Sunday, September 23, 2018

Pope in Lithuania Honors Victims of Holocaust; Warns against Rebirth of Anti-Semitic Attitudes

Pope Francis warned today (September 23, 2018) against any rebirth of the "pernicious" anti-Semitic attitudes that fueled the Holocaust as he marked the annual remembrance for Lithuania's centuries-old Jewish community that was nearly wiped out during World War II, according to the Times of Israel website.

Francis began his second day in the Baltics in Lithuania's second largest city, Kaunas, where an estimated 3,000 Jews survived out of a community of 37,000 during the 1941-1944 Nazi occupation.

During Mass in Santakos Park, Francis honored both Jewish victims of the Nazis and the Lithuanians who were deported to Siberian gulags or were tortured, killed, and oppressed at home during five decades of Soviet occupation.

"Earlier generations still bear the scars of the period of the occupation, anguish at those who were deported, uncertainty about those who never returned, shame for those who were informers and traitors," Francis told the crowd, which was estimated by the local church to number 100,000 people.

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