The Pope and I
Subtitle: how the lifelong friendship between a Polish Jew and John Paul II advanced Jewish-Christian relations
By: by Jurek Kluger with Gianfranco Di Simone ; translated by Matthew Sherry
Contributors: Di Simone, Gianfranco
Publisher: Orbis Books
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Maryknoll, N.Y
Language: eng
Number of pages: 251
ISBN-13: 9781570759703
Subjects: Popes; Friends and associates; Judaism; Jews; Biography; Catholic Church; Relations
Description: At first blush, a pope and a Holocaust survivor might not seem to have much in common. But this remarkable volume finds common ground in what may appear to be unlikely territory. Karol Lolek Wojtyla, a young Pole, and Jerzy Jurek Kluger, another young Pole, formed a friendship in grade school in the Polish town of Wadowice. Then their paths went separate waysKluger survived the horrors of the Holocaust while Wojtyla would become the future John Paul IIbut despite their differences and the years apart, they remained friends. (Kluger caught up with the then Archbishop Wojtyla in Rome during Vatican II.) Given the friendship, it is perhaps not terribly surprising that John Paul II earned a reputation as a friend of Judaism: the first pope since Saint Peter to visit and pray with Jews in the Great Synagogue of Rome, the first to visit Auschwitz, and the first to make a personal pilgrimage as well as an official state visit to Israel. This often touching memoir should be of interest to Catholics and Jews and, really, anyone interested in a remarkable friendship.
Table of contents: title: Childhood in Wadowice; title: Middle school years; title: Something is changing; title: The prisoners of Maryjskaja; title: Heaven on earth; title: From Oświęcim to Auschwitz; title: Good-bye, Wadowice; title: The book of memory; title: A slavic Pope; title: Two thousand years of hostility; title: Shtetl; title: Medinat Yiśraʹel; title: Lunch with the Pope; title: In the silence of Auschwitz; title: Years of tension; title: "They've shot the pope!"; title: War in the Middle East; title: A Kefia at the Vatican; title: Meeting Shamir; title: Convent of discord; title: The other side of the Tiber; title: Return to Wadowice; title: Israel exists; title: In front of the wall; title: The holy wars; title: Tanks roll into Bethlethem; title: All the bells of the world tolled.