PBS Pope Profile

There is a haunting image in the early part of the PBS \"Frontline\" documentary on Pope John Paul II. As the Warsaw ghetto goes up in flames, just outside the wall and within sight and sound of the remaining Jewish resistance fighters, a carousel goes round and round, full of carefree, frolicking, young Poles

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Tom Tugend

September 23, 1999

There is a haunting image in the early part of the PBS “Frontline” documentary on Pope John Paul II. As the Warsaw ghetto goes up in flames, just outside the wall and within sight and sound of the remaining Jewish resistance fighters, a carousel goes round and round, full of carefree, frolicking, young Poles.

It was in the Poland of that era that Karol Wojtyla, the future pope, grew up and inevitably absorbed the pervasive anti-Semitism of the Catholic church. But he also played soccer with Jewish friends who later would perish in the Holocaust.

The evolution of the pope’s relationship to the Jewish people is traced in the second segment — of seven — in the television biography of “John Paul II: The Millennial Pope.”

The 2 1/2-hour program will air Tuesday, Sept. 28, at 9 p.m. on KCET and other PBS stations.