Saturday, May 16, 1998

Challenge of church is to root out remaining anti-Semitism

By GERALD RENNER / Religion News Service

HARTFORD, Conn. -- As the scholars wound down their panel discussion at Trinity College in Hartford about the Vatican's recent statement on the Holocaust, one man in the audience could scarcely sit still.

He fidgeted, waved his arm to get the chairman's attention, and, when that didn't work, he jumped up and moved to a second-row seat.

That worked, and the man, Joseph Korzenik, identified himself as a survivor of Nazi concentration camps.

"I never thought I would live to see the day when a Polish newspaper headline would say, 'Jesus was a Jew,' " Korzenik said of a report on remarks made by Pope John Paul II. "The achievement of this pope was monumental." When he was growing up in Poland, he said, "the people were taught that we (Jews) were scum."

The challenge to the church now, he said, is to counter the anti-Semitism that still exists. "I get letters from students who say they still believe Jews killed Christ."

Korzenik, a Hartford businessman who speaks frequently to high school and college students about the Holocaust, was bringing home to an academic audience in a personal way that what is taught -- and not taught -- in churches has real-life consequences.

Academic people realize the stakes are high. It is why documents such as "We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah," released by the Vatican in mid-March, get such scrutiny in forums like the one in Hartford.

The Vatican document is the third in a series made pubic since 1965 being incorporated into church teachings and helping to reverse more than 1,900 years of Christian hostility toward Jews.

The forum at Trinity included two Catholic and two Jewish scholars and was convened by the college's Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life, headed by Mark Silk, a scholar and journalist.

A more ambitious forum to be held at Auschwitz Monday through Wednesdasy is being planned by Sacred Heart University's Center for Christian-Jewish Understanding in Fairfield, Conn.

With the endorsement of Pope John Paul II, the center is convening an international symposium of about 30 Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and Muslim scholars -- including four cardinals -- to discuss ways to counter religious violence.

The former Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz "is a symbol of the international cemetery which the world will be reduced to if we don't find some way to live in peace with one another," said Rabbi Joseph H. Ehrenkranz, an Orthodox rabbi from Stamford who directs the Sacred Heart center.

Ehrenkranz's goal is to expand the progress made in the betterment of Christian-Jewish relations on a wider global scale.