The Popes Speech at the Yad Vashem
Holocaust Memorial
March 24, 2000
Text of Pope John Paul IIs speech Thursday at the Yad
Vashem Holocaust memorial:
The words of the ancient Psalm, rise from our hearts: I have
become like a broken vessel. I hear the whispering of many -- terror on every
side -- as they scheme together against me, as they plot to take my life. But I
trust in you, O Lord: I say, you are my God. (Psalms
31:13-15)
In this place of memories, the mind and heart and soul feel an
extreme need for silence. Silence in which to remember. Silence in which to try
to make some sense of the memories which come flooding back. Silence because
there are no words strong enough to deplore the terrible tragedy of the Shoah.
My own personal memories are of all that happened when the Nazis
occupied Poland during the war. I remember my Jewish friends and neighbors,
some of whom perished, while others survived. I have come to Yad Vashem to pay
homage to the millions of Jewish people who, stripped of everything, especially
of human dignity, were murdered in the Holocaust. More than half a century has
passed, but the memories remain.
Here, as at Auschwitz and many other places in Europe, we are
overcome by the echo of the heart-rending laments of so many. Men, women and
children, cry out to us from the depths of the horror that they knew. How can
we fail to heed their cry? No one can forget or ignore what happened. No one
can diminish its scale.
We wish to remember. But we wish to remember for a purpose, namely
to ensure that never again will evil prevail, as it did for the millions of
innocent victims of Nazism.
How could man have such utter contempt for man? Because he had
reached the point of contempt for God. Only a godless ideology could plan and
carry out the extermination of a whole people.
The honor given to the just Gentiles by the state of
Israel at Yad Vashem for having acted heroically to save Jews, sometimes to the
point of giving their own lives, is a recognition that not even in the darkest
hour is every light extinguished. That is why the Psalms and the entire Bible,
though well aware of the human capacity for evil, also proclaims that evil will
not have the last word.
Out of the depths of pain and sorrow, the believers heart
cries out: I trust in you, O Lord: I say, you are my
God. (Psalms 31:14)
Jews and Christians share an immense spiritual patrimony, flowing
from Gods self-revelation. Our religious teachings and our spiritual
experience demand that we overcome evil with good. We remember, but not with
any desire for vengeance or as an incentive to hatred. For us, to remember is
to pray for peace and justice, and to commit ourselves to their cause. Only a
world at peace, with justice for all, can avoid repeating the mistakes and
terrible crimes of the past.
As bishop of Rome and successor of the Apostle Peter, I assure the
Jewish people that the Catholic Church, motivated by the Gospel law of truth
and love, and by no political considerations, is deeply saddened by the hatred,
acts of persecution and displays of anti-Semitism directed against the Jews by
Christians at any time and in any place.
The church rejects racism in any form as a denial of the image of
the Creator inherent in every human being.
In this place of solemn remembrance, I fervently pray that our
sorrow for the tragedy which the Jewish people suffered in the 20th century
will lead to a new relationship between Christians and Jews. Let us build a new
future in which there will be no more anti-Jewish feeling among Christians or
anti-Christian feeling among Jews, but rather the mutual respect required of
those who adore the one Creator and Lord, and look to Abraham as our common
father in faith.
The world must heed the warning that comes to us from the victims
of the Holocaust, and from the testimony of the survivors. Here at Yad Vashem
the memory lives on, and burns itself onto our souls. It makes us cry out:
I hear the whispering of many -- terror on every side -- but I trust in
you, O Lord: I say, You are my God. (Psalms 31:13-15)
Posted to The National Catholic Reporter website,
March 28, 2000
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