Under the sign of interreligious dialogue, a new era was inaugurated by John Paul II according to the principles of the Second Vatican Council, an extraordinary landmark born from the inspiration of Pope John XXIII, Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli.

The theological expression of the Council related to the non-Christian religions was the declaration ”Nostra Aetate” (Our Era), proclaimed on October 28th, 1965, in coincidence with the anniversary of John XXIII’s election as Pope in 1958.

The revolutionary document inaugurated a new era in the relationship between the Catholic Church and the Jewish people after centuries of prejudices and persecutions. The origins, however, come from the humanitarian actions of Monsignor Roncalli during the Holocaust.

Bishop Radini Tedeschi, member of the Italian nobility and one of the most progressive Prelates of Italy at that time, passed away in 1914. His secretary, Angelo Roncalli, decided to write the biography of his mentor and sent it to Pope Benedictus XV, personal friend of Bishop Tedeschi. Once the WWI ended, the chief of the church called Roncalli and designed him Director of the Office for Attention to the Foreign missions. Later, Pope Pio XI named him Apostolic Visitor to Bulgaria in March 1925. After 10 years in Sofia, Roncalli was named Apostolic Delegate in Turkey. It was precisely in Istanbul, during WWII, where Roncalli lead one of the most memorable rescue missions remembered by history.

Ira Hirschman, delegate of the United States War Refugee Board, writes in his memoirs a conversation he had with Roncalli: ”He listened to me with attention while I described the desperate fight of the Jewish people of Hungary, the last Hebrew community of Europe threatened by the Final Solution. He pulled his chair up closer and quietly asked: ‘Do you think that the Jewish people would voluntarily undergo a baptism ceremony?’ I answered that, according to my impression, they would if that was enough to save them from the extermination camps. ‘I know what I am going to do’, he sentenced. He said he had reasons to believe that some of the certificates of baptism were already given by nuns to Hungarian Jews. The Nazis had recognized them as credentials and allowed the owners to flee the country”

This is how, from Istanbul, Roncalli coordinated with the apostolic nuncio in Budapest, Angelo Rotta, the massive distribution of baptismal certificates, with the understanding that, once the war ended, each person will be able to decide which religious condition he/she will maintain.

The Baptist Operation started with the blessing of the future ”Good Pope.”

According to the testimonies given in the Nüremberg trials, the initiative helped save 24,000 Jewish lives. However, Catholic sources confirm that 80,000 certificates were given.

Baruch Tenembaum
Raoul Wallenberg Foundation
Angelo Roncalli International Committee

Dear Editor,

”During the course of his long papacy, John Paul II turned out to be the worthy heir to another well remembered pontiff, John XXIII, as the driving force of revolutionary changes within the Church in its relation with the Jews.”

”Many are the different initiatives of Peter’s successor that allowed him to establish the conditions for the construction of a harmonic atmosphere to foster the reconciliation between Catholics and Jews. Among them we must mention the visit he paid to the Synagogue of Rome, his pilgrimage to the Holy Land and, especially, his asking for forgiveness on March 12th. 2002, in a declaration which, among other concepts, states: ”We are deeply sorry for the behavior of those who, along the course of history, had made your sons suffer and, on asking for your forgiveness, we commit ourselves to exercising fraternal and authentic relations with the Jewish people”.

”That spirit of understanding and respect for differences has been one of the most outstanding virtues of John Paul II during his twenty six years at the service of the Catholic Church.”

Father Horacio Moreno
Natalio Wengrower
José I. García Hamilton
Baruch Tenembaum
International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation

Translation: Nora Bellettieri

During the course of his long papacy, John Paul II turned out to be the worthy heir to pontiff John XXIII, as the driving force of revolutionary changes within the Church in its relation with the Jews. Many are the different initiatives of Peter’s successor that allowed him to establish the conditions for the construction of a harmonic atmosphere to foster the reconciliation between Catholics and Jews. The visit he paid to the Synagogue of Rome, his pilgrimage to the Holy Land and his asking for forgiveness on March 12th. 2002, in a declaration which states: ”We are deeply sorry for the behavior of those who, along the course of history, had made your sons suffer and, on asking for your forgiveness, we commit ourselves to exercising fraternal and authentic relations with the Jewish people”. That spirit of understanding and respect for differences has been one of the most outstanding virtues of John Paul II during his twenty six years at the service of the Catholic Church.

Father Horacio Moreno
Natalio Wengrower
José I. García Hamilton
Baruch Tenembaum
International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation

ROME, JAN. 18, 2005 (Zenit.org).- For Baruch Tenembaum, founder of the Raoul Wallenberg International Foundation, and one of the pioneers of the dialogue between Jews and Catholics, this was a historic day.

For the first time, a Pope, John Paul II, received in private audience a group of some 160 rabbis and Jewish leaders and their relatives, who were in Rome to thank him for his contribution to the reconciliation between the children of Abraham, and to the struggle against anti-Semitism.

The meeting commemorated the 40th anniversary this year of the Second Vatican Council’s declaration ”Nostra Aetate,” which marked a turn in Judeo-Christian dialogue.

Tenembaum was born in Argentina, in a settlement of Jewish immigrants who had fled the 1880 pogroms in Russia.

In a telephone statement to ZENIT, he expressed his emotion to see the great progress in Jewish-Catholic relations, which he has been promoting with exponents of the Catholic Church in Argentina since he was a student in that country’s Rabbinical Seminary in the 1950s.

”Today’s meeting is exciting, as it makes one see how that idea, launched more than 50 years ago, has been very successful,” he said.

”The one who multiplied geometrically those initial efforts was Angelo Roncalli, the ‘Good Pope,’” who as John XXIII convoked Vatican II, he explained.

”I think it is an important day,” Tenembaum said.

He also found it significant that the Vatican decided to loan manuscripts of the great Jewish philosopher and rabbi Maimonides, who died in 1204, so that they can be exhibited in Israel’s Museum this spring.

”It is an opportunity for many people in the world to discover his legacy,” Tenembaum stressed.

To reveal the spirit with which he has promoted dialogue with Christians, Tenembaum believes that the key is ”friendship and love of neighbor.”

”The neighbor is the ‘next one,’ whom we feel is close to us,” he said. ”We think that when we approach someone, we can dialogue with him and alter the knowledge, the information that we had before.

”When dialoguing we wish to observe the best of the other. We want to ratify what the Creator willed and the gifts that the Creator has given each one. The Creator made us different and it was not by accident. Harmony means different voices that integrate in one expression.”

Tenembaum is convinced that many prejudices can be overcome with information, and mutual knowledge. ”The greatest enemy we have is ignorance and our greatest friend, truth,” he said.

The Raoul Wallenberg Foundation is preparing to launch a news bulletin in various languages. Those interested may apply for a subscription at irwf@irwf.org.ar.

The ceremony took place hours after Cardinal Kasper inaugurated the Kindergarten classroom ”Angelo Roncalli” in the province of Buenos Aires.

The award, a reproduction in scale of the Mural that pays tribute to the victims of the Holocaust, as well as to the people murdered in the terrorist attacks against the Embassy of Israel and the AMIA Jewish community center, installed in April 1997, in the Buenos Aires’ Cathedral by the then Primate of Argentina, Cardinal Antonio Quarracino, was presented to Cardinal Kasper by Rabbi Simón Moguilevsky and Malkiel Tenembaum, members of the executive council of the IRWF.

During the ceremony, the Wallenberg Foundation and the Roncalli Committee, created by Baruj Tenembaum, announced the granting of a scholarship to the seminarist Dario Bialer, who will finish his rabbinical studies in Jerusalem. The scholarship, approved by a special commission headed by the vice-president of the IRWF, Natalio Wengrower, was presented to Bialer due to ”his spirit of solidarity and human values at the service of the Jewish-Catholic reconciliation.” It was presented by Mr. Ricardo Faerman, member of the IRWF.

The moving interreligious ceremony was presided by Mario Ringler, President of the Rabbinical Seminary, its Dean, Rabbi Abraham Skorka; Father Horacio Moreno, President of the IRWF and Cardinal Kasper.

Among the people who attended the meeting were Apostolic Nuncio, Monsignor Adriano Bernardini, Member of the Buenos Aires Parliament, Norberto Laporta, religious dignataries, diplomatic officials and NGO leaders.

After the words of welcome pronounced by Mario Ringler, Rabbi Skorka explained the sense of the Jewish ceremony of ”Abdalá”. An instance that marks the end of the Jewish sacred day and the beginning of the others days of the week.

Father Moreno, a catholic priest, remembered the significance of the Memorial Mural as well as the determination and courage of Cardinal Quarracino who placed it inside the main Catholic temple of Argentina, but also the commitment of Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio to the causes of interfaith dialogue and reconciliation.

Filmmakers Vivian Imar and Marcelo Trotta presented to Cardinal Kasper a special copy of the movie ”First Primate Pilgrim”, a documentary film that narrates Quarracino’s visit to the Holy Land as the first Argentine Primate that officialy visited Israel as such. Imar and Trotta are also the directors of the worldwide-awarded documentary ”Legacy”, a film that tells the story of the Jewish immigration to Argentina, produced by the Wallenberg Foundation.

Cardinal Kasper read a moving speech in which he stressed the imperious need of Catholics, Jews and Muslims alike to promote interreligious dialogue, one of the essential elements for promoting peace in the world.

Among the many letters of endorsement from all over the world it is worth mentioning those sent by the US Congressman, Tom Lantos; Israel Ambassador to the Vatican, Oded Ben-Hur; National Director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman; the Permanent Representative of Bulgaria to the UN, Stefan Tafriv; the Bishop of the Concepción del Río Cuarto, Monsignor Artemio Staffolani; Archbishop of Ranchi, India, Cardinal Telesphore Toppo; the President of the Pontifical Council of Legum Textibus, Cardinal Julián Herranz and the former President of Guyana, Janet Jagan.

An actual-size replica of the Mural will be installed this year at the ”Vaterunser” church in the city of Berlin. The event is organized by the Wallenberg Foundation and the Evangelical Church of Germany.

Thus I accept this award also in representation of all the others who work in the Catholic Church for this purpose, which, over the last 40 years has become one of the most important tasks of all Christian Churches and their commitment to peace in the world. Therefore I would like to express my highest appreciation and esteem for the work that your Committee is doing in order to overcome old prejudices, and to foster mutual understanding, reconciliation and co-operation between this two monotheistic abrahamic religions.

Indeed, both Judaism and Christianity have in Abraham their common root and their common father in faith. They share a common heritage in what we Christians call the Old Testament, in their monotheistic faith, the Ten Commandments, their messianic hope. The Jews are, as Pope John Paul II put it, our elder brothers in the faith of Abraham. The covenant that God established with his people was never broken; the Jews remain the beloved people of God. We Christians are grafted on this root, which bears and nourishes us. Jews and Christians belong together, since the promise was given to our common father Abraham; because in him all nations will be blessed, Jews and Christians together have a common responsibility for schalom, for peace in the world.

It is one of the deepest and most tremendous dramas in the whole history of mankind that Jews and Christians fell apart, became estranged, developed mutual prejudices so that a language of contempt emerged and they often became enemies. Such anti-Judaism cuts off the Church from its own roots, which nourished her, thus weakening her inner life. Besides, anti-Judaism paved the way to anti-Semitism, which was a stupid and primitive modern not a Christian but a pagan race theory and which finally led to the abominable atrocities of the Holocaust. The Holocaust, or as Jews prefer: the Shoah, not only destroyed individual lives of so many people but still today has also repercussions on the political situation and conflicts in the Middle East, and so on one of the most urgent challenges of today, the relations between Christians and Muslims.

I have mentioned very briefly our present situation only to point out the importance and even the urgency of our Christian-Jewish relations for the Churches themselves and for the peace in the world as well. I am firmly convinced that we can heal one of the worst and deepest wounds of our time only if we go back to its deepest roots and to the very core of the problem: the reconciliation between Judaism and Christianity, which should more and more become the nucleus of a ”trialogue” between Jews, Christians and Muslims.

Reconciliation between Jews and Christians does not mean unification. The definitive solution for the relations between Jews and Christians will only be an eschatological one. Within history Jews and Christians are and will remain different. However, this insight cannot be a pretext for inactivity or resignation. On the contrary, Biblical hope is to be understood as an impulse for active hope. It does not hold us back but encourages us to overcome all forms of old and new anti-Semitism, which unfortunately crop up again. It impels us to recognise our common heritage and to take over our common responsibility. Christians and Jews, even if different, can and must be partners respecting each other’s identity and even so collaborating for the good of all mankind. Together they can and should bear practical witness to their common values: dignity of the human person, sanctity of life, social justice, family values, and –last but not least: hope. All of these are values and attitudes often missing in our modern world but absolutely essential for our survival and the survival of our Judeo-Christian Western culture.

In this context it is not possible to develop a whole theological theory and a whole practical program of Jewish Christian relations. More then programs, which could remain paper and abstract theory, we need living examples, concrete persons witnessing what they feel and think. Your Committee has such a patron, highly esteemed and praised by many Catholics and non-Catholics, by Christians and non-Christians alike: Angelo Roncalli, better known as Pope John XXIII.

Angelo Roncalli was not a man of great theories. He was a Christian, a true Christian who became Pope. He was a saint. He always said and did – mostly in a very simple, but not naïve way – what a Christian should say and do according to the Gospel and inspired by the Spirit. He saved the lives of many Jews, and called Jews his brothers. He cancelled ambiguous and offensive formulations in the liturgy of Good Friday and – on suggestions made to him by Jules Isaak – he decided to initiate what later became the Council’s famous Declaration ”Nostra aetate”, of which we will celebrate the 40th anniversary next year.

”Nostra aetate” is the watershed in the relations between Jews and Christians, a revolution in the original and best sense of the word, a new begin after the dark ages of lack of mutual understanding. We are still at the beginning of this new begin. Some fundamental theological problems remain still unsolved. From a practical point of view, much has been done but much more can and must still be done. As usual in life, setbacks occur and sometimes old prejudices on both sides return. The sad and bloody conflicts in the Middle East – in the Holy Land, in Jerusalem, the city of peace! – are further burdens for our dialogue; it is not always easy to take a balanced position doing justice to the legitimate concerns of both sides.

Nevertheless, the developments of the last 40 years can been considered almost as a miracle from an historical perspective. Relations and visits at the highest institutional level –inconceivable 40 years ago- take place today; today there is a scholarly co-operation between rabbinical and Christian theologians and institutes; a great deal of symposiums, conferences, meetings and institutions like yours and our modest Pontifical Commission for religious relations with the Jews are organised; there are mighty signs and symbols as the memorial of the Holocaust in the cathedral of Buenos Aires; and –most important of all– friendships are developing, which represent the basis and core of any human relations and communities. Angelo Roncalli is the exemplary realisation of such hearty relations. He is the very patron of Jewish-Christian relations and friendship, and –in this- Pope John Paul II is his true successor, who gave many further impulses to the dialogue between Jews and Christians.

Ladies and Gentlemen, let me come to a conclusion on an issue which has not yet found a conclusion. I thank you for the honour of this award; I thank you for your commitment -in the footsteps of Angelo Roncalli- to this task, which is essential for the Jewish-Christian reconciliation and for the peace in the world. Indeed you are working for the peace in the world in a special and decisive way.

The Letter to the Ephesians in the New Testament explains something very important for the Jewish-Christian dialogue. It affirms that the dividing wall between Christians and Jews, between Church and Synagogue has broken down. It says that Christ has come and made peace. This peace is the goal we are attempting to achieve. The peace process between Jews and Christians is irreversible, it goes on, even if so little is said about it at the moment because of the conflict in the Middle East and even if much more needs to be done. ”Schalomisation” we could call it. The Letter to the Ephesians tells us that this is not an illusion or an utopia: this is authentic hope. Let’s go on. Schalom!

JERUSALEM, JULY 8, 2004 (Zenit.org).- As the 18th international meeting of the Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee was closing in Argentina, ZENIT interviewed Baruch Tenembaum, an Argentine-born Jew who established the Raoul Wallenberg Foundation and the Angelo Roncalli Committee.

The Wallenberg Foundation was named after the Swedish diplomat who helped save tens of thousands of Jews from the Nazis during World War II.

The Angelo Roncalli Committee recognizes the work of diplomats who risked their lives to save Jews persecuted by Nazism.

At the time of the interview, Tenembaum was traveling in Israel.

Q: Mr. Tenembaum, your visit to Israel is full of initiatives.

Tenembaum: So it is. We are working intensely to continue with the organization of the commemorative events of the 40th anniversary of the declaration ”Nostra Aetate,” the 42nd anniversary of our interreligious dialogue movements and, also, the 70th anniversary of the death of the greatest poet of the Hebrew language, Najman Bialik, whom I had the opportunity and privilege to translate during my years of study as a seminarian, as well as other greats of Jewish poetry like Uri Zvi Grinberg.

Not only must we remember those who saved bodies but also those who every day redeem our souls.

Q: In an unusual gesture, Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, will reserve, in his tight schedule in Argentina, time this Saturday for the Wallenberg Foundation. Why?

Tenembaum: On Saturday, July 10, in the morning, the ”Monsignor Angelo Roncalli” kindergarten room will be inaugurated. The event will be presided over by Cardinal Walter Kasper.

It will take place in the Raoul Wallenberg Community Center, headquarters of the Unemployed Workers Movement of La Matanza, in an extremely poor slum of Buenos Aires province.

School materials and clothing will be donated. In the Educational Complex, named after Raoul Wallenberg since May 14, 2004, there is a kindergarten and productive undertakings such as a bakery, a silkscreen printing workshop, a publishing house, a sewing workshop, and a trade school.

On Saturday the 10th in the afternoon, after the Shabat, the Raoul Wallenberg International Foundation and the Angelo Roncalli Committee will confer on Cardinal Kasper the Memorial Mural Award for a lifetime’s dedication to causes of understanding and reconciliation between Jews and Catholics.

The presentation will take place at the headquarters of the Latin American Rabbinical Seminary. Undoubtedly, an unbeatable interfaith framework.

The award is a replica to scale of the mural that remembers the victims of the Holocaust, and those killed in the attacks against the Embassy of Israel …, installed in Buenos Aires Cathedral in April 1997 by the then primate of Argentina, Cardinal Antonio Quarracino.

A replica in the Mural’s original size will be installed this year in the ”Vaterunser” church of the city of Berlin. The event is being organized by the Wallenberg Foundation and the German Evangelical Church.

On the occasion, the Wallenberg Foundation will announce the granting of the Angelo Roncalli scholarship to a Jewish seminarian for his academic dedication, spirit of solidarity, and human values placed at the service of Jewish-Catholic reconciliation. Another interfaith gesture of which we are proud.

Q: How are the programs related to the Wallenberg Foundation dedicated to paying homage to the saviors of humanity and those promoting interconfessional dialogue?

Tenembaum: Both have as their common denominator the famous phrase: ”And thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” It was no accident that the dictum was the inspiration of Hillel and later of Jesus.

The saviors are the light, the personification of the concept of the Messiah, understood as the opportunity that each one of us has to do good, to do something for our neighbor.

Hope is the concept that unites both Jews and Catholics. Love, solidarity and courage placed at the service of one’s neighbor are like the water that runs down from the mountain to fertilize the sowing and allow it to prosper.

This allegory alludes to the need for us all to come down to the plain, to the level of the common people, and not stay on the heights, with those who see the world from on high.

There is also a very cynical interpretation of ”thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,” which claims to understand the dictum as loving the neighbor so long as he is like yourself. An interpretation that can only be accepted provided that the being of ”yourself” refers to the human race.

It is no accident that this movement was born in the Argentina republic, a country where there were no ethnic struggles as in other latitudes of the planet.

We celebrate the fact that, 42 years after starting this endeavor, led among others by Monsignor Ernesto Segura, auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires; Rabbi Guillermo Schlesinger; and Jorge Luis Borges, today other organizations of diverse confessions raise these flags.

Q: Among the saviors there are notable figures such as Raoul Wallenberg and many others who even risked their lives to save those of different cultural and confessional origins who were persecuted.

Tenembaum: So it is. There are no better examples to serve as guides of action than those given by these persons.

As you well point out, outstanding among the thousands of heroes is Monsignor Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, later Pope John XXIII, and another Italian, Giovanni Palatucci, the police chief of Fiume during the Second World War, who will soon be beatified by the Supreme Pontiff.

They are, in all truth, the other face of indifference, a very dangerous attitude that is functional to the realization of evil.

It is much more comfortable, but also extremely risky to practice indifference and to abstain from assuming a commitment. On this topic, important thinkers have written some memorable aphorisms.

Edmund Burke wrote: ”All that is necessary for evil to prosper is that the good man do nothing.” Einstein said: ”The world is a dangerous place. Not because of those who do evil, but because of those who do nothing to avoid it.”

And, among others, George Bernard Shaw pointed out: ”Indifference is the essence of humanity.”

Let us recall what pastor Martin Niemoller said, later popularized by Bertolt Brecht: ”First they came for the Communists, but as I was not a Communist, I did not raise my voice. Then they came for the Socialists and the trade unionists, but as I was neither, I didn’t raise my voice. Then they came for the Jews, and as I am not a Jew, I did not raise my voice. And when they came for me, there was no longer anyone left to raise his voice to defend me.”

Q: We must not forget Aristides de Sousa Mendes, that notable Christian who avoided the extermination of thousands of persecuted people by issuing visas in his capacity as consul of Portugal in Bordeaux, in the south of France, in 1940.

Tenembaum: Precisely, Sousa Mendes was remembered by our Foundation last June 17 with the organization of more than 80 tributes in 30 countries.

Sousa Mendes was a pioneer and is the paradigm of the one who sacrifices everything to be on the side of the weakest. He defied the Portuguese dictatorship which ordered him to do nothing, and because of this died in the most terrible poverty, condemned and sick.

But in the last decades strong approaching signals were shown by the Catholicism, which not without clearing their own obstacles, enlightened a phase of increasing fraternity and intensive dialogue. Everyone agrees that the most important arquitech of this turning point was John XXIII, who in 1959 – a year after having taken on his papacy- did away with the controversial reference of ”the treacherous and unfaithful Jews”, in the traditional prayer of the Good Friday liturgy. Today we know that John XXIII – while being Papal Nuncio in Turkey – saved thousands of Jews from the Concentration Camps by handing them Baptism Certificates.

The following step taken by the Good Pope was to summon for the Second Vatican Council, which updated the Church and opened the doors of the dialogue with the other Christian and non Christian religions wide and especially with the Judaism. Nostra Aetate was the Council Document which put an end to the ignonimious interpretation which lays the responsibility on the Jews for Jesus Christ’s death: ” Whatever has been done in His Passion, can neither be indiscriminately imputed to all the Jews that lived in those days nor to those who live nowadays (.) . Jews cannot be pointed out as if they were either condemned or cursed by God according to the Holy Scriptures.”

Paul VI made progress in this process when, in his trip to the Holy Land in 1964, he said that the patriarchs were “our Fathers in the Faith”. But it was John Paul II who sealed the reconciliation with a succession of historical signals: he was the first Pope who visited a synagogue ( the one in Rome, in 1986), on this occasion he spoke of the Jews as “our elder brothers in the Faith”. And he was also the first Pope who visited a concentration camp ( Auschwitz, in 1979). During his papacy , the Vatican published the text ” A Reflection on the Shoa” (1998), where he pondered whether ” some Christians prejudices against the Jews did not encourage the Nazi persecution”.

It was also during his papacy that the Holy See established diplomatic relations with Israel (1993). On the occasion of the Jubilee of 2000, John Paul II requested the Jews to forgive the ” hostility and bad faith of many Christians against the Hebrews which lasted for centuries, something which represents a painful action”, He also asked about the relationship between the prejudices against the Jews and the Nazi persecution. Shortly afterwards, on his trip to Holy Land, he requested the Jews for their forgiveness while standing in front of the Wailing Wall, where he invoked the victims of the Holocaust and he said that the Church ” is deeply sorry ” for some Christians’ anti- Semitism.

In Argentina

Argentina – home of one of the largest Jewish communities in the world – joined in in this process. Just like it happened all over the world, the first steps were not easy. To the prejudices against the Jews in certain sectors, a vernacular nationalism was added . But the process could not be stopped. In the fifties and in the sixties personalities such as Monsignor Gustavo Francheschi, Jorge Mejía, who is Cardinal nowadays, Guillermo
Schlesinger, who was the Great Rabbi of the Israelite Congregation in the Argentine Republic in those days, and Father Carlos Cucchetti largely contributed to this process. But there were personal rather than institutional contacts.

In the mid sixties there appeared Baruj Tenembaum, a young lay Jew, expert on Bible studies, who – being only 33 years old – launched the Argentine House in Israel Holy Land, which fostered the inter- religious fraternity. The incipient institution would play an important role in the approach. Monsignor Ernesto Segura – Assistant Bishop of Buenos Aires and General Secretary of the Episcopate – became to be its first president, encouraging the dialogue with the Jews. Cardinal Antonio Caggiano, who was the Archbishop of Buenos Aires in those days , was the first Primacy who visited a synagogue and the first member of this institution.

As time went by, the Argentine House financed the trip of dozens of priests to Holy Land and organized innumerable events to encourage the Jewish – Catholic fraternity. Much closer to our times, in 1993, it encouraged and succeded in making Cardinal Antonio Quarrachino to become the first Primacy who visited the old headquarters of the AMIA. It happened as a consequence of the visit to the country of Faruk Zoabi, the Kadi of Jerusalem – the most important Islamic authority in Israel – who had been invited by the Argentine House. The photograph of both , Schlomó Ben Hamú, the Great Rabbi of Buenos Aires, holding hands, which stands there, is another strong signal of the process.

But the most important milestone achieved by the Argentine House was the installation of a mural in the Metropolitan Cathedral in 1993 which reminds us of the victims of the Holocaust, a decision taken by Monsignor Quarrachino (see ” A unique mural..”).The agreement of Monsignor Quarrachino -who had asked to be burried by the mural – contributed to strengthen this dialogue.

The list of important personalities and entities contributing to this aproach is longer. For example, the Congregation of the Sisters of Sión, with Nun Alda; the Rabbi León Klenicki; the Latin-American Rabbinical Seminar and Rabbi Marshal Mayer, its founder, Monsignor Justo Laguna and the members of the Religious Freedom Council, presided by Ángel Centeno y Norberto Padilla.

All of them made this country an example of cohabitation

*Translation: Nora Bellettieri.

During the course of this event, the Embassy accepted as an historical testimony a sculpture created by the Argentine artist, Norma D’Ippolito, dedicated to Raoul Wallenberg. Dr. Natalio Wengrower, Vice-President of the NGO presented the sculpture to the Ambassador.

The German Ambassador declared, ”the new generations are obliged to acknowledge the horrors brought about by Nazism”. With visible emotion he added, ”I am aware that it must be very difficult for some people present to be here on German territory”. He ended his speech by toasting for the Jewish New Year, and said ”Shana Tova” (Happy New Year) on the ocassion of the Rosh Hashana 5761, which began on the evening of September 29.

Similarly, historian José Ignacio García Hamilton and Professor Carlos Escudé also delivered speeches to mark the occasion.

During the meeting, Senator Adolfo Gass was distinguished by the IRWF for his impressive diplomatic trajectory. Father Horacio Moreno and Peter Landelius, the Swedish Ambassador to Argentina, presented Gass a painting titled ”Basilica of the Annunciation-Nazareth”, a piece of art exclusively created by Argentine painter Raúl Soldi in 1967 for the interfaith organization.

The IRWF was the first NGO that acknowledged the gesture by the German President, Johannes Rau, when on February 16, 2000 he asked for forgiveness before the Israeli Parliament for the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler.

The educational program ”Diplomacy and the Holocaust”, whose latest presentations were held at the Diplomacy School of the Argentine Foreign Office and at the Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See to the United Nations in New York, continues to educate people about the diplomatic figures who went so far as to give up their lives thereby conveying through their deeds the message that there should be no norms nor bureaucratic rules set above the ethical and moral convictions of an individual.