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KAUNAS, Lithuania (Reuters) – Pope Francis said on Sunday that the company needed to be vigilant about "any smell" of rebellious anti-Semitism, calling for teaching new generations the horrors of the Holocaust.
Pope Francis celebrates mass in Kaunas, Lithuania, on September 23, 2018. REUTERS / Ints Kalnins
He launched his appeal to Kaunas, the second largest city in Lithuania, on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the wartime liquidation of the ghetto in the capital Vilnius. Two years of Nazi repression, in which tens of thousands of Jews were killed or deported, culminated on 23 and 24 September 1943.
"The Jewish people suffered cruel insults and punishments," Francis told a crowd of about 100,000 people at an outdoor mass.
"Let us ask the Lord to give us the gift of discernment to detect in time any seed of this pernicious attitude, any smell that may defile the hearts of generations who have not known that time," he said.
Francis, who was due to visit a ghetto monument later on the second day of a four-day visit to the Baltic states, took advantage of the anniversary to launch a wider appeal beyond Lithuania.
Reports of anti-Semitic acts have increased in Europe, along with the rise of right-wing populist parties in several countries.
In May, Germany reported 1,504 antisemitic offenses in 2017, up from 1,468 in 2016. The previous month, thousands of German wearing cranial caps participated in national rallies to support the Jewish community.
France was shocked in March by the killing of a Holocaust survivor in an anti-Semitic attack, and the main Labor Party of the British opposition is involved in an anti-Semitic line.
More than 200,000 Lithuanian Jews were murdered by the Nazis, helped by some residents. The Jewish community in the country is approximately 3,000 people.
In the homily of the Mass, Francis referred to those who collaborated with the Nazis during the Second World War or with communist authorities between 1944 and 1991, when Lithuania was part of the Soviet Union.
"The previous generations still bear the scars of the period of occupation, the anguish of those who have been expelled, the uncertainty about those who have never returned, shame for those who were informants and traitors, "he said.
On Sunday afternoon, the Pope visited the Museum of Occupation and the Struggle for Freedom, a former Soviet KGB prison in Vilnius, where hundreds of people were murdered and thousands, many of them priests, sent to Siberia .
In Riga, Francis will pay tribute to the heroes of Latvian independence at the Monument to Freedom and preside over an ecumenical service at the Lutheran Cathedral of the city.
In Tallinn, Estonia, he will deliver Mass at Liberty Square, a place of military parades in Soviet times, where thousands of candles are burned each year to commemorate Soviet deportees.
Additional report by Michelle Martin in Berlin and Andrius Sytas in Vilnius; edited by John Stonestreet
