Auschwitz cross
This is also the name of an award given to Poles who survived internment in the Auschwitz death camp during WW II. [1]. Remainder of article is about cross erected near Auschwitz.
In 1988, the Carmelites erected the 26-foot tall cross from the 1979 mass near their site, just outside block 11 and barely visible from within the camp. This lead to protests by Jewish groups, who said that mostly Jews were killed at Auschwitz and demanded that religious symbols be kept away from the site. Some Catholics have pointed out that the people killed in Auschwitz I were mainly Polish Catholics. The Catholic Church told the Carmelites to move by 1989, but they stayed on until 1993, leaving the large cross behind. In 1998, after further calls to remove the cross, some 300 smaller crosses were erected by local activists near the large one, leading to further protests and heated exchanges. Following an agreement between the Polish Catholic Church and the Polish government, the smaller crosses were removed in 1999 but the large papal one remains.
The erection of some 300 crosses near the former Auschwitz concentration camp caused tensions in Catholic-Jewish relations. The Government's actions in removing the crosses in May 1999 were in accordance with the rule of law.
In March 1998, a controversy arose over the "Pope's Cross," located on the grounds of a former Carmelite convent in Oswiecim adjacent to the Auschwitz concentration camp museum. The cross originally adorned the altar at a Mass conducted by Pope John Paul II near Birkenau in 1979 and was erected at the site of the Carmelite mission in 1989. The Plenipotentiary for Relations with the Jewish Diaspora, Krzystof Sliwiniski, was quoted in a French newspaper as saying that the cross would be removed, because its presence was disrespectful of the Jewish legacy at Auschwitz. By the end of March 1998, a large group of government and nongovernment leaders, including then Chief of the Prime Minister's Cabinet Wieslaw Walendziak, 130 Sejm deputies, 16 senators, former President Lech Walesa, Cardinal Jozef Glemp, Bishop Tadeusz Rokoczy, and Gdansk Archbishop Tadeusz Goclowski, went on record as opposing the removal of the cross. The cross is clearly visible from the former camp's Block 11 and marks the site where Polish political prisoners (possibly including Catholic priests) and later Jewish prisoners were murdered by the Nazis. Two radical rightwing groups also emerged that oppose the plan to remove the cross. The leader of the Defenders of the Pope's Cross, Kazimierz Switon, and Mieczyslaw Janosz, leader of the Association of War Victims, which leased the land on which the cross stood, distributed inflammatory anti-Semitic leaflets opposing the removal of the cross.
In August 1998, radical nationalist anti-Semites erected dozens of additional crosses outside Auschwitz, despite the opposition of the country's bishops. Government efforts to resolve the situation in the fall of 1998 through the courts by revoking the lease on the land held by the Association of War Victims met with little success. The Government wanted the local courts to agree to appoint an administrator for the former convent site pending a legal decision on the validity of the lease revocation. In October 1998, the local court refused the request to appoint such an administrator, a decision upheld in December 1998 by an appeals court in Bielsko Biala, which returned the lease issue to the local court. At the end of 1998, complicated legal maneuverings continued, and two separate cases were before the local court--the Government's effort to break the lease and the tenants' effort to have the government action ruled illegal. In May 1999, the Parliament passed a Government-sponsored law to protect the sites of all the former camps in the country. The Government consulted with international Jewish groups in preparing the law, which gave the Government the power it needed to resolve the issue of the "new crosses."
In late May 1999, Switon announced that he had laid explosives under the site where the crosses were erected, and that he would detonate them if the Government attempted to remove him or the crosses. Police officers quickly arrested Switon for possessing explosives and making public threats. After Switon's arrest, local authorities removed the crosses to a nearby Franciscan monastery, under the supervision of the local Bishop, and sealed off the site to prevent the erection of additional crosses. The Pope's Cross is not to be removed from the site for the time being.
