“Pope a valuable ally against antisemitism”

By Adam Smulevich

It had never happened that a Pope welcomed a president of Yad Vashem, The World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem on a private audience. It is therefore not surprising that Dani Dayan, who has been leading the Memorial from 2021, defined it as an “historic event”. “Those who care about issues such as a correct divulgation of Memory and the fight against anti-Semitism can count on a friend in this Pope,” he said at the end of the day, meeting Pagine Ebraiche in the home of Israeli ambassador Dror Eydar. The Minister of Education Patrizio Bianchi also greeted him.
During the meeting, Dayan expressed his strong appreciation to the Pope, also for the opening of the Vatican archives on Pius XII in March 2020. An initiative, he said, “that goes in the direction of a search for justice”. On the occasion, talking around that topic, the Pope reiterated the message that “Church loves history”. Transmitting also to Mr. Dayan the concept “that not everyone made the right choice”. Words that the President of Yad Vashem has found “very important”.
Leading such a Memorial is a big and unique challenge. “I feel every ounce of this immense responsibility on me,” he confided to Pagine Ebraiche. “I feel it towards the victims and those who survived. Our goal is to collect as many documents as possible, also converting them to digital. It is a heritage that will have to withstand the passage of time and the inexorable disappearance of those who have seen, lived, and told what happened in the Shoah in the first person”.
The Israeli ambassador to the Holy See Raphael Schutz accompanied Dayan to the Vatican. “Maintaining the focus on antisemitism is always important. In fact, it is a problem that has not yet been eradicated”, the diplomat’s appreciation to Pagine Ebraiche. The Pope was given a copy of a painting depicting the Tablets of the Covenant (the Ten Commandments) given to the Children of Israel on Mount Sinai. The original was recovered in the 90s in an abandoned synagogue in Cernăuți, Romania (now Chernivtsi, Ukraine), and is all that remains from this once-thriving center of Jewish life before it was destroyed by the Nazis during the Holocaust. The artifact is now on display at the Yad Vashem Synagogue.