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Pope Francis spreads incense on the altar during an outdoor mass at Santakos Park, Kaunas, Lithuania, on Sunday, September 23, 2018. Francis pays tribute to the Lithuanians who have suffered and died during Soviet and Nazi occupations remembers the near-extermination of his centuries-old Jewish community during the Holocaust. (Andrew Medichini / Associated Press)
KAUNAS, Lithuania – Pope Francis on Sunday warned against any rebirth of the "pernicious" antisemitic attitudes that fueled the Holocaust, marking the annual memory of Lithuania's secular Jewish community that nearly disappeared 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. at the number 100,000. "Kaunas knows it. Lithuania as a whole can testify, still shuddering at the mention of Siberia or the ghettos of Vilnius and Kaunas, among others.
He denounced those who meddle in debating more virtuous people in the past and who fail to perform the tasks of the present – an apparent reference to historical revisionism that affects parts of Eastern Europe in the face of war crimes.
Francis recalled that Sunday marked the 75th anniversary of the final destruction of the ghetto in the capital Vilnius, 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.
The Pope warned against the temptation "who 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 lived these times and can sometimes be taken by such siren songs ".
In Europe, right-wing, xenophobic and neo-fascist political movements are making progress, including in Lithuania.
Francis noted that he would pray later in the day on a plaque in the ghetto himself and called for "dialogue and shared commitment for 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 on the premises of the institution.
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; Lutherans and Russian Orthodox have more followers in Latvia and Estonia, where Francis goes Monday and Tuesday.
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 some 90% of the 250,000 Jews of Lithuania in 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 with the Jews.
Until recently, the Vilnius Museum actually called the "Museum of Genocide", but its name has become the "Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights" because it focuses on Soviet atrocities and not those of the Nazi Germans.
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This story corrects the deadline in Kaunas.
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Liudas Dapkus contributed from Vilnius, Lithuania
Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, disseminated, rewritten or redistributed.
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