Posted on 01/12/2005 5:35:52 PM PST by It's me
1946 Document on Jewish Children Tells a Different Story Undercuts Tale That Vatican Tried to Keep Them From Their Families
ROME, JAN. 12, 2005 (Zenit.org).- The latest in a series of accusations about Pope Pius XII's behavior vis-à-vis the Jews and Nazi persecution seems to have little basis in fact.
The latest round began Dec. 28 when an Italian newspaper published passages of an alleged 1946 Vatican document that supposedly aimed to keep baptized Jewish children from being returned to their families.
The text, as stated in Il Corriere della Sera by Alberto Melloni, director of the G. Dossetti Library of the John XXIII Foundation for Religious Sciences of Bologna, was "a disposition of the Holy Office," as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was formerly known. The document was said to be dated Oct. 20, 1946.
But after careful research, ZENIT discovered that the document, in fact, was not of the Holy Office and did not bear evidence of the reported date. Nor did it state what the article in Il Corriere said it did.
The document, whose original is in French, was written under the oversight of the then apostolic nuncio in Paris, Angelo Roncalli, the future Pope John XXIII.
It was meant to explain to the French clergy the instructions he had received from the Holy See, specifically, from the secretary of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, Monsignor Domenico Tardini.
In his newspaper article, Alberto Melloni did not quote the archive from which the document came.
In fact, the document, in full, was published last Tuesday after being tracked down by Italian journalist Andrea Tornielli of the Milan newspaper Il Giornale.
Tornielli revealed that the original is kept in the Centre National des Archives de l'Église de France, archive of the secretariat of the French episcopate, position "7 CE 131."
ZENIT obtained by fax a copy of the original and verified that the text has the seal of the apostolic nunciature of France -- as opposed to what Il Corriere della Sera published, which attributed it to the Holy Office.
ZENIT also verified that the document is dated Oct. 23, 1946, three days later than that mentioned by Il Corriere, and that the terms of the Vatican proposal are very different from what the Italian newspaper had reported.
The original document contradicts Melloni's version. It states, in fact, that the children should be returned to their original Jewish families.
Regarding "Jewish institutions," which during those months were working in Paris and throughout Europe to transfer children to Palestine, the document states that each case must be examined individually.
ZENIT learned that the history of the document began in March 1946, when Isaac Herzog, the chief rabbi of Jerusalem, addressed a letter to Pope Pius XII in which the former wrote: "The Jewish people very much remember with profound gratitude the help given by the Holy See to the people that suffered during the Nazi persecution."
Profound thanks are given for the "thousands of children who were hidden in Catholic institutions," and the rabbi requests that these children be returned to the Jewish people.
Herzog emphasized how Pius XII "has worked to banish anti-Semitism in many countries" and concluded with an invocation: "God willing, may history remember that when everything was dark for our people, His Holiness lit a light of hope for them."
Pius XII took to heart the fate of these Jewish children and, in that same month of March, asked the Holy Office to study the case.
The Holy Office, after hearing from several consultors, prepared a document in response to the Pope's request.
In August 1946, some French bishops and, specifically, Coadjutor Archbishop Emile Guerry of Cambrai and Cardinal Pierre Gerlier of Lyon, asked nuncio Roncalli for pointers as to how to resolve the situation of Jewish children saved from Nazi persecution.
Angelo Roncalli gathered all this material and, at the end of September, sent a letter to the Vatican Secretariat of State requesting instructions.
Roncalli was answered by Monsignor Tardini, secretary of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, not in the way quoted by the article in Il Corriere, but rather in the way mentioned above.
Journalist Andrea Tornielli told ZENIT that the Church in France resolved the problem in the vast majority of cases by returning the children, whose lives it saved, to their surviving families.
During the war, priests and religious received orders from the Holy See and bishops not to baptize these children. Baptism requires the consent of the person receiving the sacrament or of the parents, if the recipient does not have the use of reason. This is revealed in documents quoted by www.vaticanfiles.net. ZE05011220
There has been a tremendous amount of false information (not to mention innuendo) published about the Pope's actions during WWII.
Bottom line, the Pope had little recourse to change events then as now.
Sorry, jews might have been able to help more with the war effort if they weren't stuck in concentration camps at the time. Dearest apologies.
There were plenty of Jews that fought back. They were all killed. All of them. Just like in Iraq. There was no fighting back. That would just get your whole family killed and tossed in the garbage. Maybe your whole neighborhood.
How offensive these people are!
I understand the defensiveness of Catholics on this issue. But the facts are the facts, while motives are harder to pin down. Being curious about them doesn't mean I want to deny anything.
Ping
But then it would not fit into his false view.
Have you read much history? I certainly have read less than many people on FR, but even I know that in Germany Jews had been repressed for years, tormented for years, denied basic rights for years. And most important, been denied the right to arm themselves for years.
If someone is torn apart by a vicious dog, do you criticize the victim or the dog?
Maybe many Jews just couldn't imagine how bad things would get, that the Nazis would be such inhuman beasts. And maybe other countries didn't step in to help sooner. When people want to do evil, they are often possessed of very great power, determination, and strength. If someone cannot fight hard enough against the evil to survive, are they to be condemned?
I don't think so. We are here on earth to help one another, not condemn those who suffered and died.
Looks like you're eating crow on this one.
for reading later
"passive?"
I honestly don't think people realized the scope of what was going on before it was too late. People being made into bars of soap?
Being gassed in giant buildings like a factory?
While appreciate the support you say you have for Israel and "jews" in general I don't think you have any right to critizize the actions of the victims at the time.
You're missing the most obvious tool Hitler had: starvation.
The Nazis controlled all sources of food. People only revolt when they feel they have nothing to lose, but years before that point, the Germans starved the Jews so that they had no energy, no hope, only the effort to make it to the next rationed meal.
The Germans played off the Jews' hopes well. Everything was couched in lies that led people to believe they were essential workers, they would be protected, if only they cooperated. This is human nature. The starving will go where there is food if they're told their labor is valuable. The Holocaust was fundamentally irrational. How do you live without hope?
The Jews had no weapons to fight back, no strength, no money. If they escaped a ghetto, they had nowhere to go. The peasants were as much under the thumb of the Germans as they were, and few were looking to hide people on their farm, giving them food and shelter and getting nothing in return but the possibility of a firing squad.
Look, it's a good rule of thumb for history that if you look back at a people and say all of their decisions were STUPID or COWARDLY, that maybe you don't understand the circumstances under which their decisions were made. The sad truth of the Holocaust is that the victims were all humans, all ordinary people, just like you and me. All we have over them is hindsight. In extremis, you have no way of knowing how you'd have behaved.
Sitting on your fat ass, enjoying your brandy?
What kind of contemptible rat would practice revisionism on a race that was targeted for extinction?
I suppose you'd feel better if they were all shot down in the streets.
"Dem Joos, at least dey went down fightin'!"
I don't know who you are, or what you think you're accomplishing with this kind of tripe.
Enjoy your feather bed, cretin.
We'll see. Meanwhile, why are you sitting back while a revisionist reviles the Jews who died in death camps?
Typical liberal BS. Claim a document says the exact opposite of what is written and expect it to be accepted unquestioned.
I guess you haven't ever read about the battle of the Berlin Ghetto, where the jews stood off the Nazis for several day with nothing but old rifles and guts. I am not jewish by the way. The Jews in Germany were disarmed and faced not only the Government but the German people as well. Most of the people jumped on the band wagon and turned in jews that were trying to escape or hide. It is kinda hard to fight without weapons and when the Gov has a record of where you live. The Germans registered all the Jews first and then started to round them up. Siting innocent reasons for it. I am sure if they were told that they were going to be sent to torture chambers and gassed that many would probably have decided to fight.
Jews today, in Israel, fight hard and fight most everyday. Liberals say the fight to much and you are saying they don't carry their weight? Get real, read some history now and then, read some real news every day. Get a life.
I'd like to point out that even Thermonuke's comments on this topic would be the best one would hope to find on a liberal blog.
Crying about an "arab holocaust" would've started right away, followed by outrage about the unfair slander that Islamic terrorists suffer on a daily basis in the US. By the end everyone would be pledging to either send money to Hamas or write an angry letter to FoxNews.
The views on this site are refreshing to see.
(especially when working late.)
Zenit is a Catholic news agency. As far as I know it is independent (not run by the Vatican or by church officials).
See my tagline. Everyone knows that revisionists reviling the Jews who died in death camps is unworthy of debate.
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