The 81-year-old Holocaust survivor, Lidia Maksymowicz, had been introduced to the pope by a Polish priest accompanying her on the visit to the Vatican.
Thursday’s edition of the Vatican daily L’Osservatore Romano has a large front-page photo of Pope Francis kissing the number 70072 tattooed on the woman’s left arm.
According to the daily, the pope was deeply moved by the woman’s story.
In an article headlined “Numero 70072,” L’Osservatore Romano tells the story of Maksymowicz, who was taken to Auschwitz shortly before her third birthday. She was the subject of pseudo-medical experiments carried out by the infamous camp doctor Josef Mengele during World War II.
The daily quotes her as saying: “I did not feel hate towards my perpetrators when I was a child; I do not feel hate now.”
Maksymowicz is the hero of a documentary film entitled 70072: The Girl Who Couldn’t Hate. The True Story of Lidia Maksymowicz, which was produced by Italian association La Memoria Viva.
A resident of Kraków, southern Poland, Maksymowicz often visits schools to share her story with young people.
“It is a mission I will continue till the end of my life, to tell the young not to allow for [such atrocities] to ever happen again,” she told L’Osservatore Romano.
(mk/gs)