If we look back…” “

The 60th anniversary of the end of the World War II has been commemorated not only by world leaders gathered in Moscow on 9 May (see SIR no.35/2005), by also by various local Churches in the countries of Europe. We report on the celebrations in Germany, Austria and Holland. GERMANY. With a joint celebration held in Berlin on 8 May, the German Catholic Church and Evangelical Church commemorated the 60th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, in the presence of the highest authorities of the State. Cardinal Karl Lehmann, president of the German Bishops’ Conference, recalled that the date of the anniversary marked “not only the end of an atrocious dictatorship, but also a new beginning”. He emphasized, in this regard, the different destinies reserved for West Germany and East Germany: “On 8 May, East Germany fell under a new dictatorship. After sixty years many visible injuries still exist”. The Lutheran bishop Wolfgang Huber, chairman of the Council of the German Evangelical Church (EKD), pointed out that “peace is not just the silence of guns. There must also be security for the population, social order in the sense of the protection of the weak, freedom of thought and religion, the well-being of the individual, and also the defeat of disease and – as far as is possible – the prevention of disasters, and the lack of corruption and the abuse of power”. AUSTRIA. “God grant that the evil that ended in this place 60 years ago may never return”, said Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, president of the Austrian Bishops’ Conference. The Cardinal was speaking at Mauthausen on 8 May, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the former Nazi death camp. “For us who belong to the following generations Mauthausen preserves another dreadful memory. Those guilty of this devastation were not alien criminal hordes. They were not beasts, nor blind fanatics of another culture, another religion, another civilization. No: they were people just like us. They had women and children at home, whom they loved. They had dreams and aspirations just like us. They had their Christmas tree, their editions of Schiller and Goethe in their bookcases. Executioner and victim were indistinguishable. Each of us could have been a victim but also an executioner. And nothing can tell us with certainty on what side we would have been then – and on what side we would be today”. “How is it possible that this could have happened in a Christian country, in which the Cross is omnipresent?”, asks Schönborn. “Even though among the victims of the Nazi terror there were many persons who suffered and gave their life for their Christian faith, we must in any case recognize the failure and guilt that Christians too incurred”. “Sixty years have gone by since the liberation. Despite that, we feel that we still have a long way to go”. HOLLAND. “The liberation of our country is a legacy that entrusts a task to us: that of being and remaining free: The memory of it may still be effective”. So reads one of the most eloquent passages in a pastoral letter issued by the BISHOPS OF HOLLAND to mark the celebrations for the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Netherlands. “‘Never again!’ was the proclamation on which was built, after the war, a European society founded on peace, liberty and democratic rights. That’s why we are asked in our time to pledge ourselves anew to building a Europe in which each and every person may remain free from war, poverty and persecution”. A fundamental point made by the Dutch bishops in their letter is the plea that the period of the Second World War “be not considered merely a chapter in our national history”. It is also a warning for the future: all of us need, say the bishops, to beware of the possible emergence of “new ideologies in which discrimination, intolerance and force play a central role” and to reject “the current experiences of war in our time”. Addressing themselves to the faithful, the majority of whom had no personal experience of the war, the bishops place a lot of emphasis on the clarity of the historical reconstruction, “so that a genuine love for the memory may be developed”. “If we look back to the conflict, the superficiality of a distinction of the population between collaborators and partisans clearly emerges: in truth the whole of Dutch society was paralysed under the brutal Nazi occupation. Only with the liberation did we reach the end of what was a regime of slavery”. Emphasizing the need for an equally indelible memory for the victims of the Shoah, the bishops reaffirm their own closeness “to all the victims who fell during the occupation and to the allied soldiers who gave their own life for the freedom of others”.