Christians would stand by railway tracks taking their index finger as like a knife to their throats to tell the Jews where they were going. My grandparents were murdered by the Nazis. When going to their local church they were told that there was nothing they could do.
There were some righteous gentiles who hid Jews risking their own lives. The Anne Frank story and Schindler's List illustrates this. So does the family in Poland that took in my step-mother and gave her a cross to wear. That cross saved her life. But the majority were silent. They smelled human flesh burning from the ovens of dozens of death camps and did nothing. Don't take my word for this - go here: German, Polish civilians forced by US Army to witness Holocaust victims
This is just one photo from hundreds.
Pope Francis is a good man. Israel warmly welcomes him with open arms. Catholics, Jews and Christians face a common enemy today - Islamic Jihad.
Let us not allow our enemies to play divide and conquer among us. ;>
Thanks IsraelBeach, well said.
In other words, Christians who responded with heroic self-sacrifice, were those most observant, most representative of a deeply Christian ethic and influence.
What sparked my response here, was this author Joel Layden's lazy and vicious slander against Pope Pius XII. This is "blood libel" played back at innocent, even heroic Christians.
By now I hope you are more aware of how this "blood libel" works.
In 1928 the Holy Office had already condemned anti-Semitism. On September 6, 1938, Pius XI told a group of Belgian pilgrims: “Through Christ and in Christ, we are spiritual descendants of Abraham.” Incontrovertible facts prove the extraordinary efforts that Pius XI, Pius XII, and the Catholic Church made in saving the Jews during the Holocaust.
Before becoming Pope, and as early as 1935, Pius XII, Nazi German Regime in conversations with the French Ambassador to the Holy See, Charles-Roux, while the rest of the world were willingly accepting Hitler’s power grasp upon the German government. The Duke of Windsor visited Hitler and Lloyd George even went so far as to call him the “greatest living German”! In the U.S. there were also people in high positions who were openly sympathizers of Hitler, such as Henry Ford I, who was also a strong anti-Semitic.
On March 14, 1937, before it was fashionable to denounce the German Führer as a villain and long before the creation of the concentration camps and the gas chambers, Pius XI, ably seconded by his Secretary of State, wrote the Encyclical “Mit Brennender Sorge” meaning “with burning anxiety”. It dealt with the nazi threat to racial minorities and specifically the Jews addressing the Encyclical directly to the German people.
The Encyclical exhorted that Catholics must never be anti-Semitic because “we are all Semites spiritually” and ought to hold the Jewish people in high regard accordingly.
The Encyclical exposed to the world the III Reich’s persecution of the Catholic Church as well as the incompatibility between the principles of the National Socialism and those of the Catholic faith. The German government prohibited the entrance of the Encyclical to the country and it became necessary to smuggle it into Germany under the nose of the ruthless Gestapo. On Sunday March 21, The Encyclical was read from 12,000 Catholic pulpits across Germany. As a result, the Nazi’s campaign of innuendoes against The Church as well as the persecution of Catholics worsened.
Israeli senior diplomat and Orthodox Jewish Rabbi, Pinchas Lapide, with access to Yad Vashem’s archives, has stated in his book, “Three Popes and the Jews”, that “The Catholic Church relief and rescue program under the pontificate of Pius XII was instrumental in saving the lives of as many as 860,000 Jews from certain death at Nazi’s hands. That was more than all other Churches, religious institutions and international rescue organizations put together.” The Israelis recognized the lives saved by planting a forest, in commemoration, of as many trees in the Negeb, SE of Jerusalem. This forest was shown to Pope Paul VI during his first state visit to Israel.
At the end of the War, the World Jewish Congress, the American Jewish Committee, Albert Einstein, and many other prominent Jewish leaders expressed their deep gratitude toward Pius XII and the Catholic Church. On the death of Pius XII (1958), Golda Meir, the Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs, gave a heartfelt eulogy for the Pope before the UN Assembly.
In his scholar book, “The Last Three Popes and the Jews”, Lapide said that Pius XII was one of the few world leaders outside the Jewry itself who was quick to recognize the danger of Nazism. Lapide demonstrates convincingly the consistent and active protection provided to the Jews in Europe by the papacy. In Lapide’s words:
“When armed force ruled well-nigh omnipotent, and morality was at its lowest ebb, Pius XI commanded non of the former and could only appeal to the latter, in confronting with bare hands, the full might of evil. A sounding protest, which might turn out to be self-thwarting-or quiet piecemeal rescue? Loud words- or prudent deeds? The dilemma must have been sheer agony, for whichever course he chose horrible consequences were inevitable. Unable to cure the sickness of an entire civilization, and unwilling to bear the brunt of Hitler’s fury, the Pope, unlike many far mightier than he, alleviated, relieved, appealed, petitioned-and saved as most efficient he could by his own lights.
Who, but a prophet or a martyr could have done much more? The Talmud teaches us that ‘whoever preserves one life, it is accounted to him by Scripture as if he had preserved a whole world.’
If this is true-and it is as true as that of most Jewish of tenets, the sanctity of human life-then Pius XII deserves that forest in Judean hills, which kindly people of Israel proposed for him in October 1958. A memorial forest with 860,000 trees.” (Emphasis added. “Three Popes and the Jews.” pp.267-269)
On February 28, 1945, the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, Isaac Herzog, sent a letter of gratitude to the Apostolic Nuncio in Rumania, Msgr. Andrea Cassulo, stating that: “The people of Israel will never forget what His Holiness and his illustrious delegates, inspired by the eternal principles of religion which form the very foundations of civilization, are doing for us unfortunate brothers and sisters in the most tragic hour of our history,
Rabbi Herzog’s heartfelt words should suffice to forever end the slanderous attacks to the memory of the great protector of the Jews, Pius XII and the Catholic Church.
In Poland, Catholics caught by the Nazis helping the Jews were condemned to death. As many non Jews, as Jews were killed by the Nazis at the extermination camps. Thousands of priests, religious and nuns, including Bishops, were sent to the concentration camps. Bishops were driven out, priests killed or imprisoned. Within a few years one third of the pre-war 2,000 priests were dead and 700 imprisoned; seminaries were closed, the Catholic press and voluntary associations suppressed. The Holy See found itself desperately fighting in two fronts, for the survival of the Jews and for the survival of his own flock. The Church in a beleaguered Poland was being bled to death by the two great scourges of humanity, the Nazis and Communists. In Poland three million Catholics went to their death along with three million Jews at the Nazi’s concentration camps in addition to the millions murdered by the Soviets.
Who is remembering them? Who are crying for their dead?
Unfortunately, there is plenty anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism even today. Certainly there was anti-Semitism at that time all around the world, but it was not mainly from Catholics and much less from the Catholic Church. Germany was not alone; there was plenty of anti-Semitism in the highest spheres of the Allied governments.
Jewish historian Richard Breitman has written five books, one on the Holocaust and another on Nazism. He is, up to this day, the only person authorized to study the OSS secret documents of U.S. espionage during WWII. The Italian newspaper “Corriere della Sera.” interviewed him on June 29, 2000. In the article, Breitman not only confirms the role played by Pius XII in defending and safeguarding the persecuted during the Nazi regime but he also found “the Allied silence on the Holocaust surprising. Their first testimonies are from the end of 1942…” He also remarked that the documents denoted how the Nazis considered that the Vatican was in the side of the Allies.
The reaction of the US, French and British governments at that time, and even later, when knowledge of the concentration camps existed, were certainly not in solidarity for the persecuted Jews. In the middle of the genocide, Britain closed the doors of Palestine to the Jews. The U.S. government accepted a total of 10,000-15,000 Jewish refugees throughout the war – a truly scandalous statistic.
Being Anti-Catholic is as evil as being anti-Semitic. No matter how overwhelming is the evidence that no other organization did more to save the Jews than the Catholic Church, Pius XII and the Catholics in general, the anti-Catholic bigots will continue to pour their venom.
