Pope Francis says to extinguish "all smell" of rebellious anti-Semitism

Pope Francis warned against allowing the revival of "pernicious" antisemitic attitudes that fueled the Holocaust during a visit to Lithuania commemorating the country's Jewish community – a group nearly wiped out during the Second World War .

Francis began his second day in the Baltic countries in the second largest city of Lithuania, Kaunas, where about 3,000 Jews survived on a community of 37,000 during the Nazi occupation from 1941 to 1944.

During Holy Mass in Santakos Park under a brilliant autumn sun, Francis honored Jewish victims of Nazis and Lithuanians deported in Siberian or tortured Gulags, killed and oppressed at home during five decades of Soviet occupation.

"The previous generations still bear the scars of the period of occupation, the anguish of those who were deported, the uncertainty on those who never returned, the shame for those who were informants and traitors, "said Francis. numbering 100,000, according to the Associated Press. "Kaunas knows it, Lithuania as a whole can testify to it, shuddering at the mention of Siberia, or the ghettos of Vilnius and Kaunas, among others."

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Francis recalled that Sunday marked the 75th anniversary of the final destruction of the ghetto in the capital Vilnius, known for centuries as the "Northern Jerusalem" for its importance in Jewish thought and politics. Every year, the anniversary of 23 September is commemorated with readings of names of Jews killed by Nazis or Lithuanian partisans or deported to concentration camps.

The Pope has denounced those who meddle in debating more historically virtuous people and not addressing the problems of the present – seeming to refer to the historical revisionism that afflicts parts of Eastern Europe in the face of the crimes of the war.

He warned against the temptation "that can dwell in every human heart" to want to be superior or dominant to others. And he prayed for the gift of discernment "to detect in time any new seed of this pernicious attitude, any smell that might defile the hearts of generations who have not known those moments and who can sometimes be absorbed by such songs of Mermaid."

Francis noted that he would pray later in the day on a plaque in the ghetto himself and called for "dialogue and shared commitment to justice and peace".

Francis will also visit the former headquarters of the KGB in Vilnius, which is now a museum dedicated to Soviet atrocities, and will hear Archbishop Sigitas Tamkevicius, who was persecuted by the Soviet regime and detained in the premises of the 39; establishment.

Francis will travel to Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia to celebrate his centennial of independence and encourage faith in the Baltic countries, which have experienced five decades of Soviet-imposed religious repression and atheism sponsored by l & # 39; State. Lithuania is 80% Catholic.

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The Baltic states declared their independence in 1918 but were annexed to the Soviet Union in 1940 in a secret agreement with Nazi Germany. The Vatican and many Western countries have refused to recognize annexation. With the exception of the 1941-1944 Nazi occupation, the Baltic countries remained in the Soviet Union until its collapse in the early 1990s.

Francis' trip changed his schedule three weeks ago to allow him to recognize the massacre of 90% of the 250,000 Jews in Lithuania at the hands of Nazi occupiers and Lithuanian accomplices.

The question of Lithuania's complicity in Nazi war crimes is sensitive here. Jewish activists accuse some Lithuanians of engaging in historical revisionism by trying to equate the extermination of Jews with the deportations and executions of other Lithuanians during the Soviet occupation.

Many Lithuanians make no distinction between the Soviets who tortured and killed thousands of Lithuanians and the Nazis who did the same to millions of Jews.

Associated Press contributed to this report.