Chicagoland

Cardinal, Holocaust survivor on dangers of hateful rhetoric

By Michelle Martin | Staff writer
Wednesday, November 20, 2019

Cardinal, Holocaust survivor on dangers of hateful rhetoric

Cardinal Cupich, Holocaust survivor Fritzie Fritzshall and ABC7 news anchor Alan Krashesky came together Nov. 19, 2019 at Loyola Academy in Wilmette to talk about their July visit to Auschwitz and make the point that the horror of the Holocaust started with hateful rhetoric.
More than 800 people gathered at Loyola Academy in Wilmette for an interfaith dialogue with Cardinal Cupich and Holocaust survivor Fritzie Fritzshall, president of the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center, on Nov. 18, 2019. This discussion followed a July 2019 visit to Auchswitz by the 90-year-old Fritzshall and the cardinal. Cupich and Fritzshall had a conversation about the hate speech that gave rise to the Holocaust and the language that continues to fuel the surge of antisemitism, racism and xenophobia in the world today. (Karen Callaway/Chicago Catholic)
Cardinal Cupich chats with Fritzie Fritzshall during an interfaith dialogue Nov. 18, 2019, at Loyola Academy in Wilmette. More than 800 people gathered to listen to their conversation about the hate speech that gave rise to the Holocaust and the language that continues to fuel the surge of antisemitism, racism and xenophobia in the world today. (Karen Callaway/Chicago Catholic)
Moderator Kelley Szany talks with Cardinal Cupich and Holocaust survivor Fritzie Fritzshall, president of the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center, on Nov. 18, 2019, at Loyola Academt in Wilmette. (Karen Callaway/Chicago Catholic)
Sisters of Christian Charity Mary Ann Warwick and Monica Cormier (on end) listen to Cardinal Cupich and Holocaust survivor Fritzie Fritzshall, president of the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center, at Loyola Academy in WIlmette on Nov. 18, 2019. (Karen Callaway/Chicago Catholic)
Cardinal Cupich listens as Fritzie Fritzshall speaks during an interfaith dialogue Nov. 18, 2019, at Loyola Academy in Wilmette. More than 800 people gathered to listen to their conversation about the hate speech that gave rise to the Holocaust and the language that continues to fuel the surge of antisemitism, racism and xenophobia in the world today. (Karen Callaway/Chicago Catholic)
Alan Krashesky, ABC7 Chicago news anchor and reporter, talks about visiting Auschwitz with Cardinal Cupich and Holocaust survivor Fritzie Fritzshall at Loyola Academy in Wilmette on Nov. 18, 2019. (Karen Callaway/Chicago Catholic)
Cardinal Cupich laughs as Fritzie Fritzshall speaks during an interfaith dialogue Nov. 18, 2019, at Loyola Academy in Wilmette. More than 800 people gathered to listen to their conversation about the hate speech that gave rise to the Holocaust and the language that continues to fuel the surge of antisemitism, racism and xenophobia in the world today. (Karen Callaway/Chicago Catholic)
Cardinal Cupich chats with Fritzie Fritzshall during an interfaith dialogue Nov. 18, 2019, at Loyola Academy in Wilmette. More than 800 people gathered to listen to their conversation about the hate speech that gave rise to the Holocaust and the language that continues to fuel the surge of antisemitism, racism and xenophobia in the world today. Karen Callaway/Chicago Catholic
Jesuit Father Patrick McGrath greets more than 800 people gathered to hear Cardinal Cupich and Holocaust survivor Fritzie Fritzshall at Loyola Academy in Wilmette Nov. 18. (Karen Callaway/Chicago Catholic)

Cardinal Cupich, Holocaust survivor Fritzie Fritzshall and ABC7 news anchor Alan Krashesky came together Nov. 18 at Loyola Academy in Wilmette to talk about their July visit to Auschwitz and make the point that the horror of the Holocaust started with hateful rhetoric.

During their visit, Fritzshall, president of the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center, asked Cardinal Cupich as a religious man, a man of God, how such things could happen. At the time, the cardinal had no answer.

About a month later, he wrote a column titled “Words Matter” (Chicago Catholic, July 28).

It took some time for him to formulate his response, Cardinal Cupich told the audience of more than 800 people.

“I reflected on it, and there is an answer,” Cardinal Cupich said. “It happens in the human heart when we begin to criticize people, marginalize them, and then eventually call them ‘other,’ ‘alien,’ to ourselves. Then we begin to look at the ills of society, and there’s always the tendency to scapegoat, and so we scapegoat those people who are other as the reason for our problems. It becomes a lot easier then to get rid of the scapegoat. That’s what a scapegoat is. There is a dynamic that happens. It just doesn’t happen overnight. That’s why right away we have to stop the words. We have to stop the hate speech in its tracks, lest it begin to define people as ‘other,’ and that other becomes the enemy that we have to get rid of. There is a trajectory to those words that we can’t ignore.”

Krashesky said that when he first learned of the trip, he immediately thought it was newsworthy — newsworthy enough for him and a crew to travel to Poland.

“We have someone who is Jewish, someone who is Roman Catholic, coming together and having that shared experience at a time when, in our country and locally too, we see a rise in antisemitic incidents, we see a rise in violence that is fueled by antisemitism, we see worldwide an increase in the type of rhetoric and language that unfortunately leads people to place other groups of people into categories … for all these reasons it felt like we must tell this story and share it,” he said. “I also felt the responsibility for those who will never make that journey, for those who have never visited the Holocaust museum here or elsewhere.”

Fritzshall was a teenager when she was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau, she said, and part of the reason it happened was that her neighbors in the former Czechoslovakia had taken in antisemitic rhetoric and were spreading it even to the children in their homes.

“We had nowhere to turn,” she said.

Fritzshall had returned to Auschwitz several times, first with an aunt thirty years ago and then leading groups as a Holocaust educator, but the fear always comes back when she sets foot in the camp.

She was contemplating one last trip over the summer, as she was approaching her 90th birthday, but she wasn’t sure about it. That was when Cardinal Cupich agreed to accompany her.

“When he offered to go back with me, I grabbed the opportunity,” Fritzshall said. “I felt I was going with a friend. I was going back because I feel in years to come, the camps are not going to remain the way they are today. Even now, the camps are being torn apart. My fear has been and is today that in times to come, the young people are not going to see and get the story of Auschwitz and other camps.”

She fears that as survivors pass away, the story will fade.

“To me, going back, and especially going back with the cardinal, has been educational,” Fritzshall said. “It was our way, and the church’s way, and the cardinal’s way, of saying, ‘We are there for you, I am there for you. We will never allow this to happen again.’ So it truly was a special, special trip.”

Cardinal Cupich had visited Auschwitz before, but this trip was different, he said.

“I kept quiet for the most part because I wanted Fritzie to talk,” the cardinal said. “I wanted to see this terrible place through her voice, through eyes. That’s what really made it real.”

She was the one who told him details, such as how the latrines at the death camp became holy ground because it was the only place where prisoners had the privacy to pray.

She credits her survival, in part, to unexpectedly encountering her Aunt Nella the first day she arrived in the camp. Her grandfather, mother and brothers were all killed.

Asked how her faith helped her survive, Fritzshall said it wasn’t faith so much as hope. Every night, she said, her aunt would embrace her and tell her, “Tomorrow will be better.”

Toward the end of the war, she said, she was the youngest of 600 women taken from the camp to serve as slave labor in a munitions factory. Those women helped her survive so that she could tell their story.

“I have lived all of these years with the promise I made to 599 women that I would be their messenger. It was always, ‘Who will believe us? Who will believe that humanity can do such horrible, horrible things to other human beings? Somebody must live. Somebody must tell the story. So those women gave me extra rest. They took care of me. They gave me the crumbs of their bread so that I could survive. If anyone had a chance, it was me because I was the youngest. If I survived, I was going to tell their story.”

Cardinal Cupich also took part in an interfaith event on Nov. 5 at Fourth Presbyterian Church, 126 E. Chestnut St. The Michigan Avenue Fall Forum included the cardinal, Rabbi Wendi Geffen, senior rabbi of North Shore Congregation Israel, and Eboo Patel, founder and president of Interfaith Youth Core, discussing the topic “How Love for God Asks Us to Embrace Rather than Exclude Each Other.”

Topics:

  • cardinal cupich
  • holocaust
  • interfaith

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