Rome Rabbi Rips Pope

Agenzia Giornalistica Italia - News In English (2006 - translated):

AUSCHWITZ: ROME HEAD RABBI: THE POPE DID NOT SAY MANY THINGS

(AGI) - Rome, May 30 - Rome head Rabbi Riccardo di Segni, does not share everything pope Benedict XVI said in Auschwitz. Rabbi Di Segni comments the pope's speech on the online daily Affaritaliani.it. 'The pope's speech has raised many issues mentioning principles that we do not share. In detail I refer to Germany's lack of responsibility in the Shoah as if Germany after what has dared to do had no responsibility' he says.

"We must also mention the issues of the men's silence. The issue of God'silence is a strong theme we can share it, but it is not only it. There is also the men's silence and the pope did not speak about it" he says. "Our difference of opinions is the basis for the dialog" he says.

Di Segni also criticises the quotation made by the pope of the six million Polish people who have died in the concentration camps. "We do not share it because the Polish people who have died were not six million but five and three million of them were Jews. They remember the Jews as Polish people only when they must count the Polish dead.

The pope has marginalised the Jew martyrdom in Auschwitz, considering it one of the many elements of a complex process that is central instead. There is also the Christianization of this martyrdom because the only Jew martyr mentioned by the pope was Edith Stein who was a converted Jew" he says.