(12 Sep 2000) English/Nat
XFA
Pledging to preserve the spark of a once-vibrant Polish-Jewish culture decimated by the Holocaust, American Jews reopened a century-old synagogue Tuesday near the site of the notorious Auschwitz Nazi death camp.
Sitting on a knoll in central Oswiecim about 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) from the Auschwitz site, the Lomdei Mishnayot Synagogue was among a dozen that once served 7,000 Jews in the southern Polish city - more than half its prewar population.
Invading Nazi troops turned it into a munitions warehouse in 1939.
About 70 American Jews were joined at Tuesday's dedication by more than 200 officials from Poland, Israel, the Roman Catholic Church - even an Islamic prince from Jordan - in a sign of religious tolerance.
The ceremony under a green and white tent in warm sunshine also inaugurated an adjacent cultural center for the study of Jewish history in Poland.
The synagogue was briefly revived after World War II by local Jews who survived the Holocaust, but was abandoned when most left communist Poland for the new state of Israel.
It reverted to warehouse use and fell into disrepair.
Poland, now 95 percent Catholic, returned the synagogue to the Jewish community in March 1998 under a restitution program for former Jewish religious properties.
More than 1.5 million people, 90 percent of them Jewish, perished in gas chambers or died of starvation and disease at the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex.
In all, more than 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust.
About 3.5 million Jews lived in Poland before the war.
Most of the survivors eventually left for Israel and other countries, and only about 20,000 live in Poland today.
The New York-based Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation raised 10 (M) million dollars to renovate the synagogue and an adjacent building.
Prince El Hassan bin Talal of Jordan, the brother of the late King Hussein, joined Jewish leaders in nailing a traditional mezuza prayer scroll to the synagogue door.
The new cultural center includes videotaped testimony of Holocaust survivors and documents tracing the history of Jewish life dating back to 1450 in Oswiecim.
The city's last known Jewish resident died in May.
SOUNDBITE: (English)
"I think that this ceremony - this inauguration, this opening - are very important and very symbolic. There is no doubt that this ceremony marks the continuation of the Jewish identity in this very place, that is of course very unique and very significant. I believe that this message is very important for the Jewish world but also for the world at large as well."
SUPER CAPTION: Yigal Antabe, Israeli Ambassador to Poland
SOUNDBITE: (English)
"This was obviously a very moving moment for anybody involved with this. Auschwitz was a death camp that was built by Nazis and Oswiecim was a town that was built by its community and its community included many many Jews for many centuries. So in a certain symbolic sense, this is a renewal of that community, a renewal of the centre of that community. I think in the long run what we look for is to see the Jewish community be able to live once again in Poland."
SUPER CAPTION: Christopher Hill, American Ambassador to Poland
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