A recent visit by an Arab group to Oswiecim, Poland, was a sobering and revealing event. Included were 120 Jews, Muslims and Christians who saw the notorious Auschwitz-Birkenau death camps created and operated by the Germans before and during World War II.

In charge was Father Emile Shoufani, a Greek Catholic pastor from Nazareth. He told Daniel Rubin of the Knight Ridder Newspapers that he felt a need to lead a group of Arabs and Jews to the site to understand why so many of his conversations with Jews about the Palestinian Intifada, or uprising, wound up involving the suffering of some 60 years ago.

“We can’t understand our conflict without understanding the history of the Jewish people, the Holocaust and how it lives today,” Shoufani said. “We cannot make peace until we understand the pain.”

There were six tour buses at the ghastly camps, including Christians, Muslims and Jews who had flown from Israel to Krakow, Poland. They were joined by French Jews and Muslims. Shoufani stressed that “this visit is not symbolic and will not represent a political party or religious project.”

Rubin writes that “they walked in virtual silence, considering their visit to the death camps the beginning of a journey that might heal the relationship between two wounded peoples.” No immediate goals had been set.

Denying any political intentions, Shoufani said, “We are going through this circle of death and accusation, ‘Who is more victim? Who can kill more? Who can hurt more?’ Many people said this will be used politically. We don’t wait for any political result. We just go.”

Anyone who has witnessed, via films or in person, the horrors that prevailed at Auschwitz-Birkenau finds it difficult to put their feelings of revulsion into words. Those on the Shoufani tour had never seen what occurred and had heard only varying reports.

Many on the tour broke down in tears and others shuddered. Yet most seemed to find a commonality of suffering that could help in the treacherous peace process in the Middle East.

The goal was understanding and perceptions that could lead to healing. Fatina Hazzan who teaches Arabic at a Jewish middle school in Haifa, said, “It’s terrifying. The world hurts for what happened here. I heard about it in school, read about it in books but I didn’t expect to see such a thing. Where was the world? My God, 6 million people!”

Of her Israeli neighbors, she said: “We don’t know each other. This is the problem. We don’t feel each other. We have to learn to eat, drink with each other, celebrate each other’s customs, learn each other’s history. We hear such horrible things about each other on TV. I am here to feel the pain of the Jews.”

That capsulizes what so many in the world must do to achieve at least reasonable tranquility.

Missing from the tour were Palestinians from the west Bank and Gaza strip. But most of the 120 travelers said “this could be a start in the right direction.”

Jews, Arabs and Christians all embraced as they reeled in almost disbelief at the sights they saw and things they heard about at Auschwitz-Birkenau. All left feeling that “this cannot happen again.”

With such outreach by all the parties involved in conflicts and potential conflicts, perhaps it might not.