Proposal Made to Israel's Parliament
TEL AVIV, MAR 26 (ZENIT.org).- Among the Jews who have closely followed John Paul II's visit to Israel is Eliahu Wajcer, an engineer from Beer Sheba in Negev, and a survivor of the Warsaw ghetto, who in a letter written a few days ago (enclosing photocopies of an old magazine) requested Avraham Burg, president of the Israeli Parliament to proclaim Karol Wojtyla «Just Among the Nations,» the highest recognition given by Israel to those who did everything possible to rescue Jews from extermination.
In his letter, Wajcer wrote that «John Paul II has done more than anyone to reconcile the Church with the Jewish people.» He adds, «To offer the recognition of 'Just' would enable the opening of a new page in the history between Jews and Christians.»
Up to this time, neither the president of the Parliament nor the Yad Va-Shem Memorial to the Holocaust have commented on the initiative. The proclamation of «Just» requires thorough historical research, direct testimony, and months of work, much like the Church's canonization process.
Wajcer, who was a fellow-inmate with writer Elie Wiesel and of Israel Meir Lau, the current Grand Rabbi of the Ashkenazim of Israel, at Buchenwald concentration camp, continues to be interested in Polish culture. Therefore, he often goes to the library to page through magazines of contemporary history, among which is «Zank,» a publication produced in Warsaw.
«In the May-June, 1988, issue, writer Stanislav Krajewski described in detail a story about Karol Wojtyla,» Wajcer explained. This is information that is not new, but that is not widely known in Israel.
Wajcer takes up the case of a Krakow Jewish couple who in 1942, feeling endangered by the anti-Semitic persecutions, entrusted their 2-year old child to Catholic friends. At the end of the war, it was proved that the child's natural parents had died. Meanwhile, the Catholic friends had become very attached to the child and wished to baptize him. They asked the advice of Fr. Karol Wojtyla who counseled them, to their surprise, that if the natural parents wanted their son raised in the Jewish faith, that is what should happen.
The couple made all kinds of difficult research to find other relatives of the child. Finally, they located relatives in the United States who agreed to receive him. «That child became an orthodox Jew,» Wajcer said. According to the engineer, this gesture of Wojtyla's surprised Polish Rabbi Israel Spira, known as «the just of Lubishev.» «God has mysterious ways to reveal his will,» Rabbi Spira explained to his students in commenting on Wojtyla's example. «To save a soul in Israel is tantamount to saving the whole world. This priest is worthy of becoming a Pope.»
What the future Pope told the family who wanted to baptize the Jewish child was really nothing new. It is what the Catholic Church has taught throughout history, although it has not always been applied by the Church's children. At the Council of Toledo it was affirmed that until a Jewish child reached the use of reason, he could not be baptized against his parents' will, even if they had died. This teaching was set forth systematically by St. Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologiae, Part III, Question 68, Article 10.
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