Berlin, Aufbau Verlag; Martin Dettloff

In the left section of the window the Church is riding a tetramorph (a creature with the heads of eagle, human, lion and bull, symbolizing the four Gospels). She holds the flag of the cross and the chalice in her hands. The divine hand from heaven places a crown on her head.

In the right section the Synagogue is depicted as riding a donkey which is about to break down. In her right hand she holds the head of a he-goat. Her crown is falling. She is blindfolded. The staff of her flag is broken. But worst of all, the divine hand from heaven pierces her head and body with the sword of judgment.

On October 11th, 2006, Pope Benedikt XVI. consecrated the statue of the Carmelite nun Edith Stein, who was born 1891 in Breslau, Germany, as a Jew and murdered in the concentration camp of Auschwitz on August 9, 1942. The statue fills one of the last free exterior niches at the western facade of St. Peter's cathedral in Rome. She had converted to Christianity and was baptized on January 1, 1942, entered the monastry in Cologne and received the name Teresia Benedicta a Cruce (Teresia, blessed by the cross). This name is also chiseled into the base of the marble statue.

The personal integrity of Edith Stein and her right to convert to Christianity are undisputed, that she was canonized by the church in 1998 was, however, for Jews and Christians equally a very misleading sign — and precarious for the Christian-Jewish relationship. After all, she was not murdered in Auschwitz because she was a Christian but because she was Jewish and not for her Christian faith but in spite of it, in spite of having been baptised.

The new statue adds to the irritation of Christians and Jews that has set the Catholic-Jewish understanding and dialogue back. When the statue was revealed, many of those present at the ceremony were shocked to see her holding a Torah scroll in both hands and behind the scroll she holds a cross and, as an added Christian symbol, a crown of thorns. The cross surmounts the Torah scroll which has the words Shema Jisrael in Hebrew written on it. Thus the statue becomes an unbearable mixture of Jewish and Christian symbolysm and another visible sign to Jews of Christianity's attempt to take possession not only of the Jewish tradition but also of the Holocaust. Here, as in the victorious pose of the Ecclesia above, the cross dominates the Torah and reminds us of almost two millennia of Christian anti-Judaism.