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Be educated or go away:

--Before he became Pope Pius XII, Cardinal Pacelli drafted the papal encyclical, MIT BRENNEDNDER SORGE, in which Pius XI denounced Nazi paganism and racism; the document was smuggled into Germany in March, 1937 and read from all Catholic pulpits, which infuriated the Nazis;

--It is well documented by Jewish scholars like Joseph Lichten of B'nai B"rith that Pius used the assets of the Vatican to ransom Jews from the Nazis and that the Vatican under Pius ran an extensive network of hide-outs. Even the Pope's summer residence, Castel Gondolfo, was used to hide fugitive Jews. The Pope, moreover, took personal repsonsibility for the children of deported Jews;

--Largely as a result of the Church's efforts, the Jews in Italy had a far higher survival rate under Nazi occupation than was the case in other countries; estimates of the number of Jews saved by the Vatican's efforts range up to several hundred thousand; this was one reason why the chief Rabbi of Rome converted to Catholicism at the end of the war;

--In appreciation of what Pius did for the Jews, the World Jewish Congress made a large cash gift to the Vatican in 1945; in the same year, Rabbi Herzog of Jerusalem sent a "special blessing" to the Pope "for his lifesaving efforts on behalf of the Jews during the Nazi occupation of Italy"; and when Pius died in 1958, Israel's Foreign Minister Golda Meir gave a him moving eulogy at the United Nations for the same reason;

--What was to be gained by Pius's getting up on a soap box and lashing out at the Nazis? Both the International Red Cross and the World Council of Churches came to the same conclusion as the Vatican: relief efforts for the Jews would be more effective if the agencies remained relatively quiet; yet, you never hear anybody attacking the Red Cross for its "silence" about the Holocaust;

--In 1942, the Catholic hierarchy of Amsterdam spoke out vigorously against the Nazi treatment of the Jews; the Nazi response was a redoubling of round-ups and deportations; by the end of the war, 90 percent of the Jews in Amsterdam were liquidated. Jewish relief officials were in complete agreement that a public attack by the Vatican against the Nazis would a) not have the slightest effect on Hitler and b) would seriously jeopardize the lives of Jews who were being hidden in convents, monasteries, etc.;

--Nevertheless, Pius's Christmas message in 1942 decried the fact that hundreds of thousands were being persecuted "solely because of their race or ancestory." The German ambassador to the Vatican complained that Pius was "clearly speaking on behalf of the Jews." A NEW YORK TIMES editorial on Christmas day, 1942 praised Pius as "a lonely voice crying out of the silence of a continent";

The number of Jews rescued by Pius XII is estimated by scholars to be around 800,000. But even before he ordered all monasteries and convents to hide refugees, the Vatican was printing phony passports and ID's to help in rescue efforts. At one point Pius telephoned the president of Hungary and talked him into releasing hundreds of thousands of Jews who had been marked for deportation to death camps. A little known fact: he hid several thousand Jewish refugees in the basement of his Vatican palace--and refused to eat or drink anything they were not given to eat or drink. The man was a saint--but he has been mercilessly and cruelly slandered for half a decade by bigots who hate the Church.

Be educated or go away

You are mixing politics with real life. Your response is impressive and very well educated, as you would put it, but it lacks reality. I was born and lived in Italy during the WWII and believe me, my experiences and experiences of many thousand of other families who survived the war and the thereafter tells a different story. In their and my name I am asking you to tell me in which planet you live? You can't trust what is written in today's paper, and you go on quoting papers from 60 or more years ago? Politicians talk not what they think but what you want to hear. God Bless You. You need it!