League Blasts NY Times re Pius XII

A New York Times story smearing Pope Pius XII had about as much truth in it as the notorious 60 Minutes Rathergate story that was based on forged documents, new facts show.

The story in question is a piece in the January 9 Times about an article in an Italian newspaper claiming to have uncovered a 1946 document implicating Pope Pius XII in a scheme not to return baptized Jewish children (who were hidden by the Vatican from the Nazis during the Holocaust) to their parents after the war.

That story has now been totally discredited and has raised the ire of Catholic League president William Donohue.

"The document that was the source of the New York Times piece says that Pope Pius XII personally approved the decision not to return Jewish children who had been sheltered by Catholics during the war," Donohue wrote in a statement.

"But there are many problems with this interpretation. As first pointed out by Rev. Peter Gumpel in Rome, the document was unsigned, did not appear on Vatican stationery and was written in French, not Italian. Even more convincing is what has been learned subsequently.

"Thanks to Italian journalist Andrea Tornielli of Il Giornale, the original document in question has now been identified. To begin with, the document never originated in the Holy See: the text bears the seal of the apostolic nunciature of France. And not only does the document not say what it has been alleged to say, it says the very opposite!

"To wit: It expressly says that the children who were sheltered by Catholic institutions should be returned to their original Jewish families. In the event Jewish organizations, as opposed to Jewish families, sought custody of the children, that was to be handled on a case-by-case basis.

"Zenit, the international news agency that covers the Vatican, learned that the origins of the document extend to a letter written in 1946 by Isaac Herzog, chief rabbi of Jerusalem, to Pius XII. In it, Herzog thanked the pope for helping Jews during the Holocaust and for sheltering 'thousands of children who were hidden in Catholic institutions.' He then requested that these children be returned to their original families. Which, as we now know, is what happened.

"In short, what the critics of Pius XII are suffering from is a heady dose of Rathergate: they willingly took the bait and now look rather foolish."

As Donohue explained on EWTN Friday night, this is the latest episode of the spate of virulent hatred aimed at Pius XII - much it sparked by their fear he will soon be elevated to sainthood by the Vatican.

In point of fact, the Pope was hailed by Israel's late prime minister Golda Mier for his heroic efforts to save Jewish refugees from the Nazis. Moreover, as a direct result of the Pope's efforts on behalf of his fellow Jews, the Chief Rabbi of Rome converted to Catholicism.

Nazis Murdered More Than Jews
Barry Farber
Tuesday, Jan. 18, 2005
So, Prince Harry goes to his costume party in a Nazi uniform.

I’m glad he did it. Really, I’m more than glad; I’m GRATEFUL he did it. Prince Harry opened a window of opportunity for us to set right something that has gone very wrong since the last bullet was fired in World War II. Santa Claus has to do all his delivery work in one night. We have three or four days, at most a week, to do ours.

Oceanographers aren’t much in demand until there’s a tsunami. Vulcanologists don’t get good tables in restaurants until mountains explode. Try to get a virologist booked on a talk show in between epidemics.
Prince Harry, in all his cosmic stupidity, has given us a rare chance to shout forth a few truths about Hitler and the Nazis without seeming odd, irrelevant, untimely or annoying.

Since the end of World War II we’ve allowed the notion to take hold that whosoever stands up and denounces Nazism is somehow merely doing a favor for the Jews.

Why is that spokesman, that statesman, that candidate, that writer regurgitating the horrors of the Holocaust? The supposition has encrusted itself that he’s addressing the Jews, comforting the Jews, currying favor with the Jews, winning over the Jews. After all, isn’t “Nazi” the very opposite of “Jew”?

The answer, of course, is “Of course not.” But a notion, even a diseased one, can do a lot of encrusting over 60 years.

Notice how the media reacted to the photo of the prince wearing the swastika. Did they call Oslo for a Norwegian reaction? Did they call Athens for a Greek reaction? Did they call Belgrade for a Serbian reaction? Their editors would have looked at the reporter as if he were insane had he even suggested such a thing. “Get a JEW, man! Get the JEWISH reaction. Anti-Defamation League! Holocaust Museum! Senator Joseph Lieberman. Don’t bother me with your Norwegians and Greeks and Serbs.”

May we review. Hitler’s first hostile takeover was Czechoslovakia in 1939. His earlier takeover of Austria was no more hostile than the reaction of the head cheerleader invited into the brambleberry patch with the high school quarterback after the Friday night game. World War II started when Hitler broke his promise to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and invaded Poland on September 1, 1939.

We haven’t gotten to the Jews yet.

Poland, which was simultaneously invaded by Stalin’s Soviet Union from the east, lasted 18 days.

Then the Blitzkrieg struck in the north. Denmark and Norway were pasted into Hitler’s scrapbook, followed by Holland, Belgium and – the fall without a fight – France.

Rotterdam, Holland, by the way was bombed by the Germans six hours AFTER the Dutch surrendered. Why? Terror was the frank answer. Captive peoples must be tamed.

We haven’t gotten to the Jews yet.

In early 1941, Nazi armies invaded Yugoslavia and Greece. Both were conquered.

And we haven’t gotten to the Jews yet.

June 1941. With their “Hitler-heiling” arms held high and with arrogance enough to dwarf an alp, massive Nazi forces invaded the Soviet Union and almost took Moscow in that first lunge. The fact that they failed is probably why the rest of you aren’t speaking German and I’m not a lampshade.

OK. So far those nationalities killed, injured, captured and tortured by the German Nazis include Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Danes, Norwegians, Dutch, Belgians, French, Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, Macedonians, Montenegrins, Bosnians, Greeks and Russians.

Those are the PRIMARY victims of the Nazis. Let’s now sweep from north to south and catalogue some of the others. Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians were swallowed by the Soviet Union in August of 1940.

The next year, as Nazi forces swept through their lands en route to the Soviet Union, most of the people of those Baltic lands preferred Hitler to Stalin. Still, many anti-Nazi Balts lost their lives at the hands of those whose arms were decorated the same way Prince Harry’s were. Add the Ukrainians, who found themselves in a similar situation.

Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria were Nazi allies. Still, many courageous anti-Nazis in those countries lost their lives to German barbarism.

The German army in Africa under General Erwin Rommel invaded and then fought losing battles for Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Algeria. People in those countries who lost their lives must be included in the final tally of Nazi victims.
Italy, which was one day in 1943 a Nazi ally, the next day neutral, and the next day an American ally, lost a terrible toll to the slaughterers who wore the same insignia that Prince Harry did the other night.

Canadians died in the fight against the Nazis. Australians died. New Zealanders died. Ghurkas died. Sikhs died. African colonials, French and British, died. South Africans died.

And we still haven’t gotten to the Jews yet.

Let’s touch down on Prince Harry’s England. As Americans we are still recoiling from the trauma of 9/11. How many Americans are aware that, beginning September 7, 1940, THERE WAS A 9/11 INFLICTED UPON ENGLAND VIRTUALLY EVERY SINGLE NIGHT FOR NINE SOLID MONTHS! And the inflictors were bombers of the German Luftwaffe, which Air Marshal Herman Goering promised Hitler could bomb England out of the war.

It’s easy to forget that the very FIRST victims of Nazi barbarism were GERMANS. Hitler ruled in Germany for most of the 1930s before he conquered a single foreign country. His infrastructure of jails, concentration camps and torture chambers was up and running when all he ruled was Germany alone. Hitler’s murderers and torturers picked up a lot of training over the years until 1945, but they were skilled enough right there at the beginning. Those early victims were mostly German Protestants and Catholics.

Finally, now, let’s get to the Jews.

In ALL of the countries mentioned above there were Jews who, initially, suffered roughly proportionate to their numbers in the part of the population that chose to resist Nazi occupation. That was the Nazis’ “getting to the resistance.” Getting to the Jews came programmatically later country by country under Nazi control.

The Polish “Final Solution” of the “Jewish Problem” came early, the Danish not until October 1943, the Hungarian later still. But they all came. After all those other targets and victims, the Nazis got to the Jews.

The reason too many people today consider World War II a contest between “the Nazis and the Jews” is that, in spite of all those aforementioned victims of Nazi slaughter, there were two and only two peoples the Nazis murdered just because of who they were. And those were the Jews and the Gypsies. All the others – Poles, Danes, Norwegians, French, etc. – were killed if, when, and as they chose to defy the Nazis.

The Jews and the Gypsies were killed just because they were Jews and Gypsies.
And because there were far fewer Gypsies than Jews, the lazy-brained world settled down on the conclusion that “It was Hitler’s Nazis against the Jews!”

Prince Harry is the least of my targets. Young people from Hitler-victim-Norway in the north to Hitler-victim-Greece in the south and in every single land in between have lost the memory of what Hitler’s Nazis did to their lands, their heroes, their grandparents and their Jews

“Oh, yeah, World War II?” they say. “Hitler tried to kill all the Jews.”
I don’t scold those younger people in countries savaged by Hitler for failing to hate Germans. Any stupid peasant can teach their children who they’re supposed to hate.

I don’t preach the perpetuation of hatred against Germany. I preach the initiation of knowledge about World War II. Go ahead and forgive, like, love, marry and praise those people of the strong democratic Germany of today.

If the young people of countries brutalized by Hitler care to remember what their grandparents experienced at the hands of the Nazis, fine; they’ll make historians happy.

All I ask is that you remember that only about 10 percent of Hitler’s victims were Jewish: 6 million versus 60 million.

The media world scored an “F” in reacting to Prince Harry’s “wardrobe malfunction.” The media said: “Swastika! Hey, find a Jew. Let’s interview a Jew. Preferably a good, articulate, angry Jew. Get me a Jew’s comment, please. Any Jew. None others need apply!”

Thanks for opening up the arena for dialogue, Prince Harry. In your honor, if I’m ever invited to a costume party, I might come as a PRINCE!

French Nazi hunter deflates Jewish war children row

Ha'aertz ^ | 1-20-05

PARIS - A controversy over Jewish children hidden by French Catholics during World War Two is "a storm in a teacup" because almost none were withheld from their families afterwards, French Holocaust historian and anti-Nazi attorney Serge Klarsfeld said.

Klarsfeld has studied the fate of French Jewish children during the Holocaust and has been involved in the prosecution of several Nazi criminals who operated in France. He told Reuters he knew of only two boys whose Catholic foster family tried to keep them after hiding them from German occupation forces during the war.

The issue has flared up in recent weeks after an Italian historian published what appeared to be a 1946 Vatican letter showing that Pope Pius XII ordered French bishops not to return Jewish children to their families if they had been baptized.

Thousands of French Jewish children escaped deportation to Nazi death camps by living with Catholic families and pretending to be Catholics. Some were baptized but no figures exist for how many were and what they did after the war, Klarsfeld said.

"There are no other cases besides the Finaly children," Klarsfeld said late on Wednesday, referring to a well-publicised case of two brothers whose relatives had to go to court to get them back from a Catholic who hid them during the war.

"If there had been similar cases, we certainly would have known about them (but) nobody ever came to me to complain," he said. "I think it's a storm in a teacup."

The 1946 letter sparked off a heated debate in Italy about Pope Pius XII, whose critics say he turned a blind eye to the Holocaust, and triggered negative headlines around the world.

One harsh critic of the Vatican, United States academic Daniel Goldhagen, said the letter showed the Church wanted "to kidnap Jewish children, perhaps by the thousands."

Vatican documents published after the first directive was revealed in late December showed the Vatican said baptized Jewish children with no surviving relatives should not be handed over to Jewish institutions that had no custody rights.

"It would be a different story if relatives asked for the children to be returned," one of these notes stated.
Klarsfeld said he believed Archbishop Angelo Roncalli, who was papal nuncio in Paris after the war and later became Pope John XXIII, would not have followed the Vatican directive and advised French bishops to keep Jewish children.

"If there had been an actual case, I think Roncalli would have thrown it in the wastepaper basket," he said.
In the Finaly case, the parents died in a concentration camp. When the foster mother refused to return the boys to their relatives, the family had to go to court and won custody rights only in 1953. The two now live in Israel.

Klarsfeld, who himself attended a rural Catholic school during the war and pretended to be an Orthodox Christian, said most baptised "hidden children" probably went back to Judaism when they were reunited with relatives after the war.

"They never stopped being Jews," he said. "They simply had a paper in their pockets saying they had been baptized."

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