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To: Alex Murphy
refusing to sign a 1942 Allied condemnation of the massacre of Jews during World War II

I wonder if Switzerland and Sweden, also neutrals, refused to sign Secretary of State Hull's condemnation?

No castigation prominently displayed for any other neutrals? Hmmmm.

Did Pius refuse to sign because he could not at the same time condemn the slaughter of religious believers by Stalin, the America's ally?

The voice of Pius XII is a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping Europe this Christmas....
He is about the only ruler left on the Continent of Europe who dares to raise his voice at all.
- Editorial, The New York Times, Dec. 25, 1941

3 posted on 04/12/2007 3:13:41 PM PDT by siunevada (If we learn nothing from history, what's the point of having one? - Peggy Hill)
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To: siunevada; Alex Murphy; wmfights; OLD REGGIE; Uncle Chip; blue-duncan
I really doubt that quote is from the editorial board of the NYT. More likely it was either a guest editorial on Christmas day or a columnist.

POPE PIUS XII AND THE HOLOCAUST

CRIES FOR HELP

Throughout the Holocaust, Pius XII was consistently besieged with pleas for help on behalf of the Jews.

In the spring of 1940, the Chief Rabbi of Palestine, Isaac Herzog, asked the papal Secretary of State, Cardinal Luigi Maglione to intercede to keep Jews in Spain from being deported to Germany. He later made a similar request for Jews in Lithuania. The papacy did nothing.(5)

Within the Pope's own church, Cardinal Theodor Innitzer of Vienna told Pius XII about Jewish deportations in 1941. In 1942, the Slovakian charge d'affaires, a position under the supervision of the Pope, reported to Rome that Slovakian Jews were being systematically deported and sent to death camps.(6)

In October 1941, the Assistant Chief of the U.S. delegation to the Vatican, Harold Tittman, asked the Pope to condemn the atrocities. The response came that the Holy See wanted to remain "neutral," and that condemning the atrocities would have a negative influence on Catholics in German-held lands.(7)

In late August 1942, after more than 200,000 Ukrainian Jews had been killed, Ukrainian Metropolitan Andrej Septyckyj wrote a long letter to the Pope, referring to the German government as a regime of terror and corruption, more diabolical than that of the Bolsheviks. The Pope replied by quoting verses from Psalms and advising Septyckyj to "bear adversity with serene patience."(8)

On September 18, 1942, Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini, the future Pope Paul VI, wrote, "The massacres of the Jews reach frightening proportions and forms."(9) Yet, that same month when Myron Taylor, U.S. representative to the Vatican, warned the Pope that his silence was endangering his moral prestige, the Secretary of State responded on the Pope's behalf that it was impossible to verify rumors about crimes committed against the Jews.(10)

Wladislaw Raczkiewicz, president of the Polish government-in-exile, appealed to the Pope in January 1943 to publicly denounce Nazi violence. Bishop Preysing of Berlin did the same, at least twice. Pius XII refused.(11)...


5 posted on 04/12/2007 5:53:32 PM PDT by Dr. Eckleburg ("I don't think they want my respect; I think they want my submission." - Flemming Rose)
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To: siunevada; Salvation; Coleus; NYer; SoothingDave; Frank Sheed; cyborg; livius; Miss Marple; onyx; ..
The voice of Pius XII is a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping Europe this Christmas.... He is about the only ruler left on the Continent of Europe who dares to raise his voice at all. - Editorial, The New York Times, Dec. 25, 1941

That was a different NYT.

Today's NYT (the Old Gray Whore) is a shadow of that institution, and apparently someone at Yad Vashem reads it.

6 posted on 04/12/2007 5:55:49 PM PDT by Petronski (FRED!)
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