Posted on 12/23/2009 9:03:19 AM PST by markomalley
VATICAN CITY, 23 DEC 2009 (VIS) - Holy See Press Office Director Fr. Federico Lombardi S.J. today issued the following note concerning the signing of the recent decree on the heroic virtues of Servant of God Pope Pius XII.
"The Pope's signing of the decree 'on the heroic virtues' of Pius XII has elicited a certain number of reactions in the Jewish world; perhaps because the meaning of such a signature is clear in the area of the Catholic Church and of specialists in the field, but may merit certain explanation for the larger public, in particular the Jewish public who are understandably very sensitive to all things concerning the historical period of World War II and the Holocaust.
"When the Pope signs a decree 'on the heroic virtues' of a Servant of God - i.e., of a person for whom a cause for beatification has been introduced - he confirms the positive evaluation already voted by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. ... Naturally, such evaluation takes account of the circumstances in which the person lived, and hence it is necessary to examine the question from a historical standpoint, but the evaluation essentially concerns the witness of Christian life that the person showed (his intense relationship with God and continuous search for evangelical perfection) ... and not the historical impact of all his operative decisions".
"At the beatification of Pope John XXIII and of Pope Pius IX, John Paul II said: 'holiness lives in history and no saint has escaped the limits and conditioning which are part of our human nature. In beatifying one of her sons, the Church does not celebrate the specific historical decisions he may have made, but rather points to him as someone to be imitated and venerated because of his virtues, in praise of the divine grace which shines resplendently in them'.
"There is, then, no intention in any way to limit discussion concerning the concrete choices made by Pius XII in the situation in which he lived. For her part, the Church affirms that these choices were made with the pure intention of carrying out the Pontiff's service of exalted and dramatic responsibility to the best of his abilities. In any case, Pius XII's attention to and concern for the fate of the Jews - something which is certainly relevant in the evaluation of his virtues - are widely testified and recognised, also by many Jews.
"The field for research and evaluation by historians, working in their specific area, thus remains open, also for the future. In this specific case it is comprehensible that there should be a request to have open access to all possibilities of research on the documents. ... Yet for the complete opening of the archives - as has been said on a number of occasions in the past - it is necessary to organise and catalogue an enormous mass of documentation, something which still requires a number of years' work.
"As for the fact that the decree on the heroic virtues of Pope John Paul II and Pope Pius XII were promulgated on the same day, this does not mean that from now on the two causes will be 'paired'. They are completely independent of one another and each will follow its own course. There is, then, no reason to imagine that any future beatification will take place together".
"It is, then, clear that the recent signing of the decree is in no way to be read as a hostile act towards the Jewish people, and it is to be hoped that it will not be considered as an obstacle on the path of dialogue between Judaism and the Catholic Church. Rather we trust that the Pope's forthcoming visit to the Synagogue of Rome will be an opportunity for the cordial reiteration and reinforcement of ties of friendship and respect".
Everybody gets all bent out of shape about issues like this. Then you read the actual documents from Rome and they are shockingly *sensible*.
If you are looking for Jews haters, you are looking at the wrong place my friend!!!
F.D.R. ANTISEMITISM AND ANTICATHOLICISM
Why is it that some Jews, instead of slander Pope Pius XII, who did his up must to save the Jews (risking the destruction of the Catholic Church by the Nazis), do not condemn those who, like president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, could have spoken against the Holocaust but no only kept silent, he denied entrance into U.S. those Jews fleeing Nazi occupied Europe?
FDR’S ANTISEMITISM
©1998 by Robert Michael
The records of the Casablanca Conference contain the clearest and most significant evidence concerning the President attitudes toward the Jews and the basic reason why he did nothing to end the anti-refugee policy of the United States.
The conference took place in January 1943 in the middle of the period when the mass murder of Jews was taking place in Europe. By this time, Roosevelt knew nearly everything about these atrocities. Roosevelt had been informed over the years by American diplomats and American press reports about the Jewish condition in Europe.1 Moreover, in December 1942 the Polish government in exile had accurately informed the U.S. government of many of the facts of the Holocaust.
Yet at Casablanca, Roosevelt amazingly seemed to sympathize with Nazi discrimination against Jews. He proposed to Generals Noguès and Giraud that the French government in North Africa discriminate against the Jews of French North Africa just as Hitler had done in Germany before the war .2)
Roosevelt stated that the number of Jews engaged in the practice of the professions . . . should be definitely limited to the percentage that the Jewish population in North Africa bears to the whole North African population.
He endorsed the same plan for Germany. Limiting the number of Jews in the professions, he stated, would further eliminate the specific and understandable complaints which the Germans bore toward the Jews in Germany, namely, that while they represented a single part of the population, over 50 per cent of the lawyers, doctors, school teachers, college professors, etc., in Germany were Jews. 3)
Roosevelt’s misinformation and solutions were shared by American Ambassador to Germany, William Dodd, who had written to Charles Crane that he, Dodd, had told the Germans unofficially that they had a serious [Jewish] problem but that they did not know how to solve it. The Jews had held a great many more of the key positions in Germany than their numbers or their talents entitled them to. 4)
The errors in Roosevelt statements were telling, because they mirrored modern antisemitic stereotypes. In the interwar period, the facts are that Jews comprised about 16 percent of German lawyers, 11 percent of physicians, 4 percent of the university teachers, and 1 percent of teachers in lower grades. 5 )
At Casablanca, F.D.R.¸s comments echoed Nazi and American anti-Jewish propaganda of the 1930s. Father Coughlin praised the National-Socialists¸ understandable effort to block the Jewish-Communist plan for subjugating Germany.6
Congressman Louis McFadden had encouraged Hitler¸s attempts to destroy the alleged Jewish control of the German economy, media, education, and professions.7)
For President Roosevelt, America was a “Protestant” nation,8) and Jews were here on suffrance. F.D.R.¸s feelings about Jews (and Catholics) are clear from a private conversation with Leo Crowley, the Catholic economist and wartime Alien Property Custodian.
One day in January 1942, Roosevelt proclaimed to a shocked Crowley: Leo, you know this is a Protestant country, and the Catholics and the Jews are here on sufferance. It is up to both of you [Crowley and Henry Morganthau, a Jew and Secretary of the Treasury] to go along with anything that I want at this time. 9)
F.D.R.¸s comment confirms his belief that Jews as well as Catholics would always be aliens in a Protestant nation like the United States. This attitude, not uncommon among America’s Protestant elite, may help explain FDR’s aloofness from the agonized experience of the Holocaust’s Jews. He may have hated the Nazis and their collaborators for the crimes they committed against non-Jews, but he remained aloof, unable to make the human connection with Jewish victims. 10)
Like many liberals, FDR avoided the realities of the Jewish catastrophe based on a mild antisemitism. As Life magazine’s managing editor, John Billing, wrote in his diary, “We’re all antisemitic, only some of us have better self-control than others.”11)
FOOTNOTES 1) At the time of Kristallnacht in November 1938, President Roosevelt had already been warned by his ambassador to Poland, Anthony Biddle, that The plight of the Jewish populations as a whole in Europe is steadily becoming . . . untenable. Biddle to Roosevelt (10 November 1938). See Lipstadt, Beyond Belief.
2) Noguès was Vichy France¸s Resident General of Morocco.
3) The Roosevelt-Noguès and the Roosevelt-Giraud Conversations at the President¸s Villa (noon and 4:20 p.m., 17 January 1943), Roosevelt Papers, McCrea Notes, in Foreign Relations of the United States: The Conferences at Washington 1941-1942 and Casablanca 1943 (Washington D.C. 1968), 608-11.
4) Brecher, Charles R. Crane¸s Crusade for the Arabs, 47, 54n34.
5) See Jewish Historical Atlas.
6) Curran, Xenophobia and Immigration, 149.
7) Shapiro, The Approach of War, 48.
8) Robert Herzstein, “Jews, the Holocaust, and Henry Luce,” Dimensions, 15.
9) Entry of 27 January 1942, Henry Morganthau Diaries, in Morgan, FDR, 553.
10) NAnother example was Henry Luce, the owner and director of Time Magazine, AMerica’s most powerful journalistic enterprise. Herzstein, “Jews, the Holocaust, and Henry Luce,” Dimensions, 19.
11) Herzstein, “Jews, the Holocaust, and Henry Luce,” 21.
©1998 by Robert Michael
F.D.R. DENIED ASYLUM TO JEWS FLEEING NAZI OCCUPIED EUROPE
The St. Louis and U.S. Policy Failures
German Jews Denied Entrance to America in 1939
Aug 22, 2009 Michael Streich
Allowing 937 Jews to leave Germany in May 1939 served Nazi propaganda goals, particularly when the the United States rejected asylum after Cuba refused their entry visas.
In May 1939, the S.S. St. Louis sailed out of Hamburg, Germany bound for Havana with 937 Jewish men, women, and children. It was only seven months since Kristallnacht had wrecked a bloody havoc on the Jews in the German Reich and only five months from the outbreak of World War II. The plight of these Jews would become intimately entangled with insensitive American immigration quotas, President Franklin Roosevelt’s political expediency, and deeply rooted Anti-Semitism in the United States.
The passengers on the St. Louis were a varied group. They represented young and old, professional and worker. Some had been in concentration camps. Both Dachau and Buchenwald camps were in full operation, a fact known to most foreign governments including the United States.
Dr. Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Minister of Propaganda, used the sailing of the St. Louis to strengthen the ideological posture of Germany toward the Jews to appeal to world public opinion.
On the one hand, Germany was demonstrating compassion by allowing these Jews to leave, albeit at a steep price. Those with property forfeited everything to the Reich. This aspect of the Nazi procedures was not for public opinion. Although issued exit visa, the passenger’s entry documents into Cuba would not be honored. The passengers did not know this.
Dr. Goebbels, Reichsmarschal Goering, and Hitler knew that, inevitably, the St. Louis would be turned away, proving to the world that nobody wanted the Jews. Most European nations had already stopped the flow of refugees crossing their borders. Britain not only curtailed Jews from entering Britain, but severely limited the number of Jews migrating to Palestine, a viable and logical destination coming out of late 19th-Century Zionist efforts.
FRANCO OFFERED REFUGE IN CATHOLIC SPAIN TO PERSECUTED JEWS.
The reaction of the Western democracies was in stark contrast with that of “Fascist” Spain. General Franco’s regime, even though his country was devastated and impoverished after a bloody civil war, recognized all the Sephardic Jews living in the Nazi occupied territories as Spanish citizens. That measure allowed them to return to Spain- the beloved Sepharad, land of their ancestors where they lived a golden age more than five centuries ago. Franco’s government also collaborated with the Holy See and several South American countries in providing false passports for Jews trying to flee the Nazi scourge.
More than 50,000 Jews were saved thanks to the Spanish government actions. When the Nazis discovered the covert operation, some of the Latin American countries retracted from accepting the validity of the faked passports.
The Vatican, on January 24, 1944, interceded with the Latin American governments asking them to recognize the passports “no matter how illegally obtained”, and the humanitarian operation proceeded. Brazil gave 3,000 enter visas. Paraguay, Chile and others South American countries were also very receptive to the Pope’s pleas in favor of the Jews.
TESTIMONIALS ON PIUS XII FROM WORLD LEADERS.
The fact is, as affirmed Graham, that even before 1944, the world Jewish organizations had recognized in the Vatican a friend who was willing- and often able- to help their people during their tragic ordeal in occupied Europe. The concerns of the Jewish organizations were also those of the Holy See. Sometimes The Church acted on the appeal of a Jewish organization, at other times, they acted on the basis of reports received from its own representatives in the occupied territories where they held a relationship of confidence with the local Jewish leaders. In many instances, the Holy See had already acted upon information received from its own nuncios before the appeals from Jewish organizations arrived at the Vatican.
Pope Paul VI, who was a close collaborator with Pius XII, authorized in 1964 the publications of the documents of the Holy See relating World War II. In Volume X, there is a day-by-day record of the Holy See’s correspondence with the most active international Jewish organizations. Among the more important of these are the ones from the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe, the World Jewish Congress, the American Jewish Congress, Agudas Israel World Organization, Vaad Hahatzala of the Unions of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada, Hijefs (Schweizerischer Hillfsverein fur Judische Fluchling im Ausland), the Jewish Agency for Palestine and the American Jewish Committee.
In November, 1943, Herzog, Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, wrote to Cardinal Roncalli, (the future Pope John XXIII) then Apostolic Delegate to Turkey and Greece, stating: “I take this opportunity to express to your Eminence my sincere thanks as well as my deep appreciation of your kindly attitude to Israel and of the invaluable help given by the Catholic Church to the Jewish people in its affliction. Would you please convey these sentiments which come from Sion, to His Holiness the Pope (Pius XII) along with the assurances that the people of Israel know how to value his assistance and his attitude.” (24) The American Jewish Welfare Board wrote to Pius XII on July 1944 to express their appreciation for the protection given to the Jews during the German occupation of Italy.
In 1944 the War Refugee Board came into existence as the united effort of several American Jewish organizations. During and after the war, the War Refugee Board publicly acknowledged its close relationship with the Holy See. The documentation includes the correspondence from eminent rabbinical leaders who made special appeals to the Holy See; among them are the Grand Rabbi of Jerusalem, Dr. Issac Herzog; the Grand Rabbi of the British Empire, Dr. Joseph Hertz; and Rabbi Abraham Kalmanowitz, leader of the rabbinical school of Mir, in Lithuania.
Fr. William Saunders has quoted Dr. Raphael Cantoni, a leader in Italy’s Jewish Assistance Committee, declaring that “The Church and the Papacy have saved Jews as much and insofar as they could Christians. Six million of my co-religionists have been murdered by the Nazis…but there would have been many more victims had it not been for the efficacious intervention of Pius XII.” (25)
New York Times praises Pius XII’s Christmas Messages in 1941 and 1942
On Christmas Day 1941, the editorial of the New York Times, commenting on Pius XII’s Christmas Message, said: “The voice of Pius XII is a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping Europe this Christmas…as we realize that he is about the only ruler left on the Continent of Europe who dares to raise his voice at all…In calling for a ‘real new order’ based on ‘liberty, justice and love,’ to be attained only by a ‘return to social and international principles capable of creating a barrier against the abuse of liberty and the abuse of power”. “The Pope,” said the NYT, “put himself squarely against Hitlerism, he left no doubt that the Nazi aims are also irreconcilable with his own conception of a Christian peace.”
On Christmas Day 1942, the New York Times editorialized on Pius XII’s Christmas Message and again praised the Pope for his moral leadership. “This Christmas,” said de NYT, “more than ever he (Pius XII) is a lonely voice crying out of the silence of a continent. The Pulpit whence he speaks is more than ever like the rock on which the Church was founded, a tiny island lashed and surrounded by a sea of war… (Pius XII) condemns as heresy the new form of national state which subordinates every thing to itself, he declared that whoever wants peace must protect against ‘arbitrary attacks’ the ‘juridical safety of individuals. The Pope assailed the violent occupation of territory, the exile and persecution of human beings for no other reason than race or political opinion.” The address also contained the first formal enunciation of human rights made by a Pope.
Pope Pius XII, said the NYT, “expresses as passionately as any leader on our side of the war aims of the struggle for freedom when he says that those who aim at building a new world order must fight for free choice of government and religious order. They must refuse that the state should make of individuals a herd of whom the state disposes as if they were a lifeless thing.”
The British Ambassador to the Vatican says that the Pope was the most warmly humane, kindly, sympathetic, and saintly character he had known
D’Arcy Osborne, the Protestant Minister of Britain to the Vatican wrote of Pope Pius XII: as “the most warmly humane, kindly, generous, sympathetic, and incidentally saintly, character who has been my privilege to meet in the course of a long life.” (26)
Charles de Gaulle described the Pope as pious and compassionate
Charles de Gaulle, after an audience with the Pope on June 30, 1944, declared: “The Holy Father receives me. Beneath the kindly welcome and the simplicity of his language, I am gripped by the sharpness and power of his thought. Pius XII judges everything from a viewpoint superior to that of men…the supernatural burden, which is laid on him alone in all the world, weighs, one feels, on his soul, but he carries it without flinching, certain of his goal, sure of his way…Pious, compassionate, political in the highest meaning these words can have, thus this pontiff and sovereign appears to me, through the respect which he inspires in me.” (27)
On October 12, 1945, Leo Kubwitsky, on behalf of the World Jewish Congress made a gift of 2 million lire (the equivalent of over one million dollars at present value) to the Vatican as a token of gratitude. Pius XII decided that the sum should go exclusively to needy people of Jewish origin. Jews who had first hand knowledge, or participated in the extraordinary efforts of Pius XII and the Catholic Church in saving Jewish lives during this most tragic period, were not short in publicly expressing their profound gratitude while this great Pope was still alive.
Moshe Sharett, Israel’s first Foreign Minister, (and later the second Prime of Minister), met Pius XII in 1945 and said later: “I told him that my first duty was to thank him, and through him, the Catholic Church, on behalf of the Jewish people, for all they had done in various countries to rescue Jews, to save children and Jews in general.” (28)
The Founders of the State of Israel express their condolences at the death of Pius XII
Among those who mourned the death of Pius XII pronouncing heartfelt tributes were the President of Israel Ben-Zevi, Dr. Nahum Goldmann, president of the World Jewish Congress and the World Zionist Organization, and many Rabbis including Dr. Israel Goldstein of New York. Rabbi Elio Toaff, Chief Rabbi of Rome, said: “More than anyone else, we have had the opportunity to appreciate the great kindness, filled with compassion and magnanimity, that the Pope displayed during the terrible years of persecution and terror, when it seemed that there was no hope left for us.” Rabbi Israel Zolli stated: “What the Vatican did will indelibly and eternally engraved in our hearts…Priests and even high prelates did things that will forever be an honor to Catholicism.” (29)
The Israeli’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mrs.Golda Meir’s cablegram to the Vatican read; “We share in the grief of humanity at the passing away of His Holiness Pope Pius XII. In a generation afflicted by wars and discords, he upheld the highest ideals of peace and compassion. When fearful martyrdom came to our people in the decade of Nazi terror, the voice of the Pope was raised for the victims. The life of our times was enriched by a voice speaking out on the great moral truths above the tumult of daily conflict. We mourn a great servant of peace.” (30)
Unfortunately, today we are witnessing a campaign against this great benefactor of Humanity. His memory is being slandered and dishonored through falsehoods and innuendoes. This matter should be open to honest analysis and discussion. Legitimate discrepancies might exist while studying historical facts, but that should not be of excuse for those people who are moved by the same great evils of ignorance, hatred, and bigotry that made possible the brutal onslaught of innocent people by the Nazis and the Communists.
CONCLUSION
The relationship of trust and collaboration during WW II between the Holy See, the Jewish organizations, the Allies’ intelligence services and their governments, including the anti-Nazi German Generals, is well proven and documented. However, there is not the slightest thread of evidence to substantiate the preposterous and vicious allegations raised against Pius XII and the Catholic Church of collaboration or sympathizing with the Nazis.
Did the Church do enough to save the Jews? As usual those who do the less complain the most and those who do the most always think they could have done even more. When Michael O’Carroll, author of the scholar book “Pius XII: Greatness Dishonoured” related in the Foreword that in 1957 he met Dr. Isaac Herzog, Chief Rabbi of Israel, and he told him with emotion of an audience he had with the Pope and how they discussed the prophet Ezechiel. “My blessing to him” said the saintly old man, and O’Carroll promised to be the bearer of the message of his goodwill. When O’Carroll gave the message to Pius XII he added “I think Jews everywhere are grateful for what you did for them during the war.” “I wish I could have done more” was the Pope’s reply.
On February 28, 1945, the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, Isaac Herzog, sent a letter of gratitude to the
Apostolic Nuncio in Rumania, Msgr. Andrea Cassulo, stating that: “The people of Israel will never forget what His Holiness and his illustrious delegates, inspired by the eternal principles of religion which form the very foundations of civilization, are doing for us unfortunate brothers and sisters in the most tragic hour of our history, which is living prove of divine Providence in this world.” (31)
Rabbi Herzog’s heartfelt words should suffice to forever end the slanderous attacks to the memory of the great protector of the Jews, Pius XII and the Catholic Church.
Those testimonies aforementioned, as powerful as they might be, are just a few samples of the hundreds of messages of gratitude sent to Pius XII by Jews from around the world. There are at least 4 to 5 million descendants of those 860,000 Jews around the world whose lives were saved by Pius XII and the Catholic Church. They should be able to bring to light much more valuable documentation if they were to delve into their family’s historical records, the Israeli’s archives, and so many other serious, unbiased, Jewish scholarly research in this matter.
In Pius XII’s own words in an address given on June 13, 1943, he said: “Our speeches and messages will not be able to be crossed out or run down by anyone, neither in their intentions nor essence. Everyone has been able to hear them as words of truth and peace…The Church is not afraid of the light of truth, neither of the past, the present, nor the future.” (32)
To those seeking the truth, what a better witness than the testimony of Albert Einstein, the great Jewish physicist, who had first hand experience of the horrors of Nazism? In 1944 he said: “Being a lover of freedom, when the Nazi revolution came in Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it, but the universities were immediately silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of newspapers, but they, like the universities were silenced in a few short weeks. Then I looked to individual writers…they too were mute. Only the Church,” Einstein concluded, “stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing the truth…I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel great affection and admiration…and am forced thus to confess that what I once despised, I now praise unreservedly.”(33)
Just as the evils of the Holocaust must never be forgotten, neither should the kindness of those spiritual brothers from another faith who tried to help the Jews, at the risk of their own lives, under the most enormously dangerous travails be forgotten. The truth will prevail and with it, a greater understanding and brotherhood among Jews and Catholics.
I don’t know one Catholic who hates Jews. Do you?
THE GOOD SAMARITAN: JEWISH PRAISE FOR POPE PIUS XII
Dimitri Cavalli
________________________________________
Inside the Vatican has given considerable space in its pages to coverage of the fierce debate over the wartime role of Pope Pius XII and his alleged “silence” in the face of the Nazi persecution of the Jews (see particularly our June 1997 and our October 1999 issues). We will continue to do so as long as the debate rages.
The article we print here brings together a considerable amount of previously scattered evidence for how Jews during Pius’s lifetime viewed Pius’s conduct. Reading Cavalli’s piece, it is striking to see how different the general Jewish opinion of Pius XII was in the years during and immediately following the war from what it is today. This prompts a fundamental question: Were the Jews who praised and thanked Pius after the war all mistaken or insincere, or are the attacks on Pius today unfair?—The Editor
During World War II, many Jews around the world had the chance to observe Pope Pius XII’s conduct. They listened to his every word, and scrutinized his every action. Instead of seeing “Hitler’s Pope,” most Jews concluded that Pius XII’s public statements were directed against the Nazis, and that he and his subordinates in many Nazi-occupied and Axis countries were trying to save Jewish lives. The many extraordinary and eloquent tributes that the Pope once received from Jews show that the allegations that he was a Nazi collaborator and indifferent toward the extermination of Jews would have seem completely unjustified and unjust to those who closely following his career.
Allegations that Pope Pius XII was pro-Nazi are often supported by his time in Germany from 1917 to 1929 as the papal nuncio and his direct role, as Secretary of State, in negotiating the Vatican’s concordat with Germany in 1933. These facts were universally known when Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli was elected Pope on March 2, 1939. How did Jews around the world react to his election? Were they concerned by his former ties to Germany?
In a March 6, 1939 editorial, “Leadership for Peace,” the Palestine Post in Jerusalem said: “Pius XII has clearly shown that he intends to carry on the late Pope’s [Pius XI] work for freedom and peace... we remember that he must have had a large part to play in the recent Papal opposition to pernicious race theories and certain aspects of totalitarianism...”
In praising Cardinal Pacelli’s election, the Jewish Chronicle in London on March 10, quoted an anti-Nazi speech he delivered in Lourdes in April 1935 and the hostile statements expressed about him in the Nazi press. “It is interesting to recall... on January 22 [1939], the Voelkischer Beobachter published pictures of Cardinal Pacelli and other Church dignitaries beneath a collective heading of ‘Agitators in the Vatican against Fascism and National Socialism,”’ the Jewish Chronicle noted.
Also on March 10, the Canadian Jewish Chronicle commended the College of Cardinals for resisting Nazi attempts to influence the election and prevent Cardinal Pacelli from becoming Pope. “The plot to pilfer the Ring of Fisherman has gone up in white smoke,” the editorial quipped.
Many Jewish organizations also expressed their enthusiasm for the new Pope. According to the Jewish Chronicle in London (March 10), the Vatican received congratulatory messages from “the Anglo-Jewish Community, the Synagogue Council of America, the Canadian Jewish Congress, and the Polish Rabbinical Council.”
Pius XII’s decision to appoint Luigi Cardinal Maglione as the Vatican’s new Secretary of State also brought favorable reactions. The March 16, 1939 Zionist Review in London said that the Cardinal’s appointment “confirms the view that the new Pope means to conduct an anti-Nazi and anti-Fascist policy.”
Certainly, such statements made by Jewish newspapers and organizations show they considered the newly elected Pope Pius XII a friend of democracy and peace, and an enemy of racism and totalitarianism. Cardinal Pacelli’s role in negotiating the concordat with the Nazis did not cause any concern. Instead, many Jews cited his anti-Nazi speeches, and his role as Vatican Secretary of State, which helped produce the 1937 anti-Nazi encyclical, Mit brennender Sorge, and numerous protests against the persecution of the Catholic Church in Germany.
Less than two months after World War II broke out, on October 27, Pius XII issued his first encyclical, Summi Pontificatus. On the same day, the New York-based Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the equivalent of the Associated Press, reported that, “the unqualified condemnation which Pope Pius XII heaped on totalitarian, racist and materialistic theories of government in his encyclical Summi Pontificatus caused a profound stir... Although it had been expected that the Pope would attack ideologies hostile to the Catholic Church, few observers had expected so outspoken a document...”
In a November 9, 1939 editorial, “Endowed with Reason,” the American Israelite in Cincinnati also discussed the encyclical. “In decrying totalitarianism, Pope Pius XII called the individual the end and the state the means of bringing out the fundamental equality of men because men are endowed with reason,” the editorial said. “This concept of democracy is reiterated in the Pope’s Encyclical, stressing again the inviolability of the human person as a sacred being...”
In January 1940, the United Jewish Appeal for Refugees and Overseas Needs donated $125,000 to the Vatican in order to assist its efforts on behalf of all victims of racial persecution. On January 19, the Jewish Ledger in Hartford, Connecticut described the United Jewish Appeal’s gift as an “eloquent gesture,” which “should prove an important step in the direction of cementing the bonds of sympathy and understanding” between Catholics and Jews. An account of how the money was spent is in the Vatican’s official wartime documents, Actes et documents du Saint Siege relatifs a la Seconde Guerre Mondiale, (Vol. VI, pp. 282-283.)
On January 26, 1940, the Jewish Advocate in Boston reported, “The Vatican radio this week broadcast an outspoken denunciation of German atrocities in Nazi [occupied] Poland, declaring they affronted the moral conscience of mankind.” Exiled Polish Cardinal August Hlond of Gnezo and Poznan had given the Vatican detailed reports about the Nazi persecution of the Church in Poland. On the Pope’s orders, Vatican Radio broadcast the cardinal’s reports. The front-page story quoted one Vatican Radio broadcast as saying, “Jews and Poles are being herded into separate ghettos, hermetically sealed and pitifully inadequate for the economic subsistence of the millions designed to live there.” This broadcast was also important because it gave independent confirmation of media reports about Nazi atrocities, which were previously dismissed as Allied propaganda.
Also, on January 26, the Canadian Jewish Chronicle published a brief item about Jacob Freedman, a Boston tailor. Mr. Freedman was concerned about the fate of his sister and nephews in German-occupied Poland. He wrote the State Department and the Red Cross, but they were unable to provide any information. Mr. Freedman then sought Pope Pius XII’s assistance.
Several months later, Cardinal Maglione informed Mr. Freedman that his family were alive and well in Warsaw. “I don’t know the words to express what I feel, that they should take an interest in us with all the other things in the world to worry them, “ said Mr. Freedman. “I think it’s the finest, most wonderful thing.” According to Pinchas Lapide’s 1967 book, Three Popes and the Jews, the Vatican Information Office helped tens of thousands of Jews locate missing relatives in Europe.
On March 14, 1940, the Jewish Chronicle in London commented on Pope Pius XII’s conditions for a “just and honorable peace,” which he articulated in his 1939 Christmas message. The Chronicle said that the Pope’s conditions, especially the protection of racial minorities, were a “welcome feature,” and praised him for standing up for “rights of the common man.”
Also, in March, Italy’s anti-Semitic laws went into effect, and many Jews were dismissed from the government, universities, and other professions. In response, Pius XII appointed several displaced Jewish scholars, including geographer Prof. Roberto Almagia, to posts in the Vatican Library. The March 29 Kansas City Jewish Chronicle said that the Pope’s actions showed “his disapproval of the dastardly anti-Semitic decrees.”
On April 29, 1941, a group of Jewish refugees interned at an Italian concentration camp thanked Pius XII after being visited by Bishop Francesco Borgognini-Duca, the papal nuncio in Italy. The prisoners wrote that the nuncio’s visit gave them “new courage to go on living,” and they described the Pope as a “revered personality who has stood up for the rights of all afflicted and powerless people.” (Actes, VIII, pp. 178-179).
On January 2, 1942, the front page of the California Jewish Voice published a report on the Pope’s 1941 Christmas address. “Religious persecution and oppression of minorities must have no place in the world of the future, declared Pope Pius XII in his annual Christmas Eve message,” the article said.
By early 1942, the Nazis began to implement their plans to exterminate the Jews. The Vatican had no practical way of bringing these plans to a halt, but sought to assist endangered Jews and other victims on a case-by-case basis. This assistance ranged from actively opposing the deportations to meeting the material and spiritual needs of refugees. For example, on April 14, 1942, Rabbi Naftali Adler and Dr. Max Pereles, the representatives of thousands of Jewish refugees interned at the Ferramonti concentration camp in southern Italy, sent a letter of thanks to the Pope, who sent “an abundant supply of clothing and linen” to the children at the camp, and took care of the prisoners’ other needs. “This noble and generous gift proves anew what the whole world knows and admires that Your Holiness is... also the paternal guardian and promoter of the ideal of humanity for all mankind,” they wrote. (Actes, VIII, pp. 505-507).
In 1942, Croatia’s Jews were being brutally persecuted by the Nazi-installed dictatorship. On August 4, Chief Rabbi Miroslav Freiberger of Zagreb, Croatia’s capital, sought more assistance from Pius XII. Already, the Vatican’s unofficial diplomatic representative in Croatia, Msgr. Joseph Marcone, who was acting on Cardinal Maglione’s instructions, and Archbishop Alois Stepinac opposed the anti-Jewish persecutions. In his letter, Chief Rabbi Freiberger appreciated “the limitless goodness that the representatives of the Holy See and the leaders of the Church showed to our poor brothers.” (Actes, VIII, p. 611).
Throughout the war, the Chief Rabbi continued to express his gratitude to the Vatican for helping Croatian Jews.
The deportations of French Jews also began in late July 1942. Msgr. Valerio Valeri, the papal nuncio in France, protested the deportations with Marshall Henri Philippe Petain and Prime Minister Pierre Laval in August. The nuncio’s intervention became publicly known by the end of the month. On August 28, the California Jewish Voice said, “Pope Pius XII has asked the Papal Nuncio at Vichy to protest to the Laval Government against ‘the inhuman arrests and deportations’ of Jews in France... Previously, reports from Geneva had indicated that the Pope had tried, though vainly, to use his good offices in Slovakia to prevent deportations and other cruelties.”
The Voice’s account is confirmed by the Actes. On October 31, 1941, Cardinal Maglione had given Msgr. Valeri and Pierre Cardinal Gerlier of Lyon a blank check to “tone down” the practical application of the anti-Semitic laws, which would include any deportations. In April 1942, the Vatican protested the deportations of Slovak Jews with a note to the Slovak Government.
Although Msgr. Valeri actually made the protest, the Jewish press understood that he was acting on behalf of Pius XII. In a September II editorial, the Jewish Chronicle in London said, “The Pope’s action is also a striking affirmation of the dictum of one of the Pope’s predecessors that no true Christian can be an anti-Semite...”
In his 1942 Christmas message, the Pope condemned the treatment of “hundreds of thousands who, without any fault on their own, sometimes only by reason of their nationality or race, are marked down for death or a progressive extinction.” The Pope’s defenders argue that this was a clear reference to the Holocaust.
The Pope’s detractors insist that he didn’t go far enough, and should have condemned the Nazis by name. But the Nazis understood the Pope very clearly. “In a manner never known before the Pope has repudiated the National Socialist New European Order,” complained a January 22, 1943 report by the Reich Central Security Office. “Here he is virtually accusing the German people of injustice towards the Jews, and makes himself the mouthpiece of the Jewish war criminals.” (Anthony Rhodes, The Vatican in the Age of Dictators (1973), pp. 272-273).
I was unable to find any references to the Pope’s address in the many Jewish newspapers that I examined. However, in a January 20, 1943 letter to Msgr. Arthur Hughes, the apostolic delegate in Egypt, Chaim Barlas, the Jewish Agency’s Turkish Representative, wrote, “The highly humanitarian attitude of His Saintety [meaning, Holiness] expressing His indignation against racial persecutions, was a source of comfort for our brethren.” (Actes, IX, p. 90).
If Pius XII was “silent” in the literal sense of the word, then the Reich Central Security Office and Chaim Barlas could not have made these conclusions.
In late 1942, Chief Rabbi Isaac Herzog of Jerusalem sought the Pope’s intervention to rescue Jews from the Nazis. On February 12, 1943, the Vatican’s reply to Chief Rabbi Herzog was noted on the front page of the California Jewish Voice. “The Vatican this week cabled Chief Rabbi Herzog, assuring him that it is doing everything possible for all the victims of Nazi persecution, including the Jews,” the article said. The Jewish Chronicle in London and the Australian Jewish News also reported the Vatican’s assurance to the Chief Rabbi.
On April 16, 1943, the Australian Jewish News published a brief article about Cardinal Gerlier, who had strongly opposed the deportations of French Jews, and was sheltering Jewish children. The article quoted the cardinal as saying that he was obeying Pius XII’s instructions by continuing to oppose France’s anti-Semitic measures.
In his June 2 address to the College of Cardinals, Pope Pius XII spoke up again. He referred to persons “tormented as they are, because of their nationality or their race... delivered, without any fault on their part, to measures of extermination.” The July 16, 1943 Jewish Chronicle in London published a slightly different version of these words on its front page under the title, “The Pope’s Solicitude.”
On September 24, Alex Easterman, the British representative of the World Jewish Congress, contacted Msgr. William Godfrey, the apostolic delegate in London. Easterman informed him that about 4,000 Jewish refugees from Croatia were safely evacuated to an island in the Adriatic Sea. “I feel sure that efforts of your Grace and of the Holy See have brought about this fortunate result,” Easterman wrote. (Actes, IX, pp. 488-489).
After Benito Mussolini’s fall from power, the new Italian government surrendered to the Allies in September 1943. German troops occupied Italy, including Rome, in order to stop the Allied offensive. During the occupation of Rome, the Nazis threatened to arrest Roman Jews unless their leaders paid them 50 kilograms of gold. When the Roman Jews were able to raise only 42 kilograms of gold, they turned to the Pope, who agreed to provide the balance. Meanwhile, the Jews raised the balance from ordinary Catholics and informed the Vatican that the Pope’s contribution was not needed. On October 28, 1943, however, the Palestine Post in Jerusalem noted Pius XII’s offer on the front page under the headline, “The Pope’s Gift to the Jews.”
On October 16, the Nazis also seized about 1,000 Jews and deported them to Auschwitz. On October 29 Jewish Chronicle in London reported the Vatican’s response to the arrests: “The Vatican has made strong representations to the German Government and the German High Command in Italy against the persecution of Jews in Nazi-occupied Italy...”
This account of the Vatican’s actions was exactly correct. On Pius XII’s orders, Cardinal Maglione made an immediate protest with Germany’s Ambassador. Bishop Alois Hudal, the Rector of the German Catholic Church in Rome, protested the arrests of Jews with the German Military Governor of Rome. Along with the Vatican’s protests, 4,700 Jews disappeared into Rome’s convents, monasteries and the Vatican itself. The remaining 2,300 Jews were able to find shelter elsewhere because Vatican protests brought the round-ups to an end.
By 1943, the Vatican’s many rescue efforts on behalf of Jews were being universally acknowledged. In the fall of 1943, the Jewish communities of Chile, Uruguay, and Bolivia sent letters to Pope Pius XII, and thanked him for assisting Jews (Actes, IX, pp. 498, 501-502, and 567).
The 1943-1944 American Jewish Yearbook said that Pius XII “took an unequivocal stand against the oppression of Jews throughout Europe.” In his February 18, 1944 letter to Msgr. Amleto Cicognani, the apostolic delegate in Washington, D.C., Rabbi Maurice Perlzweig, the political director of the World Jewish Congress, wrote that “the repeated interventions of the Holy Father on behalf of Jewish Communities in Europe has evoked the profoundest sentiments of appreciation and gratitude from Jews throughout the world.” (Actes, X, p. 140).
Two important Jewish leaders who worked with the Vatican to save Jews also expressed similar sentiments. “The people of Israel will never forget what His Holiness and his illustrious delegates, inspired by the eternal principles of religion which form the very foundations of true civilization, are doing for our unfortunate brothers and sisters in this most tragic hour of history, which is living proof of divine Providence in this world,” Chief Rabbi Herzog declared on February 28. (Actes, X, p. 292).
In his April 7 letter to the papal nuncio in Romania, Chief Rabbi Alexander Shafran of Bucharest wrote, “It is not easy for us to find the right words to express the warmth and consolation we experienced because of the concern of the Supreme Pontiff, who offered a large sum to relive the sufferings of deported Jews... The Jews of Romania will never forget these facts of historic importance...” (Actes, X, pp. 291-292).
In June 1944, two separate events helped establish the Pope’s reputation as a rescuer of Jews, at least temporarily. When the Allies liberated Rome, thousands of Jews came out of their hiding places, and told the world of their salvation by the Vatican. On June 25, the Pope openly protested the deportations of Hungarian Jews.
The many tributes to Pius XII began in July. “It is gradually being revealed that Jews have been sheltered within the walls of the Vatican during the German occupation of Rome,” reported the July 7 Jewish News in Detroit. A July 14 editorial in the Congress Weekly, the official journal of the American Jewish Congress, added that the Vatican also provided Jewish refugees with kosher food.
Also on July 14, American Hebrew in New York published an interview with Chief Rabbi Israel Zolli of Rome. “The Vatican has always helped the Jews and the Jews are very grateful for the charitable work of the Vatican, all done without distinction of race,” Rabbi Zolli said. After the war, Rabbi Zolli converted to Catholicism, which brought him much severe criticism from some Jews. Dr. Zolli’s conversion was widely attributed to his gratitude for what the Pope did for Jews. In his 1954 memoirs, Before the Dawn, however, Dr. Zolli strongly denied this assertion. Instead, he claimed to have witnessed a vision of Christ, who called him to the faith.
A week later on July 21, the Vatican received telegrams from the National Jewish Welfare Board and the World Jewish Congress. The National Jewish Welfare Board expressed its gratitude to the Pope for “the aid and protection given to so many Italian Jews by the Vatican...” (Actes, X, pp. 358-359). The World Jewish Congress also acknowledged the Vatican’s “noble humanitarian work” on behalf of Hungarian Jews. (Actes, X, pp. 359).
The deportations of Hungarian Jews horrified the Allied and neutral nations. The American Jewish Committee and other Jewish groups organized a rally in Manhattan’s Madison Square Park on July 31 to mobilize public opinion against the deportations. In his address, Judge Joseph Proskauer, the Committee’s president, declared, “We have heard... what a great part the Holy Father has played in the salvation of the refugees in Italy, and we know from sources that must be credited that this great Pope has reached forth his mighty and sheltering hand to help the oppressed of Hungary.” (Speech obtained from American Committee Library in Manhattan).
During the following months, Rabbi Stephen Wise, the president of the American Jewish Congress, Chief Rabbi Joseph Hertz of the British Empire, composer Irving Berlin, Congressman Emmanuel Cellar of Brooklyn, the Emergency Committee to Save the Jews of Europe, the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada, and the World Agudas Organization also lauded Pius XII for helping endangered Jews. At the time, Rabbi Wise also condemned Christian indifference toward the extermination of Jews.
With Rome liberated, the Pope frequently greeted Allied soldiers. During one meeting, he blessed a Jewish soldier from Palestine in Hebrew. In the Congress Weekly (October 20, 1944), Elias Gilner found great significance in this event. Gilner wrote that the Pope’s blessing “becomes a memorable act, a far-flung message of good-will, an expression of the Christian spirit at its highest.” Gilner added that Pius XII by this blessing also began a “new course” in Catholic-Jewish relations.
The tributes to Pope Pius XII from Jews continued after the war in Europe ended. On April 22, 1945, Moshe Sharrett, the future Foreign Minister and Prime Minister of Israel sent a report of his meeting with the Pope to the Executive of the Jewish Agency. Sharrett wrote that “my first duty was to thank him, and through him, the Catholic Church, on behalf of the Jewish public, for all they had done in the various countries to rescue Jews, to save children, and Jews in general.” (Lapide, pp. 225-226)
On October 11, the World Jewish Congress donated $20,000 to Vatican charities. According to the New York Times (October 12, 1945), the gift was “made in recognition of the work of the Holy See in rescuing Jews from Fascist and Nazi persecution.” Although the current leaders of the World Jewish Congress have a much different view of the Vatican’s wartime actions, they never retracted that recognition.
During a St. Louis conference on the plight of displaced Jewish refugees on March 17, 1946, William Rosenwald, the chairman of the United Jewish Appeal for Refugees, Overseas Needs and Palestine, said, “I wish to take this opportunity to pay tribute to Pope Pius for his appeal in behalf of the victims of war and oppression. He provided aid for Jews in Italy and intervened in behalf of refugees to lighten their burden.” (New York Times, March 18, 1946.) The previous week, the Pope granted Mr. Rosenwald an audience. According to Mr. Rosenwald, the Pope said that Holocaust survivors and Jewish refugees should be allowed to resettle in the United States.
In an article for Commentary (November 1950), French scholar and Holocaust survivor Leon Poliakov discussed the Vatican’s conduct during the war. Poliakov suggested that the Vatican during the Holocaust retreated to its “medieval tradition” of protecting Jews from state persecution. “There is no doubt that secret instructions went out from the Vatican urging the national churches to intervene in favor of the Jews by every possible means,” Poliakov wrote. In fact, according to Volumes VI, VIII, IX, and X of the Actes, these instructions were sent to the Vatican’s many diplomatic representatives.
Still, Poliakov was troubled because he believed that Pius XII’s public statements were too vague. But Poliakov conceded the argument that “public protests would have brought no help to the victims, and might have produced contrary effects.” He cited the tragic case of Holland where the protests against the deportations of Jews by the Dutch Catholic bishops in 1942 led to the arrest of Catholic Jews, who were previously spared for deportation by the Nazis.
In 1955, the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra, which was composed of Jewish refugees from many nations, toured Italy. The Orchestra performed a concert at the Vatican on May 26, 1955. According to the Jerusalem Post (May 29, 1955), “Conductor Paul Klecki had requested that the Orchestra on its first visit to Italy play for the Pope as a gesture of gratitude for the help his Church had given to all those persecuted by Nazi Fascism.”
In 1957, the Pope received a delegation from the American Jewish Committee. The New York Times on June 29, 1957 reported that the Committee’s representatives described the Pope as a “great friend” in the battle against racism and anti-Semitism in the United States. The Pope also praised the Committee’s work, and issued a strong statement condemning anti-Semitism.
Pope Pius XII died on October 8, 1958. Many Jewish organizations and newspapers around the world mourned his passing, and recalled his wartime efforts to rescue Jews. At the United Nations, Golda Meir, Israel’s Foreign Minister, said, “When fearful martyrdom came to our people in the decade of Nazi terror, the voice of the Pope was raised for the victims. The life of our times was enriched by a voice speaking out on the great moral truths above the tumult of daily conflict.” The Zionist Record (October 17) in South Africa published Meir’s moving eulogy along with tributes from Jewish organizations to the late Pope.
“Adherents of all creeds and parties will recall how Pius XII faced the responsibilities of his exalted office with courage and devotion,” declared the Jewish Chronicle in London on October 10. “Before, during, and after the Second World War, he constantly preached the message of peace. Confronted by the monstrous cruelties of Nazism, Fascism, and Communism, he repeatedly proclaimed the virtues of humanity and compassion.”
In the Canadian Jewish Chronicle (October 17), Rabbi J. Stern recalled that Pius XII “made it possible for thousands of Jewish victims of Nazism and Fascism to be hidden away...” In the November 6 edition of the Jewish Post in Winnipeg, William Zukerman, the former American Hebrew columnist, wrote that no other leader “did more to help the Jews in their hour of greatest tragedy, during the Nazi occupation of Europe, than the late Pope.”
Representatives of the World Jewish Congress, American Jewish Congress, American Jewish Committee, Synagogue Council of America, New York Board of Rabbis, the Anti-Defamation League, Massachusetts Board of Rabbis, Rabbinical Council of America, National Council of Jewish Women, and the Union of American Hebrew Congregations also gracefully eulogized Pope Pius XII. The Chief Rabbis of London, Rome, Jerusalem, France, Egypt, Argentina and many other Jewish newspapers also paid tribute to the late Pope.
How do Pius XII’s detractors explain these many statements of praise from Jews? They prefer to ignore them. Any acknowledgment of these tributes immediately undermines the case against him.
Instead, critics always focus on the Pope’s “silence” without discussing what he actually said during the war, and how his addresses were received by all sides; insist that the Pope did little or nothing to help Jews escape from the Nazis; exclusively cite authors who attack him while ignoring those who defend him; and assign him sinister motives by using suspicion and a selective interpretation of evidence.
Recently, in Commentary (July/August 1999), Prof. Robert Wistrich argued that it is unfair to cite these tributes from Jews because damaging evidence against the Pope was discovered after his death. But that argument ignores the fact that many post-war revelations have been very favorable toward the Pope. In 1946, the Vatican newspaper confirmed that Pius XII in 1940 had acted as an intermediary between a group of German generals who wanted to overthrow Adolf Hitler and the British government. The release of documents from the British Foreign Office years later also confirmed his role in “The Generals’ Plot.” The 1953 publication of The Undeclared War by William Langer and S. Everett Gleason disclosed the Pope’s surprising 1941 concession to President Franklin Roosevelt that American Catholics could support the extension of the Lend-Lease program to the Soviet Union.
The conclusions of the first generation of authors critical of the Pope like Rolf Hochhuth, Guenther Lewy, Saul Friedlander and Carlo Falconi were invalidated by the complete publication of the 11 volumes of the Actes.
Unfortunately, these volumes, which detail the Vatican’s relations with all the belligerent governments and assistance given to all the victims of the war, have been either ignored or downplayed by historians and journalists.
Many Jewish organizations had no reservations about attacking Father Charles Coughlin, the anti-Semitic radio broadcaster. If these same organizations were actually displeased with Pius XII’s actions, as Father John Pawlikoski suggested in Commonweal (July 17, 1998), then why did they continue to publicly honor the Pope throughout the war and beyond? How could Jews on six continents have been so tragically mistaken about one man? Could they all have been either blissfully ignorant or extremely disingenuous?
Many Catholics have been puzzled by the fact that many of the same Jewish organizations that condemn Pius XII today once never passed up an opportunity to praise him. What could have caused the vast shift in Jewish attitudes toward the late Pope?
Some Catholic writers point to the influence of Rolf Hochhuth’s 1963 play, The Deputy, which presented the Pope as a cold-blooded Nazi collaborator who did nothing as six million Jews went to their death. However, allegations that the Vatican collaborated with the Nazis did not begin with Hochhuth. While Pius XII was still alive, anti-Catholic authors like Avro Manhattan (The Vatican in World Politics, 1949) and Paul Blanshard (American Freedom and Catholic Power, 1949) condemned his actions during World War II.
Although Manhattan and Blanshard found isolated audiences in some Protestant and fundamentalist Christian circles, many Jews continued to have a favorable impression of the wartime Pope.
Other cultural shifts in society ensured that Hochhuth’s demonic portrait would become accepted as conventional wisdom. Shortly after Hochhuth’s play made its appearance, the movement known as the New Left marched across college campuses. The New Left was more than a political movement; it was also a cultural movement whose members seized influential positions in the universities, the media and the entertainment industry.
The Catholic Church strongly opposed the New Left’s social agenda of legal abortion, contraception and sexual promiscuity. Activists needed a weapon to undermine the Catholic Church’s moral authority and influence. “The silence of Pius XII” provided such a powerful weapon, and it was used at every possible opportunity. What right would a Church that failed to oppose the mass murder of Jews have to teach morality to anyone? A few years ago, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops criticized US Surgeon General Dr. Jocelyn Elders for her pro-abortion views. Dr. Elders responded by noting the Catholic Church’s indifference toward both slavery and the Holocaust.
Unfortunately, Jewish organizations have never sufficiently explained why they changed their minds about the Pope. A clear answer may never be known unless Jewish organizations finally provide honest and convincing explanations after nearly 40 years of evasion.
Could attitudes shift again? It’s possible. In the last several years, many Catholic newspapers and magazines have been zealously defending Pius XII’s reputation. The Catholic League for Civil and Religious Rights has also been successful in bringing the debate over the Vatican’s wartime role into the mainstream media.
In his new book, Never Again: A History’ of the Holocaust, acclaimed Holocaust historian Sir Martin Gilbert identifies the Vatican as one of the European governments that protected Jews. Prof. William Rubinstein’s book, The Myth of Rescue (1997), which received substantial attention and criticism, argues that the Allies and Vatican could not have saved more Jewish lives. Rubinstein’s sobering conclusion that the, “responsibility for the Holocaust lies solely and wholly with Adolf Hitler, the SS and their accomplices, and with no one else,” represents a return to reason.
It may take a generation to restore Pope Pius XII’s good name. However, more and more people today are recognizing that he acted like a Good Samaritan during World War II. When the Pope failed to prevent the start of the war, he immediately devoted himself to alleviating the physical and spiritual suffering of countless numbers of innocent victims regardless of their race or faith. As the late Father Robert Graham, S.J. wrote, the many tributes the Pope received from Jews around the world are a witness to both his efforts and his character.
(Cavalli is a freelance writer based in New York, with an M.A. from Catholic University. He is grateful to the Rev. Matthew Flood, S.J. of Fordham Prep in the Bronx, New York and to Angelo Sedacca for translating a number of documents from the Actes into English. The Jewish newspapers cited are on microfilm at the New York Public Library’s Jewish Division.)
WAS PIUS XII THE “HITLER’S POPE”?
The facts negate this vile and often-made baseless allegation by those who are blinded by ignorance and/or anti-Catholic bigotry. Unfortunately, many people of good will, lacking reliable information, had fallen victims to this campaign of character assassination against Pius XII and the Catholic Church.
There was never any ambiguity on the Vatican Secretary of State’s feelings about Hitler’s regime, and the Nazis knew it. When Cardinal Pacelli was elected Pope on March 2, 1939, the next day the Berlin Morgenpost (the Nazi party’s newspaper) wrote: “The election of Cardinal Pacelli is not accepted with favor in Germany because he was always opposed to Nazism and practically determined the policies of the Vatican under his predecessor.” (2)
According to Mother Pasqualina Lehner, his close collaborator, Nuncio Pacelli said of Hitler: “This man is completely carried away; everything he says and writes has the mark of his egocentrism; this man is capable of trampling on corpses and eliminating anything that is an obstacle. I cannot understand how there are so many people in Germany who do not understand him, and cannot draw conclusions from what he says or writes. Has any of them even read his horrifying ‘Mein Kampf’?” (3)
During Pacelli’s twelve years as Apostolic Nuncio in Germany (1917-29), he made 44 public speeches and in 40 of these attacked the fundamental tenets of the Communism and National Socialism. Already in April 1933, as Secretary of State of Pope Pius XI, he sent an urgent request to the new Nazi government “not to let it be influenced by anti-Semitic aims.”
On April 28, 1935, at Lourdes, where he went as the Pope Legate, Pacelli said to 250,000 pilgrims: “They (the Nazis) are in reality only miserable plagiarists who dress up old errors with new tinsel. It does not make any difference whether they flock to the banners of social revolution, whether they are guided by a false conception of the world of life, or whether they are possessed by the superstition of a race and blood cult.” (4) Certainly, these were very strong words coming from such a consummated diplomat.
Hitler’s discussions with his closest collaborators, as well as the diaries and decrees by Goebbles, Bormann, Rosenberg and Himmler, denote that from the beginning Hitler and his followers were motivated by a pathological hatred toward the Catholic Church. All those who did not adhere unconditionally to their way of thinking and acting were considered and treated as enemies, who had to be annihilated, said Fr.Gumpel.
As Jewish historian Dr. Joseph L. Litchen wrote in the Anti-Defamation Bulletin for October, in 1958, commenting on Pius XII, “the new Vicar of Christ” said Litchen, “showed no softening after his election toward Hitler’s brutal policies; Pius the Pope was the same as Pacelli the priest.” (5)
WAS PIUS XII OR THE CATHOLIC CHURCH ANTI-SEMITE?
Pius XII had a deep knowledge of Germany where he served for 13 years as Papal Nuncio during Pope Benedictus XV and Pius XI. No other world leader at that time was more aware than him of the evil nature of Nazism and Communism, the two ideologies that were to bring rivers of blood to mankind. A consummated and experienced diplomat, Pacelli was well groomed by Pius XI to be his successor. There was an extraordinary spiritual and ideological communion between these two great Popes; they both were of one mind. Pacelli dedicated his life to the service of God, The Church, and mankind, through five decades of indefatigable struggle for world peace.
In 1928 the Holy Office had already condemned anti-Semitism. On September 6, 1938, Pius XI told a group of Belgian pilgrims: “Through Christ and in Christ, we are spiritual descendants of Abraham.” Incontrovertible facts prove the extraordinary efforts that Pius XI, Pius XII, and the Catholic Church made in saving the Jews during the Holocaust.
As early as 1935, Cardinal Pacelli describes Nazism as diabolical
Before becoming Pope, and as early as 1935, Pius XII had described as “diabolical” the new German
Regime in conversations with the French Ambassador to the Holy See, Charles-Roux, while the rest of the world were willingly accepting Hitler’s power grasp upon the German government. The Duke of Windsor visited Hitler and Lloyd George even went so far as to call him the “greatest living German”! In the U.S. there were also people in high positions who were openly sympathizers of Hitler, such as Henry Ford I, who was also a strong anti-Semitic.
In 1937, Pius XI published the Encyclical “Mit Brennender Sorge,” stating that Catholics must never be anti-Semite.
On March 14, 1937, before it was fashionable to denounce the German Führer as a villain and long before the creation of the concentration camps and the gas chambers, Pius XI, ably seconded by his Secretary of State, wrote the Encyclical “Mit Brennender Sorge” meaning “with burning anxiety”. It dealt with the nazi threat to racial minorities and specifically the Jews addressing the Encyclical directly to the German people. The Encyclical exhorted that Catholics must never be anti-Semitic because “we are all Semites spiritually” and ought to hold the Jewish people in high regard accordingly. The Encyclical exposed to the world the III Reich’s persecution of the Catholic Church as well as the incompatibility between the principles of the National Socialism and those of the Catholic faith. The German government prohibited the entrance of the Encyclical to the country and it became necessary to smuggle it into Germany under the nose of the ruthless Gestapo. On Sunday March 21, The Encyclical was read from 12,000 Catholic pulpits across Germany. As a result, the Nazi’s campaign of innuendoes against The Church as well as the persecution of Catholics worsened.
The German Catholic hierarchy thanked Pope Pius XI for the letter, which strongly condemned both, racism and anti-Semitism. The Pope pointed to Cardinal Pacelli saying that it was he who had been responsible for the Encyclical. It was the Secretary of State, who asked the German Cardinal Faulhaber to submit a draft text, which he amended carefully. Pacelli also bore the burden of its defense when the Encyclical was the subject of strong German diplomatic protests; he did so personally, not by delegation.
Pope Pius XII’s first Encyclical, “Summi Pontificatus”, in 1939, attacks Nazism and Communism
Pius XII’s first encyclical on October 27, 1939, “Summi Pontificatus” reiterated the attack on the German regime and the Gestapo was ordered to prevent its distribution. In it, the Pope declared his position “against exacerbated nationalism, the idolatry of the state, totalitarianism, racism, the cult of brutal force, contempt of international agreements”, against all the characteristics of Hitler’s political system; he laid the responsibility for the scourge of the war on these aberrations. The Allies airdropped 88,000 copies of the Encyclical over Germany.
WERE PIUS XII AND THE CHURCH REALLY SILENT DURING THE HOLOCAUST?
The Pope was well aware that any public denunciation against Hitler would make things even worse for the Jews. His polices were aimed at saving the Jews. In fact, that was the same policy followed by the International Red Cross and the World Council of Churches both based in Geneva as well as the one recommended by most of the International Jewish organizations involved in the rescue operations of Jews. Gerhart Riegner, the representative of the World Jewish Congress in Geneva, accepted the validity of this policy –preferring action rather than words, as the common goal.
You forgot the sarcasm tag.
Thanks ... you got the manure out of the way early ... maybe on this thread, we can enjoy some rational discussion.
WHERE WERE THE ANTI-SEMITES? CERTAINLY NOT IN THE VATICAN. YOU SHOULD RATHER LOOK AT THE PARTY OF THE KKK.
They’re Just Wild About Harry
By Jason Maoz
The Jewish Press | July 17, 2003
Harry Truman reached out from the grave last week and exposed the media’s double standard when it comes to judging Democrats and Republicans. A librarian at the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri, discovered a 1947 diary of Truman’s that had been sitting unopened on a shelf for some four decades. The book contained the following edifying remarks:
“The Jews, I find, are very, very selfish. They care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as D[isplaced] P[ersons] as long as the Jews get special treatment. Yet when they have power, physical, financial or political, neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the underdog.”
The media’s response? Either a rush to “explain” the remarks in a positive light or a relative disinterest (playing down the entries about Jews while highlighting some other aspect of the diary). The New York Times, for example, headlined its July 11 story on the diary “Truman Wrote of ‘48 Offer to Eisenhower” — and didn’t get around to blandly mentioning Truman’s anti-Semitic comments until the sixth paragraph.
The Times failed to give its readers the full flavor of Truman’s rant, reproducing only a partial quote from the diary and excising the president’s comparison of Jews — a mere two years after the Holocaust — with Hitler and Stalin.
Just about every media account quoted so-called experts who strained to place Truman’s remarks in historical context and to differentiate between his words and deeds. Such fair-mindedness is, of course, noticeably lacking whenever the media rehash the anti-Semitic statements made by Richard Nixon, whose deeds vis-a-vis Israel trumped Truman’s — Nixon saved Israel from catastrophe during the Yom Kippur War while Truman, after granting recognition to Israel in 1948, refused to provide desperately needed arms to the new Jewish state as it fought for its life against invading Arab armies.
Some of the aforementioned “experts” professed shock at the very idea that Harry Truman could have harbored dark thoughts toward Jews. Sara Bloomfield, director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, reacted with a particularly appalling display of ignorance: “Wow!” she said. “It did surprise me because of what I know about Truman’s record.”
Ms. Bloomfield obviously doesn’t know very much. At a Cabinet meeting in 1946, Truman complained bitterly to his Cabinet about Jewish organizational leaders, remarking, “If Jesus Christ couldn’t satisfy them here on earth, how the hell am I supposed to?....I have no use for them and I don’t care what happens to them.”
On another occasion, referring to Jews who were pressing the case for a Jewish state, Truman snapped to some aides, “I’m not a New Yorker. All these people are pleading for a special interest. I’m an American.”
Truman’s anti-Jewish tantrums were hardly limited to his inner circle: Ted Thackrey, editor of the New York Post and husband of the paper’s flamboyant publisher, Dorothy Schiff, recalled how stunned he and his wife were when they paid a call on Truman at the White House and broached the subject of Palestine. “Now, Thackrey,” Truman said, anger visibly rising, “if only the [expletive deleted] New York Jews would just shut their mouths and quit hollering.”
In his book “Confessions of a White House Ghostwriter,” James Humes, a speech writer for five U.S. presidents, relates a little-known but highly revealing story that was told to him by the television producer David Susskind, who worked on a documentary with Truman several years after the latter left office.
“Susskind,” writes Humes, “said that each morning...he would arrive at Truman’s house at Independence. He would wait on the porch on a cold February day while Mrs. Truman went to inform her husband of his arrival. After about the fourth morning, he asked the president in his walk why he was never asked inside.
“You’re a Jew, David,” Truman replied, “and no Jew has ever been in the house.”
According to Humes, Truman went on to explain to a stunned Susskind that the house was his wife’s: “Bess runs it, and there’s never been a Jew inside the house in her or her mother’s lifetime.”
Truman and the Jews
By William Safire
New York Times | July 15, 2003
A 5,500-word diary in President Harry Truman’s handwriting, unnoticed for decades, recently turned up at the Truman Library in Independence, Mo. Three pages were mysteriously loose and interleaved in the journal.
On these detached and reinserted pages was this entry: “6:00 P.M. Monday July 21, 1947. Had ten minutes conversation with Henry Morgenthau about Jewish ship in Palistine [sic]. Told him I would talk to General George] Marshall about it.”
On that day, news reached the world that 4,500 Jewish refugees seeking entry to Palestine aboard the ship Exodus 1947 had been seized by British soldiers. These “displaced persons” had been placed on three vessels ostensibly headed to nearby Cyprus for detention until permitted entry to the Holy Land, where other Jews waited to welcome them. Instead, the homeless families, including a thousand children, were encaged on decks being taken back to a hostile Europe.
“He’d no business, whatever to call me,” Truman wrote. Morgenthau, who had served as F.D.R.’s treasury secretary, was telephoning Truman as chairman of the United Jewish Appeal, and had an obligation to get through to the president to stop this further atrocity.
“The Jews have no sense of proportion,” wrote the incensed Truman after he hung up, “nor do they have any judgement on world affairs. Henry brought a thousand Jews to New York on a supposedly temporary basis and they stayed.” These refugees were welcomed in Oswego, N.Y., just after the war, and Truman saw political implications in Gov. Thomas E. Dewey’s support for Jewish immigration: “When the country went backward — and Republican in the election of 1946, this incident loomed large on the D[isplaced] P[ersons] program.”
Then the president vented his spleen on the ethnic group trying desperately to escape from Europe’s hatred: “The Jews, I find are very, very selfish. They care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as DP as long as the Jews get special treatment. Yet when they have power, physical, financial or political neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the under dog.”
After equating the cruelty of Jews with that of Hitler and Stalin, Truman waxed philosophic about ingratitude: “Put an underdog on top and it makes no difference whether his name is Russian, Jewish, Negro, Management, Labor, Mormon, Baptist he goes haywire. I’ve found very, very few who remember their past condition when prosperity comes.”
Truman wrongly assumed that the plight of all of Europe’s displaced was the same — ignoring the “special treatment” Hitler had inflicted on the Jews of the Holocaust, resulting in six million murdered, genocide beyond all other groups’ suffering. The homeless survivors now faced sullen populations of former neighbors who wanted no part of the Jews’ return.
This diary outburst reflected a longstanding judgment about the ungrateful nature of the oppressed; in a letter to Eleanor Roosevelt, he repeated that “Jews are like all underdogs. When they get on top they are just as intolerant and as cruel as the people were to them when they were underneath.”
Did this deep-seated belief affect Truman’s policy about taking immigrants into the U.S., or in failing to urge the British to allow the Exodus refugees haven in Palestine? Maybe; when the National Archives release was front-paged last week in The Washington Post, historians and other liberals hastened to remind us that the long-buried embarrassing entry was written when such talk was “acceptable.” The director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum dismissed it as “typical of a sort of cultural anti-Semitism that was common at that time.”
For decades, I have refused to make such excuses to defend President Nixon for his slurs about Jews on his tapes. This is more dismaying.
Lest we forget, Harry Truman overruled Secretary of State George Marshall and beat the Russians to be first to recognize the state of Israel. The private words of Truman and Nixon are far outweighed by their pro-Israel public actions.
But underdogs of every generation must disprove Truman’s cynical theory and have a duty to speak up. I asked Robert Morgenthau, the great Manhattan D.A., about Truman’s angry diary entry, and he said, “I’m glad my father made that call.”
I must take issue. I believe the author means "extermination camps" (Vernichtungslagern, literally "annihilation camps"), whose primary purpose was industrialized murder, most commonly with cyanide gas.
The concentration camps (Konzentrationslagern) were there from the beginning in 1933 (Dachau being the first as I recall) and began as improvised holding facilities when wholesale politically-motivated arrests quickly exceeded the holding capacity of proper jails and prisons.
Calm down, guy. I was being sarcastic.
For instance, do I hear any outrage from any of the Pius XII naysayers about the current Holocaust which is being perpetrated on the unborn in this country and numerous others in the west? Of course, not. The Catholic Church fights against it and vocally opposes it and what is its reward? Abuse and insult. How ironic that when we do speak about a Holocaust we're told to mind our own business.
So let me see if I have this straight. We're supposed to shut up about abortion yet more vocally condemn the murder of Jews during WWII? I detect a double standard but that's not surprising. Those who denigrate Pius XII have no love for the Catholic Church and are hypocrites of the first order. They willfully ignore his work in saving Jews and instead slander him.
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