Rabbi tells Vatican synod: 'We can't forget'

www.nationalpost.com ^ | October 07, 2008 | Philip Pullella

[Publius804]

Rabbi tells Vatican synod: 'We can't forget'

Wartime Silence

Philip Pullella, Reuters

Published: Tuesday, October 07, 2008

VATICAN CITY - The first Jew to address a Vatican synod told the gathering yesterday Jews "cannot forgive and forget" that some major religious leaders during the Second World War did not speak out against the Holocaust.

Rabbi Shear-Yashuv Cohen's words, spoken in the presence of Pope Benedict, were a clear reference to Pius XII, the wartime pope who many Jews say did not do enough to help them.

"We cannot forget the sad and painful fact of how many, including great religious leaders, didn't raise their voice in the effort to save our brethren but chose to keep silent and helped secretly. We cannot forgive and forget it and we hope that you understand ...," Mr. Cohen, chief rabbi of Haifa, Israel, said in unprepared remarks at the end of his address.

[Petronski]

860,000

[Aggie Mama]

And yet a good portion of Jews in this country will vote for candidates that will hasten their destruction...

[The Sons of Liberty]

And yet a good portion of Jews in this country will vote for candidates that will hasten their destruction...

Amen. Took the words right out of my mouth and said them better.

[ikka]

Is it not the case that virtually no Italian Jews were rounded up by the Nazis? And that was partially because of the Pope and the local priests?

[pgkdan]

I’m sick of the lies and smears against this great and holy man. Pope Pious XII did more to help Jews escape Nazi slaughter than anyone else in the world. This Rabbi complains that he didn’t say enough...wasn’t vocal enough??? It’s not enough that the Holy Father helped nearly a million Jews escape the ovens? This Rabbi ought to be ashamed. I feel shame for him.

[Unam Sanctam]

And liberals of today see nothing wrong with Ahmedinejad’s threat to wipe Israel off a map. Hilary Clinton can’t even be bothered to appear at a protest rally because a Republican woman politician might also be present.

[Ann Archy]

That IGNORANT Rabbi! ILL-MANNERED also!! ASS.....The Pope did MORE than most JEWS....IDIOT.

Hey Rabbi....read the New York Times, if nothing else.....at the time, they were reporting the great things that the Pope was doing to help the Jews, when your DEAR LEADER, FDR, was sending a boatload of Jews back to Europe to be KILLED....IDIOT! ILL MANNERED.

Diff between Catholics and Jews....forgive and forget.

[ArrogantBustard]

860,000

If Rabbi Cohen prefers empty words to silent actions, then he's an idiot and I hold him in contempt.

Rabbi Cohen need to explain his remarks ... and maybe to learn some real history.

Holocaust slander is worse than holocaust denial.

[GladesGuru]

Aside from the obvious reasons for not forgiving/forgetting about the Holocaust, there are fundamental theological reasons for the rabbi’s statement.

Forgiveness, in Mosaic Law requires three things:
1. Restitution
2. Public apology
3. The apology must be sincere

This is in sharp contrast to Christian theological positions on forgiveness.

Catholics require confession and penance imposed by the Church. The Catholic changes from the preceding Mosaic Law may well be a significant factor why the teachings of Jesus, who was a practicing Essene Jew, were to spread across the world while the original Jewish faith did not.

Under Catholic Canon Law, the old Mosaic Law requirement for a public apology became the private confession of the sin to the priest. As in the preceding Jewish faith, Catholicism also requires the confession to be sincere.

The Jewish requirement for restitution was retained - but with a major variation. Where the Jew had to offer restitution to the offended, the Catholic was assigned penance by the priest hearing the confession. The restitution did not have to go to the victim of the sin.

Protestants largely believe that the sacrifice made by Jesus atones for their sins IF they accept Jesus as Savior. No specific theological requirements are made because all men are sinners and thus all must accept Jesus as Savior to have their sins forgiven by God.

As I am not, by training, a theologian, I would enjoy a discussion of forgiveness with any who may have a more detailed knowledge of this question.

[ex-snook]

The Rabbi is just using today’s smear tactics to advance some current agenda.

[GladesGuru]

OOPS! “the Catholic was assigned” should read “the Catholic assigned”.

Proof read before pushing the SEND button, Proof read before pushing the SEND button, Proof read before pushing the SEND button, Proof read before - - -

[Hacksaw]

"We cannot forget the sad and painful fact of how many, including great religious leaders, didn't raise their voice in the effort to save our brethren but chose to keep silent and helped secretly.

If this rabbi was starving and was given 20 dollars to buy food, he would come back later and condemn the man for not giving him 100 dollars. Sometimes I wonder if these rabbis purposely generate emnity in others.

[Hacksaw]

The Rabbi is just using today’s smear tactics to advance some current agenda.

A trust fund perhaps.

[Alex Murphy]

The first Jew to address a Vatican synod told the gathering yesterday Jews "cannot forgive and forget" that some major religious leaders during the Second World War did not speak out against the Holocaust.

Ping to read later

[Tax-chick]

How does this help? Does it bring any dead people back to life? Does it do anything to prevent future harm? Does it glorify God?

From my reading of the “Jewish Ethics” column on “Jewish World Review,” I believe the author of that column would tell this rabbi to shut up.

[Alter Kaker]

Diff between Catholics and Jews....forgive and forget.

Wow, you have issues with the Jews. Why?

FDR, was sending a boatload of Jews back to Europe to be KILLED.

That's just not factually correct. The St. Louis sailed to London (where some of the passengers disembarked) and later Antwerp, Belgium, where the rest disembarked and wound up in France, Belgium and the Netherlands.

All those countries were free and independent in 1939. Some of the passengers on the St. Louis were indeed later killed, but blaming the US for that is crazy. You would have had to predict (1) the Holocaust (still 3 years away in 1939) and (2) the conquest by Germany of all of Europe (which was ludicrous in 1939).

[magisterium]

From a Catholic viewpoint, the issue isn't one involving transference of venue from the public sphere to the confessional. One is expected, if anything, to manifest his forgiveness - or his apology - to the person(s) affected by it. The private confession is for the sin involved, which is against God, so one is seeking His forgiveness there.

For a Christian, one need not publicly "forgive" until such time as the other party seeks forgiveness, but onece this happens, the forgiveness must be made and must be sincere. It is hard, or even impossible, to "forget," but one must still forgive, at least to the extent that he wishes no ill on the offender based on his offense. This does not require a break in common sense, however. If you, my erstwhile best friend, break my skull open and take all that I possess in the bargain, I may be required by Christ to forgive you when you seek forgiveness, but that does not mean that I have to proceed with our friendship as if nothing happened. It would take a lot more than a mere spirit of forgiveness to repair the "trust" that has been severly damaged here. I would be within my rights to simply say, "I forgive you. I will not press my rights against you, and I wish you well. Go in peace. Our friendship, however, is at an end."

Coming from the other directiom, if I am in the wrong (and know it), I must apologize and seek forgiveness from the party or parties I have wronged. Preferably, I should do this even before I have confessed the sin, but it is understood that, to the extent that it is possible, I need to do this at least after absolution has been given. Again, confession is for squaring oneself with God, the apology derives from that, but is a separate action made to the offended party. God will not forgive such sins if no effort is made to acknowledge the wrongdoing in confession and to the person(s) affected.

So, in this respect, I think trying to cast this issue of forgiveness and apology as soely within the confines of sacramental absolution is incorrect.

As for this rabbi involved here, I'm afraid I can't find the proper word to express my disgust at his ingratitude. Pius XII did more to help European (and especially Italian) Jews from the Nazis than any other world leader. FDR, Churchill, any other head of state among the Allied powers, you name it. None of them even helped at all, and didn't even bomb the railways leading to the camps when, by 1943, this was certainly quite feasible.

Pius was deterred from much overt denouncement after, among other events, the Nazis retaliated for the Dutch bishops' public protests by rounding up all of the Dutch Jewish converts (including St. Edith Stein and her sister, both Carmelite nuns who had converted from Judaism) and sending them to the camps. Furthermore, it can be plausibly argueed that almost no one knew the extent of what was going on in the camps as recently as April 1944. You may recall the famous escape from Auschwitz by two Slovakian Jews, Alfred Weczler and Rudolph Vrba, who escaped precisely to make the plight of Jews in the death camps known to the outside world. They were met with complete disbelief when they tried, after their successful escape, to convince the Jews of Hungary that they were "next" in line for deportation and extermination. This, in April 1944!! Check out a few of the many sources on this that I'm enclosing below:

http://remember.org/witness/wit.res.esc.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Vrba

http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/camps/auschwitz/ftp.py?camps/auschwitz//auschwitz.07

http://books.google.com/books?id=8InGE7lTy08C&pg=PA8&lpg=PA8&dq=weczler+vrba&source=web&ots=6z14RLkzUg&sig=yHL8hs8TjPMKD6CT9SXnOtf_AUI&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result

If the Jews of Hungary refused to believe it, and had no prior, common-knowledge evidence that this was going on, and the Western governments dismissed the reports from both Weczler and Vrba, it is safe to say that Pius XII might not have know the extent of the genocide himself by that date. He may, as a world leader, have had an inkling, but he might not have been sure enough about actual death campes (as opposed to slave-labor camps) to risk inciting the Nazis with constant public condemnations. Remember, again, what happened in Holland after the first real protest from the Church had been lodged against what had merely been supposed had been going on.

<Could Pius have done more? Sure. I'm sure that's possible. How do you quantify such a thing, anyway? But he did what he thought he could do prudently without making the situation worse. Keep in mind, too, that he did what he did while surrounded by German troops garrisoned in Rome through early June 1944!!! It is absolutely ludicrous for this rabbi, or any rabbi, to condemn Pius for "inaction," when he did far more than any other major religious or political leader in the entire world, and did so while in a far more exposed position (in an occupied city) than any of them. The New York Times, in several instances contemporary to the events, lauded Pius as the "lone voice" crying out against what was known was going on a the time. He was eulogized at his death by many Jews, including Golda Meir and Albert Einstein, as the greatest savior of Jews in Europe during the Holocaust. What else is there to say in defense of this man?

Revisionist history is usually spawned by bad motives, but revisionist history, applied in a spirit of utter ingratitude, against the benefactor of one's own people is just reprehensible! I hope this rabbi sleeps well.

[Ann Archy]

You are UN-Listening!! I said NOTHING about the US KILLING the Jews....I said FRD SENT THEM BACK TO BE KILLED!! good freaking grief....go back and re-read please.