Our modern-day Moses: Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky (05/03/98)

Our modern-day Moses: Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky

by the Rev. Bohdan Lukie

I remember when Itzhak, better known as Kurt Lewin, came to Roblin, Manitoba, and when he told me about a modern-day Moses - ours, and his!

The year was 1959. The place was St. Vladimir's College, a minor seminary, run by the Redemptorist Fathers. I was in Grade 11. With 49 other students I listened to this Ukrainian Jew speak. He praised one of the greatest European prelates of this century, Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky, who headed the Ukrainian Catholic Church for nearly half a century until his death on November 1, 1944.

I had never before heard of Metropolitan Sheptytsky. I was just a farm kid from Grandview, Manitoba. And yet here was Kurt Lewin, a Holocaust survivor, a Haganah commander during the siege of Jerusalem, an Israeli Army officer, the great grandson of Isaac Schmelkes - a rabbi of Lviv still revered by Orthodox Jewry as a spiritual and intellectual giant - telling me about his Ukrainian savior.

Mr. Lewin had come to Manitoba at the invitation of the Rev. Michael Hrynchyshyn, the postulator in the cause of the beatification of Metropolitan Andrei. Mr. Lewin was passionately committed to that purpose. He told us that we, as future priests of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, should know what our metropolitan had done for the Jews of Ukrainian Galicia under Nazi occupation. He spoke about how his own life was saved when the metropolitan gave him shelter in Lviv's St. George Cathedral and of how the metropolitan, who stood resolutely in favor of Ukraine's independence and shared in the general euphoria of liberation from the Soviets, nevertheless, maintained a critical vigilance toward German rule.

In February 1942, the metropolitan dared to lodge a protest with Heinrich Himmler against the destruction of the Galician Jewish community. The Nazi functionary who delivered Himmler's response bluntly told the metropolitan that if it were not for the metropolitan's age, he would have been shot for meddling in matters that should not concern him.

The metropolitan saw things differently. He persisted with works of Christian charity. He soon mobilized a Christian opposition to Nazi rule in western Ukraine. He let the Vatican know what was happening, in late August 1942, when he wrote to Pope Pius XII, alerting the holy father to the "almost diabolical" nature of the German regime. A few days later he repeated that condemnation in a letter to Cardinal Eugene Tisserant, prefect of the Congregation of Eastern Churches.

He also encouraged Christian resistance. Working with his brother, Klymentii, leader of Lviv's Studite monks, the metropolitan gathered together a small army of nuns and priests who would risk their own lives in clandestine rescue and sanctuary operations. False baptismal certificates were arranged for no less than 200 Jewish children, who were then smuggled to monasteries, orphanages and convent schools in and around Lviv. All of these children's lives were saved - 15 in the metropolitan's own residence. This at a time when sheltering Jews was a criminal offense punishable by death.

Rabbi Dr. David Kahana also survived thanks to the metropolitan's intervention. Later he drew up a list of over 240 Ukrainian Catholic priests who saved Jews. This good rabbi noted that his list was not exhaustive.

The lives of thousands of Ukrainian Jews were saved at the metropolitan's command. And all remember how, in November 1942, Metropolitan Sheptytsky issued what was to become his best-known pastoral letter, "Thou Shalt Not Kill." His message on the sanctity of human life was a clear condemnation of genocide.

Attempts to have the metropolitan proclaimed a saint have foundered on the protests of some Poles, on the propaganda of the Soviets and on the indifference or hostility of certain groups within the Jewish diaspora. In 1994, in his book "A Journey Through Illusions," Mr. Lewin wrote about how he had tried to interest the American Jewish Congress and the Anti-Defamation League of the B'nai B'rith in "this extraordinary saga of assistance." That was in 1951. No one cared then. No one seems to be interested now. As Mr. Lewin has observed, even Yad Vashem, Israel's memorial dedicated to keeping alive the memory of the Holocaust, "seems to have difficulty in recognizing the man's compassion and assistance extended to the Jewish community in his diocese at the time of its martyrdom and destruction." To this day Metropolitan Sheptytsky is not honored in Israel.

Of late there has been much debate about whether the Catholic Church did enough to save Jews during the Nazi terror. There can be no doubt that Metropolitan Sheptytsky did, acting as a leader of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, as a Ukrainian patriot, and as a man of rare intellect and spirituality. If he had been discovered, he would have been martyred, joining the many millions of other Ukrainian victims of the Holocaust.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the state of Israel, which on April 22 paid special honor to those who risked everything to save Jews. I shall pray that this will be the year in which Israel recognizes Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky as a Righteous Gentile, for many years ago, a Holocaust survivor told me that this man's deeds were truly holy.

Perhaps if Tel Aviv finally honors Metropolitan Sheptytsky as a Righteous Gentile, then, one day soon, Rome will also confirm that Metropolitan Andrei was a saint - a Moses whom Itzhak and I share.

The Rev. Bohdan Lukie, CSsR, is pastor of Holy Eucharist Ukrainian Catholic Church in Toronto.