Letter: All will be resolved at Auschwitz

Sir: As a member of the committee that is arranging events in London commemorating the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, I regret that the Reuter report that you published on 3 April under the heading 'Nuns to move' gives a wrong impression of the events surrounding the Auschwitz Convent controversy.

It is untrue that Jewish leaders have been threatening to boycott the 50th anniversary commemorations on 19 April. As someone involved in the negotiations, I am not aware of any boycott threat by any responsible organisation. So far as this country is concerned, a delegation of about 50, led by the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, is planning to be in Warsaw for the main event. The prime minister of Israel will also take part.

Equally misleading is the suggestion that this is a dispute between Catholics and Jews. It may have been so originally, but in recent years the Polish churches and the Vatican, including the Pope himself, have ruled that the nuns should move into the newly built convent and therefore become part of the new Cultural Centre for Information and Dialogue.

It now appears that the matter will soon be resolved and that Auschwitz will remain, as your report states: 'the most symbolic of all monuments to the Holocaust'.

Yours sincerely,

SIGMUND STERNBERG

London, NW5