A Publication of the ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN LAITY
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| Volume 6 Number 27 - Tuesday, July 6th, 2004 |
A Publication of the ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN LAITY |
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The Orthodox Christian News Service |
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A ROMANIAN ORTHODOX PRIEST – “JUST AMONG PEOPLES”“România liberă” and “Ziua” of 26 June 2004 - On 25 June 2004, the Patriarchal Palace housed the ceremony for awarding the title of “Just among Peoples” of the state of Israel, to Father Gheorghe I. Petre, from the Diocese of Râmnic, for the help granted to the Jews during the Holocaust, risking his own freedom and life. The event was organised both by the Embassy of Israel in Bucharest and by the Romanian Patriarchate. “Israel ought to honour, in the name of the Jewish people, those non-Jewish people who saved Jews in times of great sorrow, in spite of the risk they were submitted to”, said the Ambassador of the State Israel in Bucharest, Rodica Radian Gordon, while presenting the “Just among Peoples” diploma to Rev. Gheorghe I. Petre. Her Excellency has also saluted the Romania’s initiative to set a Commission for Studying Holocaust and to declare the day of 9 October as National Day for Commemorating the Holocaust. Rev. Gheorghe I. Petre, aged 94, spoke, in his turn, about the “troubled times” of the World War II and about “many Romanians (…) who opposed this scourge, as inhuman and outside the divine commandment” and declared with great modesty that while helping the Jews from the dreadful ghettoes of the “Kingdom of Death” (as Transnistria was called, a province within the territory of today’s Republic of Moldova) he only did his duty of Christian and of servant of God. The medal reads the words of the Talmud “Whoever saves a single life saves a whole world”. Father Gheorghe I. Petre is the first Romanian Orthodox priest and the 49th citizen of Romania who is awarded this title, which also honoured post-mortem Queen Helen, mother of King Michael of Hohenzollern of Romania. The State of Israel recognized 19,707 men and women so far as “Just among Peoples” for the help granted to the Jews during the period of the Holocaust.
Born in 1910, in Govora village,
county of Vâlcea, priest Gheorghe I. Petre was
sent in 1942 by the Diocese of Vâlcea as
missionary priest in Transnistria. The Diocese of
Odessa sent him to the parish of Sarovo, in the
territory of Golta, on the Bug river. Rev.
Gheorghe Petre started to help the Jews from the
ghettoes of Crivoi Ozero and Trei Dube close to
the parish of Sarovo, facilitating their life in
the camp. He was arrested and prosecuted in
Tiraspol for having helped the deported. At the
end of 1943 he was called to the Court Marshal in
Tiraspol. In 1944 a trial began, but he was
acquitted for lack of evidence. |
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