The Convent at Auschwitz

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

The opening of a Carmelite convent at Auschwitz in 1984 triggered worldwide protests; the controversy culminated in an attempt by U.S. Jews to enter the building by force in 1989 and the pope's subsequent agreement to relocate the convent and to erect a proposed educational/prayer center at a different site. Bartoszewski's balanced, thoughtful account sets the dispute in the historical context of Catholic-Jewish and Polish-Jewish relations. Secretary of Oxford University's Institute for Polish/Jewish Studies, he shows that a clash between two perceptions of the symbol lays at the core of the conflict. To Jews, Auschwitz is a universal symbol of the Holocaust, while Poles point out that the Nazi concentration camp's original function was to exterminate the Polish resistance. Bartoszewski is critical of Jews' ``tendency to downplay or ignore the fate of the Polish Gentiles'' in WW II, yet he blames the outbreak of the controversy on Poles' ``almost total lack of understanding of Jewish matters.'' (June)

Library Journal

Bartoszewski (history, Warwick Univ.) provides a detailed account of the controversial Carmelite convent that appeared suddenly at the very gates of Auschwitz in 1984. In an effort to present both the Jewish and the Polish sides of the conflict, he begins by tracing the turbulent history of the Jews on Polish soil from the 10th century to the present while concurrently explaining the role of Catholicism in Poland. Bartoszewski then details the itemized story of American-Jewish efforts to get the convent relocated, and the Polish-Catholic opposition to that effort. Both fruitful talks and angry confrontations are present. There are harmful words by Cardinal Glemp and Prime Minister Shamir. All the information is recorded in a scholarly, textbook-like fashion and should be studied by anyone who is interested in this historic encounter. If Bartoszewski's book is the textbook to the controversy over the Auschwitz convent, then Rittner and Roth's collection of essays is exegesis to that text. Contributors are Holocaust scholars and scholars in other appropriate fields, which provides a look at the memory of Auschwitz through the lens of several disciplines. Among the essayists for Part 1, ``The History and Politics of Memory,'' are Richard Rubenstein and John Pawlikowski; for Part 2, ``The Psychology of Memory,'' Leo Eitlinger and Hermann Langbein; and for Part 3, ``The Theology of Memory,'' Albert Friedlander and Robert McAfee Brown. There are many new ideas here, and much can be learned from this timely, scholarly, and exciting work.--Gerda Haas, Lewiston, Me.