Penitence and prayer

Dr Homi Dhalla was invited to represent the Zoroastrian community at a peace conference held in Krakow, Poland from September 6-8, 2009 to commemorate the 70th anniversary of World War II. The war was triggered off when a Nazi German battleship on a goodwill visit opened fire at 4.45 a.m. on September 1, 1939 on a Polish port on the Baltic Sea. The war eventually claimed over 50 million lives. The year 2009 also marked the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall as well as the collapse of the totalitarian regimes in central and eastern Europe. Prominent personalities and religious leaders from around the world were invited to participate in the landmark conference, as per a press release received by Parsiana from the World Zarathushti Cultural Foundation, of which Dhalla is the founder.

Issues such as dialog, human rights, peace, ecology, etc were addressed at the conference and at one session Dhalla made a presentation on "Faiths in Asia: Building a world without violence.” On the concluding day he conducted a simple ceremony before a lighted fire, commencing with the kusti ritual, playing a recorded monajat and reciting prayers on peace from the Zoroastrian scriptures, the press release mentions.

Speeches and testimonies as well as the proclamation and delivery of the Appeal for Peace 2009 followed the Procession of Peace leading to the large market square in Krakow. Dhalla was asked to light a candle on behalf of Zoroastrians and sign the Appeal for Peace.

All the delegates were taken to the Memorial Museum at Auschwitz Concentration Camp on the following day, site of the most tragic and barbaric chapter in European history, the write-up reveals. Dhalla writes that he felt the "deepest pain and sorrow” at this death factory where millions of Poles, Russians, Jews, gypsies and others had been brutally killed. The delegation also visited the Birkenau Concentration Camp. A Silent March along the rail tracks was followed by a memorial ceremony at the monument for the victims of Nazi fascism, where Dhalla offered flowers on behalf of Asian religions, the write-up concludes.