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What is the Holocaust?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2024
Extract
The controversy which arose in the summer of 1989 over the presence of a Carmelite convent adjacent to the former Nazi deathcamp at Auschwitz in Poland momentarily brought to world attention the entire field of Holocaust studies, including the theology of the Holocaust. In America, for example, various colleges and universities have established institutes for study of the Holocaust. These centres usually sponsor conferences and scholarly meetings, offer courses on various aspects of the Holocaust, and often do the important work of recording oral and video testimonies from the shrinking pool of concentration camp survivors, thereby documenting the brutality of those years. Some American states have introduced Holocaust studies components into the social studies curricula of their primary and secondary schools. In both Jewish and Christian theological circles, the Holocaust has raised anew such questions as the meaning of suffering and the existence of God, Providence and the vicissitudes of human history, and the entire Christian perspective on Jews and Judaism (including what role Christianity may have played in aiding and/or abetting anti-Semitism).
The Auschwitz convent controversy focused attention on the entire realm of Holocaust studies. But what the controversy did not do was to foster discussion about the central issue upon which the controversy turned: what is the Holocaust?
It is the ambiguity of the definition of “Holocaust” which provided fertile soil not just for the debate over the Carmelite cloister at Auschwitz but also for other disputes. During his June 1991 pilgrimage to Poland, Pope John Paul II was criticised by some Jewish organisations for speaking of abortion on demand as a “Holocaust” of the unborn.
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- Copyright © 1991 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 Lukas, Richard, The Forgotten Holocaust (Lexington; University Press of Kentucky, 1986)Google Scholar.
2 An excellent chronology of events surrounding the Carmel controversy, from its beginnings through groundbreaking ceremonies for the new Centre to which the convent is to be relocated, can be found in Waldemar Chrostowski, “Spór wokól klasztoru w Oswiecimiu” (The Controversy Surrounding the Cloister at Auschwitz], Znak 42 (April/May 19901, nos. 4–5: 123–43.
3 English text in Origins, 19 (14 September 1989), no. 15:249–50.
4 English text in Origins, 19 (14 September 1989), no, 15:249.
5 For the official statements of the Kraków Archdiocesan Chancery on these incidents, see “Komunikat kurii krakowskiej nr I” and “Komunikat kurii krakowskiej nr 2” in Tygodnik Powszechny, 43 (30 July 1989), no. 31 (2092), p. 7Google Scholar, cols. 5–6. For English translations, see “Statements issued by the Chancellery of the Archdiocese of Kraków,” in Canadian Polish Congress—Viewpoint Supplement, December 1989, p. 3, cols. 4–5.
6 English text in Origins, 19 (14 September 1989), no. 15:250.
7 English text as “Cardinal Glemp's August 26 Homily at Czestochowa,”Origins, 19 (5 October 1989), no. 18: 291–94. For a commentary on the sermon see Grondelski, John M., “Cardinal Glemp's Sermon at Czestochowa: An Analysis,” in Proceedings of the First Biannual Conference on Christianity and the Holocaust (Lawrenceville, NJ: Rider College, 1990). pp. 191–212Google Scholar.
8 Kloczowski, Jerzy, Müllerowa, Lidia, and Skarbek, Jan, Zarys dziejów Kosciola katolickiego w Polsce [A Brief History of the Catholic Church in Poland] (Kraków: Znak, 1986), p. 340Google Scholar. See also Lukas, Richard, “The Polish Experience During the Holocaust,” in Berenbaum, Michael, ed., A Mosaic of Victims: Non‐Jews Persecuted and Murdered by the Nazis (New York University Press. 1990), pp. 88–95Google Scholar.
9 Oswiecim: Hitlerowski obóz masowej zaglady [Auschwitz: The Hitlerite Camp of Mass Murder], 4th ed. (Warsaw: Interpress, 1987), pp. 15–16.
10 “Cardinal Glemp's August 26 Homily,” ibid., p. 294.