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Apology for massacre
Slaughter attributed to Poles, not Nazis
Poland’s bishops have offered a formal apology for the 1941 massacre of Jews in northeastern Poland.
A book published last year suggested that the murder of 1,600 Jews, which had previously been blamed on Nazis, was carried out in a pogrom by their Catholic neighbors. In a ceremony to be held on May 27 in Warsaw’s Jewish ghetto, the bishops were to apologize “for the sins or the evil done in this painful event concerning Polish-Jewish relations, which recently has been revealed as a murder of Jews in Jedwabne,” Father Adam Schulz, spokesman for the bishop’s conference, told the PAP news agency.
Father Schulz later told a news conference that the bishops would apologize “for all the evil done by Catholics during World War II,” as part of the Church’s continuing Jubilee efforts to examine her past actions. Last year, the bishops issued a letter apologizing for the tolerance of anti-Semitism by some Church leaders. “We will apologize to God and people who suffered from this evil,” Father Schulz said. He said the bishops’ prayers would be offered not only for the victims of the massacre in Jedwabne but also for all the “painful events of World War II, both on Jewish and Catholic sides.”
“We should also commend to God those people who were killed for helping Jews,” the spokesman added.