[ad_1]
KAUNAS, Lithuania – Pope Francis on Sunday warned against historical revisionism and against any rebirth of anti-Semitism that fueled the Holocaust, marking the annual memory of the secular Jewish community in Lithuania that nearly disappeared during the Second World War World.
Francis began his second day in the Baltic countries in the second largest city of Lithuania, Kaunas, where about 3,000 Jews survived out of 37,000 during the Nazi occupation from 1941 to 1944. He eventually returned to the capital, Vilnius, to pay tribute to Lithuanians who were deported to Siberian gulags or were tortured, killed and oppressed at home for five decades of Soviet occupation.
Francis also paid tribute to the freedom fighters of the former KGB headquarters where anti-Soviet supporters were arrested and executed, solemnly visiting the now-transformed chambers into a haunting museum of occupation.
Francis also recalled that Sunday was the 75th anniversary of the destruction of the Vilnius ghetto, known for centuries as the "Jerusalem of the North" 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.
Francis prayed in the old ghetto and warned against the temptation "who can dwell in every human heart" to want to be superior or dominant to others.
Pope's remarks come in the wake of Vatican declaration reached a tentative agreement with China to end a decades-long power struggle over the right to appoint bishops in the country.
Francis travels to Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia to celebrate his centennial of independence and to foster religious faith in the Baltic countries, which have experienced five decades of religious repression imposed by the USSR and in the past. atheism sponsored by the state. Lithuania is 80% Catholic; Lutherans and Russian Orthodox have more followers in Latvia and Estonia, where Francis goes Monday and Tuesday.
Francis' trip changed his schedule three weeks ago to allow him to recognize the massacre of around 90 per cent of the 250,000 Jews in Lithuania at the hands of Nazi occupiers and Lithuanian accomplices.
The issue of Lithuania's complicity in Nazi war crimes is a sensitive topic. 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 with the Jews.
Until recently, the Vilnius KGB Museum called the "Museum of Genocide", but it changed its name to "Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights" because it focuses about Soviet atrocities, not about Nazi Germans.
