December 15, 2004

A Mural that Makes History

Source:

The Cathedral of Buenos Aires became in 1997 -through the initiative of the Raoul Wallenberg Foundation and the then Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Cardinal Antonio Quarracino-the first Catholic temple in the world to have a Mural that commemorates the victims of the Holocaust and those who were murdered in the attacks to the Embassy of Israel and the Jewish Community Center of Argentina (AMIA).

Recently, a replica of the Mural was inaugurated in the Vaterunser Protestant Church in Berlin in the course of a very moving ceremony.

Bishop Wolfang Huber, president of the Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland (EKD), the largest church in Germany; the German Secretary of State, Otto Schily; the president of the Berlin Jewish Community, Stephen Kramer; the Deputy Mayor of Berlin, Karin Schubert; the Catholic Bishop Wolfgang Weider; the Argentine Ambassador to Germany, Enrique Candiotti and the President of the Wallenberg Foundation, Baruj Tenembaum attended the ceremony.

The Mural contains pieces of religious books rescued from the extermination camps of Auschwitz and Treblinka and other relics like a partiture of the Kadish which belonged to the Synagogue of the Ghetto of Warsaw.

It also contains fragments of the Book of Samuel, rescued from the debris of the Embassy Of Israel and pieces of the Talmud found among the ruins of the AMIA.

Translation: María Lía Macchi