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By Robert Muller
BRATISLAVA (Reuters) – Pope Francis, in a memorial to the more than 100,000 Slovak Jews killed in the Holocaust, said Monday it was shameful how people who said they believed in God perpetrated or allowed “indescribable inhuman acts.”
In a grim ceremony at a site where a synagogue was demolished during the post-war communist era, apparently to make way for a bridge, the pope said the real reason was because “they wanted to cancel all traces of the (Jewish) community “.
“Here in this place, the Name of God was dishonored, as the worst form of blasphemy is to exploit it for our own purposes, refusing to respect and love others,” the pope told representatives of the Jewish communities of Slovakia.
“Here, reflecting on the history of the Jewish people marked by this tragic affront to the Most High, we shamefully admit the frequency with which their ineffable Name has been used for indescribable inhumanities!” Francis said.
The open space, which is next to a Catholic cathedral and other buildings that were saved, is now a monument to the dead. The Jewish community in Slovakia now has about 2,600 people.
“How many oppressors have declared‘ God is with us, ’but it was they who were not with God,” Francis said, before hearing the testimonies of a survivor who lost his parents to the Holocaust and a nun. who spoke of Catholics risking their lives to save Jews.
At the end of the ceremony, a singer sang in Hebrew while standing near the stones of the demolished temple.
Jozef Haľko, an assistant bishop in Bratislava, told local journalists that it was “paradoxical” for the Communists to decide to destroy the synagogue while allowing other buildings to be erected.
Last week, Slovakia marked the 80th anniversary of the Jewish Codex, a legal framework for the persecution of Jews. Slovak Prime Minister Eduard Heger apologized to the Jewish community on behalf of the country for the anniversary.
A Globsec think tank survey last year said 51% of respondents said Jews had too much power globally and controlled governments and other institutions.
During World War II, the Slovak state, a puppet regime established under the auspices of Nazi Germany in 1939 after the break-up of Czechoslovakia, had even promised to pay the Nazis for every Jew transported out of the country. .
The president of the war, the Catholic priest Jozef Tiso, is still revered by some groups in Slovakia, including members of a far-right party whose logo and other symbols are inspired by those then used by Tiso. He was sentenced to death and executed for war crimes in 1947.
(Report by Robert Muller; edited by Philip Pullella, William Maclean)