Auschwitz cross

The American branch of the World Jewish Congress also protested with statements from chairman Wolfe Kelman and the Orthodox faction representative Zvi Zakheim.

"[2] The central issue in the controversy over the Auschwitz cross was articulated by the author and former Catholic priest James Carroll:[3] If Jewish responses to the Holocaust, which range from piety to nihilism, are complex and multifaceted, Christian interpretations of the near elimination of Jews from Europe, however respectfully put forth, must inevitably be even more problematic.

The [Auschwitz] cross signifies the problem: when suffering is seen to serve a universal plan of salvation, its particular character as tragic and evil is always diminished.

[...] Once, for Christians to speak among ourselves about the murder of six million as a kind of crucifixion would have seemed an epiphany of compassion, paying the Jews the highest tribute, as if the remnant of Israel had at last become, in this way, the Body of Christ.

By the end of March 1998, a large group of government and nongovernment leaders, including then Chief of the Prime Minister's Cabinet Wiesław Walendziak [pl], 130 Sejm deputies, 16 senators, former President Lech Wałęsa, Cardinal Józef Glemp, and Gdańsk Archbishop Tadeusz Rakoczy, went on record as opposing the removal of the cross.

In August 1998, the erection of some hundreds of additional smaller crosses outside Auschwitz, despite the opposition of the country's bishops, sparked intense controversy in the Polish Catholic and international Jewish community.

Government efforts to resolve the situation in the fall of 1998 through the courts by revoking the lease on the land held by the Association of War Victims was met with little success.

The government wanted the local courts to agree to appoint an administrator for the former convent site pending a legal decision on the validity of the lease revocation.

An elderly man from the far-right organisation Telewizja Narodowe had built a 2-story tall wooden cross beside a temporary campground on the highway on the day of the 70th anniversary.