A Polish survivor of a Nazi concentration camp published a book yesterday recollecting her family's relationship with Pope John Paul II, including letters from the late pontiff
A Polish survivor of a Nazi concentration camp published a book yesterday recollecting her family's relationship with Pope John Paul II, including letters from the late pontiff.
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Wanda Poltawska, an 87-year-old psychiatrist, said the relationship started in the 1950s when she sought a priest for spiritual support in overcoming the trauma that she suffered during almost four years at the Ravensbrueck concentration camp. That priest was Karol Wojtyla, who was elected pope in 1978.
Poltawska's 570-page book, The Beskidy Mountains Recollections, recalls vacations with Wojtyla and includes letters of spiritual guidance he exchanged with her and her family -- a correspondence that continued after he became pope. In the letters, he also offered occasional comments on his papal encyclicals.
John Paul died in 2005. Moves toward his beatification and canonisation began that year, as Pope Benedict XVI waived the five-year waiting period after a candidate's death. Poltawska said that, in deciding to publish her book, she was "encouraged by other people who said that I must give this testimony of the life of a saint".
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