Nun's interfaith efforts honored

Three-and-a-half decades after she first studied the Holocaust, Sister Linda Neil, CSJ, still doesn't understand how the world allowed it to occur.

When she first read the classic "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" by William Shirer in high school in the late 1960s, it horrified her.

"It caught my attention that so many people had been bystanders. It took an awful lot of people to just stand by mutely to let the Holocaust happen," she asserted. "How does that happen in a Christian country, that your neighbors' rights are totally obliterated? How come nobody spoke up in enough numbers to make a difference?"

Learning more

As a former school principal and now a seventh- and ninth-grade theology teacher at Catholic Central High School in Troy, Sister Linda went on to promote tolerance and respect in the classroom.

In 2002, she attended a conference in Washington, D.C., that caused her to explore such issues at an even deeper level.

"Bearing Witness: Anti-Semitism, the Holocaust and Contemporary Issues" was a week-long institute co-sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League, the National Catholic Educational Association and the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. Holocaust survivors, rabbis, national Catholic officials and others gave participants an in-depth education on the Holocaust.

Anti-Judaism

Sister Linda also learned about the history of anti-Judaism, something she distinguishes from anti-Semitism. The latter refers to prejudice against the Jewish people; in contrast, she said, anti-Judaism is prejudice against the Jewish faith.

It bothered Sister Linda to learn about the Catholic Church's role in promoting anti-Judaism. She noted that St. John Chrysostom wrote seven sermons against Jews, even referring to synagogues as brothels; that ancient Church art sometimes depicted Jews in base ways, such as riding on pigs; and that popes often preached that Jews should convert to Christianity.

"The idea that in 70 A.D., the temple [in Jerusalem] was destroyed, the Jews were no longer God's chosen people and we [Christians] were meant to supplant them: Those are the points of prejudice and hurt that the Jewish people went through," she stated.

Lesson plans

The teacher returned from the conference determined to spread her newfound knowledge. She created an 80-slide PowerPoint presentation on the Holocaust, including photos of artwork that had disturbed her, lists of the 1935 Nuremberg Laws that disenfranchised Jews during World War II, and even explanations of Church laws that were hurtful to Jews.

Also included in the presentation were positives: the fact that Pope John XXIII began building bridges toward dialogue with the Jewish people, and that the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s made major efforts to "repair the damage that had been done" over centuries to the relationship between Christians and Jews.

"Pope John Paul II made a point, during the [2000] Jubilee Year, to ask for reconciliation" with the Jews, Sister Linda pointed out. She noted that he went to several sites in Israel, including the Wailing Wall, to pray for peace between Jews and Christians.

'Heavy history'

Sister Linda showed the presentation -- which she termed "heavy history" -- to her ninth-graders, who were studying Scripture, and to tenth-graders studying Church history.

Although many teens experience intolerance from their peers, she said, "I don't know if any of them even compare what they go through to [the intolerance that caused the Holocaust]. That's a point I try to make: that when we accept prejudice, when we see people as 'other' and 'weird,' and don't make any effort to understand them, this is what can happen."

Her work made more of an impact when she visited at Maria College in Albany. The students were studying moral issues, including genocide, so Sister Linda added information on genocides taking place today to the presentation.

"People looked like they'd been run over," she recalled. "They said, 'We really did this? I didn't know.'"

On the road

In the past three years, Sister Linda has brought her presentation to several groups, including all the Catholic school principals and teachers in the Albany Diocese, and a workshop sponsored by the Holocaust Survivors and Friends Educational Center.

Sometimes, people challenge her assertion that everyone should take some responsibility for the Holocaust. Some tell her that people weren't aware of what was happening.

"People didn't know?" she retorts -- and shows a slide with a map of the more than 100 concentration camps that were built in German-occupied Europe during World War II. "People didn't know that all these people were in their backyards?"

Responsibility

Sister Linda is quick to note that Pope John Paul II said responsibility for the Holocaust is a burden for all people to carry. In fact, Shoah (Holocaust) education is mandated by both New York State and the Church.

"As a Catholic school, for us, that carries more weight," she said of the Church requirement. She questions students: "Do we just believe what Jesus says, or act on it? How did this [Holocaust] happen in Christian Europe? Other [genocides] are happening today, in a world with a billion Christians; how does that happen?"

Sister Linda also brings in Shoah survivors to speak to her students. In fact, when she taught in Watertown in the 1970s and '80s, the grandfather of one of her students had been a court reporter at the Nuremberg trials of Nazis and spoke to the class about it. A different survivor addressed Catholic High students this year.

Honored

Because her work has received such praise, Sister Linda recently received a Spirit of Anne Frank "outstanding educator" award from the Anne Frank Center USA.

"Sister [Linda] is a bridge-builder," read the award ceremony's program. "She models religious understanding as a core value for her students as she teaches the importance of developing a world based on tolerance, peace and harmony."

Said Sister Linda: "I was kind of floored. It was a very humbling experience!"

She hopes to bring her presentation to even more groups and organizations in the future to promote reconciliation.

"Our two faiths are like a brother and sister who grew up in the same house," she said of Christianity and Judaism. "We went different ways, but we still grew up in the same house."

(To reach Sister Linda regarding her presentation, call 235-7100.)

(6/23/05) [[In-content Ad]]