Memory Offended: The Auschwitz Convent Controversy [Hardcover]

Carol Rittner (Editor), John K. Roth (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 30, 1991 | ISBN-10: 0275936066 | ISBN-13: 978-0275936068

On August 1, 1984, a group of Polish Carmelite nuns, with the approval of both church and government authorities, but apparently without any dialogue with members of the Polish or international Jewish community, moved into a building at the site of Auschwitz I. This establishment of a Roman Catholic convent in what was once a storehouse for the poisonous Zyklon B used in the gas chambers of the Nazi extermination center has sparked intense controversy between Jews and Christians. Memory Offended is as definitive a survey of the Auschwitz convent controversy as could be hoped for. But even more important than its thorough chronological record of events pertinent to the dispute, is the book's use of this particular controversy as a departure for reflection on fundamental issues for Jews and Christians and their relationships with each other. Essays by fourteen distinguished international scholars who represent diverse viewpoints within their Jewish and Christian traditions identify, analyze, and comment on the long-range issues, questions, and implications at the heart of the controversy. A recent interview with the internationally renowned Holocaust authority and survivor, Elie Wiesel, makes an important contribution to the ongoing discussion. The volume merits careful reading by all who seek to learn the lessons this controversy can teach both Christians and Jews. In their introduction, editors Carol Rittner and John K. Roth define the meaning of the word covenant in both the Jewish and Christian religious traditions. They develop a compelling argument for the notion that the Christian concept of a "new" covenant between God and humanity, which supposedly superseded Judaism's "old" covenant, formed the basis for the centuries-old anti-Jewish contempt that led to Auschwitz--the Nazi death camp where 1.6 million human beings, mostly Jews, were exterminated. The editors contend that the existence of a convent at this site offended memory. The vital issue of what constitutes a fitting Auschwitz memorial is addressed throughout the volume's three major divisions in which important thinkers, including Robert McAfee Brown and Richard L. Rubenstein, among others, investigate "The History and Politics of Memory," "The Psychology of Memory," and "The Theology of Memory." Important tools for researchers are a chronology of events pertinent to the Auschwitz convent controversy, 1933-1990 and an appendix that contains many key documents relating to the controversy. Memory Offended will be an important resource in university and public libraries as well as in Holocaust courses, classes on Jewish Studies, twentieth-century history, and those that focus on interreligious issues.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“An important collection of essays by leading scholars engaged in Christian-Jewish dialogue that share, from their perspectives, the meaning of the controversy surrounding the building of a Carmelite convent at the site of the Auschwitz camp. The editors posed three questions to the contributors. First, how does the Auschwitz convent controversy and its seeming resolution reflect and affect the most important issues in Jewish-Christian relations? Second, in both the Jewish and Christian traditions, what obstacle(s) most need to be overcome and what strengths are needed to address the issues in ways that might improve those relationships? Third, are there lessons Jews and Christians can learn as a result of this controversy? The editors, in raising these questions, work on the thesis that the Christian claim of the "new" covenant superseding Judaism's "old" covenant helped make the Holocaust happen by inciting anti-Jewish contempt in which Nazism would later flourish. That flourishing implicates Christianity in a twisted road that led to Auschwitz, which, in turn, made the Carmelite convent problematic and controversial. The volume also includes an interesting interview with Elie Wiesel. The essay's should be read along with Wladyslaw T. Bartoszewski's The Convent at Auschwitz (1991). For graduate and undergraduate libraries.”–Choice

“This is a book of extraordinary power. The essays are written by eminent Christian, Jewish, and gentile scholars and thinkers....[A]nyone conversant with the Christian/Jewish dialogue knows that even twenty-five years ago such a book could not have been written or published. The dialogue has moved beyond civil conversation and mutual commiseration. Fundamental feelings are being expressed in the confidence that no offence will be taken, and basic convictions are being affirmed in trust that the other party will make an honest effort to understand and interpret fairly. The essays are excellent, the documentaries are indispensable to the student of a landmark event, and the editors are due a rousing vote of gratitude.”–Franklin H. Littell President, The Philadelphia Center on the Holocaust

“The Auschwitz convent controversy put postwar Christianity and Judaism and all their attempts at reconciliation to the test. This book sheds light on this conflict which is one of the most painful, indeed agonizing, public religious controversies of recent years. The book is marked by candor and integrity. The essays are consistently full of insights and self-revelation with very little special pleading. The key documents are included. This book deserves wide reading.”– Irving Greenberg, President The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership

About the Author

CAROL RITTNER, formerly Director of The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity in New York, is a Roman Catholic Sister of Mercy who has written extensively.

JOHN K. ROTH is Pitzer Professor of Philosophy at Claremont McKenna College, Claremont, California.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 312 pages
• Publisher: Praeger Publishers (June 30, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0275936066
• ISBN-13: 978-0275936068
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,691,454 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

John K. Roth is the Edward J. Sexton Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and the Founding Director of the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights (now the Center for Human Rights Leadership) at Claremont McKenna College, where he taught from 1966 through 2006. In 2007-2008, he served as the Robert and Carolyn Frederick Distinguished Visiting Professor of Ethics at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. In addition to service on the United States Holocaust Memorial Council and on the editorial board for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, he has published hundreds of articles and reviews and authored, co-authored, or edited more than forty books, including Genocide and Human Rights: A Philosophical Guide; Gray Zones: Ambiguity and Compromise in the Holocaust and Its Aftermath; and Ethics During and After the Holocaust: In the Shadow of Birkenau. With Peter Hayes, Roth is currently editing the Oxford Handbook of Holocaust Studies for the Oxford University Press. Roth has been Visiting Professor of Holocaust studies at the University of Haifa, Israel, and his Holocaust-related research appointments have included a 2001 Koerner Visiting Fellowship at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies in England as well as a 2004-05 appointment as the Ina Levine Invitational Scholar at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C. In 1988, Roth was named U.S. National Professor of the Year by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good Chronological Format, but Rather Simplistic Reasoning and Inaccurate Premises, February 7, 2008

By 

Jan Peczkis "Scholar and Thinker" (Chicago IL, USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Memory Offended: The Auschwitz Convent Controversy (Paperback)

The strongest part of this book is its listing of events (p. 17-on) and the full texts of important speeches, as by Cardinal Glemp (p. 207-on). We also read how Glemp made reference to Jews having access to the media (p. 224). He did NOT say that Jews control the media.

Unfortunately, the authors generally make no attempt to evaluate the arguments presented for their coherence or rationality. We repeatedly read that the convent raised concerns about the Holocaust becoming forgotten, Christianized, or Polonized. Considering the mountains of Judeocentric Holocaust materials throughout the media and libraries of the west, far exceeding those on all other genocides put together, how can this concern be anything other than irrational, or a smokescreen?

If the cross and the convent had been super-skyscraper size, one might appreciate the contention about them giving an unmistakably Christian "shadow" to the entire Auschwitz-Birkenau complex. But, since these structures cannot even be SEEN from Birkenau, by far the main Jewish-killing site, located 4 miles away, how can anyone take such contentions seriously?

There is an undercurrent of thinking which justifies Jewish opposition to the convent on the basis of the premise that Jews are more or less entitled to an everlasting grudge against Christianity because of such things as past persecutions of Jews. But, considering the fact that no religion has cornered the market on either tolerance or bigotry, isn't this grudge, and its manifestation, itself a form of bigotry?

Furthermore, this book has a heavy blame-Christianity-for-the-Holocaust theme. It has even been argued that the Holocaust couldn't have happened without Christianity, and that there was an inverse relationship between the piety of the local Christian population and the number of Jews saved (pp. 85-86). What ridiculous non sequiturs! Genocides have occurred in lands having minimal Christian influence. And remember Haman's genocide? Oops, you can't blame that on Christianity, which came centuries later. The secularized nations of NW Europe happened to have small, assimilated Jewish populations, which were relatively easy to hide or disguise as gentiles. Besides, the German occupations of those nations were far less intensive than those of Eastern Europe.

Completely lost on all of the authors in this volume is the fact that Nazism was a pan-German, racist ideology which developed, not when Christianity enjoyed considerable political power, but in this age of the modern secular state. And Hitler's decision to exterminate the Jews was based on his belief that "international Jewry" had "caused the war", and had nothing to do with traditional Christian teaching about Jews. Finally, unmentioned in this book is the fact that traditional Judaic teachings about Jesus Christ and Christianity were at least as ugly as the reverse.

We read that: Kolbe had been an anti-Semite (p. 20), the 4-million victim figure had been invented to hide the Jewishness of most of the victims (pp. 251-252), and Polish authorities failed to differentiate between Polish and Jewish victims (p. 7, 59). All the foregoing premises are false (see Peczkis Listmania on Auschwitz).

To maintain and justify Judeo-supremacy at Auschwitz and elsewhere, the "all Jews, but not all Poles, were slated for extermination" argument is repeated (e. g., p. 60). To begin with, it is disingenuous, as the Germans were not in a position to kill substantially more Poles than they did for various practical reasons (see the Peczkis Listmania: Forgotten Holocaust...). Not all accessible Jews were victims. Finland's (Germany's ally) Jews were never molested, and thousands of full-blooded German Jews were re-labeled Aryans and deliberately spared (the schutzjuden). Nor is it true that, whereas Poles could sometimes be released from Nazi captivity, Jews never could (p. 43). For instance, about 1,700 Jews were freed by the Kastner-Eichmann deal alone.

Robert Brown (p. 192) condemns Glemp for, in his words, endorsing the notion that Jews feel superior to other peoples. But consider the following: If any OTHER ethno-religious group went to a place of multi-religious deaths and started to dictate what can and cannot be displayed, it would, at very least, be soundly repudiated for its arrogance and chauvinism.