“We are, I stressed, united in the condemnation of all violence, every form of anti-Semitism and in the commitment that the image of God in the human creature is not desecrated,” said the head of the Catholic Church on Monday at a meeting with the Jewish Municipality in the capital city of Bratislava. The 84-year-old met the religious representatives in the center of the city. A synagogue once stood there that survived World War II and was later demolished by the communists. Today there is a memorial there to commemorate the Holocaust.
“Dear brothers and sisters, your story is our story, your pain is our pain,” said Francis. For many Jews, this Shoah memorial is the only place where they can commemorate their deceased. One must not forget the mistakes of the past so that they do not repeat themselves in the future, said the president of the Central Association of Jewish Congregations in Slovakia, Richard Duda. Symbolically, Duda and Francis then lit two candles.
For the Catholic Church in Slovakia, anti-Semitism and the Holocaust are a sensitive issue. During the Second World War, the country was a vassal state dependent on Nazi Germany, with the Catholic priest Jozef Tiso as president and other leading clerics as active supporters. The Tiso regime banned all democratic parties and deported nearly 70,000 Jews to German concentration camps such as Auschwitz and Theresienstadt.