ROBERT S. WISTRICH
101
There is no doubt that the present Pope has had a far more direct
experience of Jewish life and suffering than any of his predecessors. As a
youth growing up in the small Polish town of Wadowice (about thirty
miles from Krakow) where nearly a quarter of the population were Jews,
he counted them among his closest friends. As a result of these friend–
ships he became familiar with the rhythms of Jewish observance and
family life. Later, after
1939,
Karol Woytyla would witness the murder
of Poland's Jews and the martyrdom of his fellow Poles while studying
secretly for the priesthood in Nazi-occupied Krakow. These macabre
events left an indelible impression on the young man (only twenty years
old in
1940),
and they inform his repeated reminders to Catholics that
Europe's Jews were exterminated "only for the reason that they were
Jews"-a bitter reality that he would internalize as part of his most inti–
mate credo. When Karol Woytyla returned in
J948
from Rome to
Krakow after a two-year period of study, he was shocked to discover
that all his Jewish friends in Wadowice had vanished. Speaking of his
home town in
1994,
John Paul II remarked that it was "from there that
I have this attitude of community, of communal feelings about the Jews."
These recollections are vividly expressed in a
1989
letter to his class–
mate Jerzy Kluger which comments on the plate to be unveiled in com–
memoration of the Jews of Wadowice who were exterminated by the
Nazis: "I remember very clearly the Wadowice Synagogue, which was
near to our high school. I have in front of my eyes the numerous wor–
shippers, who during their holidays passed on their way to pray there."
In this letter, the Pope stressed his veneration for the memory of the
Wadowice Jews so cruelly killed by the Germans, and for the place of
worship which the Nazi invaders destroyed. Quoting from his own
words of June
J
4, 1987,
delivered to the representatives of the Warsaw
Jewish community during his third Papal pilgrimage
to
Poland, John
Paul
[[
stated: "The Church and all peoples and nations within this
Church are united with you .... Indeed, when they speak with warning
to people, nations, and even to the whole of humanity, they place in the
forefront your nation, its suffering, its persecutions, its extermination.
Also the pope raises his voice of warning in your name. This has a spe–
cial significance to the pope from Poland, because together with you, he
survived all that happened in this land."
It
was no accident that the Pope
should share such a powerful testament of solidarity with the Jews of
Wadowice to Jerzy Kluger, though few in the wider world knew of their
lifelong friendship.
It is this relationship with Jerzy Kluger, a Polish Jew and Karol
Woytyla's last surviving classmate from Wadowice (who today still lives
