Cardinal Dziwisz in Yad Vashem

The visit to a place of Jewish worship became part of a pilgrimage’s program to the Holy Land. The pilgrimage was chaired by the Archbishop of Krakow, Stanislaw Dziwisz.

The Cardinal paid tribute to the memory of six million Jews exterminated during the Holocaust. He did so at the eternal flame which burns in the Mausoleum of Yad Vashem, and then he went into a tree planted by Jan Karski, the legendary emissary of the Polish Underground and the Polish Government in exile, in the Grove of the Righteous Among the Nations.

Last year Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz won the prestigious Jan Karski Eagle Award for having the courage to acknowledge the truth that anti-Semitism is a sin.

Cardinal was accompanied in the Yad Vashem by another winner of this award, Fr. Monsignor Grzegorz Pawlowski. He is very well known figure in Lublin and Zamosc. He was born into a Jewish family, as Hersh Griner and was rescued by Poles during the war, while all his family was murdered in Izbica.

Then Archbishop of Krakow met with aChairman of Yad Vashem, Avner Shalev, who informed the Cardinal about ongoing Institute activities such as cooperation with similar institutions in Poland. It was strongly emphasized that Poles are the largest group among the Righteous Among the Nations.

The visit to Yad Vashem had been arranged by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), whose leader Abraham Foxman, had been a guest of the Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz at the traditional New Year’s concert at the Krakow Philharmonic on the first days of January.