Israeli diplomat praises Pope Pius XII for saving thousands of Jews during the Holocaust

speroforum.com ^ | June 23, 2011 | Martin Barillas

[Berlin_Freeper]

Apparently breaking with a taboo among critics of the Catholic Church and of Pope Pius XII – who reigned during the Second World War and the Holocaust – Israel’s ambassador to the Vatican has recognized that the pontiff did actually save thousands of Jews during the years of Nazi predation.

Ambassador Mordechai Lewy affirmed on June 23 that “as of the raid of 16 October 1943 and the days following in the ghetto of Rome, the monasteries and orphanages of the religious orders opened their doors to Jews, and we have reason to believe that this occurred under the supervision of the highest authorities of the Vatican, who were aware of these measures.” The diplomat spoke at a ceremony in which a Catholic priest, Gaetano Piccinini of the order founded by Don Orione, was post-humously awarded a medal honoring him as numbering among righteous Gentiles.

Media reports in Italy claim that it was Pope Pius XII, who is largely dismissed as having done little to save the victims of the Holocaust, who transmitted an appeal to religious orders through his Secretary of State, Cardinal Luigi Maglione. The pontiff’s desire that the Jews of Rome be sheltered from the Nazi storm was transmitted in conversations and messages so as to avoid Nazi reprisals. Besides the approximately 5,000 Jews who took refuge in Rome’s convents, schools, and monasteries, several thousands more were sheltered at the papal village at Castelgandolfo in Rome.

[Berlin_Freeper]

ping

[TSgt]

Quick! Rewrite history as fast as you can!


Priests giving the Hitler salute at a Catholic youth rally in the Berlin-Neukolln stadium in August 1933.


“On February 10, 1939, Pius XI died, at the age of 81. [Vatican Secretary of State Eugenio] Pacelli, then 63, was elected Pope by the College of Cardinals in just three ballots, on March 2. He was crowned on March 12, on the eve of Hitler’s march into Prague. Between his election and his coronation he held a crucial meeting with the German cardinals. Keen to affirm Hitler publicly, he showed them a letter of good wishes which began, ‘To the Illustrious Herr Adolf Hitler.’ Should he, he asked them, style the Führer ‘Most Illustrious’? He decided that that might be going too far. He told the cardinals that Pius XI had said that keeping a papal nuncio in Berlin ‘conflicts with our honor.’ But his predecessor, he said, had been mistaken. He was going to maintain normal diplomatic relations with Hitler. The following month, at Pacelli’s express wish, Archbishop Cesare Orsenigo, the Berlin nuncio, hosted a gala reception in honor of Hitler’s 50th birthday. A birthday greeting to the Führer from the bishops of Germany would become an annual tradition until the war’s end.”

[Berlin_Freeper]

Berlin-Neukolln stadium in August 1933.

and

March 12, 1939

Now I got two for you:

The Bund reached its peak in 1939, when its members gathered at Madison Square Garden ostensibly to celebrate George Washington’s birthday, an event attended by 20,000.

Yorkville, Manhattan

[bboop]

Bonhoffer’s biography delves deeply into B’s frustration with the other Protestant pastors and leadership throughout Germany, who all thought Hitler had some good ideas and wanted to be obedient to their leader. Bonhoffer, almost alone, stood out as one who understood the evil that lurked. He was continually challenged and privately counseled that he was being paranoid, that the edicts coming from Hitler were ‘not so bad,’ that they should go along to get along.

The prophetic voice stands alone, often, unheard and vilified. That the priests in the photo are meeting with Hitler, I suspect, is not outstanding. I bet the Protestant leadership did, also. Evil often lies low, unnoticed, masquerading as something almost good. Takes discernment and wisdom to spot it and name it.

This is wonderful, that a Jewish leader in Israel is praising the good Pope. The Truth will out.

[bboop]

Those photos are in Manhattan?? And what was the Bund? An active group here in the US?

[Berlin_Freeper]

Yes and yes.

But according to the logic of TSgt - all Americans are Nazis.

[TSgt]

The following translation of the very important Article 16 of the Reichskonkordat was authorized by the Vatican: Article 16 “Before bishops take possession of their dioceses they are to take an oath of fealty either to the Reich Representative of the State concerned, or to the President of the Reich, according to the following formula: “‘Before God and on the Holy Gospels I swear and promise as becomes a bishop, loyalty to the German Reich and to the [regional - EC] State of . . . I swear and promise to honor the legally constituted Government and to cause the clergy of my diocese to honor it. In the performance of my spiritual office and in my solicitude for the welfare and the interests of the German Reich, I will endeavor to avoid all detrimental acts which might endanger it.’”

[Berlin_Freeper]

The German soldiers took an oath directly to Hitler:

“I swear by almighty God this sacred oath:
I will render unconditional obedience
to the Fuehrer of the German Reich and people, Adolf Hitler,
Supreme Commander of the Wehrmacht,
and, as a brave soldier,
I will be ready at any time
to stake my life for this oath.”

[agere_contra]

Who's trying to rewrite history here? That would be you.

Pope Pius XII saved 860,000 Jews during WW2 by NOT grandstanding, by not publicly defying Hitler - but by getting on with the job.

His efforts completely dwarf all others, including those of the Red Cross.

You are shamefully, perhaps culpably badly-informed about what Pope Pius and the Church did during WW2.

Let me bring a cure to your ignorance.

The foremost Jewish Scholar of the Holocaust at its height in Hungary, Jeno Levai, insisted some years ago that it was a "particularly regrettable irony that the one person in all of occupied Europe who did more than anyone else to halt the dreadful crime and alleviate its consequences is today made the scapegoat for the failures of others."

The Israeli diplomat and scholar Pinchas Lapide concluded his careful review of Pius XII’s wartime activities with the following words: "The Catholic Church under the pontificate of Pius XII was instrumental in saving lives of as many as 860,000 Jews from certain death at Nazi hands."

He went on to add that this "figure far exceeds those saved by all other Churches and rescue organizations combined."

After recounting statements of appreciation from a variety of preeminent Jewish spokespersons, he noted. "No Pope in history has been thanked more heartily by Jews . . . .Several suggested in open letters that a Pope Pius XII forest of 860,000 trees be planted on the hills of Judea in order to fittingly honor the memory of the late Pontiff ("Three Popes and the Jews" pp. 214–215)."

Levai in his own book did not hesitate to argue that the attacks on the Pope’s wartime record are "demonstrably malicious and fabricated . . . . The archives of the Vatican of diocesan authorities of Ribbentrop’s foreign ministry, contain a whole series of protests—direct and indirect, diplomatic and public, secret and open. The nuncios and bishops of the Catholic Church intervened again and again on the instructions of the Pope," he wrote.

Hungarian Jews and the Papacy: The former chief rabbi of Rome during the German occupation, Emilio Zolli, concluded his firsthand account of wartime events thus: "Volumes could be written on the multiform works of Pius XII, and the countless priests, religious and laity who stood with him throughout the world during the war." "No hero," he said, "in all of history was more militant, more fought against, none more heroic, than Pius XII in pursuing the works of true charity . . . and thus on behalf of all the suffering children of God."

Zolli was so moved by Pius XII’s work that he became a Catholic after the war and took the Pope’s name

Pinchas Lapide acknowledged in his book (Before the Dawn). that the Church "in an endless flood of sermons, allocutions, pastoral letters and encyclicals was a clear and unrelenting foe to all forms of racism at the time, and everyone knew it—Jews, Poles, Russians and most ominously the Nazi secret police." Their files mention recalcitrant Catholic clergy in this regard more than any other group.

The New York Times in its Christmas editorials of 1941 and 1942 praised Pius XII for his moral leadership as a "lonely voice crying out of the silence of a continent" and for, among other things, assailing "the violent occupation of territory, and the exile and persecution of human beings, for no other reason than race."

Golda Meir, Israel’s representative to the United Nations, was the first of the delegates to react to the news of Pope Pius XII’s death. She sent an eloquent message: "We share in the grief of humanity at the passing away of His Holiness, Pope Pius XII. In a generation afflicted by wars and discords he upheld the highest ideals of peace and compassion. When fearful martyrdom came to our people in the decade of Nazi terror, the voice of the Pope was raised for its victims. The life of our times was enriched by a voice speaking out about great moral truths above the tumult of daily conflict. We mourn a great servant of peace."

Leonard Bernstein, on learning of Pope Pius XII’s death while conducting his orchestra in New York’s Carnegie Hall, tapped his baton for a moment of silence to pay tribute to the Pope who had saved the lives of so many people without distinction of race, nationality, or religion.

The great Jewish physicist, Albert Einstein, who himself barely escaped annihilation at Nazi hands, made the point well in 1944 when he said, "Being a lover of freedom, when the Nazi revolution came in Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it, but the universities were immediately silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers, but they, like the universities were silenced in a few short weeks. Then I looked to individual writers . . . . they too were mute. Only the Church," Einstein concluded, "stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing the truth. . . . I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel great affection and admiration . . . . and am forced thus to confess that what I once despised, I now praise unreservedly."

Well, there you go. The testament of history, vs your unreasoning hate.

[TSgt]

Americans didn't sign a Reichskonkordat with Hitler. The Pope did...

The signing of the Reichskonkordat on July 20, 1933 in Rome. (From left to right: German prelate Ludwig Kaas, German Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen, Secretary of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs Giuseppe Pizzardo, Cardinal Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli, Alfredo Ottaviani, and member of Reichsministerium des Inneren (Home Office) Rudolf Buttmann)

[TSgt]

* By voting to give Hitler dictatorial powers, the Catholic Centre party (Zentrum) made it possible for Hitler to set up his dictatorship with a phony appearance of legality;

* By then dissolving Zentrum, the German Church eliminated the powerful party, through which many Catholics had opposed Nazism and through which they were trying to continue opposing Nazism up until the moment Zentrum was dissolved;

* By rescinding the ban on Catholics joining the Nazi Party, the Church made Nazism the only church-approved vehicle for political action;

* By drafting and signing the Concordat, the Vatican literally (i.e., in the form of specific rules, laid out in the Concordat, such as Article 16) ordered German Catholics to support the Nazis, telling millions of Catholics not only in Germany but worldwide that the Pope was allied with this especially violent strain of fascism, meaning that they must ally with it as well;

* By giving Hitler their vote-winning support for his Enabling Act, dissolving Zentrum, rescinding the ban on Nazi membership, and drafting/and signing the Concordat, the Vatican wrapped Hitler in a cloak of Vatican acceptance at a crucial moment, when the infant racist state was suffering extreme international isolation.

“It cannot be denied that a certain insufficient resistance to this atrocity [the Holocaust] on the part of Christians can be explained by an inherited anti-Judaism present in the hearts of not a few Christians.” - Joseph Ratzinger

[Berlin_Freeper]

Whatever ambiguous oath or document signed, this item posted shows that they were not kept to the letter.

As made clear by Mordechai Lewy, Israel’s ambassador to the Vatican.

[Berlin_Freeper]

I am trying to understand your fascination with “Some folks just need killin’” from your tagline.

[TSgt]

Ambiguous?

The Reichskonkordat is still valid today.

[WILLIALAL]

“I am trying to understand your fascination with “Some folks just need killin’” from your tagline.”

Comeon, that was a great movie and the explanation is self evident.

[TSgt]

I am trying to understand your fascination with “Some folks just need killin’” from your tagline.

Like pedophiles for example. Oh' wait, sore subject, sorry...

[Berlin_Freeper]

Thanks for making your anti-Catholic bias clear.

My objective is done.

[Berlin_Freeper]

You think because a hand was put in the air or a document was signed, that is binding and meaningful.

[TSgt]

My objective is done.

Good, now please return to the rape-o-rectory.