[Apologetics] Fw: Catholic Authority

[Stephen Korsman]

March 23, 2000
JERUSALEM, (ZENIT).- Today will be an unforgettable day for Edith Zirer, a
Jewish woman who was born in Poland but who has lived in Haifa for decades.
At last, in the Yad Vashem Memorial to the Holocaust, she will be able to
personally thank Karol Wojtyla, (Pope John Paul II)----the man who saved her
life 55 years ago, she said.

At that time, Edith Zirer said: "I remember perfectly well. I was a 13 year
old girl, alone, sick, and weak. I had spent 3 years in a German
concentration camp at the point of death. And, like an angel, Karol Wojtyla
saved my life; like a dream from heaven: he gave me something to drink and
eat and then carried me on his back some 4 kilometers in the snow, before
catching the train to safety."

Edith Zirer tells the story as if it had happened yesterday. It was a cold
morning in early February, 1945. The young Jew, who was not yet aware that
she was the only member of her family to survive the Nazi massacre, let a
tall, strong 25-year-old, tonsured seminarian carry her and give her a ray
of hope.

"On January 28, 1945 Russian soldiers liberated the Hassak concentration
camp, where I had been imprisoned for almost 3 years, working in a munitions
factory. I felt confused, I was prostrated with illness. Two days later I
arrived at a small railway station between Czestochowa and Krakow." At this
time, Wojtyla was in Krakow preparing for his priestly ordination.

"I was sure I would arrive at the end of my journey. I was lying on the
ground, in the corner of a large hall where dozens of refugees were
gathering, the majority of whom still wore uniforms with the numbers of the
concentration camps. Then Wojtyla saw me. He came with a big cup of tea, the
first hot beverage I had had in weeks. Then he brought me a cheese sandwich
made with Polish rye bread, wonderful. But I didn't want to eat. I was too
tired. He made me eat. Then he told me I would have to walk to catch the
train. I tried, but I fell down on the ground. He then took me in his arms
and carried me for a long time. All the while the snow fell. I remember his
brown jacket, the tranquil voice who told me about his parents' death, and
his brother's, the loneliness he felt, and the need not to be overcome by
sorrow and to fight for life. His name was indelibly imprinted in my
memory."