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The Auschwitz cross is a cross erected near the Auschwitz concentration camp. In 1979, the newly elected Polish Pope John Paul II celebrated Mass on the grounds of the Auschwitz II (Birkenau) extermination camp for some 500,000 people. An 8.6 metre (26 ft) tall cross was erected there for the purpose, and removed after the event. Carmelite nuns opened a convent near Auschwitz I in 1984. Edgar Bronfman, president of the World Jewish Congress called for the removal of the convent. Public statements from Theo Klein, president of the Council of Jews in France, Jewish activist Serge Klarsfeld, and Dr. Gerhard Riegner, representative of the World Jewish Congress, also demanded the removal of the convent. The American branch of the World Jewish Congress also protested with statements from chairman Rabbi Wolfe Kelman and the Orthodox faction representative Rabbi Zvi Zakheim. Representatives of the Catholic Church agreed in 1987. One year later the Carmelites erected the large cross from the 1979 Mass near their site, just outside Block 11, a torture prison in Auschwitz I, visible from within the camp. The Catholic Church ordered the Carmelites to move by 1989. They remained until 1993; however, the cross was not removed. ==Controversy== Tensions escalated into 1989 when two notable protests occurred. In May 1989, the Women's International Zionist Organization led a protest of 300 members carrying signs and Israeli flags. In July 1989, New York City Rabbi Avraham Weiss traveled with six supporters and led a protest that earned international notoriety. Weiss and his supporters scaled the fence of the convent wearing concentration camp uniforms. The group then harassed the nuns with banging and shouting until local Polish workers ran them off with buckets of water. Representatives of the Council of Jews and the World Jewish Congress stated that mostly Jews were killed at Auschwitz and demanded that religious symbols be kept away from the site. Ian Kagedan of B'nai Brith Canada called the erection of the cross, "an obvious gap in understanding."〔Carter chided for Auschwitz convent stand, Toronto, Ont., Sept. 13, 1989〕 The central issue in the controversy over the Auschwitz cross was articulated by the author and former Catholic priest James Carroll: In March 1998 the Plenipotentiary for Relations with the Jewish Diaspora, Krzysztof Śliwiński, was quoted in a French newspaper as saying that the cross would be removed, because its presence was disrespectful of the Jewish legacy at Auschwitz. By the end of March 1998, a large group of government and nongovernment leaders, including then Chief of the Prime Minister's Cabinet Wiesław Walendziak, 130 Sejm deputies, 16 senators, former President Lech Wałęsa, Cardinal Józef Glemp, and Gdańsk Archbishop Tadeusz Rakoczy, went on record as opposing the removal of the cross. The cross is clearly visible from the former camp's Block 11 and marks the site where Polish political prisoners (including Catholic priests) and later Jewish prisoners were murdered by the Germans. The leader of the ''Defenders of the Pope's Cross'', Kazimierz Świtoń, and Mieczysław Janosz, leader of the ''Association of War Victims'', which leased the land on which the cross stood, distributed leaflets opposing the removal of the cross. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Auschwitz cross」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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