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Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony
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| By israelinsider staff April 15, 2007 |
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After a three-day-long controversy, the Vatican ambassador to Israel has agreed to attend the official Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony at Israeli Holocaust museum Yad Vashem.
The controversy began on Thursday when Vatican Ambassador Archbishop Antonio Franco announced he would boycott the service due to a photo caption in the museum criticizing Pope Pius XII's apparent inaction against atrocities during WWII.
Yad Vashem released a statement Sunday expressing their contentment with the ambassador's decision.
"We believe that the Vatican's representative's decision to attend the ceremony at Yad Vashem and identify with the memory of the victims is the right thing to do," the statement said.
"Yad Vashem believes that it was inappropriate to link an issue of historical research with commemoration of the victims of the Holocaust."
Franco said that his planned boycott was an effort to bring attention to the issue, which he deemed offensive to Catholics, and his actions were "not against the memory of the Holocaust or the people of Israel," reported Ynetnews.
"We just want the truth about Pope Pius to be clearer," the ambassador said.
Calling ambassador's initial decision to boycott the service both "inappropriate and insulting," the Anti-Defamation League again reiterated its plea Friday that the Vatican open its WWII archives in an effort to shine light on the wartime actions of Pope Pius XII.
"While we understand Archbishop Franco's displeasure about the photo caption, his decision to boycott the entire Holocaust Memorial Day ceremonies is unnecessarily insulting and unbecoming," said ADL National Director and a Holocaust survivor Abraham H. Foxman.
"The photo caption may be inappropriate and too judgmental, but it does not justify the Vatican's refusal to participate in Israel 's national observation of Holocaust Memorial Day."
The caption next to the museum's photograph of Pope Pius notes his inaction during the Holocaust, saying "even when reports about the murder of Jews reached the Vatican, the pope did not protest."
The photograph of the Pope was put on display in the new portion of Yad Vashem when it opened in 2005. In 2006, the Vatican requested that the museum change the caption -- essentially a request for the museum to reinvent history.
Yad Vashem responded that they would happily research Pope Pius' actions during the Holocaust if the Vatican would be willing to open its World War II archives to the research staff for that purpose. However, the Vatican however did not open the archives.
"It is a complex issue, and we will continue to make sure that we are firmly rooted in the most updated historical truth. We would be pleased to examine any new documentation that may come to light on this issue." Said Yad Vashem chairman Avner Shalev Sunday in a letter to the ambassador.
The Vatican has struggled to defend Pope Pius, in power from 1939 until his death in 1958, and his controversial actions.
According to Israel's Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, no foreign emissary has ever deliberately not attended the memorial service. |
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