In the second half of the twentieth century, Gerhart M. Riegner (1911–2001) played a guiding role in the promotion of the relationship between Jews and Christians, in particular between the Jewish people and the Catholic Church. This followed the positively revolutionary change in the Church’s attitude toward Jews contained in Section 4 of the declaration Nostra Aetate (In Our Time) promulgated on October 28, 1965 by the Second Vatican Council. Riegner was inspired by a desire to protect Jewish rights and dignity and did so in the context of the universal human rights and fundamental freedoms as recognized by the United Nations.
I first encountered Riegner in Milan on September 6, 1982 at the tenth meeting of the International Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee (ILC). Human rights and religious concern were at the heart of this meeting, the theme of which was “The Sanctity and Meaning of Human Life in Relation to the Present Situation of Violence.” Delegates raised many issues. One of them— a gentleman speaking in a warm, calm voice with passionate undertones, revealing moral integrity— stressed that for a Jew, to be religious implies a strong commitment to promoting justice, peace, and cultural values; a concern for pacifism; opposing violence, anti-Semitism, and terrorism in the world; and promoting religious freedom and relations with Israel and the Holy See. When I heard this honest man for the first time in my youth, I felt I was meeting a person of unambiguous courage, a true mensch: this was Gerhart M. Riegner. But I had no way of knowing that day, as I showed the delegates the ancient illuminated Hebrew manuscripts in the Ambrosiana Library, that our paths were to cross again so closely in the following two decades.
Serving as Secretary of the Holy See’s Commission for Religious Relations with Jews over several years (1987– 1993), working in Rome or traveling, particularly to Eastern Europe, it was quite customary for me to receive visits or to cooperate closely with Dr. Riegner. All the major issues in Catholic-Jewish relations were always on his agenda, but what is more relevant in my opinion was his universal—that is, “ecumenical”—regard for every concrete situation of human suffering and violation of human rights. Without forgetting the tragic memories of history, he looked with great hope toward the future, calling for pooling resources and efforts with the Church, within and without the boundaries of faith and culture. Jerusalem, Auschwitz, and Geneva are among the places where we met frequently in an effort to promote the new brotherly relations between the Church and Judaism, as was the dream of the giants of the Second Vatican Council when they wrote Nostra Aetate. Our cooperation was specifically devoted to continuing the joint work in meetings of the ILC, which, according to Cardinal Johannes Willebrands, was the only official body linking the Holy See and the Jewish community.
Forced to flee his native Berlin in May 1933 after the Nazis had come to power, Riegner settled in Geneva, where he joined the World Jewish Congress soon after its establishment in 1936. He devoted himself to that organization for the remainder of his life, serving for many years as director of its Geneva office, then as secretary-general, and finally as honorary vice president. In 1942, in his famous Riegner telegram, he provided the first news of the Nazi holocaust against the Jews to the free governments.
After the defeat of Nazism and the end of the Shoah, Riegner was one of the leading Jewish personalities who wanted to forge a constructive relationship between the Jewish people and the Church, but not at any cost. He insisted that the condemnation of both the crime of genocide and anti-Semitism had to be among the preconditions for Jewish-Christian dialogue and cooperation. It was his hope that this dialogue would lead to, in addition to the creation of a common front against racism and anti-Semitism, the recognition of the State of Israel by the Holy See. This indeed occurred in 1993, concurrent with the start of direct negotiations between Israel and Palestinians.
Among the first Jews to seek an audience with Pope Pius XII after the end of World War II was WJC Secretary-General A. Leon Kubowitzki who was received by the Catholic pontiff on September 21, 1945. Kubowitzki thanked the Pope on behalf of the WJC for his actions during the war, and asked for the Catholic Church’s help and cooperation on two important issues.
The first of these was practical and specific, the second theoretical and general. The urgent practical item concerned the WJC’s request for the Church’s intervention in the search for many Jewish children, saved during the years of the Holocaust and hidden in Catholic religious institutions, where many, if not most, had been baptized. Kubowitzki asked that the Church return these children to their families, or, if there were no surviving relatives, to the Jewish people.
The more general issue concerned the possibility of the Church promulgating an encyclical, which, recognizing the spiritual link between Jews and Christians, would put an end to the ancient accusation of deicide aimed at the entire Jewish people, and the source of so much anti-Jewish hostility and anti-Semitism over the centuries. Neither of the two requests was acted upon, as Riegner later recalled in his autobiography.
In November 1945, Riegner was in Rome to attend a gathering of displaced persons who had survived the Shoah. On that occasion, at Kubowitzki’s request, he met with Mgr. Giovanni Battista Montini, the future Pope Paul VI, who at that time was one of the Pope’s two deputies. Riegner was accompanied to this meeting by Raffaele Cantoni, the president of the Union of Jewish Communities in Italy. Riegner explained to Mgr. Montini, again without success, the magnitude of the tragedy that had struck the Jewish people. Riegner recalled:
I said to the deputy, “We, the Jewish people, have lost a million and a half children. We cannot allow ourselves to lose one more. We are very grateful to the institutions and to the Catholic faithful for what they have done to save Jewish children and to help them survive. But we now judge that the danger is past, and they should be restored to us. Since we do not know where they are, we are asking you to help us find them.”
To Riegner’s surprise and profound disappointment, Mgr. Montini at first did not believe the extent of the Jewish losses. After a conversation that lasted twenty minutes, Mgr. Montini said, “Point out to me where these children are and I will assist you in recovering them.” Riegner replied that if he knew where the children were, he wouldn’t need the Church’s assistance.
Similar initiatives, undertaken after May 1948 by the leaders of the State of Israel in the hope of creating a climate of trust that would lead to diplomatic relations between the Holy See and the nascent Jewish state, were equally unsuccessful. It seemed that the Jewish-Catholic relationship was destined to remain unchanged since this issue was not a priority for the Church.
The possibility of a Catholic-Jewish rapprochement was given a vigorous boost on June 13, 1960, when the French-Jewish historian Jules Isaac had a private audience with Pope John XXIII. The Pope was receptive to Isaac’s idea of the Church condemning its traditional “teaching of contempt” for Jews and Judaism and placed this item on the agenda of the Second Vatican Council.
Riegner, who was closely following the efforts to “update” the Catholic Church, saw that the time had come for decisive action to build a new relationship between Jews and Christians. A natural mediator and forger of daring and creative briefs, he was convinced that in both the Jewish and Christian communities, as well as in wider civil society, there was no longer a daunting separation between secular and religious life, and this allowed him to act incisively as the representative of world Jewry in the workings of the Vatican Council.
One result of this work was an important memorandum dated February 17, 1962, which WJC President Nahum Goldmann and Label Katz, president of B’nai Brith International, sent to Cardinal Augustin Béa, to whom Pope John XXIII had entrusted the sensitive beginning of a Jewish-Catholic dialogue. This memorandum summarized the Jewish point of view on the issues the Council was proposing to address. This document emphasized, with biblical foundation, the universal values that would be discussed by the Council and included in its documents, concluding with the prophetic statement:
Have we not all one Father? Hath not one God created us? The challenge of the Prophet lays upon all of us the most solemn obligations. The differences which separate us are real and important; it were [sic] foolish to overlook and underrate them. But they cannot nullify the commandment to love our neighbour.
Elsewhere, the memorandum declared that:
As Jews we consider the fight against anti-Semitism as an integral element of these aspirations for a better world. What constitutes for us— as it does no doubt for the Church—a source of deep distress is that the anti-Semitic agitation and incidents are occurring, with rare exceptions, in European countries or overseas countries with European populations, which are, or have been, ingrained by the influence of Christianity. We venture to express the conviction that in the contemporary world wherever anti-Semitism poses a danger to the Jewish community, it constitutes at the same time a threat to the Church.
Among those who had approved the wording of the memorandum were two individuals who seemed antithetical, but were in fact complementary, representing as they did the different strands of Judaism: on the one hand, Nahum Goldmann, the president of the WJC and a principal exponent of secular and liberal Judaism, and on the other, Rabbi Joseph Dov Soloveitchik of Boston, a renowned professor at Yeshiva University who was then considered the highest authority in Jewish modern Orthodoxy. It was Goldmann who had consulted Rabbi Soloveitchik regarding establishing a dialogue with the Church, and it was Soloveitchik who insisted that any overture in this regard be initiated by secular as opposed to religious Jewish groups, so as to make clear that any such dialogue would be secular rather than theological.
Upon rereading the memorandum and some of the statements made by the Council, one easily notes substantial similarities and convergences:
One is the community of all peoples, one their origin, for God made the whole human race to live over the face of the earth. . . .We cannot truly call on God, the Father of all, if we refuse to treat in a brotherly way any man, created as he is in the image of God. Man’s relation to God the Father and his relation to men his brothers are so linked together that Scripture says: “He who does not love does not know God.” (1 John 4:8)
It is in this context that Nostra Aetate contained the then-revolutionary declaration that the Church “decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone.” Published on October 28, 1965, Nostra Aetate immediately became the fundamental Church text that revolutionized the Jewish-Christian— or, more accurately, the Jewish-Catholic—relationship.
Between 1965 and 1970, thanks to the work of Cardinal Béa and his successor, Cardinal Willebrands, the Council’s rejection of the charge of deicide against the Jews and its repudiation of anti-Semitism were disseminated around the world and backed up by solid theological studies. At the same time, the promulgation of Nostra Aetate aroused intense emotion in the Jewish community throughout the world and led to new forms of cooperation between Catholics and Jews.
Riegner, for his part, devoted his energies to creating a Catholic-Jewish institutional dialogue at the highest level, placing great emphasis on exploring the content and motivations underlying the ideals and cultures on both sides. On January 6, 1969, he accompanied Goldmann and Rabbi Joachim Prinz, chairman of the WJC’s executive committee, to an audience with Pope Paul VI. It was during that audience that the Pope referred for the first time to the Jewish, or Hebrew, people— in Italian, populo ebraico—followed by an almost epiphanic incident that Riegner described in his memoirs:
In pronouncing the words “Jewish people” the Pope [sic] suddenly broke off to add with some emotion, “You know, we have known each other for such a long time, but we are really only starting to reflect on our relationship.” The phrase had visibly affected him. He realized all of a sudden that he had never before spoken of the “Hebrew people,” that previously he had considered Jews solely as adherents of a religion. This was an extremely moving moment, and we all saw the sincerity of the pope’s reaction.
However, to establish and promote effective and stable relations between Jews and Christians, both within individual countries and internationally, it was necessary to interpret in a dynamic and creative manner the opportunities and existing tensions between orthodoxy and secularism, religion and civil and political society.
Accordingly in 1970, the World Jewish Congress, at Riegner’s initiative, joined with other Jewish organizations— the American Jewish Committee, B’nai B’rith International, the Jewish Council for Interreligious Consultations in Israel, and the Synagogue Council of America— to set up an international Jewish committee for interaction with the Catholic Church and other religious organizations, which was to be called the International Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultations (IJCIC), with offices in Geneva and New York. Responding to this Jewish initiative, in December 1970 Pope Paul VI appointed five Catholic delegates to form, together with IJCIC delegates, the ILC, which is in existence to this day, on the basis of an Intesa or memorandum of understanding.
The decisive inaugural meeting of the ILC, which would have an extraordinary and lasting impact, took place in the Palazzo della Congregazione Orientale, then the seat of the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, to which the Vatican Office for Jewish Relations was attached. Cardinal Willebrands, the president of the Secretariat, attended this meeting on behalf of the Holy See together with officials from the Secretariat of State and from the Congregations for the Doctrine of the Faith, for Catholic Education, and for the Oriental Churches, as well as from the Pontifical Commission for Justice and Peace. Riegner participated in the meeting for the WJC together with other representatives of IJCIC. The memorandum of understanding that was agreed upon at the conclusion of the session on December 23, 1970 reflected, in accordance with Riegner’s ideals, the convergence between the Jewish and Catholic perspectives on matters of common interest, without compromising the legitimate diversity of faiths of the two religious communities or the secular point of view on the subject of human rights.
This document focused on two “main areas of concern,” namely, questions concerning the Jewish-Catholic relationship, including confronting and working toward the elimination of all manifestations of anti-Semitism and promoting mutual understanding, and questions of common concern such as “the promotion of justice and peace in the world, as well as of human freedom and dignity; the fight against poverty and racism and all forms of discrimination; and the protection of human rights, both of individuals or groups.”
The ILC’s authority was strengthened in 1974 when Pope Paul VI set up the Holy See’s Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews (CRRC), which, under the leadership of Cardinal Willebrands (and later of Cardinals Edward Idris Cassidy, Walter Kasper, and Kurt Koch), has been the IJCIC’s direct partner for over forty years.
Riegner was the principal protagonist in the activities of the ILC and IJCIC for many years. Other WJC leaders and personalities who played important roles in the many meetings and activities held under ILC auspices over the years have included Fritz Becker, the long-time head of the WJC’s Rome office; Jean Halpérin of Geneva; Rabbi Joachim Prinz; Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg; WJC President Edgar M. Bronfman; Rabbi Israel Singer; and Betty Ehrenberg.
To measure the extent of the progress made in almost half a century of joint activities, it must be borne in mind that in addition to the plenary sessions of the ILC, there was a smaller executive committee, led by Riegner for many years, which was very active. It called two special meetings of the ILC in 1987 and in 1990, and in February 1991 successfully organized an international mission to Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, nations that had just shaken off the Soviet yoke.
These positive results were due to the wide horizon outlined in the founding memorandum. Between 1970 and 1985, the ILC focused on two main areas related to Jewish-Catholic relations and common action. The first dealt with issues such as anti-Semitism, mutual understanding, education, and, in particular, religious relationships between the people, the nation, and the country. The second area concerned matters relating to justice and peace, religious freedom and human rights, poverty and racism, interreligious dialogue, and relations with Islam.
At the end of the twelfth plenary session in Rome in 1985, the joint action plan was unanimously extended to six goals, including the dissemination of the results achieved, the overcoming of remaining prejudice, cooperation in opposing religious fanaticism, theological reflection, the commitment to justice and peace, and the beginning of “a joint study on the historical events and the theological implications of the extermination of European Jews.”
To offer a particularly meaningful example of the atmosphere in which the ILC meetings took place, I share a personal memory of the preparatory talks that preceded the extraordinary session of the ILC, scheduled to take place in Rome at the end of August and the beginning of September of 1987. At that time Vatican officials were preparing the apostolic trip to the United States that the Pope would begin shortly. A further source of concern was (and it was certainly not a novelty) the tension that was disturbing the Vatican’s relations with international Jewish organizations such as the WJC. The main worries during the summer had been caused by the papal audience granted to Austrian President Kurt Waldheim, whose Nazi past had been exposed by the WJC and, more generally, by a certain impression that there was a deliberate strategy to “Christianize” the Shoah or to turn it into something more banal. Among the catalysts of that particular debate were the controversies surrounding the Carmelite convent in the “Old Theatre” at Auschwitz and the beatification of Edith Stein in Cologne, a few months earlier on March 1, 1987.The latter had been harshly criticized because of the Jewish origins of the Carmelite nun, who had been deported and murdered at Auschwitz along with millions of other Jews, and who was now being put forward as a model of martyrdom for the Catholic faith.
For these reasons, Rabbi Mordechai Waxman, President of the Synagogue Council of America and then-chair of IJCIC, and Cardinal Wille- brands agreed to call an extraordinary session of about twenty delegates and experts. This session took the form of a special meeting of the International Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee. On the afternoon of Sunday, August 30, 1987, Riegner, together with Rabbi Waxman and Fr. Pierre Duprey, vice president of the Vatican commission, met with Willebrands in the Cardinal’s home in Rome to prepare the details of the sessions. I was also present in my capacity as secretary of the ILC.
I vividly remember Riegner’s remarks during the discussion. After emphasizing the importance of taking a new step on the road of dialogue, he came to his main point in a tone that was calm, but at the same time vibrant and full of the memory of suffering. To overcome the suspicions and the lack of trust on the part of the Jewish communities as to the sincerity of the Jewish-Catholic dialogue, and to reaffirm the authoritative orientation that the Pope gives through his teaching (as he had recently done in Warsaw), the time was ready for a Church document (maybe even an encyclical letter) that confronted in a comprehensive manner the difficult themes of the Shoah and of anti-Semitism in its historical and religious roots— aspects that in some way are connected with the history and the future of Jewish-Christian relations. At the same time, however, he concluded:
This is not a project that we, as Jews, can suggest or ask you to consider; you alone can autonomously begin such an initiative, which, however, would certainly have an extraordinarily positive effect on world Jewry. In particular, if announced now, on the eve of the Pope’s trip to the United States, the decision would deeply and positively impress the large and lively Jewish communities of America, which are now agitated by doubts and suspicions as to what the Church really thinks of the Shoah [author’s recollection of Riegner’s words].
Riegner stopped— there was a brief silence, full of intensity, a pregnant expectation, redolent with the weight of memories, as happens when two people recognize each other after a long separation. But it was little more than a moment. The words of Willebrands’s decisive assent sounded short but appeared to reflect a long, earlier reflection, as if they had been pronounced to fulfil an ancient expectation, answering a gesture of fraternal trust and truth, a gesture as strong as a cry. From this encounter would come the process of repentance, of teshuvah, and reconciliation that is still in progress now, within which we ought to include the important document “We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah,” that was eventually signed by Cardinal Cassidy in 1998.
Another serious issue affecting Jewish-Catholic relations at that time should be mentioned here. Beginning in 1984, when a controversy erupted in Poland following the establishment of a convent of Carmelite nuns on the grounds of the concentration and extermination camp of Auschwitz- Birkenau, Riegner devoted all his energies to explaining to numerous interlocutors and Catholic friends that it was essential to be able to con-template in silence the memory of all victims of the Shoah and Nazi brutality. It took him a decade of patient persuasion until finally—in 1993—Pope John Paul II addressed a letter to the “Dear Sisters” of Carmel that brought this long-running affair to a close with the relocation of the convent to a more appropriate location, and with the creation of a center for education and dialogue in Oswiecim.
No less important were the joint documents of the ILC, which with the cooperation of many Jewish thinkers, such as Emmanuel Lévinas and Jean Halpérin, and Catholics, such as Bernard Dupuy and Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, deepened and promoted Jewish-Christian initiatives in defense of human rights and religious freedom around the world, as a contribution to tikkun olam [repairing the world] in the spirit of the prophets of Israel.
One of the many fruits of Riegner’s tireless work is recognizable in the brief but significant statement condemning anti-Semitism disguised as anti-Zionism published in 1988 and signed by the president of the Pontifical Commission for Justice and Peace, Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, and the vice president, Cardinal Jorge Mejía, then-president of the Bilateral Commission between the Holy See’s Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews and the Chief Rabbinate of Israel. It states:
Among the manifestations of systematic racial distrust, specific mention must once again be made of anti-Semitism. If anti-Semitism has been the most tragic form that racist ideology has assumed in our century, with the horrors of the Jewish “holocaust,” it has unfortunately not yet entirely disappeared. As if some had nothing to learn from the crimes of the past, certain organizations, with branches in many countries, keep alive the anti-Semite racist myth, with the support of networks of publications. Terrorist acts which have Jewish persons or symbols as their target have multiplied in recent years and show the radicalism of such groups. Anti-Zionism— which is not of the same order, since it questions the State of Israel and its policies— serves at times as a screen for anti-Semitism, feeding on it and leading to it. Furthermore, some countries impose undue harassments and restrictions on the free emigration of Jews.
Subsequently, another significant milestone for the ILC was marked by the establishment of diplomatic relations between Israel and the Holy See on December 30, 1993. Once again, this milestone in Jewish-Catholic relations owes a great deal to Riegner’s behind-the-scenes diplomatic efforts over the course of many years.
Riegner was particularly tenacious in Jerusalem in May of 1991 at the ninth plenary assembly of the WJC, where his actions were decisive in overcoming the impasse that blocked the first official relations between the Holy See and representatives of the State of Israel. He was always ready to seize any opportunity to discretely promote meetings that could contribute to an increase in mutual trust and understanding, and he knew how to create networks that served to improve relations between peoples and nations. In large part due to Riegner’s efforts and personal intervention, there were many opportunities at the 1991 WJC plenary assembly for high-level informal meetings between Israeli officials and representatives of the Vatican, including with Monsignor (today, Cardinal) Andrea Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo, the Apostolic Nuncio to Israel and Palestine. The constructive atmosphere of those informal meetings laid the groundwork for a subsequent institutional meeting between the Holy See and the State of Israel.
It is not surprising, therefore, that on the occasion of Riegner’s ninetieth birthday, Rabbi David Rosen, the American Jewish Committee’s Director of Interfaith Relations and Liaison to the Vatican, called Riegner “the Jewish doyen of relations with the Christian world,” adding that he “deserves no small amount of credit for the remarkable achievements of the last half-century, and in particular with the Catholic Church over the last thirty-six years since the promulgation of the Church’s ground-breaking document Nostra Aetate.”
Following Riegner’s death on December 3, 2001, Cardinal Walter Kas- per, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, said, “I think Gerhart Riegner was one of the witnesses of our time and played an outstanding role in the relations between Christians and Jews. With his experiences in World War II, he worked for mutual understanding and improving the Church’s relationship with Jews. We have lost one of the most important and competent partners in Jewish-Christian dialogue.”
May his memory be a blessing and an inspiration to all of us.
3. Goldmann and Katz issued the memorandum in the name of the World Conference of Jewish Organizations (COJO), of which they were, respectively, the chairman and co-chairman. In addition to the WJC and B’nai Brith International, COJO consisted of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Canadian Jewish Congress, the Conseil Représentatif des Juifs de France (CRIF), the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, the South African Jewish Board of Deputies, the Delegación de Asociaciones Israelitas Argentinas (DAIA), the American Jewish Congress, and the Jewish Labor Committee.
4. Translated from the original [French] of the memorandum as sent to Cardinal Béa.
8. Riegner, Never Despair, p. 275.
9. “Memorandum of Understanding,” International Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee, initial meeting, Vatican City, December 1970, https:/www.bc.edu/content/dam/files/research_sites/cjl/texts/cjrelations/resources/documents/interreligious/ILC_memo_understanding_1970.htm
10. The Church and Racism: Toward a More Fraternal Society, Pontifical Commission for Justice and Peace, paragraph 15, signed November 3, 1988, https:/www.ewtn.com/library/curia/pcjpraci.htm
11. David Rosen, “Challenges Ahead in the Jewish Catholic Relationship,” in Gerhart M. Riegner, ed. Isabella Nespoli (Brussels, 2001).
12. United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, “Cardinals Keeler and Kasper Pay Tribute to Jewish Official Who First Told the World of Hitler’s Plan for the Holocaust,” press release, December 5, 2001.