The pontiff listened intently as a Polish priest who accompanied Lidia Maksymowicz, 80, told him of her story at a general audience in the Vatican s San Damaso Courtyard.
Maksymowicz was a toddler when she and her family were sent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp from their home in Belarus. While there, she was subjected to horrifying experiments by the notorious Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele
By Philip Pullella VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis kissed the number tattooed on the arm of a survivor of medical experiments at the Auschwitz Nazi concentration camp when she was introduced to him on Wednesday. The pope listened intently as a Polish priest who accompanied Lidia Maksymowicz, 80, told him of her story. She then rolled up her left sleeve to show him the number - 70072. He kissed it and she hugged him. Maksymowicz and her family were taken from their home in Belarus to the Nazi death camp in German-occupied Poland in December 1943, shortly before her third birthday. She was put in a children s barracks, where she and others were the subjects of medical experimentation by Doctor Josef Mengele, according to a documentary about her life. After the liberation of the camp in 1945, Russian soldiers assumed her mother Anna - tattooed with the number 70071 - was dead. She was adopted and raised by a Catholic Polish family. Born Ludmila Boczarowa, she did not know her birth
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Pope Francis greets a Holocaust survivor Lidia Maksymowicz after the weekly general audience at the San Damaso courtyard, at the Vatican, May 26, 2021. REUTERS/Remo Casilli
Pope Francis kissed the number tattooed on the arm of a survivor of medical experiments at the Auschwitz Nazi concentration camp when she was introduced to him on Wednesday.
The pope listened intently as a Polish priest who accompanied Lidia Maksymowicz, 80, told him of her story during a general audience in the Vatican’s San Damaso Courtyard.
She then rolled up her left sleeve to show him the number 70072. He kissed it and she hugged him.