Resolution Adopted by the CCAR
Monastery at Auschwitz
Adopted by the CCAR at the 98th Annual Convention of
the Central Conference of American Rabbis
1987
WHEREAS the projected Carmelite monastery on the site of the Auschwitz death camp
has been tainted by regrettable insensitivity from its origin as a gift to Pope John
Paul II by a small segment of the Belgian Roman Catholic community, and
WHEREAS the building itself was the storehouse for the Zyklon B gas utilized primarily
for the efficient mass murder of Jews, wherefore the building belongs as a part of
the museum to Nazi infamy that is preserved at Auschwitz, and
WHEREAS the very name Auschwitz has unique overtones of association with the merciless
slaughter of Jews, others in the hundreds of thousands having been murdered there
in a commonality of victimization,
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the Central Conference of American Rabbis objects in
the strongest terms to the establishment of a Carmelite monastery at the site of
the Auschwitz death camp as a total disregard of Jewish sensitivities as well as
a violation of the spectrum of Auschwitz victims and urges relocation of the monastery to neutral
ground.