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Southeastern Vh-ginia Jewish News
Jew, sh-Arab group v,s,ts Auschwitz - coil for healing
By OH Sedan
KRAKOW, Poland, (JTA) - A
Hollywood director could not have
staged a more dramatic scene: In the
middle of a fgrest, on the ruins of a
former gas chamber at the heart of
the Birkenau death camp, an Israeli
rabbi from a West Bank settlement
stood and said Kaddish, surrounded
by a group of Arabs and Jews.
Birds sang along with the
mourning prayer but the group lis-
tened in total silence, noting that
Rabbi Avi Gisser had changed the
Kaddish's traditional ending.
Instead of the usual "He will
make peace upon us and upon all of
Israel;' Gisser said, "and upon all
the peoples of the world.'"
It was a gesture of gratitude to
the 120 Israeli Arabs who initiated
this unusual visit to the death camps,
an unprecedented act of Arab soli-
darity with the greatest tragedy of
the Jewish people.
When Gisser concluded the
prayer, no one said a word. People
stood in silence for two or three min-
utes, Jews and Arabs, some weep-
ing, some lost in thought.
One woman could not fight her
emotions and moved away from the
group, hugging the trunk of a tree for
support and bursting into tears.
Nearly 60 years after the Holo-
caust, the prayer in memory of the
1.5 million Jews murdered in this
camp, and the support of this unusu-
al group of Israeli Arabs, was just
too hard for the woman to take.
Gisser is the rabbi of Ofra, a Jew-
ish settlement in the eye of the Pales-
June 1, 2003
tinian .intifada. When he goes to that one"should learn the pain of the that an organized group of Arab pub- their owners, the glasses, the ashes.
Jerusalem, a 20-minute drive away,
he must reckon with the possibility
of a terrorist attack.
The Palestinians are his enemy,
and he is theirs. Yet he decided to go
on this visit to Auschwitz precisely
because Arabs -- Israeli Palestinians,
as many now call themselves -- ini-
tiated it.
"I am sensitive to Palestinian
pain regardless of the political dis-
pute with them" Gisser says. "I
came because they showed sensitiv-
ity to Jewish pain."
More than anything else, the
visit of some 450 Arabs and Jews to
Auschwitz and Birkenau was an act
of courage: It takes courage for an
Israeli Arab or a French Muslim to
identify with the Jews' plight when it
is so much easier these days simply
to hate.
And yet they came -- 120 Arabs
and 130 Jews from Israel. as well as
a delegation of 200 Jews and Mus-
lims from France.
The visit was the initiative of a
group of Israeli Arabs headed by
Archimandrite Emile Shoufani, pas-
tor of the Greek Catholic communi-
ty in Nazareth, one of the foremost
leaders of the Christian community
in Israel.
After the October 2000 riots
among Israeli Arabs, as relations
between Jews and Arabs in Israel
deteriorated, and after endless dis-
cussions with Jewish friends,
Shoufani declared: "I understand
that we did not understand."
In July 2002 Shoufani published
a book in France in which he noted
other side to stop the death circles."
Seven months later, Shoufani's
group called a press conference in
Jerusalem announcing its plan to
visit the death camps in order to bet-
ter understand the Jews' pain.
A group of some 150 Jewish
public figures was organized to
endorse the project, including Dan
Patir of the Abraham Foundation,
Eliezer Ya'ari of the New Israel
Fund and Yeshayahu Tadmor of
Jezreel Valley College. A similar
group was organized in France.
Shoufani stood on the podium at
the Temple synagogue in Krakow,
an hour's drive from Auschwitz, and
pledged: "We are here to be with the
Jewish people and its suffering, and
tell them, we are with you."
Shoufani was aware of the fire
his initiative had drawn from the
Arab community in Israel. In recem
weeks, key Arab figures had charged
that the initiative was serving Zion-
ist propaganda.
"The Zionist enterprise uses" the
Holocaust "to justify Israel's crimes
today," journalist Amir Makhoul
wrote.
In his address, however,
Shoufani took precisely the opposite
tack: He used the Holocaust to point
out that pain is pare is pain, whether
suffered by Palestinians, Jews or
people of any nationality.
"We come out of the pain of our
own i0pi6: Shbufani Said, but it
is out of this pain that we unite with
you in your pain."
It was a courageous act, the first
time since the October 2000 riots
lic figures openly raised the flag of
reconciliation with the Jews.
They all visited Birkenau and
Auschwitz, the twin death camps
where much of European Jewry was
killed in the Holocaust.
The fast stop was the Juden-
ramp, the place where the trains
came until May 1944, unloading
thousands of Jews to face the fatal
selection: Some 15 percent of them
would gain additional time working
in Auschwitz, but the majority
would take the long walk to the
nearby death camp of Birkenau.
Ida Grinspan from Paris is one
of the survivors. She stood at the
very ramp where she arrived 60
years ago as a 14-year-old girl on a
transport from France, separated by
force from her parents. She stood,
remembering quietly.
Next to her stood Majid Zer-
ouali," 23. a Muslim of Moroccan
origin now living in Toulouse. Zer-
ouali was one of a number of Mus-
lim boy scouts who decided to join
the visit.
"It is not just a Jewish tragedy, it
is a human tragedy," he said.
It was particularly important to
join ranks now, he added, with the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict continu-
ing and relations between Muslims
and Jews in France deteriorating.
The group then moved to the
death camps, walking from one gas
barrack to another d visiting the
crematoriums and the Auschwitz
Museum. There they saw the hair
shaven off women, the collection of
suitcases still carrying the names of
All that time they were saying '
that they could not believe what they
saw. Some Arabs could not proceed
Th6y stopped during the visit ano
stayed behind.
"At one point I said to myself,
'Why did I come here, why did I not
stay at home in Nazareth?' " said
Tawftk, a bank manager. "I ar
telling you, I read books, I n
movies, but until I came here
saw this, I did not have the faintest
idea of what the Shoah was like."
" e sallae
We leave here not th
people that came here," said Jail
abu-Tuameh, former mayor of Bal
al-Gharbiya. " .
Nazir Majali, one of the org
ers of the group, said they wer
aetermined to enlarge the circle d,
call on the rest of the Arab and M"
lim world to join this act of reconCil"
iation.
"We shall not be deterred by e
critics, said Majali, the former exlt-
tor of a communist newspaper. , .
The visit ended with a briet cer
emony at the Death Wall it1
Auschwitz. After reading thr
chapters from Psalms, an Arab ano-
Jewish woman laid wreaths and tlae
group sang a song written by H aa a
Szenes. The young Jewish P..
•.
"God" goes the song; qettt t
end for ever, the light, the song ,,ot [
the waves, and the prayer of naan.
1
50th A nnual Meeting
of the Jewish C om munity Cente
of South Hampton Roads
Tuesday June 10, 2003
5:30 -7:00 pm
7300 Newport Avenue
Norfolk, Virginia 23505
State of the Center- Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow
Honoring of Our Presidents
Elec=don of Trustees
Recognition of Staff Members
