Pope receives Holocaust survivor in private audience

27 November 2009

Pope Benedict XVI has met at the Vatican with a Holocaust survivor from his native Germany. After his weekly general audience, the pontiff of the Catholic Church met with Cäcilie Peiser, the founder and honorary president of Child Survivors Germany. She presented him with a signed copy of her biography, which tells the story of her survival. Peiser was accompanied by Father Norbert Hofmann, secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews.  

"After the ‘Kristallnacht’ in 1938, at the age of 13, I was forced to flee with my younger sister Jutta and other children to Holland," Peiser, who is 84, told the official Vatican newspaper ‘Osservatore Romano’. Her mother and younger brother were deported and killed.  

After the war, Peiser dedicated herself to the care of former prisoners who had contracted tuberculosis in the Nazi death camps. "I also went to Palestine in 1946, where I struggled for peaceful coexistence between men of different cultures and religions. In 1957, I returned to Germany to work with handicapped children," she explained.

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