Christians, Jews Look Together At Holocaust History
The Georgia Bulletin, February 14, 2008
ATLANTA—Two upcoming Jewish-Catholic educational events will examine the history of the Holocaust in an interfaith setting. The American Jewish Committee and Atlanta Archdiocese, along with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, will host a lunchtime seminar and an evening lecture with leading experts focused on Holocaust history and other contemporary interfaith issues.
The lunch event, a discussion entitled “Christians, Jews and Studying the Holocaust,” will be held Tuesday, Feb. 26, from 12:30-3 p.m., at the Catholic Center, located at 680 West Peachtree Street, Atlanta. A kosher lunch will be provided. Space is limited. Parking is available on Spring Street behind the Catholic Center.
The evening event, a panel discussion on “Remembering for Reconciliation: Healing Memories in the Christian-Jewish Dialogue,” will be held at Our Lady of Assumption Church, 1350 Hearst Drive, Atlanta, also on Tuesday, Feb. 26, at 7:30 p.m.
During World War II, some 1.5 million Ukrainian Jews were killed. The deaths are called a “Holocaust of bullets” as mobile gangs of Nazis and collaborators tried to exterminate the Jewish people by shooting them all. The remains were tossed into unmarked mass graves.
Father Patrick Desbois, a French priest, works to find those remains by talking to people, who as teenagers or young children witnessed the killings.
The program is a conversation between the Father Desbois, who has received many honors for his work, and Paul Shapiro, director of the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
The two experts have been meeting in communities throughout the United States to talk about this history.
Father Desbois is the president of Yahad–In Unum, which was co-founded by the Archbishop of Paris and the head of the World Jewish Congress to promote Jewish-Catholic dialogue, joint social relief programs, and common moral values throughout Europe. In addition to serving since 2003 as an adviser to the Vatican’s Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, he is also a member of the board of the French Judeo-Christian Friendship Society.
Shapiro is a member of the Congressionally mandated Interagency Working Group on Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records. He also serves on the Academic Advisory Committee of the Center for Jewish History in New York. Most recently he was instrumental in the Museum’s successful effort to open the archive of the International Tracing Service in Germany, the world’s largest and last major inaccessible collection of Holocaust-related records.
The events are being sponsored as a collaboration between the American Jewish Committee and Atlanta Archdiocese. Most recently they partnered for a community-wide immigration forum in November 2006.
To register for the lunchtime seminar, contact Ana Nagel at (404) 885-7458 or anagel@archatl.com. For more information on the evening event, call Our Lady of the Assumption Church at (404) 261-7181.
Dear Ana Nagel,
I’m interested in the “Christians, Jews and Studying the Holocaust,” lecture. Will the holocaust of Christians that took place in Russia prior to W.W. II at the hands of many Judaic persons be addressed? Will the Orthodox Judaic teachings of contempt against Christ and Christians which paved the road to this holocaust of Christians be addressed? Will the rabbis be pressured to revise their hateful teachings? If not, why?
Sincerely,
your name
The archbishop of Atlanta, Wilton D. Gregory’s contact info is:
Phone: 404-888-7804
Fax: 404-885-7282
Email: archbishop@archatl.com
Maurice Pinay 