The Convent at Auschwitz

The opening of a Carmelite convent at Auschwitz in 1984 triggered worldwide protests; the controversy culminated in an attempt by U.S. Jews to enter the building by force in 1989 and the pope's subsequent agreement to relocate the convent and to erect a proposed educational/prayer center at a different site. Bartoszewski's balanced, thoughtful account sets the dispute in the historical context of Catholic-Jewish and Polish-Jewish relations. Secretary of Oxford University's Institute for Polish/Jewish Studies, he shows that a clash between two perceptions of the symbol lays at the core of the conflict. To Jews, Auschwitz is a universal symbol of the Holocaust, while Poles point out that the Nazi concentration camp's original function was to exterminate the Polish resistance. Bartoszewski is critical of Jews' ``tendency to downplay or ignore the fate of the Polish Gentiles'' in WW II, yet he blames the outbreak of the controversy on Poles' ``almost total lack of understanding of Jewish matters.'' (June)