“Last year, Weigel wrote a First Things article emphasizing John Paul II’s refusal to believe that some problems in the world cannot be fixed:
Those frightened by the seeming power of the wicked in the world today can take heart from what John Paul II said to young people in Cracow in June 1979: “Be afraid only of thoughtlessness and pusillanimity.” Be not afraid: his signature phrase, lived to the end, made him John Paul the Great.”
As over 3 million young Catholics gathered in Krakow during a time of escalating violence across the world — and as the Sussers reflected on the horrific violence that affected their family decades ago — the words of the first and only Polish pope remained as timeless and important as ever.
The sun set slowly, shining its last light against the barbed-wire fences of Auschwitz, and casting a shadow on the ground where unspeakable atrocities were committed, three-quarters of a century ago. Ron Susser and his 16-year-old daughter Zoe set foot onto the former concentration camp, crossing beneath a gate that bore the infamous inscription: arbeit macht frei, or “Work sets you free.”
After traveling all day, a group of 220 people from the Arlington diocese in Virginia had arrived at the camp as part of their World Youth Day pilgrimage to Krakow, Poland. The trip to Auschwitz was an emotional one for much of the group. But it held particular significance for Ron and Zoe.
During the Nazi regime, now-notable figures such as Anne Frank and her father, Viktor Frankl, Primo Levi, Maximilian Kolbe, Edith Stein, and Elie Wiesel were imprisoned in Auschwitz. The concentration camp also detained many of Ron’s ancestors, only three of whom survived: his great aunt and his parents.
“My parents were liberated on May 1, 1945,” Susser said. “My father referred to that day as his second birthday.”
Auschwitz operated for less than five years, and yet the number of people murdered at the camp is estimated to be somewhere around 1.1 million. Only about 200,000 people who passed through the Auschwitz camps survived.
The group from the Arlington diocese arranged to visit Auschwitz on the first day of their trip to Poland for World Youth Day, a global encounter that took place all of last week and gathered 3 million Catholics in Krakow to see Pope Francis.