Ex-minister of foreign affairs of Poland, Adam Rotfeld, states that Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church should be granted the title “Righteous Among the Nations.”
According to Rotfeld, granting the title of the righteous to Andrey Sheptytsky is a matter of honor for those whose lives he saved.
“People from Yad Vashem who passed the decision regarding the granting of the title to Andrey Sheptytsky have a very vague idea, one can even say almost no idea about this matter. They lived in other circumstances, therefore, the decision was passed in the same way as many other administrative decisions, on the basis of various denunciations and various documents, which were deliberately forged,” said Adam Rotfeld.
He told the audience the story of his own rescue. He was one of the Jewish children hidden by Greek Catholic monks on Metropolitan Sheptytsky’s instruction. Monks of the monastery in the village of Univ transported him from his native town of Peremyshliany in the Lviv region and hid him in the monastery.
Adam is the only member of the Rotfelds family who survived the Holocaust. All in all, 150 Jews were rescued thanks to Sheptytsky. As the minister of foreign affairs of Poland, Adam Rotfeld placed a memorial board containing words of gratitude to the heroic Sheptytsky brothers. Rotfeld considers it strange that Yad Vashem granted the title of the righteous to Clement Sheptytsky but ignored the main organizer of the action of rescue of Jews.
“Paradoxically, Andrey Sheptytsky, who was the man making the decisions and who played the key role in the rescue of the Jews, has not been granted the title 'Righteous Among the Nations,' despite the fact that many people, including me, repeatedly raised this question. I must say that it is a bad testimony about the institute Yad Vashem."
In his commentary to Radio Freedom, Rotfeld stressed that even the former head of the committee, who repeatedly voted against granting the mentioned title to Metropolitan Sheptytsky, changed his mind before his death. He admitted his mistake and stated that it should be corrected. “The sooner the mistake is corrected, the better,” said Rotfeld.