Pope Francis Calls Christians to Stand United with Jews in Condemning Anti-Semitism

Pope Francis called on Christians to stand united with Jews to defend themselves against discrimination and persecution.

The Pope made the call during a meeting with a 30-member delegation from the Conference of European Rabbis on Monday at the Vatican.

The highest leader of the Catholic Church cited the "troubling" anti-Semitic movements in Europe, in his address to rabbis who met with him in anticipation of the 50th anniversary in October of the "Nostra Aetate," the Second Vatican Council's declaration on relations with the Jews, Muslims and other religions.

"Anti-Semitic trends in Europe these days are troubling, as are certain acts of hatred and violence. Every Christian must be firm in deploring all forms of anti-Semitism, and in showing their solidarity with the Jewish people," said the Pope.

He also said the Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, is a reminder that persecution against followers of religions should be denounced.

"Recently we marked the seventieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the concentration camp which has come to be synonymous with the great tragedy of the Shoah. The memory of what took place there, in the heart of Europe, is a warning to present and future generations," th Pope said.

Pope Francis also maintained that Jews and Christians are bound by duty to "preserve the religious sense" amid an increasingly secular and atheist society.

"Today, in Europe, it is more important than ever to emphasize the spiritual and religious dimension of human life," he said. "In a society increasingly marked by secularism and threatened by atheism, we run the risk of living as if God did not exist. People are often tempted to take the place of God, to consider themselves the criterion of all things, to control them, to use everything according to their own will."

"It is so important to remember, however, that our life is a gift from God, and that we must depend on him, confide in him, and turn towards him always," Pope Francis said. "Jews and Christians have the blessing but also the responsibility to help preserve the religious sense of the men and women of today, and that of our society, by our witness to the sanctity of God and human life. God is holy, and the life he has given is holy and inviolable."

The Pope also condemned persecution against the faithful in other regions. "Acts of hatred and violence against Christians and the faithful of other religions must likewise be condemned everywhere," he said.

The chief rabbi of Moscow and the president of the conference, Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, said: "We express our deepest sympathy, prayers and support for the Christians in the Middle East."

The chief rabbi said the Jewish community values the Nostra Aetate's "rejection of every persecution against any man," its condemnation of "displays of anti-Semitism directed against Jews at any time and by anyone," as well as its recognition of the spiritual patrimony that Jews and Christians have.

Rabbi Goldschmidt expressed alarm at the rising secularism in Europe. "Who would have thought even 25 years ago that the East will become the defender of traditional religious values while the West has embraced a secularism which moves it away from its Judeo-Christian heritage," he said.

Goldschmidt asked Pope Francis "to help build new bridges and bring the East and the West back from the brink of war, to a unified and peaceful Europe and the world."

Aren’t Catholics also Christians? -

Yes, and yes to the corollary questions, “Are Jews also human beings ? Do Jews also worship the same God of Abraham as Christians worship ? Are the Jews the brethren of the Messiah ?”

I know what some Catholics and Protestants did help Jews during the Holocaust, as well as some governments, and I am grateful for what help was given. There will be a judgment, and the sheep will be separated from the goats.

LET US DELVE INTO THE REST OF THE HISTORY

Hitler was democratically elected by the. German people I spite of the Catholics, and the Catholic Church prohibited the faithful not to vote for the Nazis instead to vote to the Zentrum opposition Christian party.

On January 30, 1933, the German President Hindeburg appointed Adolph Hitler as Chancellor. Since the elections in March 1933 the Nazis were the lawful government of the German people. With the help of the Nationalist allies they had a majority, though small, in the Reichstag. The Enabling Act, passed by the Reichstag, made them rulers with extraordinary powers and without a possibility of change for four years. Very soon, the Nazi regime was to become a brutal totalitarian state destroying the parliamentary democracy. It was the beginning of the end for the Weimar Republic.

According to Peter Gumbel, a prestigious historian with open access to the Vatican’s archives; even before the Nazis came to power, the German Bishops had already condemned the National Socialist Movement and prohibited Catholics from being associated with it or voting for it.

On January 30, and on the March 5, 1933’s elections, virtually all the Catholics voted for the “Zentrum” Christian party, well known for its opposition to Hitler’s party.

England, France and Italy recognized the new German regime immediately and proceeded to sign what was called the “four countries pact”. Later, on July 20, 1933, the Holy See signed a Concordat with legitimate government of Germany.

The western democracies were elated with Hitler’s triumph. Among Hitler’s sycophants were the Duke of Windsor who visited Hitler and British Prime Minister, Lloyd George, that 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, Joseph Kennedy the patriarch of the Kennedy clan and his sons, Joseph, and the future president of United States, John F. Kennedy.

Certainly the world, except the Catholic Church, did not condemn Nazi ideology.

Pius XI’s Nuncio in Germany, Eugenio Pacelli, never met with Hitler. During Pacelli’s (later Pius XII) 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.” Certainly, these were very strong words coming from such a consummated diplomat.

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.

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.

Without belittling the unspeakable horrors suffered by Jews, we should not ignore the fact that millions of Catholics were also victims of the Holocaust, as were gypsies, Slavs, homosexuals, and in much less scale, Orthodox and Protestants. Poland had the biggest Jewish population in Europe and was the only country where there was a mandatory death penalty for those hiding Jews. Many, who were caught sheltering Jews, were killed in a gruesome manner, such as being publicly burned as a warning to others.

According to historian William J. O’Malley, “to the genocide of six million Jews we have to add nine to ten millions Slavic victims (Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Yugoslavs) who were eliminated-not in war, not as saboteurs, not as guerrillas, but sorely because they were Slavic.” The Nazi’s genocide, based on race, should also include half a million gypsies who, just as the Slavs, were executed because they were not member of the superior race, the Aryans. The Nazis in Poland alone murdered more than 3 million Catholics together with over 3 million Jews.

About 2,800 clergymen were interned between 1940 and 1945, at Dachau, the infamous Nazi concentration camp. Among them, 2,579 were Catholic clergymen, 109 Protestants, 30 orthodox and two Moslem clergymen. The Catholics came from 38 nations; 1,780 were Polish, 447 German and Austrian, 109 Czech and Slovaks, 50 Yugoslavs, 156 French, 63 Dutch.

The auxiliary Polish Bishop of Wladislava died of typhus while imprisoned at Dachau. At least 1034 died in the camp, some victims of medical experimentation by the infamous Dr. Rascher. In 1940, 800 priests died in Buchenwald, 1,200 in 1942 and 3,000 in 1943. And that was just in Buchenwald.

As O’Malley, pointed out, “That figure, surprising as it might be, does not include the clergy or nuns who were shot, beheaded or tortured to death in squares and alleys and jails all over Europe…In France, in February 1944, the Gestapo had arrested 162 priests, of whom 123 were shot or decapitated before ever reaching any camp.

According to the International Tribunal at Nuremburg, 780 priests died of exhaustion at Mauthausen and 300 at Sachsenhausen, and there were hundreds of other camps in the network. Nor does the total figure of 2,771 take into consideration that one-quarter to one-third of those shipped to any camps often arrived dead.

Although not every Catholic was a victim of the Nazis, it is certain that all the Jews were victims of Hitler’s hatred. Hitler’s “Final Solution” was targeted to the total extermination of the Jewish race-an abhorrent and unforgivable crime against humanity.

The German Catholic hierarchy thanked Pope Pius XI for the Encyclical 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.

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.”

To those seeking the truth, what a better witness than the testimony of Albert Einstein, the great Jewish physicist, who had firsthand 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.”

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 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 firsthand 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.”

The Founders of the State of Israel expressed 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.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.

Israeli senior diplomat and now Orthodox Jewish Rabbi, Pinchas Lapide, with access to Yad Vashem’s archives, has stated in his book, “Three Popes and the Jews”, that “The Catholic Church relief and rescue program under the pontificate of Pius XII was instrumental in saving the lives of as many as 860,000 Jews from certain death at Nazi’s hands. That was more than all other Churches, religious institutions and international rescue organizations put together.” (17) The Israelis recognized the lives saved by planting a forest, in commemoration, of as many trees in the Negeb, SE of Jerusalem. This forest was shown to Pope Paul VI during his first state visit to Israel.

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