訪波蘭最後一天教宗憑弔奧許維茨:天主為何默不作聲?
2006.05.30  中國時報   楊明暐/綜合報導  報導連結
 
羅馬天主教教宗本篤十六世廿八日進行其訪問波蘭最後一天的行程:前往納粹時代惡名昭彰的奧許維茨集中營憑弔。他說,身為一個基督徒,一個來自德國的教宗,走訪這個地方特別令他感到艱難和痛苦。祈禱時,教宗以顫抖的聲音念道:「天主,您為何默不作聲?您怎能容忍這種事?」 

教宗抵達奧許維茨集中營後,在一些囚室和焚化爐前停下來祈禱。他說,在這裡他說不出話來,最終只能報以畏懼的沉默,而這沉默是對天主誠摰的哭喊。奧許維茨集中營是納粹用來進行種族屠殺的集中營之一,有超過一百萬人命喪於此,其中大部分是猶太人。

本名若瑟.拉辛格的教宗本篤十六世,一九二七年出生在德國巴伐利亞。他在青少年時代曾參加「希特勒青年團」,戰爭結束前夕被徵召入德國陸軍服役。

教宗曾對自己身為德國人,卻能在奧許維茨慘劇之後六十年獲選為全球天主教徒的領袖,這件事令他感到驚訝。而他這次親赴奧許維茨憑弔,更是別具象徵意義。

教宗走訪奧許維茨的影像畫面相當突出。他身穿白袍走過一道鐵門,上方書有:「勞動使人自由」(ARBEIT MACHT FREI);他親吻一名倖存猶太人的臉頰;幽暗的陣雨過後,陽光照耀。而更令人驚詫的是,在教宗祈禱完後,天際突然浮現了一道美麗絕倫的七彩彩虹,彷彿來自上界的回應。

不過教宗在奧許維茨逗留的兩小時裡,仍維持一貫的古板作風,他不用情緒的字眼,對自己的過去隻字不提,只強調「原諒及和解」,而未就德國人和天主教會在二次世界大戰期間所犯下的罪行請求寬恕。

教宗這次前往波蘭訪問四天,受到波蘭民眾熱忱歡迎。鑑於波蘭人對納粹當年在波蘭的所作所為仍有記憶,本篤十六世在訪問全程都講義大利語,且曾以波蘭語作簡單致詞或祈禱,只有在奧許維茨,他才以母語德語祈禱。

教宗講波蘭語時偶而會有錯漏字,但他努力使用這種難學的語言發聲,令波蘭人備感窩心。教宗周日參加一場露天彌撒,有近一百萬波蘭民眾參加。

六十三歲教徒戴默克說:「他(教宗)通過了他的波蘭語言測驗。顯然他很努力學我們的語言,不過我們了解他的意思,我相信他也了解我們。經過這次朝聖,我可以說,這位教宗現在已成為我的教宗。」
 
Auschwitz visit 'difficult and troubling' for pope Benedict XVI meets concentration camp survivors  link of this news
 
OSWIECIM, Poland (AP) -- German-born Pope Benedict XVI, visiting Auschwitz as "a son of the German people," on Sunday denounced the "unprecedented mass crimes" of the Holocaust, and underlined the reality of Hitler's campaign to wipe out Europe's Jews.
 
"To speak in this place of horror, in this place where unprecedented mass crimes were committed against God and man, is almost impossible -- and it is particularly difficult and troubling for a Christian, for a pope from Germany," he said.

"In a place like this, words fail; in the end, there can be only a dread silence," he said, "a silence which itself is a heartfelt cry to God: Why, Lord, did you remain silent?"

Benedict walked along the row of plaques at the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex's memorial, one in the language of each nationality whose members died there.

As he stopped to pray, a light rain stopped and a brilliant rainbow suddenly appeared over the camp.

During his remarks, Benedict said that just as his predecessor, John Paul II, had visited as a Pole in 1979, he came as "a son of the German people."

"The rulers of the Third Reich wanted to crush the entire Jewish people, to cancel it from the register of the peoples of the earth," he said, standing near the demolished crematoriums where the Nazis burned the bodies of their victims.

"By destroying Israel with the Shoah, they ultimately wanted to tear up the taproot of the Christian faith and to replace it with a faith of their own invention."

Shoah is the Hebrew term for the Holocaust, the killing of six million Jews by the forces of German dictator Adolf Hitler during World War II.

As many as 1.5 million people, most of them Jews, died at Auschwitz and Birkenau, neighboring camps built by the German occupiers near the Polish town of Oswiecim. Others who died there included Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, Roma, or Gypsies, and political opponents of the Nazis.

Benedict did not refer to collective guilt by the German people, but instead focused on the Nazi rulers. He said he was "a son of that people over which a ring of criminals rose to power by false promises of future greatness."

He also did not mention the controversy over the wartime role of Pope Pius XII, who some say did not do all in his power to prevent Jews from being deported to concentration camps. The Vatican rejects the accusation.

Typically, Benedict did not mention his own personal experiences during the war. Raised by his anti-Nazi father, Benedict was enrolled in the Hitler Youth as a teenager against his will and then was drafted into the German army in the last months of the war.

He wrote in his memoirs that he decided to desert in the war's last days in 1945 and returned to his home in Traunstein in Bavaria, risking summary execution if caught. In the book, he recounted his terror at being briefly stopped by two soldiers.

He was then held for several weeks as a prisoner of war by U.S. forces who occupied his hometown.




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