English Section

US clergyman visits Auschwitz with former camp prisoner

17.07.2019 01:00
Chicago's Roman Catholic Cardinal Blase Cupich has toured the site of the former Nazi German concentration camp of Auschwitz in southern Poland.
Chicago Archbishop Blase Cupich. Photo: Goat_Girl [CC BY 2.0 (https:creativecommons.orglicensesby2.0)]
Chicago Archbishop Blase Cupich. Photo: Goat_Girl [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)]via Wikimedia Commons

He accompanied 90-year-old Fritzie Fritzshall, the president of the Holocaust Museum & Education Center in Skokie, Illinois.

Fritzshall was imprisoned in Auschwitz as a teenage girl. Her mother and two young brothers perished there, while her grandfather died on the way to Auschwitz.

Having walked through the gate to the camp with the German words “Arbeit Macht Frei” (Work Sets You Free), Fritzshall commented: "When I see it, the sign itself is a joke, because we know we all worked here and that didn't give us freedom."


Entrance to the former Auschwitz death camp with the infamous "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work sets you free) sign. Photo: CC BY-SA 2.5 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5) Entrance to the former Auschwitz death camp with the infamous "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work sets you free) sign. Photo: CC BY-SA 2.5 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5), via Wikimedia Common

She left Auschwitz on the notorious death march in mid-January 1945 when the Nazis marched some 56,000 prisoners out of the camp in temperatures reaching minus 20 degrees Celsius.

Asked why she kept returning to the place, Fritzshall said: "I want the world to remember and to know to never, ever, ever, ever forget about the Holocaust."

Cardinal Cupich said that “it is disturbing that people today can tell lies that shape public opinion, that dehumanise other people.”

He added that "Auschwitz and places like this began with lies, with words."

(mk/gs)

Source: Catholic Information Agency KAI, abc7chicago.com