Pope sends e-mail to Jewish professor about Shoah

Professor Menachem Rosensaft, who teaches law about genocide and war crimes at Columbia and Cornell Universities in the United States, is the child of two Holocaust survivors. He has founded an organization for the children of survivors and serves on the board of the World Jewish Congress.

Rosensaft had sent a sermon that he had preached with a personal note to the Vatican. In this sermon, Rosensaft explained that he believed that God was not responsible for the horrors but God’s divine presence is in the continued humanity of the victims and in those who rescued, who saved, who helped. Rosensaft said he believes that God's presence gave his father strength to pray though his imprisonment and torture, and empowered his mother to rescue 149 children at a Nazi concentration camp.

Pope Francis sent his reply, saying: “When you, with humility, are telling us where God was in that moment, I felt within me that you had transcended all possible explanations and that, after a long pilgrimage – sometimes sad, tedious or dull – you came to discover a certain logic and it is from there that you were speaking to us; the logic of First Kings 19:12, the logic of that 'gentle breeze' (I know that it is a very poor translation of the rich Hebrew expression) that constitutes the only possible hermeneutic interpretation. Thank you from my heart. And, please, do not forget to pray for me. May the Lord bless you.”

Rosensaft said that the pope’s message “is a tremendous spiritual gift” that gave meaning to survivors of any act of violence.

Read the report in the Washington Post here