Benedict Follows John Paul's Path -- and Sees Saint
KRAKOW, Poland, May 27, 2006 — -- Before Pope John Paul II's 1979 trip to Poland, Judaism there had been all but wiped out by a culture of anti-Semitism.
"Nobody felt safe to be Jewish," said Michael Schudrich, the rabbi of Poland. "We're talking about: It's not assimilation, it's fear."
Schudrich said one man, the Polish-born former pope, helped to transform Polish attitudes to Judaism -- both as a moral authority and a Polish national hero.
"Pope John Paul II … has inspired many people here," Schudrich said. "To say, 'I can't be an anti-Semite if the pope said it was a sin,' it really had a social impact."
During a four-day trip to Poland today, Pope Benedict XVI told a receptive audience that his friend and predecessor, John Paul II, should be made a saint -- and fast.
The German-born Benedict said he is following in John Paul's footsteps. Today, he visited John Paul II's birthplace, and on Sunday, he will visit Auschwitz, World War II's most notorious concentration camp and one of the most memorable journeys of John Paul's papacy.
For 50 years, Polish Jews faced an awful choice: To stay Jewish and leave Poland -- or to stay Polish and leave Judaism.
Jewish culture goes back centuries in Poland. The old Jewish quarter of Krakow has been restored to what it used to look like before the World War II -- except then it would have been bustling with people, and today it is nearly empty. Jews then made up 10 percent of the population -- roughly 3½ million people -- a population the Nazis tried to exterminate and the Communists tried to expel.
But those days are finally over.
"It would be exaggerated to speak of a critical mass," said Konstanty Gebert, publisher of Midrash Monthly. "We're still a small community."
Even so, Poland's Jews again are a thriving community. This month, Poland hosted an international rabbi's convention and a cultural festival in what used to be the Warsaw ghetto -- the World War II Jewish neighborhood notoriously decimated by the Nazis.
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