Letter to the Pope

Your Holiness, Dear Brother,

In January 2015, shortly before the 70th anniversary of our liberation and the liberation of Auschwitz, we had the honour of meeting with you during a General Audience in Rome.

You greeted us, survivors in the International Auschwitz Committee from Poland, France, the Czech Republic and Germany, with great warmth. And, as a symbol of our deepest recognition for your commitment, we gave you the statue of the inverted ‘B’ from the infamous inscription above the main gate of Auschwitz concentration camp ‘ARBEIT MACHT FREI’ (work makes you free). The prisoners who were forced to manufacture the gate inscription deliberately placed the ‘B’ upside down as a mark of their humanity and a sign of their silent protest.

Your Holiness, we profoundly felt your interest in our fate and that of our families.

This meeting was, and will remain not only unforgettable for us and the young people who accompanied us, but also a source of inspiration for our work: when we tell the world what happened in Auschwitz, why it happened, and why it can happen again. For we need to be pure in heart if we are to preserve the rights of all people within our hearts, to protect and defend them.

In July 2016 you, Holy Father, will be on Krakow to celebrate World Youth Day.

We would sincerely like to encourage you and invite you on this occasion to visit Auschwitz together with young people and ourselves, the survivors. We kindly ask you, to join with us, and to pray in remembrance of our murdered and burned family members as well as for the world, which time and again is violated by xenophobia and anti-Semitism. No place in the world cries out more for this prayer; from no place in the world can this prayer be heard more clearly as a sign of peace and remembrance.

It would be a great honour for us if you, like your predecessors, were to accept our invitation: Please come.

In gratitude for your good work, and with best wishes for you and your mission.

Very respectfully,

Roman Kent, New York
President

Marian Turski, Warsaw
Vice President

Kazimierz Albin, Warsaw
Vice President

Christoph Heubner
Executive Vice President