of STAVROS JIMA
A message of vigilance to the peoples so that humanity does not relive the Nazi horror was sent yesterday from the Dachau concentration camp, which was visited by the Ecumenical Patriarch Mr. Bartholomew.
Orthodox metropolitans and clerics, Catholic and evangelical bishops, Jewish and Muslim priests, with the Ecumenical Patriarch, Mr. Bartholomew, a prayer "for the repose of the souls" of the thousands of prisoners who died there in horrific conditions during the Nazi period in Germany was sent to the Dachau concentration camp yesterday.
At the same time, they issued a message of vigilance to the people so that humanity would "never again" experience the Nazi horror.
It was a visit of "memory and prayer", with special symbolism, coinciding with the eve of the European elections, in which it is expected that ideas and theories that created Dachau, Auschwitz, Mauthausen and the hundreds of other concentration camps in occupied Europe will be depicted in black colors. and drowned the planet in hatred and blood.
THE TOUR
The Ecumenical Patriarch, Mr. Bartholomeus, he passed through the no return for tens of thousands of prisoners, an iron-barred gate with the chilling inscription "arbeit macht frei" -"work sets you free"- and crossed the camp following the "steps" of the future dead, guided by the director of the museum Ms. Hammerman.
He went into the vestibule where the prisoners received their striped uniforms with the number - later the dreaded number was indelibly engraved on the arm - and heard Mrs. Hammerman explain that from that moment on they stopped even saying their name.
He passed through the torture chamber, where he came "face to face" with the leader of the KKE... Nikos Zachariadis, whose portrait is posted together with other political leaders who were imprisoned in Dachau and stopped in "shack 26", or otherwise "block of priests', where the Nazis held Orthodox and Catholic priests.
He lit a candle there, which they had made especially for Mr. Bartholomew Catholic nuns, which was erected after the war near the camp, to offer daily prayers for the souls of dead prisoners. He left a flower at the site and performed a small trisage "in memoriam" of the priests who succumbed to torture and hardship, while he stood in silence in front of the gas chambers and crematorium ovens, which the Nazis did not have time to use and sent those who wanted to exterminate in Birkenau, Treblinka and other camps.
At the monument that has been erected in the place where the prisoners were forced to come three times a day for summons, he was officially received by the general director of the Bavarian concentration camps, Mr. Froehler, in the presence of representatives of the other denominations, and there Mr. .Bartholomew delivered a short speech expressing his abhorrence at the crimes of Nazism and emphasizing the need to unite peoples and cultures so that phenomena like those that caused oceans of hatred and rivers of blood in the past do not recur.
ACCEPTED AT HIGH PRICES
The Ecumenical Patriarch, who visited Germany in the context of the celebrations for the XNUMXth anniversary of the Orthodox Metropolis, was received with high honors both in Munich by the government and earlier in Berlin by Chancellor Merkel and the President of the Republic Mr. .Gawk.
He is the first head of the Orthodox Church to visit a Nazi concentration camp in Germany, and among the Catholics, Pope Benedict XVI made a symbolic visit to Auschwitz four years ago.
Mr. Bartholomew, finally, will meet next Sunday in Jerusalem with Pope Francis.
Source: DAILY, May 20, 2014
*Relevant Articles:
-DAILY, May 20, 2014, Photos - document from Bartholomew's visit to Dachau, by Stavros Tsima
-NEWSBEAST.GR WEBSITE, May 20, 2014, Bartholomew prayed in Dachau
