Il Papa Comments

BACKGROUND TO ‘IL PAPA’

In 1945, a young Catholic priest, Father Karel Wotoyla, volunteered to assist the Allied forces in Europe with the closure and evacuation of the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp operated by the Nazi regime at Oswiecim in Poland. Among the human wreckage was a seventeen year old girl, who, like many others, had been starved, abused and battered almost to the point of death. When Father Wotoyla lifted her up in his arms, she was little more than a bag of bones, but was still alive, so he carried her to the trucks that were standing by to transport these survivors to the Allied medical facilities. Despite her shockingly wasted and feeble condition, she survived, and was nursed back to health. As with many of the Jewish inmates of these charnel houses, she eventually immigrated to Israel, where she married and began a family of her own.
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