| FORGIVE US FATHER, FOR WE HAVE SINNED Continued... Pg. 2 |
| Sister Pista's need for repentance goes back to her childhood in Koenigsberg, a German - populated area on the Baltic Sea annexed by the Soviet Union after the Second World War. Although her father never supported the Nazi party, her own resolve weakened when as a teenager during the war she began dreaming of becoming a doctor. "I was sixteen, and a Christian teacher told us, 'girls, apply for membership to Hitler's party or else you won't have a good career opportunity.' Even though I was already a believing Christian, who read the Bible every day, I remember walking down the City Hall steps after I applied to the party and saying 'This does not interfere with my faith'". When the war ended fifteen months later, she knew she was wrong. "Six million Jews perished because of thousands of Bible-believing Christians like me who have been deceived and went along with the flow," sister Pista would say later. In 1947, after escaping across the border into Western Germany she met Mother Basilea, who was about to start the sisterhood, and sister Pista since she had found her real place in the world. After a probationary period, she joined the sisterhood, where she has been for 54 years. Today she serves as one of the seven sisters administrating the order, in charge of representing them to the outside world. "As a Christian, I love and belong to the L-RD Jesus Christ," she says, "and this is the cross we are wearing" pointing to the sign embroidered on her tan-colored robe. But when she sees Israeli school children recoil when they see her wearing that sign, "it makes me aware, each minute when I travel in public transportation, of what we did in the name of the cross." It is for that purpose that sister Pista is here this week with her fellow Christians, to acknowledge publicly before G-D and the Jews those sins committed in the name of Jesus. "G-d will have mercy if we bow down before those we have tormented," she said. Asked to explain the history basis for anti-Semitism, sister Pista says it is "hatred against G-D. Our hubris, our wanting to have our own way." Perhaps, she says, it is also a jealousy that Jews are G-D's Chosen People. "Hitler said this bluntly, he reportedly was walking up the steps of a cathedral and said to one of his aids, 'there can only be one chosen people on earth, and that is us."' What bothers her is how even today perpetrators of the Holocaust cannot admit to their guilt. A recent T.V. series on German T.V. about the Holocaust interviewed former SS officers. One woman, a guard at Bergen-Belsen, was asked if she had any regrets, if she had done anything wrong in her life. 'Me? Anything wrong in my life? I just did what I was told.' This had such an impact on our community life, because we feel there is the cause in the Christian life of our deepest travail: If we are self-righteous, if we always have an excuse, if we always think, 'I can't help, the circumstance, and the other people, and the difficulties, please, 'but never to say, ' I am guilty.' And only if we admit this, if we thoroughly acknowledge it, will the L-rd throw our sins into the depths of the sea." The problem with this conference for many Jews will undoubtedly be the immediate sense of mistrust such a Christian gathering in genders. But that would squander an opportunity for fostering better relations between communities, others argue, especially with groups that are friendly to Israel. "I am rather optimistic in regards to Jewish - Christian relations, " says Nobel laureate and author Elie Wiesel. "I feel never before have relations been so good: never before have so many rabbis and priests met and learned together, discussed things together, never before has a pope come to Israel - and to Jerusalem, after all, the capital of Jewish history. "Never before have so many Christians in the world, Catholics and Protestants, spoken about forgiveness. So I think it is a good thing that they are doing it: 700 people who are coming to Jerusalem and speaking. Whether they are speaking on behalf of the entire movement I don't know, nor do they, maybe. I am sure there are extremists everywhere who will say 'they don't speak for us.' But it is good that they are doing it in Israel, and it is good to encourage them and to say we appreciate their solidarity." Rabbi Yehiel Eckstein, founder and president of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, agrees, saying that the group is declaring while the past cannot be changed, "they want to point to a future that reverses the past way in which the Church related to the Jewish people, and begin to bring healing to the relationship and a greater sense of trust on the part of the Jewish people, and not to cast with broad strokes all Christians of the past, and certainly not today. "These people, through their deeds express remorse and contrition for the Holocaust and the history of anti-Semitism done in the name of the Church. "Even as they do so, it's important for Israelis and the Jewish people to be opened to accept these people, and to extending our hands to them and meeting them half-way." Doctor Efraim Zuroff, head of the Israeli office of Simon Wiesenthal Center, takes a more cautious approach, saying a public pronouncement of an acknowledgement of guilt by Christians is important, but it's equally important to combine such declarations with active work in education to demonstrate feelings of remorse. "For them to come to Israel and acknowledge guilt both before and during the Holocaust is important. But even more important is teaching how the doctrine of the Church lead to terrible anti-Semitism and paved the way for the Holocaust," Zuroff says. "We need such acknowlegement accompanied by good works and educational activities in their communities. This is the key - the true test of the validlty of such pronoucements is what goes along with it." |