Bishop Says Jews Use Holocaust For Propaganda

Chloe Markowicz - Thursday 28th January 2010


Bishop Tadeusz Pieronek's comments have provoked outrage

A leading Catholic bishop provoked outrage this week ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day by accusing Jews of exploiting the Shoah.

Faith leaders were horrified by quotes attributed to senior Bishop Tadeusz Pieronek in which he allegedly claimed that Jews use the Holocaust as "a weapon of propaganda, to obtain benefits which are often unjustified".

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While acknowledging that the majority of people who died in Nazi concentration camps were Jewish, the Polish clergyman said other victims should also have memorial days. He was quoted as saying: "It is not right to expropriate that tragedy for propaganda. The Jews enjoy good press because they have powerful financial means behind them, enormous power and the unconditional backing of the United States, and this favours a certain arrogance that I find unbearable."
The bishop later told Polish television he had been misquoted by an Italian Catholic website and explicitly denied that he had called the Holocaust a "Jewish invention".

Reverend Dick Pruiksma, general secretary of the International Council of Christians and Jews, has asked the group's sister organisation in Poland to clarify the bishop's comments. Pruiksma said: "We request that they intervene to convert the bishop to more sensible and sound insights." He also branded the bishop's comments "an accusation against Jews, not a justification for the suffering of non-Jews".

The American Jewish Committee (AJC) has approached the Vatican, which has so far declined to comment, and the Cardinal of Krakow about Pieronek's remarks.
Jon Benjamin, chief executive of the Board of Deputies, said: "In denying that intolerance and historical revisionism exist, the Bishop is actually demonstrating, through his intolerant language, that it does. We naturally hope that his is a minority voice, but all people of good conscience should condemn these comments."

Abe Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League, said: "It is so sad that, 65 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, a Polish cleric still engages in anti-Semitic rhetoric because so much Jewish blood was shed on Polish soil."
This is the latest in a series of incidents to cause tension between the Jewish and Catholic communities, following British Bishop Richard Williamson's denial of the Holocaust and the Vatican's plan to beatify the wartime Pope Pius XII.
Reverend Dick Pruiksma acknowledged "there are so many problems that have put a strain on Jewish-Catholic relations" but added: "Relations between the religions will not be damaged by one bishop."

David Gifford, chief executive of the Council for Christians and Jews, said that the relationship between the Roman Catholic Church and the Jewish community was strained, but insisted there were still "good relations" between the two communities in Britain.

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