If Your interested / Metropolitan Andrew Sheptytsky

[steve_vlasenko]

Metropolitan Andrew Sheptytsky
Catholic priest saved Jews in wartime Ukraine

By Father Bohdan Lukie

I remember when the Jewish visitor came to Roblin, Manitoba. And when he told me about a modern-day Moses. Ours, and his!
The year was 1959. The place was St. Vladimir's College, a minor seminary, run by the Redemptorist Fathers. I was in Grade 11. With 49 other students, I listened to this Jewish Ukrainian speak. He praised one of the greatest European prelates of this century, Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky, who headed the Ukrainian Catholic Church for nearly 50 years until his death on Nov. 1, 1944.
I had never heard of Sheptytsky before. I was just a farm kid from Grandview, Manitoba. And yet here was Kurt Lewin, a Holocaust survivor, a Haganah commander during the siege of Jerusalem, an Israeli Army officer, the great-grandson of Isaac Schmelkes -- a rabbi of Lviv still revered by orthodox Jewry as a spiritual and intellectual giant -- telling me about his Ukrainian saviour!
Lewin told us that we, as furture priests of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, should know what our Metropolitan had done for the Jews of Ukrainian Galacia under Nazi occupation. He spoke about how his own life was saved when the Metropolitan gave him shelter in Lviv's St. George's Cathedral, how the Metropolitan, who stood resolutely in favour of Ukrainie's independence and shared in the general euphoria of liberation from the Soviets, nevertheless kept a critical vigilance toward German rule.
In February 1942, he even dared to lodge a protest against the destruction of the Galacian Jewish community with Heinrich Himmler himself. The Nazi who delivered Himmler's response bluntly told the Metropolitan that if it were not for his age, he would have been shot for meddling in matters which should not concern him.
The Metropolitan saw things differently. He persisted with works of Christian charity. He soon mobilized a Christian opposition to Nazi rule in western Ukraine. He let the Vatican know what was happening, in late August 1942, when he wrote to Pope Pius XII, alerting the Holy Father to the "almost diabolical" nature of the German regime. A few days later he repeated that condemnation in a letter to Eugene Cardinal Tisserant, Prefect of the Congregation of Eastern Churches.
He also encouraged Christian resistance. Working with his brother, Klymentii, leader of Lviv's Studite monks, the Metropolitan gathered together a small army of nuns and priests who would risk their own lives in clandestine rescue and sanctuary operations. False baptismal certificates were arranged for no less than 200 Jewish children, who were then smuggled to monasteries, orphanages, and convent schools in and around Lviv. All of these children's lives were saved, 15 in the Metropolitan's own residence. This at a time when sheltering Jews was a criminal offense punishable by death.
Rabbi Dr. David Kahana also survived thanks to the Metropolitan's intervention. Later he drew up a list of over 240 Ukrainian Catholic priests who saved Jews. This good rabbi noted that his list was not exhaustive.
Thousands of Jewish Ukrainian lives were saved at the Metropolitan's command. And all remember how, in November 1942, Sheptytsky issued what was to become his best-known pastoral letter, "Thou Shalt Not Kill." His message on the sanctity of human life was a clear condemnation of genocide.
Attempts to have the Metropolitan proclaimed a saint have foundered on the protests of some Poles, on the propaganda of the Soviets and on the indifference or hostility of certain groups within the Jewish diaspora. In 1994, in his book A Journey Through Illusions, Lewin wrote about how he had tried to interest the American Jewish Congress and the Anti-Defamation League of Brith in "this extraordinary saga of assistance." That was in 1951! No one cared then. No one seems to be interested now.
As Lewin has observed, even Yad Vashem, dedicated to keeping alive the memory of the Holocaust, "seems to have difficulty in recognizing the man's compassion and assistance extended to the Jewish community in his diocese at the time of its martyrdom and destruction." To this day Sheptytsky is not honoured in Israel.
Of late there has been much debate about whether the Catholic Church did enough to save Jews during the Nazi terror. There can be not doubt that Sheptytsky did, acting as a leader of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, as a Ukrainian patriot, and as a man of rare intellect and spirituality. If he had been discovered, he would have been martyred, joining the many millions of other Ukrainian victims of the Holocaust.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the State of Israel which on the 22nd of April will pay special honour to those who risked everything to save Jews. I shall pray that this will be the year in which Israel recognizes Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky as a Righteous Gentile, for many years ago, a Holocaust survivor told me that this man's deeds were truly holy.
Perhaps if Tel Aviv finally honours Sheptytsky as a Righteous Gentile, then one day soon, Rome will also confirm that Metropolitan Andrei was a saint - a Moses whom Itzhak and I can share.


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Vlas.

[Zbyszek]

Steve, thank you for your article about Andrij Szeptycki. He is surely one of the most outstanding Ukrainians.
It is not my intention to undermine his achievements which were great but a good question is why he has not been beatified yet.
Famous Andrij loved his Ukraine and his ancient Rusyn roots and sometimes he got too much involved in politics which is dangerous for any church hierarch.
He greeted the Germans in 1941 TOO openly and with too much enthusiasm. It was impossible to get unnoticed. Szeptycki naively believed that Nazis are just bad boys who change their minds one sunny day and their horrible crimes are just "misunderstanding" which can be corrected, hence his blessing for the Ukrainian SS Halychyna, which was openly expressed during the saint mass in the Saint Yuri Catherdral in Lviv. Also, he got too personally involved in his patriotic Ukrainian dreams [support for the doubtful German-endorsed Skoropadsky regime in Ukraine 1918]. In the thirties, he failed to definitely condemn the German nazism.
It is nice to mention that while Andrej Szeptycki, formerly Roman the Count Szeptycki was a Ukrainian patriot, his brother Stanislaw the Count Szeptycki was a Polish general in the army which won Kiev in 1919 as a result of the common Polish-Ukrainian offensive against the Soviet Russia[Petliura-Pilsudsky agreement].
Moreover, both brothers were grandsons of the famous Polish playwright Aleksander Fredro! Family roots were quite complicated and reflected the Polish-Rusyn/Ukrainian nobility meanders. They were direct descendants of the Rusyn boyars who were polonized and changed their original Orthodox religion.
I think I can understand the Count's dreams as a human. I can even say I'd share many of his feelings. On the other hand, I clearly see that He was caught in the same trap as many Vatican hierarchs during WWII. His aristoctratic distrust in the left made him neglect horrible dangers on the right.
Is not it ironic that a grandson of the the famous joker and even an author of some obscenic texts became such a spiritual person? He was a poewrful personality, surely worth remembering. And he definitely should be honoured as a Righteous Gentile by the Jews.

[Edited by Zbyszek on 30th September 2003 at 12:40]