Berlin, Germany, Nov 5, 2006 / 22:00 pm
A new stone sculpture was unveiled in Germany this weekend to commemorate the many Catholic priests and monks killed in a lesser-known World War II Nazi concentration camp near Berlin.
The sculpture, unveiled Saturday, is engraved with a cross and the names of 96 clergy who died at Sachsenhausen concentration camp on the north-west outskirts of Berlin, reported Deutsche Presse-Agentur.
Cardinal Jozef Glemp, primate of Poland, attended the ceremony as most of the priests were Polish.
To date, historians working for the Archdiocese of Berlin have documented the names of 711 Catholic clergy from Poland, Germany, and other European nations who were incarcerated in the Sachsenhausen camp.
Hundreds were later transferred to Dachau and other Nazi sites, where they died. One of the surviving inmates, Kazimierz Majdanski, now 90, went on to become Catholic bishop of Szczecin-Kamien.
At the unveiling, Cardinal Georg Sterzinsky said the German Catholic Church was grateful for this memorial to the victims of Sachsenhausen camp, more than 600 of whom were Poles, reported DPA.
The Cardinal also appealed for continued vigilance against racism.