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Pope Francis Photo Reuters
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Pope Francis said today that he was ashamed of the massacre of more than 100,000 Slovak Jews and expressed regret that God’s name was often used “in the madness and hatred” of World War II, AFP reported.
The pope spoke in front of the Jewish community in Bratislava in a square where there was once a synagogue destroyed during communism, and once again condemned any form of anti-Semitism, BTA reports.
Three days before the arrival of the Holy Father, Bratislava made an official apology for the grim legacy of the era of President Josef Tiso, a Catholic priest and president of the Nazi satellite Slovakia in 1939-45, who agreed to send tens of thousands of Jews to German death camps.
God’s name was dishonored: more than a hundred thousand Slovak Jews were killed in madness and hatred during World War II. And then, when we wanted to erase the traces of the community, the synagogue was destroyed, said Pope Francis.
Here, in the face of the history of the Jewish people, marked by this tragic and indescribable insult, we must shamefully admit: how many times has the inexpressible name of God been used to commit indescribable inhuman acts. How many oppressors have said “God is with us” but they were not with God, the pope said, without naming Joseph Tiso.
After the creation in 1939 of the first Slovak Republic, a totalitarian satellite of Nazi Germany, several anti-Jewish laws became the basis for the deportation of tens of thousands of Slovak Jews. Less than 300 of them survived the war. Today, the Jewish community in Slovakia numbers only about 2,000.
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