Priest hopes youth who visit Auschwitz will build the
future
(VATICAN RADIO) With Pope
Francis visiting Auschwitz on Friday, many World Youth Day pilgrims have also
been paying a visit to the Nazi concentration camp.
The Centre for Dialogue and
Prayer in Oświęcim was founded for all those who were touched by what
happened in the Nazi concentration and extermination camps located there.
Vatican Radio’s Lydia O’Kane
interviewed Fr. Manfred Deselaers, programme manager at the Centre for Dialogue
and Prayer in Oświęcim, to find out what he hopes visitors will gain from their
experience.
“The first experience is
always something like a shock,” Father explained
“This negative experience of
evil is very powerful, and my hope (and our task) is that this is not only a
negative experience, that we do not go home depressed,” he added.
Fr. Manfred hopes that guests
do not leave Auschwitz doubting the goodness of the human race, nor doubting
the goodness of God. Though after seeing such horrific marks left from the
World War II concentration camp, such feelings may be difficult to resist at
first.
However, Father urges that
the lives of those lost at the concentration camp in Auschwitz can teach us to
make a world where we respect one another’s dignity. He hopes that this is the
message the young people go home with, this is the testament of the victims
they remember.
Father described how one
survivor of Auschwitz, who met with some young German people, said to him:
"Manfred, isn’t it wonderful that today we can be friends?"
“And I hope that people leave
this place, especially the young, with this mission: that their task [is]
building the future,” Fr. Manfred emphasised.
Father told another story,
something that had happened to him that morning. A young girl from Syria asked
him what she could do for her country; that is, how could she build a
“civilization of love”, as St. Pope John Paul II called for, in a country
greatly afflicted with war and suffering.
Fr. Manfred replied:
“Like Maximilian Kolbe, he died; he was killed during the war. But he is [a]
saint because his love was not killed.
So our task is that we don’t
stop [loving], even if the environment is full of hate.”
In an increasingly violent
world, Fr. Manfred’s words have never been more relevant.
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