It is as inappropriate as a Star of David or a synagogue would be near the largest Catholic cemetery. With the camps decaying, years from now, all that will remain at those sites will be Christian, largely Catholic symbols and houses of worship. People call then assume that the Holocaust, the systematic effort to murder all of Europe's Jews, was not an overwhelmingly Jewish tragedy, but rather a process of mass killing that focused, at least in Poland, on Catholics. The existence of Catholic churches at the death camps that were set up primarily to kill Jews may also lead people, both now and in future decades, to conclude that Vatican policy was to protect Jews during the Holocaust. The truth is, despite the heroism of many individual Catholics in Poland and elsewhere, not only did the Vatican largely fail to help Jews, but after the war, the Vatican was openly involved in helping Nazis escape to South America and elsewhere.
Holocaust revisionism is unacceptable.
Our disagreement has never been with the Catholic grassroots clergy or laity. It has been with the Vatican, the Polish Church and the Polish government, which have the power to ensure that the 1987 Geneva Agreement and the 1972 U.N. Convention be honored, and that Polish nationalist extremists responsible for this incitement at Auschwitz be strongly repudiated. Our children will learn more from taking a principled stand against Holocaust desecration than by continuing to visit a country that refuses to deal with the residue of its ugly past. The time has come for Israel to flex its economic and moral muscle to effect a resolution to this ongoing affront to Holocaust victims. N.Y. This column previously appeared in the Jerusalem Post.