Pope John Paul II's Speech at Israel's Holocaust Memorial

Pope John Paul II made a pilgrimage to Israel in March of 2000 to pay tribute to the six million Jews who were murdered during the Holocaust from 1938 to 1945.  At Yad Vashem, he laid a wreath and lit a flame in memory of the victims.  Pope John Paul II was a seminary student in Poland when the Hitler's Wehrmacht was invading country after country, rounding up Jews and throwing them in concentration camps.  Fifty survivors, including thirteen who were from the Pope's hometown of Wadowice, Poland, were present at the memorial ceremony.  Sadly, Pope John Paul II did not go so far as to apologize on behalf of Pope Pius XII (and the Vatican) who did not speak out against the Holocaust, even though he knew about the death camps.  Here is an excerpt from Pope John Paul II's speech:

"The words of the ancient Psalm, rise from our hearts:  "I have been like a broken vessel.  I hear the whispering of many -- terror on every side -- as they scheme together against me, as they plot to take my life.  But I trust in you, O Lord:  I say, you are my God. (Psalm 31:13-15)

In this place of memories, the mind and heart and soul feel an extreme need for silence.  Silence in which to remember.  Silence in which to try to make some sense of the memories which come flooding back.  Silence because there are no words strong enough to deplore the terrible tragedy of the Shoah.  

My own personal memories are of all that happened when the Nazis occupied Poland during the war.  I remember my Jewish friends, some of whom perished, while others survived.  I have come to Yad Vashem to pay homage to the millions of Jewish people who, stripped of everything, especially of human dignity, were murdered in the Holocaust.  More than half a century has passed, but the memories remain.  

Here, as at Auschwitz, and many other places in Europe, we are overcome by the echo of the heart rending laments of so many.  Men, women and children, cry out to the depths of the horror that they knew.  How can we fail to heed their cry?  No one can ignore or forget what happened.  No one can diminish its scale.  

We wish to remember.  But we wish to remember for a purpose, namely to ensure that never again will evil prevail, as it did for millions of victims of Naziism.  

How could man have such utter contempt for man?  Because he had reached the point of utter contempt for God.  Only a godless ideology could plan and carry out the extermination of a whole people.  

The world must heed the warning that comes to us from the victims of the Holocaust, and from the testimony of the survivors.  Here at Yad Vashem the memory lives on and burns itself into our souls.  It makes us cry out:  "I hear the whispering of many -- terror on every side -- but I trust in you, O Lord, I say:  You are my God."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yad_Vashem

Kristallnacht

"It did not take long before the first heavy grey stones came tumbling down and the children of the village amused themselves as they threw the stones into the many coloured windows.  When the first rays of a pale and cold November sun penetrated the heavy dark clouds, the little synagogue was but a heap of stone, broken glass and smashed up woodwork." (Eric Lucas, Kristallnacht)

Shattered shop windows courtesy https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005201.

Shards of broken glass lay in the streets.  Storefronts were shattered.  Synagogues were stripped. Schools were vandalized.  Homes were ransacked.  Cemetery headstones were toppled.  The date? November 9 & 10, 1938.  The place?  Nazi Germany and Austria.  The event?  Kristallnacht (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristallnacht).

Murdered German diplomat Ernst Vom Rath courtesy en.wikipedia.org.

It all started over the murder of a German diplomat in Paris by a Polish Jew whose parents had recently been deported from Germany.  Hitler gave the order to Gauleiters and Stormtroopers to riot in German and Austrian cities.  Dressed in civilian clothing, they wielded sledgehammers, destroying 7,500 businesses, hundreds of synagogues, 29 department stores, countless Jewish schools and homes.  Local police and fire departments were told not to interfere.

Damaged berlin synagogue courtesy en.wikipedia.org.

Thirty thousand Jewish men were arrested and jailed.  At least 100 Jews (and some mistakenly identified non-Jews) were murdered and dozens of others committed suicide.  German newspapers were ordered to downplay "The Night of Broken Glass".  However, as for the foreign correspondents, "no German Jewish event between 1933 and 1945 was so widely reported" as Kristallnacht.

en.wikipedia.org

Most of the arrested Jews, who were sent to Concentration Camps, were let go on the condition that they leave Germany and Austria.  The Nazi government fined the Jews one billion marks for the death of the German diplomat.  They used it as an excuse to seize Jewish property and insurance settlement money received after damaged incurred on November 9 and 10.  Many historians consider Kristallnacht to be the start of the Holocaust.

Shop owner cleaning up broken glass courtesy en.wikpedia.org.