'Hitler's Pope' tried to help Jews, say documents

The Sunday Telegraph ^ | February 16, 2003 | Michael Burleigh

[MadIvan]

Vatican papers offering the first direct evidence that Pope Pius XII tried to help Jews during the Second World War have been discovered by an Italian expert.

The documents undermine critics' claims that Pius - condemned by critics as "Hitler's Pope" - put the interests of Rome first and did not protest about the fate of Jews during the Holocaust.

A letter, signed by the Pope in October 1940 and sent to Giuseppe Palatucci, Bishop of Campagna in southern Italy, instructed him to give money "in aid to interned Jews", to whom Pius also referred in an earlier letter as "suffering for reasons of race".

The bishop was already involved in assisting Jews through his nephew, Giovanni Palatucci, the police chief in Fiume, in north-eastern Italy. Palatucci had distributed false identity papers to 5,000 Croatian Jews, enabling them to leave local internment camps for relative safety in his uncle's southern Italian diocese, an operation that would later lead to the police chief's death in Dachau.

A second letter to Bishop Palatucci in November 1940 contained a cheque for 10,000 lira that was to be used for the "support of Jews interned in your diocese".

Supporters believe that the letters will help to repair the reputation of a man whom the present Pope, John Paul II, is seeking to make a saint but who has been accused of being anti-semitic, culturally Germanophile, rabidly anti-communist and conspicuously silent about the fate of Europe's Jews.

"They appear to give compelling proof that will testify to Pius's attitude towards the Jews," said William Doino, an authority on Pius XII.

"Given the dangers then existing and the reluctance of the Church to put such matters in writing, these letters are remarkable. They establish beyond question that Pius XII took a direct, personal interest in helping Jews [and] did so very early on in the war.

"Numerous authors have maintained that there is no credible written evidence that Pius XII himself ever gave direct orders to assist persecuted Jews. Now, we have that evidence."

Mr Doino believes that other new documents to be released by the Vatican to scholars this weekend will shed light on one of the most controversial figures in the Catholic Church's history.

They cover between 1922 and 1939, when the then Eugenio Pacelli was nuncio to Weimar Germany and later papal secretary of state when Hitler came to power.

Controversy has long dogged Pacelli, the principal architect of the 1933 concordat between Germany and the Vatican which ring-fenced Catholic schooling and public worship in a climate that was hostile to "political Catholicism".

While Britain, France and Italy had already established relations with Germany, the concordat is widely viewed as having conferred "respectability" on the Nazis.

The alleged silence of Pius, who became Pope a few months before the outbreak of hostilities in 1939, would later become a stick with which to beat the Catholic Church over its wartime record.

While more than 80 per cent of Italy's Jewish population was rescued, critics of the Church have claimed that individual Italian Catholics acted spontaneously, without aid from Pius XII.

Defenders of Pius XII say he detested the Nazis, signed the concordat to protect German Catholics and put German conservatives who were plotting to kill Hitler in touch with the British, who failed to take much interest in them.

[rmlew]

That's something like complaining that a British Ambassador to Washington during the Reagan Administration didn't do enough to keep Bill Clinton from being elected President.

Pacelli (if my memory serves me) wasn't Papal Nuncio when Hitler became chancellor. What sort of influence he might have had, as the diplomatic representative of a foreign power, on domestic German politics before that is at best conjectural.

Your analogy is false. The RCC has not been a temporal power since the unification of Italy under Sardinia. Its power is moral and is primarily excercised through Catholics.
Had the RCC excomunicated the Nazis or condemned them as anti-catholic, they would not have gained power.

And, BTW, the Church did "explicitly condemn the Holocaust". Many times, beginning with Mit Brennender Sorge in 1937, before the Holocaust even took place. When von Ribbentrop visited Rome after the Nazis invaded Poland, Pius XII simply sat down at his desk, opened a large book, and began reciting, in German, the catalog of German atrocities against Polish Catholics, Jews, and others.

Condemning anti-Semetism is different than condemning genocide. Besides, many Catholic Priests abetted the Holocaust. They were not cleaned out for decades.

[rmlew]

Are you blaming Jews for the crimes of the communists?

[rmlew]

You understand the concept of institutional crimes?
The fact is that until the 1840's, the RCC was complicit in schemes to kidnap Jewish children so that they could be converted and put in monestaries.
The RCC has changed, but that does not mean that there were not Jew-haters in the 1940's who helped the Nazis. Pacelli/Pius XII was NOT one of these.

[rmlew]

He was a Cardinal with some influence. Moreover, what of the previous Pope?

[Alberta's Child]

What is the basis of her beatification?

A "martyr" in a formal Christian sense is one who gives up his or her life for her faith in Christ. Edith Stein was canonized in recognition of her life of spiritual devotion as a Carmelite sister.

And many more, some of whom were recognized and many more who were not.

You really have to understand the canonization process -- it is distinctly not a "political" process, though politics will often come into play as far as the timing of someone's canonization is concerned. Pope Pius IX, for example, was only recently canonized even though later popes such as Pius X and Pius XII had already been canonized. This delay was the result of the Vatican's desire to avoid having the canonization process influenced one way or another by Italian political sentiment related to the issues surrounding the unification of Italy at the time Pius IX served as pope.

[Alberta's Child]

If you go back and read through the history of formal "anti-Semitism" in the Catholic Church, what you will find is that Judaism had little, if anything, to do with it.

I believe it was St. Pius X, for example, who warned extensively about the influence of "Jews" in Europe at the time, because they were seen as "agents of secularism."

In other words, his criticism of the European Jews at the time was not because they were Jewish, but because they were specifically not Jewish in any religious sense.

[nickcarraway]

While Pius XII was Papal Nuncio in Germany, he was one of the first people to take the Nazi Party seriously as a threat. But most people didn't listen to those who were making warnings about them.

He was a Cardinal with some influence. Moreover, what of the previous Pope?

A Cardinal of influence over who? Yes, at the Vatican he had influence, but how much power does a cardinal have? Even the pope has mostly only the power the attention of his office can bring. Pope Pius XI (who died in 1939) release the Encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge in 1937. (It was mostly written by the future Pius XII)It was clearly directed at the situtation in Germany, and if anyone thinks that wasn't obvious, they took the highly unusual step of writing it in German, not the usual Latin. Did Hitler care that the Pope didn't approve of his policies? Hitler had no intention of listening to the Pope. As Stalin said, ``How many divisions does the pope have?'' Did the Pope have the authority to force other nations to invade Germany? Winston Churchill was in his country's government, but he still couldn't convince them of the danger of Germany. Pius also tried to put anti-Hitler german officials in touch with the British.

If you had been pope, what do you think you could have done to make a difference?

[nickcarraway]

Do you believe that Golda Meir was a liar and a traitor?

[FormerLib]

This particular example of the benevolence of the "Holy Orthodox Tsar" was part of a campaign of -- get this -- forcible conversion to Orthodoxy in the Western Ukraine.

Is the Russian Orthodox Church naming this Tsar as a saint? But the Roman Catholic Church is doing so for the Ustashe Cardinal Stepinac, whose forced conversion campaign resulted in tens of thousands of deaths.

[NativeNewYorker]

You must be confusing me with someone else. I rarely/never post on church issues.

[MrLeRoy]

How about the "noble and valiant" efforts of Pius XII, which saved -- according to Rabbi Pinchas Lapide, former Israeli ambassador to Italy -- between 700,000 and 860,000 Jews from certain death?

That's not a "spotty" record, it's a heroic record, and it makes very understandable the position of people like Rabbi David Dalin, who says Pope Pius should be formally granted the title of "righteous among the nations" for his efforts.

Thanks for setting the record straight.

[Conservative til I die]

My opinion is that we need to keep you and your leaders from doing it again.

bullcrap. You view this as a competition between Catholics and Orthodox and any anti-Catholic comment you make is not done out of some noble quest but to give your team an edge.

[TheEngineer]

But the truth is the Catholic church, as an institution, not as individuals, and often in the name of Catholicism, has hurt and killed people, over and over again. Jews, Orthodox, Protestants, and gypsies.....who knows what other groups?... My opinion is that we need to keep you and your leaders from doing it again.

Well lookie here... The bigot Marmema has crawled out of her bitter hole to spew some more anti-Catholic drivel. 'The pot calling the kettle black' is her specialty, so no surprise.

Of course, you always neglect to notice that your beloved Russian Orthodox Church specializes in killing its own... and that its highest leader in Moscow, Patriarch Alexei II (aka 'Agent Drozdov'), is an unrepentant KGB spy and plant. But keep on driveling. But you might want to wear a bib to keep the hypocrisy from ruining your shirt.

Almost every Church institution has had moments of which it should be ashamed. It's because they are made up of fallible men and women. But I can't think of any shame that equals what the Russian Orthodox Church did to itself. Who do you think turned in all those dissident Orthodox priests to the communists for murder or the gulag? (Hint: communist Orthodox priests.)

PS. Marmema, while you are stewing in your Catholic-envy juices, you might want to catch the #9-ranked fighting Irish on ESPN basketball next Monday night.

Love,
TheEngineer

[rmlew]

The time to stop Hitler was 1932. The RCC ignored them because they were anti-Communist.
Pius XI condemned certain actions of the Nazi regime. However, neither Pope went about cleaning up the church of anti-Semetism. The local anti-Semites were kept in place.

I oppose the attacks on both Pius XI and XII. However, I consider neither saintly.

If you had been pope, what do you think you could have done to make a difference?

1.Make it clear that racism was not to be tolerated against Jews and Gypsies in an ex cathedra statement.
2. Ex-communicate Hitler and other Nazis. Call Nazism a pagan cult. (Likewise excommunicate communists)
3. Explicitly say that rescuing the oppressed was a duty of Catholics.

Of course, I'm not Catholic.

[rmlew]

Do you believe that Golda Meir was a liar and a traitor?

She was a liar, a socialist, and a fool. However, she was not wrong to thank Pius XII.

[mlmr]

You were refering to the article at the link. I read it and it is warmed over Hitler's Pope. So follow some of the different links that I have provided and open your mind and learn something instead of gobbling up what fits your preconceptions.

[NativeNewYorker]

I read Hitler's Pope, and found it rather inconclusive relative to the hype. The Odessa book I cited gives a fair amount of detail, set in a real world context. If you are interested in that history, I'd recommend it to you.

BTW, I have no preconceptions in this field whatsoever. War is hell.

[mlmr]

Your link is an article that basically rehashes Hitler's Pope. What book and author are you talking about?


You are absolutely right, war is hell.

[NativeNewYorker]

The Real Odessa: Smuggling the Nazis to Peron's Argentina by Uki Goni

Hardcover: 382 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.55 x 9.51 x 6.47

Publisher: Granta Books

(September 2002)

ISBN: 1862075816

[perform_to_strangers]

I've never read the book, but I saw the movie. It starred Gregory Peck and Captain von Trapp (what was his name?). As I recall, the movie had a rather despicable scene in which a nearly senile Pope Pius XII talks to O'Flaherty at the end of the war and asks if he thinks it was okay that he (the Pope) didn't say or do anything during the war. O'Flaherty (who in the movie, did everything in Pius's name) dissembles, telling the Pope that he's sure he did everything he could (meaning, although the Pope did nothing, O'Flaherty had done everything that could be done, so it was as if Pius had acted), and the pope whispers to himself, "I suppose I should have said something," and shuffles offstage, broken and ineffectual, finally conscience-stricken now that the danger has passed and the harm done.

I own the movie on video, and I don't recall any scene like that. However, the movie concerns O'Flaherty's efforts on behalf of Allied POW's, not Jews. The plight of the Jews really doesn't enter into the story much, one way or the other.

I borrowed the movie last night and you are absolutely correct. Pius is portrayed from the first moment of the film as a strong, passionate leader who's struggling with everything in him to shepherd the Church through the horror of the Nazi years. He sees everything and gives every bit of aid he can to those who are trying to help. It's a wonderful movie.

Thanks, Campion, for the correction!