Israeli selling Pope's home
Jewish heir puts childhood house of late Pope John Paul II for sale for USD 1 million; Krakow's Jewish community, in fear of anti-Semitic reactions, offers to buy house, give it as gift to church
Millions of Catholics in Poland and all over the world were astounded over the weekend to hear that an Israeli psychologist living in the United States has put the family home of late Pope John Paul II for sale for USD 1 million, Israel's leading newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported Sunday.
The home where Karol Wojtyla lived during his childhood, in the Polish town of Wadowice, was owned by Rabbi Yechiel Balamuth, the grandfather of Israeli psychologist Ron Balamuth.
When the communists took over Poland, following the soviet occupation after World War II, they nationalized the house. It was then turned into a museum for the Pope's history visited by approximately 250,000 pilgrims every year.
The house was returned to its legal owners in the mid 1990's after the fall of communism in Poland.
Ron Balamuth, who inherited the house, visited Pope John Paul II in 2000 and showed him pictures of the house and of his family members who were killed in the Holocaust.
After the visit, Balamuth told Yedioth Ahronoth that "the Pope immediately recognized my grandfather and the home where he grew up, and was very excited to see the pictures."
"I asked him for details about my grandfather and grandmother, who died in the Lodz concentration camp, and he told me that he remembers my grandfather as a progressive Jew," he said.
'He did a lot for the Jews'
Balamuth did not plan on selling the house when it was returned to him, but he changed his mind last week. Now he is asking the Wadowice municipality, which runs the museum, to buy it from him for USD 1 million.
The Polish media reported over the weekend that the new Archbishop of Krakow, Stanislaw Dziwisz, who was the Pope's private secretary, has begun negotiating with Balamuth.
However, the head of Krakow's Jewish community, Tadeusz Jakubowicz, in fear of anti-Semitic reactions, suggested that international Jewish organizations buy the house and give it as a gift to the Polish church.
"John Paul II did a lot for the Jews, and this would be a good way to thank him for it," Jakubowicz said.
