2 More Crosses Erected at Auschwitz

Roman Catholic activists in Poland erected two more crosses at Auschwitz on Wednesday, just one day after the nation’s bishops called for the removal of a sea of crosses that began appearing at the former Nazi death camp earlier this year.

The bishops, meeting in the southwestern city of Czestochowa, said about 220 smaller crosses should be removed from the site while the largest cross should be permitted to stay. The large cross, which was used during a 1979 papal Mass at Birkenau, Auschwitz’s sister camp, was placed at its present site in 1988 and commemorates the 152 Poles killed by the Nazis at Auschwitz in 1941.

About 1.5 million people, 90% of them Jews, were killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau during World War II, and many consider the site the largest Jewish graveyard in the world.

Jewish groups, who are calling for the removal of all the crosses, say the Christian symbols prevent them from praying at the site. They say an international accord bans religious, ideological or political symbols at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Still, many Polish Catholics insist they have a right to commemorate their countrymen killed at Auschwitz by erecting the crosses. And Cardinal Jozef Glemp, Poland’s top Roman Catholic cleric, has expressed his disappointment with the tough stance of Jewish organizations and their failure to “find words of compromise.”