Some of the survivors made Francis offerings that were linked to their suffering. “If 15 years ago someone had told us that we would so hysterically react to aiding refugees from war-torn territories, I would never have believed it”, he continued.
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Francis moved on to nearby Birkenau, a sprawling complex where people were murdered in factory-like fashion in its gas chambers.
He is in the country to mark 1,050 years since it adopted Christianity.
He also met some 25 Christians who risked their lives during the war to help hide and protect Jews in Poland – a group recognised by Israel’s Yad Vashem as “Righteous Among the Nations”.
He also prayed in the dark Auschwitz prison cell of a Catholic saint, Maximilian Kolba; a Polish friar who sacrificed his life during the war to save the life of another man. A few shafts from a tiny window were the only light cast on the pontiff.
They were receptive and then they all got down to the business of organizing the meeting, which happened Friday during the pope’s visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau. One woman kissed his hand and he exchanged a few words with them.
Afterwards, he placed a large white candle at the Death Wall where prisoners were executed.
As reporters looked on, the pope passed alone under the infamous sign at the camp entrance that bears the words “Arbeit Macht Frei”, or “Work Sets You Free”.
In the camp’s barracks, he sat on a bench in silent contemplation.
The Argentine-born pontiff made an early morning pilgrimage to the place where Adolf Hitler’s forces killed more than 1 million people, majority Jews, during World War II.
The quiet, contemplative nature of the pope’s visit was markedly different from those of his two most recent predecessors, both of whom had direct personal ties to the Holocaust and gave public remarks.
“This site bore witness to the most systematic, industrialized atrocity in the history of humanity”, Rabbi David Rosen of the American Jewish Committee, who was with the pope during the visit, told the Times.
“I feel like the Pope came especially to see me”, said Janina Iwanska, 86, who was brought to the camp as a teenager following the failed Warsaw Uprising against Adolf Hitler’s forces in 1944.
With his visit on Friday he will become the third consecutive pontiff to make the pilgrimage to the place where Adolf Hitler’s forces killed more than 1 million people, a lot of them Jews.
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Inclement weather forced Pope Francis to travel by vehicle for about 65 kilometers (40 miles) from Krakow to Oswiecim where the concentration camp-turned-museum is located.
