Pope Francis said on Sunday that society should be vigilant for "any whiff" of resurgent anti-Semitism, calling for new generations to be taught the horrors of the Holocaust.
The pope made his appeal in Kaunas, Lithuania's second-largest city, on the 75th anniversary of the liquidation of the Jewish ghetto created by the Nazis in the capital, Vilnius, a city known for centuries as the "Jerusalem of the North" for its importance to Jewish thought and politics. Of about 37,000 Jews in the city when the Germans occupied it in June 1941, only about 3,000 survived the war.
"The Jewish people suffered insults and cruel punishments," Pope Francis told a crowd of about 100,000 at an open-air service.
"Let us ... ask the Lord to give us the gift of discernment to detect in time any seed of that pernicious attitude, any whiff of it that can taint the heart of generations that did not experience those times."
Francis was using the anniversary to make a broader appeal beyond Lithuania, a papal aide said.
In May, Germany reported that it recorded 1,504 anti-Semitic incidents in 2017, up from 1,468 in 2016. The previous month, thousands of Germans wearing Jewish kippot took part in nationwide rallies in support of the Jewish community.
France was shocked in March by the murder of a Holocaust survivor in a suspected anti-Semitic attack, and Britain's main opposition Labour Party is embroiled in an anti-Semitism row.
More than 200,000 Lithuanian Jews were murdered by the Nazis, aided by Lithuanian collaborators. The country's Jewish community today numbers about 3,000.
In his Mass sermon, Francis referred to those who collaborated with the Nazis in World War II or with communist authorities in the period between 1944 and 1991, when Lithuania was part of the Soviet Union.
"Earlier generations still bear the scars of the period of the occupation, anguish at those who were deported, uncertainty about those who never returned [and] shame for those who were informers and traitors," he said.
Francis paid equal tribute to victims of both Nazi and Soviet atrocities.
Each year, the Sept. 23 anniversary is commemorated with readings of the names of Jews who were killed by Nazis or Lithuanian partisans or were deported to concentration camps.
Francis prayed silently in the former ghetto and warned against the temptation "that can dwell in every human heart" to want to be superior or dominant over others again.
Francis honored freedom fighters at the former KGB headquarters where anti-Soviet partisans were detained, tortured and executed, solemnly touring the underground chambers that have now been turned into a haunting museum of occupation atrocities.
"In this place of remembrance, Lord, we pray that your cry may keep us alert," he said afterward. "That your cry, Lord, may free us from the spiritual sickness that remains a constant temptation for us as a people: forgetfulness of the experiences and sufferings of those who have gone before us."
Sitting outside in places of honor were some of the last living Lithuanian freedom fighters, including Juozas Jakavonis, also known as "Tiger," a 93-year-old partisan fighter in uniform who said he had spent three months in the former KGB detention facility where 59 of his fellow inmates were executed. Now considered a partisan hero in Lithuania, Jakavonis said he was "really very touched by the appearance of the pope."
Francis changed his trip schedule three weeks ago to allow him to acknowledge the slaughter of 90% of Lithuania's 250,000 Jews at the hands of Nazi occupiers and their Lithuanian collaborators.
The issue of Lithuanian complicity in Nazi war crimes is sensitive in the country. Jewish activists accuse some Lithuanians of engaging in historical revisionism by trying to equate the extermination of Jews with the deportations and executions of other Lithuanians during the Soviet occupation.
Many Lithuanians do not make distinctions between the Soviets who tortured and killed thousands of Lithuanians and the Nazis who did the same with Jews.
Until recently, the Vilnius KGB museum was called the "Genocide Museum" but changed its name to the "Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights" since it focuses on Soviet atrocities, not Nazi German ones.
