As a Kiwi it’s difficult to understand traditional enmity between one group and another.  Of course we pretend to have a rivalry with the Australians at Sport. But when pushed the average Kiwi will tell you that Australians are, “pretty much like us” our “closest neighbours” and our “best allies” and anyway Aunty Marg and my cousins are Aussies as are my brother and his wife and kids. As well Kiwis have never really been into identifying people as Jewish.

I saw a programme on TV a few years ago and was astounded by my own naiveté at never having realised that many of the barons of business in NZ were in fact ethnically Jewish and/or religiously as well.  In fact I felt proud of the fact that I’d never even heard that household names like Hallensteins, Hannahs, Myers, the beer magnate of Lion Nathan, and several others were of Jewish origin.

So when I read that the Pope has recently been trying to mend fences with the Jewish people of Rome and at the same time promoting the cause of Pius XII I start to wonder what all the fuss is about.

Forgiveness leads to closure
No I am not at all a holocaust denier – Of the atrocities that happened in the last century there is none worse than the systematic genocide of the Jewish people across Europe.  And I know that at the funeral of every serviceman or woman I’ve attended I have heard or seen two phrases “Lest we forget” and “We will Remember.”

It is indeed wonderful that we remember those who gave their lives for the sake of freedom, and that we do not forget those who had their lives taken from them in the same conflagration. But, we also need to be able to forgive and almost forget – we cannot forever live hating everyone from Germany or Japan.  We have to move on.  It has become a commonplace saying now that people need to be able to grieve and move on.  We call that experience “closure”.

In countries where people cannot reach closure we are doomed to repeat over and over the same rivalries that have fuelled conflicts in the past century in the Middle East, in Ireland, in the Baltics and elsewhere.  Until there is forgiveness it is impossible to reach closure on hatred.

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