One day Rabbi Rene-Samuel Sirat was invited to attend a lecture on the Holocaust, held in the amphitheater of the Sorbonne University in Paris. The speaker, a member of the Academie Francaise, moved the audience when he spoke of a Jewish girl who missed out on a golden opportunity to escape a concentration camp to remain near her parents. Eventually, she was sent to her death along with them.

"Next to me sat Cardinal Lustiger," the former chief rabbi of France recalled. "I glanced at his face and saw tears running down his cheeks. At that moment I knew he was remembering his mother, who suffered a similar fate at the Auschwitz death camp."

Lustiger passed away Monday aged 80. Born Aaron Lustiger, he converted to Catholicism when his Jewish German parents sent him to live with a French Catholic family during the Holocaust. He was ultimately appointed to the Church's most senior positions, and served as archbishop of Paris from 1981 until 2005.