Holocaust Survivor Represents Israel at Pope John Paul’s Beatification
02 May 2011 – By Cindy Wooden
ROME (CNS) — In an unusual move, the Israeli
government sent an official delegate to the beatification of
Pope John Paul II, choosing a government official who
survived the Holocaust because he was entrusted to a
Catholic family.
Yossi Peled told reporters April 29, “Pope John
Paul II is not just another pope for us,” but was
responsible for establishing diplomatic relations with
Israel and for promoting better relations between
Catholics and Jews.
Mordechay Lewy, the Israeli ambassador to the
Vatican, said that because the beatification is a religious
ceremony and an internal matter of the Catholic Church,
he did not expect rabbis to lead Jewish religious
delegations at the Mass.
Peled, 70, told reporters that his parents, who
were Polish Jews, went to Belgium thinking they and their
family would be safe. Peled was born in Belgium and he
said that when he was 6 months old, his parents became
aware of the danger facing the Jews, so they entrusted
their infant son to a Catholic family.
“I grew up as a happy Christian boy,” he said.
His parents, aunts and uncles all were taken to
Auschwitz, he said, and only his mother survived.
Peled said he had not known he was Jewish until
his mother returned to claim him when he was 8 years old.
She had been part of Dr. Josef Mengele’s Block 10
medical experiment laboratory, Peled said. Because of her
physical condition, she could not take care of her son, so
she put him in a Jewish orphanage in Belgium. He and
300 other children moved together to Israel a year later.
Peled told reporters he had no idea whether his
Catholic foster family had him baptized, but “I used to go
to church every Sunday. And I knew that before I go to
bed, I have to cross myself. And I knew when I sat down
at the table, we have to cross the bread.”
“Suddenly, all of this was forbidden” once his
mother reclaimed him, he said. Learning he was Jewish
and being told he mustn’t pray as a Christian anymore was
difficult for a boy of 8 years, he said.
“Every day I was waiting for dark and sitting in
my bed, (so) I could pray to Jesus,” he said.
Peled said Pope John Paul grew up in Poland in
“the midst of an atmosphere of publicly sanctioned anti-
Semitism,” and yet managed to forge friendships with
Jews and establish a new relationship between the
Catholic Church and the Jewish people.
“His apology for the suffering of the Jewish
people was nothing short of heroic,” he said.
“Indeed, there is probably no man more fitting to
represent the true spirit of Christianity than Karol Jozef
Wojtyla,” Peled said.
Rabbi Jack Bemporad, director of the New Jersey-
based Center for Interreligious Understanding and a
professor at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas
Aquinas in Rome, told the Vatican newspaper that “the
Jewish people have the highest opinion of and the highest
respect for John Paul II.”
“He was the first pope to enter a synagogue and to
ask for forgiveness for past acts of anti-Judaism, using the
Hebrew word ‘teshuvah,’ which means not only asking for
pardon, but also the determination to move in a new
direction,” the rabbi said.
In addition to establishing diplomatic relations
with Israel, “everywhere he went in the world, he always
met with the local Jewish community to establish ties of
friendship and mutual understanding,” Rabbi Bemporad
said. “No pope before him had ever done so much.”
Tags: Israel Vatican Jews Pope John Paul II Jewish-Catholic relations