The meeting with the Pope: “I would like to tell parents that their children are better than they imagine”
VATICAN CITY. “I would like to tell parents that their children are better than they imagine.” It is the desire born in Edith Bruck when she met thousands of girls and boys during her “pilgrimages” to the schools of Rome. He expresses it at the home of Pope Francis. A little less than a year after going by surprise to visit her in her Roman home, the Pope welcomes Bruck to Santa Marta on the Day of Remembrance. As soon as they see each other, the Pontiff and the writer who survived Auschwitz embrace each other tightly, like old friends. And then, in the presence of the Ukrainian assistant of the writer, Olga, and the director of the Osservatore Romano Andrea Monda, they converse “affectionately” – says Monda himself – for more than an hour. The Pope and Bruck highlight “the inestimable value of transmitting the memory of the past to the youngest, even in its most painful aspects, so as not to fall back into the same tragedies”, informs the Holy See Press Office. In fact, Monda explains, central to the interview was the theme of memory and the importance of passing it on to young people, to defeat the ghosts of racism and the specter of anti-Semitism that seem to re-emerge. Francesco and Bruck agree on the too much indifference that is recorded in the face of certain episodes and slogans of violence that recall the dark times of Nazism, with too many human beings who turn away to avoid abuses and injustices. The artist reiterates a concept affirmed in a recent interview with Vatican News, the website of the Holy See: «Men have not learned from their misdeeds. They have not learned from Auschwitz ». It is not the first time they talk about it, because since that first meeting of 20 February 2021 a continuous dialogue was born. They became friends and mutual admirers.
On Vatican News we read that the writer, finalist at the last Strega Prize, spoke to the Pontiff about her “pilgrimages” to Roman schools to talk to the students and retrace with them what she lived, suffered and discovered at the time of the fields of concentration and extermination. And he revealed to the Pope that this commitment “is good for me”. Francesco, 85, replies with a smile, and with a joke: he tells her that he has noticed that work rejuvenates. Bruck says she is heartened to see “the extraordinary effect” that her words have on young people, indeed, she would like to communicate “to parents that their children are better than they imagine”, reports Monda. At this point the Pontiff underlines one of the key preachings of his pontificate: the need to re-establish a fruitful relationship and communication between children and parents, grandchildren and grandparents, young and old, where each generation learns something from the other.
There was also a brief moment with the assistant, who asked the Pope to pray for Ukraine: Francis assured her that he is already praying.
Then came the time for gifts, marked by another hug. The Bishop of Rome gives her a medal made for him in Jerusalem, a present that amazes Bruck a lot, which he reciprocates with a home-baked braided bread: it is that “lost bread”, the title of his famous novel, which his mother cooked very little before being taken away by the Nazis. Today, however, he presents it to the Pontiff as “found bread”, a symbol of recovered joy. Everyone present tastes a piece. The writer also gives the Pope two books: Letters to my mother, in the new edition of the Nave di Theseo; and a volume of poems by Miklós Radnóti, the Hungarian poet “whose brilliant career – as Francis himself stated in Budapest – was broken by the blinded hatred of those who, just because he was of Jewish origin, first prevented him from teaching and then took away from the family ». The poems are translated and edited by Bruck herself.
There is still something that the Pope wants to leave to his friend Edith. It’s a wool shawl. He rests it gently and tenderly on her shoulders, telling her: “This is because of the heat, because it’s cold now.” A few tears line the face of the tenacious writer who managed to save herself from the horrors of six concentration camps.
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