To remember the Shoah, choose life over death, says French cardinal

Published: 2006-03-31

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- To transmit the memory of the Shoah from one generation to the next, people must be determined to choose life over death and good over evil, said French Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger. In a March 29 talk at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, the retired archbishop of Paris said that to remember the Shoah, the Hebrew word for Holocaust, the events first must be "rigorously, scientifically documented," and the memory of those who escaped must be relived. The Shoah was "human, rational decisions made by human, rational beings. The Shoah rises as a mystery of human liberty" and, for it to be remembered and never repeated, "moral conscience must become educated," he said, as a real "choice between life and death." Because good and evil can be defined in various ways, dependent upon the context of society and the collective group, the only way to understand the difference between good and evil is to "identify good with life and evil with death," said the cardinal, who was born of Jewish parents; his mother was killed in the Holocaust.

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