In an audience in Vatican City on Oct. 25, Sara Bloomfield, director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, presented Pope Francis with a letter, penned by Holocaust survivors who volunteer at the museum, about the Hamas terrorist border infiltration and resulting massacre of more than 1,400 people in Israel on Oct. 7.
“All our lives we mourned for our loved ones lost to the genocidal actions of the Nazis and their collaborators, but we hoped the lessons of the past could shape a different future,” the survivors wrote. “Today we mourn for Israel that holds such special meaning for us.”
“This is not what we expected in this final chapter of our lives, as we contemplate our legacy, the future of Holocaust memory and education, and the future of our people,” they added. “We write this letter to humanity in sorrow but also in hope. We know pain few can comprehend, having seen our families and communities obliterated. We are living proof that the unthinkable is always possible.”
Bloomfield was part of a small group that included six children of Holocaust survivors, the museum stated. She thanked the pope for opening the Vatican’s wartime archives, for which Stuart Eizenstat, chair of the museum, has advocated for more nearly 30 years.