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"I believe there were no gas chambers.... I think that 200,000 to 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps but none of them by gas chambers," Bishop Richard Williamson was quoted as saying in an interview with Swedish SVT television.
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JERUSALEM (EJP)---Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem and the Simon Wiesenthal Centre on Sunday slammed a Holocaust-denying English bishop whose ex-communication has been cancelled by Pope Benedict XVI.
"The reinstatement is an internal Church matter.However, it is scandalous that someone of this stature in the Church denies the Holocaust.Denial of the Holocaust not only insults the survivors, memory of the victims, and the Righteous Among the Nations who risked their lives to rescue Jews, it is a brutal attack on Truth," Yad Vashem said in a statement, referring to Bishop Richard Williamson who has publicly denied the murder of six million Jews during World
War II.
"Even if the revocation of the excommunication is unrelated to Williamson’s comments regarding the Holocaust, what kind of message is this sending regarding the Church’s attitude toward the Holocaust? Although we understand that Williamson’s statements do not represent the Church’s stance, we continue to hope that the Church will vigorously condemn these unacceptable and odious comments.," it added.
The Simon Wiesenthal Centre, an international Jewish human rights body, said: "The Pope's decision to welcome back such a hater into the Church lends moral credence to deniers of history's worst crime.
"In addition to Bishop Williamson's Holocaust denial looms the unchanging virulent anti-Semitism of the Society of Saint Pius as a whole," it said.
The pope cancelled the ex-communication of Williamson and three other bishops in a bid to heal a 20-year schism with traditionalists led by rebel French archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.
The Roman Catholic Church published an edict lifting the 1998 sanction on Lefebvre's successor Bernard Fellay and three other bishops in his breakaway conservative movement, including Williamson.
He is on record as denying the existence of the gas chambers.
"I believe there were no gas chambers.... I think that 200,000 to 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps but none of them by gas chambers," Williamson was quoted as saying in an interview with Swedish SVT television.
"There was not one Jew killed by the gas chambers. It was all lies, lies, lies!"
Italian Jewish groups criticised the decision as a "negative, worrying and incomprehensible signal" on Saturday.
Uneasy relations between the Vatican and Israel have been further strained by plans to declare Nazi-era Pope Pius XII a saint, despite widespread criticism of his inaction during the Holocaust.