Conference Report
Examination of Conscience: The Polish Church Confronts Anti-Semitism, 1989-99

Loyola Marymount University, LA, January 20, 1999

This one-day conference was a direct outgrowth of the self-examination called for in the Vatican document We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah. Having heard Cardinal Cassidy's address on November 9, 1998 in Reno, I was particularly glad to see that the Catholic church in Poland is taking proactive steps to dialogue with Polish Jews and to consider how to implement measures that will lead to better understanding and reconciliation between Polish Catholics and Polish Jews. Conference Chairman Prof. Bohdan Oppenheim pointed out that the past tenyears of freedom for the Church in a sovereign Poland is just the second such period in the last 200 years, the first being just 20 years between the two World Wars.

The 150 years of partition between Austria, Prussia, and Russia, influenced the relations between Polish Jews and Polish Catholics. Since the collapse of communism, the Polish Church is free to exercise its significant influence in ways that can improve relations between the two communities, address issues of open anti-Semitism (from the pulpit and beyond), and create a more pluralistic awareness among Polish Catholics. During the past several years, a minority of nationalists and fundamentalist Catholics has become visible, vocal, and anti-Semitic, causing embarrassment and dismay for the great majority of Poles and Polish Church officials.

Among the issues raised were three that have recently created tensions between Polish Catholics and Jews, in Poland and elsewhere: the Carmelite convent in Auschwitz, the "war of the crosses" at the gravel yard bordering on Auschwitz concentration camp, and the Reverend Henryk Jankowski of Gdansk. Jankowski is one of the bastions of Solidarity in the early 1980's an early supporter of Lech Walesa. However, he is a virulent anti-Semite who has expressed his inflammatory comments both from the pulpit and elsewhere, and who has been disciplined by the Church on several occasions.

These are difficult issues to wrestle with. Opinions vary as to how they should be resolved. But the Polish Church and many Polish leaders are taking them seriously. On December 28, 1998, for example, a workshop was organized by the Jesuits of Krakow entitled, Jesuits and Jews: Towards Greater Fraternity and Commitment.

Bishop Prof. Tadeusz Pieronek, one of the visiting Polish panelists, noted that the history of the Church and anti-Semitism can be analyzed over 1000 years (and certainly not just in Poland); but in Poland especially, relations between Catholics and Jews bear the underlying burden of the extermination of Jews on Polish lands, albeit at the hands of the Nazis. He underscored the readiness of the Church to change old anti-Semitic stereotypes and to revise them. To this effect, an official letter was read in all Polish churches to support this effort. In this letter it was recognized that Poland is a second fatherland to many Jews _ but it was also a grave for millions of them. In this way and through various Church-sponsored programs (like Jewish heritage educational tours through the old Jewish section of Kazimierz in Krakow) the Polish Church is trying to meet its obligation to remedy past anti-Semitism within the Church.

This notion was picked up by one of the conference visitors, Leopold Page (the Schindler survivor who came to Reno in 1995), who commented emphatically that as a Jew and a Pole the tendency to speak about Jewish-Polish relations is in itself divisive. He stressed that he is a Pole and is no different from other Poles.

At the beginning of the Los Angeles conference it was noted that some people questioned why this conference was being held at all. Was the Polish Church being singled out as being inherently anti-Semitic? I can only wish that the Church leaders in other countries are pursuing the same sort of examination of conscience. I, as Jew married to a Pole whose family are Righteous Gentile, applaud the Polish Church's efforts, and the efforts of the thoughtful and sincere organizers and panelists of this conference. In the spirit of "examination of conscience," as we celebrate a new millennium, I hope similar dialogues are being held in other countries to overcome a history of intolerance. As Cardinal Cassidy noted in his address here in Reno, the Church spent the last millennium focusing on the differences between Catholics and the rest of humanity. Now it is time to focus on the similarities we share as human beings, so that we can strengthen what is best in humanity.

Shelly Lescott-Leszczynski