Pilgrimage to Israel by German bishops ends in dispute

FRANKFURT: A pilgrimage to Israel last week by 27 Roman Catholic bishops from Germany was meant to be a historic symbol of reconciliation between Jews and German Catholics.

Instead, after two bishops drew a link between the plight of Palestinians in the West Bank and that of Jews in the Warsaw ghetto during World War II, it has become a fresh source of recrimination.

German-Jewish groups and the Israeli ambassador to Germany condemned their comments, which were reported in newspapers here, saying they were demagogic and "verging on anti-Semitism."

"If one uses terms like Warsaw ghetto or racism in connection with Israeli or Palestinian politics, then one has forgotten everything, or learned nothing," the Israeli ambassador to Germany, Shimon Stein, said in a statement.

The Warsaw ghetto, established by the Nazi regime in 1940 as a holding pen for Polish Jews before they were deported to concentration camps, has come to epitomize the barbarity of the Holocaust.

The top Catholic official in Germany, Cardinal Karl Lehmann, disavowed the bishop's remarks in a letter made public Wednesday to the director of Yad Vashem, the holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. But the outrage among Jews living in Germany has not yet subsided.

"I made my point. Cardinal Lehmann made his point, unfortunately a bit late," Stein said in an interview. "Now we have to find other ways to deal with this. It tells us we have a problem."

The dispute came after a trip that had been considered successful.

The bishops were met by the deputy prime minister of Israel, Shimon Peres. At Yad Vashem, Lehmann, chairman of the Conference of German Bishops, spoke about deepening ties between Jews and Catholics.

The trouble started back in Germany when newspapers published more blunt remarks by two southern German bishops: Gregor Maria Hanke of Eichstätte and Walter Mixa of Augsburg.

"In the morning, we see the photos of the inhuman Warsaw ghetto, and this evening we travel to the ghetto in Ramallah," Hanke was quoted as saying by Suddeutsche Zeitung, the German newspaper. "That makes you angry."

Mixa described the situation in Ramallah as "ghetto-like" and said the situation was "almost racism."

The bishops said they had been reacting to an emotional meeting with Palestinian Christians and a stop at a children's hospital in Bethlehem, in the occupied West Bank, where nurses spoke of the hardships mothers faced because of security restrictions by Israeli authorities.

A third member of the delegation, Cardinal Joachim Meisner, the archbishop of Cologne, was quoted by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung as likening the separation barrier in the West Bank to the Berlin Wall. "I never thought I would have to see something like this ever again in my life," said Meisner, who is from the former East Germany.

German-Jewish leaders said the bishops either had a shaky grasp of history or were trying to draw a comparison between the genocide of the Nazis and the policies of the current Israeli government.

Hanke said in a statement that he had not intended such a comparison. In his letter, Lehmann wrote, "It is inappropriate to connect contemporary problems or situations of injustice, in any way, with the National Socialists' mass murder of the Jews."

*QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

From what the article tells us, do you think that the Bishops intended to draw the comparision between the Warsaw Ghetto and the West Bank?