it takes a lot of chutzpah to do, but because Germany has taken responsibility for the atrocities of the Nazi era, they certainly can do. 

The Holocaust was not the only genocide for which the Third Reich must bear responsibility.  In addition to the attempted wholesale slaughter of European Jewry, Nazi policy aimed at whipping out the Romani (Gypsy) population of Europe, resulting in the death of between a quarter and a half million of the Roma.  Some scholars estimate that proportionately to their numbers, this was even more devastating than the murder of the six million Jews.  Under the cover of their Nazi overlords, the Croat State led by Prime Ministers Ante Pavelić and Nikola Mancić undertook the systematic slaughter not only of Jews and Roma people, but the Serbian population.   Under the same conditions, the Ukrainians, led by Dmytro Klyachkivsky, initiated the slaughter of the Polish adult male population of the Ukraine and Eastern Galicia.  In the same way, the Armenians were not the only victims of the Ottoman Turks as there were programs of mass slaughter directed against both the Assyrian and Greek populations of the Empire. 

The twentieth century was marred by many “ethnic cleansing” or genocidal programs. The 1994 Rwandan genocide and the 1992-95 ethnic cleansing of Bosnian Muslims by Serbs are two more examples.  The policies of the government of Indonesia against the indigenous population of East Timor, the policies of the Beijing regime against Tibet, the policies of Sri Lanka against the Tamil people—all are cited by some sources as “genocide,” and that tragically does not exhaust the list.  Indeed, there is a danger of trivializing the whole concept of genocide by showing just how common it has been.  All too often religion has played a role in genocide and no one’s hands—be they Catholic or Muslim or Buddhist or Hindu or Jewish—can claim to be clean of their brothers’ blood. 

This brings me to the point.  Instead of trying to fix the blame for genocide on one nationality or religion or other “grouping,” perhaps we all need to own our collective responsibility for the occurrence and reoccurrence of this heinous crime against God and against the human race.  Turkey’s refusal to acknowledge responsibility is pathetic but is not significantly different, in this world that has become a global village, from your and my denial of complicity.  I was not yet born during the Nazi atrocities and granted, I can’t take responsibility for what happened in those years. I have, however, lived through Rwanda and Kosovo and Bosnia and Cambodia and how many other mass slaughters over the last half-century.  Given the “global village” created by our mass media, how do I differ from the villager in Oswiecim who saw the trains roll by day and night, who saw the smoke by day and the sky lit by the eerie glow of the furnaces by night, who smelled the foul air of burning flesh and went on his daily life of Mass in the village Church, of going to work, of eating his supper, of making love to his wife?  The problem is not simply that some government people in Ankara won’t take responsibility or some officials in Warsaw are offended by a remark that hits too close to home.  The problem is that we all are cynical enough to say to God at the end of the day, “Am I My Brother’s Keeper?”

Franciscans of The Immaculate--and Saint Maximilian Kolbe

Saint Maximilian Kolbe, OFM Conv.

Let me write a bit more about the Franciscans of the Immaculate—or rather let me compare and contrast their two sources of inspiration—Saint Maximilian Maria Kolbe OFM Conv.  and Saint Francis of Assisi.
Raymond Kolbe was born January 8 1894 in a section of Poland then occupied by and ruled by Russia.   His father was an ethnic German (and the name was Kolb) and his mother, Polish.  He had three siblings, only one of whom lived to adulthood.  His father was arrested and executed by the Russians shortly before Maximilian was ordained a priest because he, the father, was involved in the movement for Polish independence and nationhood.  From his childhood Raymond was inculcated with a strong devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary.  Kolbe and his elder brother, Francis, in 1907 fled Russian dominated Poland to Lvov in the Austrian ruled Polish Ukraine where they entered the novitiate of the Conventual Franciscans.   Kolbe was sent on to study in Rome where he earned doctorates in both Theology and Philosophy.
During his time in Rome he witnessed a massive demonstration by the Italian Freemasons against the Church and attacking the Pope, Pius X, personally.  Demonstrators filled Saint Peter’s Square—then part of Italy—with blasphemous banners and shouting obscene slogans.  All this needs to be put into the context of Italian independence and the virulent anti-Catholicism of Giuseppe Garibaldi, the Italian George Washington, a Mason and freethinker who hated the Church and papacy.  Italian Freemasons were a noisy minority more inspired by a hatred of organized religion than the principles of Freemasonry, but for Kolbe the Freemasons became the bogeyman of evil attempting to destroy the Church.
This experience of Freemasonry in Italy led Kolbe on his return to Poland to organize the “Militia of the Immaculate,” a movement of Polish laity to combat the influence of Freemasonry.  The battle with Freemasonry became the organizing principle of Kolbe’s life.  Don’t misunderstand Kolbe’s conservativism— Kolbe was a thoroughly modern man and used the modern media in his battle against Freemasonry.  He opened a publishing house that printed catechisms and other instructional materials as well as devotional tracts, he had a daily newspaper with a quarter million readers, and a monthly magazine that had a million subscribers.  He also used the radio in his attempts to reach an audience.  He had two passions: for the Blessed Mother and against Freemasonry.   
Unfortunately, Kolbe and other anti-Freemasons often slid into anti-Semitism.  European Freemasonry in the late 19^th and early 20^th century included many secular Jews precisely because Freemasonry advocated an intellectual and scholarly freedom of thought that more conservative religious voices—orthodox rabbis as well as Catholic theologians—feared.  Freemasonry was the voice of secular intellectualism and embraced the ideas of Spinoza, Rousseau, Hume, Darwin, Nietzsche, Freud, Ingersoll, Einstein and others.  By no means were all Freethinkers Jews but secular Jews were prominent among Freethinkers and this undermined the hopes of many Poles not simply for an independent Poland but the restoration of Catholic Poland, and not only Catholic Poland but a Marian Poland. 
Anti-Semitism is woven into the Polish Catholic culture going back for centuries.  It is not that many Catholic Poles did not have good relationships with their Jewish fellow Poles. (One cannot say neighbors because for the most part Jews and Gentiles lived in separate communities, even when in the same cities and there was not much contact between Christians and religious (orthodox) Jews.  One of my favorite sites in Krakow is Kazimierz, the old Jewish Quarter.  When one goes there now one sees the desolation created by the Holocaust: the elegant synagogues now museums of a vanished, slaughtered, culture.)   Nevertheless, many Polish Catholics and many Polish Jews, at least among those who were integrated into mainstream Polish society, were friends.  Jerzy Kluger and Karol Wojtyla, later John Paul II, were boyhood friends and that was not unusual.  But in the Polish tradition there were stories and legends and songs of the blood libel, there were depictions in stone and stained glass of Jews murdering Christian children, bedtime stories and campfire tales made Jews out to be bogeymen and monsters.  Kolbe was not conscious of this flaw in the culture and often reinforced it in his attempts to discredit those he saw as enemies of the Church. 
Kolbe’s work brought the Conventual Franciscans to prominence in Poland and the number of vocations enabled them to open missions in Japan where Kolbe served for several years in the 1930’s—but his publishing work was too important for him to be away for long.  Kolbe was arrested by the Gestapo in 1941 for—among other things—sheltering Jews in his monastery.  He was sent to Auschwitz. 
Now Auschwitz was actually four main camps and 45 satellite camps.  Kolbe was sent to Auschwitz I.  This must be differentiated from Auschwitz II or Birkenau which was primarily an extinction camp where prisoners were normally held only until they could be gassed.   Auschwitz I was primarily for long-term prisoners.  While, there are exceptions Jews normally were marked for extinction; Poles were held in Auschwitz I and kept for forced labor.  The two camps, by the way, are remarkably different.  While Birkenau was a massive complex of wooden barracks in which those Jews were held who were not to be gassed immediately but worked to death, wooden barracks that were no more than huge shacks that did not even keep out the cold and which held hundreds of slave-prisoners, Auschwitz I was an orderly village of well-built brick structures which housed the prisoners.  In Auschwitz I There were trees and stone-lined avenues among the barracks.  It was by no means a pleasant place but it wasn’t the architecture of despair and death that marked Birkenau.  Of course most of those sent to Auschwitz II or Birkenau were gassed immediately.
In Auschwitz I Kolbe was put to work as were the rest of the prisoners.  He was only there about five months when three prisoners escaped.  As a warning to other prisoners, ten men were selected to be put in a starvation bunker where they would die a slow and painful death of hunger.  One of the ten, Franciszek Gajowniczek, cried out “O, my wife, my children!”  Kolbe stepped forward and asked to replace the family man. 
Kolbe lasted two weeks without food or water.  He kept up the courage of the other prisoners by singing with them and telling them stories as well as giving them the reassurances of our Christian faith.  Finally he alone was left alive—barley alive.  A nurse was sent into the cell to give him an injection of Carbolic Acid. It was August 14^th, the vigil of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. 
Kolbe’s canonization was not without controversy.  Anti-Semitic passages from his magazine and newspaper were cited.  John Paul II was passionately determined to advance the cause of his fellow Pole however.  The anti-Semitic tone of some of his writings needs to be balanced against his actions which not only show no trace of animosity towards Jews but a recognition of the human dignity of all people regardless of race or creed.  The anti-Semitism found in Polish culture was woven into his personality much as racism has become part of the warp and woof of American culture.  It is a reminder to us all to be very critical of our cultural assumptions and examine our own words to see when they betray prejudices of which we are not consciously aware.  Paula Deen isn’t the only racist in America.  Far from it. 
Kolbe was devoted to the Virgin Mary and is devotion to her can be said to have marked his spirituality far more profoundly than his Franciscanism.  While they are not, of course, mutually exclusive, in our next entry we will look at Saint Francis and see what he brought to the Church.  The Franciscans of the Immaculate are far more disciples of Maximilian Kolbe than they are of Francis of Assisi.  That is not a problem but it needs to be noted.   

Never Forget

A mural on a wall in Kazimierz, the

old Jewish quarter of Krakow where

a vibrant Jewish community thrived

until destroyed in the Holocaust.

The Jewish Community of Krakow is an orthodox Jewish community the range of which is the south-east part of Poland. Currently the Community numbers about 100 members. The main synagogue which is functioning is the orthodox Remuh Synagogue. Additionally, sometimes two other synagogues are used for services, the Kupa Synagogue and the Tempel Synagogue. Apart from that the Congregation is the legal owner of the following synagogues in Krakow: the Old Synagogue (Alte Shul; currently a museum), Isaac Synagogue, High Synagogue, Popper Synagogue, Mizrachi Shul and other buildings located in the Małopolska area, such as synagogues in Bobowa, Grybów or Słomniki. Also, the Congregation is takes care of the following cemeteries: the New Cemetery (the only functioning Jewish cemetery in Krakow), the Remuh Cemetery and the Abraham Cemetery in Krakow; cemeteries in Tarnów, Nowy Targ, Zakopane, Bochnia, Nowy Sącz, Krynica, Łabowa and Gorlice. The congregation also holds a kosher lunchroom, seniors' club and a mikveh. The Chief Rabbi of Krakow is Rabbi Boaz Pash. An important part of the Jewish life in Krakow is the Jewish Community Centre (JCC Krakow) which was established due to an initiative of His Royal Highness, Prince Charles of Wales, the Jewish Religious Congregation in Krakow and with the support of World Jewish Relief and American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. The Jewish Community Centre in Krakow is a vibrant and living place, and educational and cultural centre, and the meeting place for the Jewish community.

        I found this information on a website about the Jewish Community in Krakow while researching another topic and it struck me to the heart.  I have been to Krakow several times; it is one of my favorite cities in Europe.  it was only on my third visit to the city, however, that I went to Kazimierz, the old Jewish Quarter and saw the remains of a once vibrant culture that was all but destroyed—indeed I think one can say was destroyed—by the ravages of the Holocaust.  Look at the number of synagogues once needed: The Remuh Synagogue, the Tempel Synagogue, the Kupa Synagogue, the Alte Shul, the Issac Synagogue, the High Synagogue, the Popper Synagogue, the Mizrachi Shul –all these synagogues and now only one hundred Jews in Krakow!!!  As best as I can determine there were approximately 64,000 Jews in Krakow before the Nazi invasion of 1939, and now there are a hundred.  It is sobering to think of such loss of life.  
       I have been twice to Auschwitz I (the work camp) and Auschwitz Birkenau (the extermination camp) on the edge of Krakow. One should never go to these places more than once.  The camps are seared into your memory.  There was absolutely nothing that I saw the second time that I had not remembered in horrid detail from my first visit.  We must ask ourselves how this sort of hatred could have existed.  We must ask ourselves why we failed as Christians and as a Church to protest it.  anyone who says it could not happen again, is either naïve or disingenuous.  It may not be the Jews, but it could be anyone.  Hatred and prejudice run strong in cultures under economic or political stress.  At some point I want to do some entries on Catholicism and anti-semitism as well as Catholicism and the Third Reich.  The stories are very complex.  But for today, I just think of the tens of thousands of ghosts of Kazimierz—the children, the women, the old men, the pregnant, the ill, the poor and the rich, the believers and the non-believers—whose lives and heritage were snuffed out.