I will never forget Pope John Paul II’s visit to Britain, my home country. Not because of the crowds and the cacophony but because of my father. I walked into the sitting room of our small house and there was dad, a proud, strong working-class man, crying as he saw the Holy Father on television. The layers or relevance and emotion are almost overwhelming. My father was from a Polish Jewish family and had lost most of his relatives during the war. His personal history obliged him to pursue truth rather than sordid hyperbole and in particular to understand the role of Pius XII during the Holocaust. The lies about the man made him extremely angry. It makes his son angry as well.
The issue is relevant once again because the current Pope has declared Pius XII venerable, the first step towards the man’s sainthood. This has provoked some angry comments from many leaders of the Jewish community. But the reaction is terribly unfair.
Before he became Pope Pius, Cardinal Pacelli drafted the papal encyclical condemning Nazi racism and had it read from every pulpit. The Vatican used its assets to ransom Jews from the Nazis, ran an elaborate escape route and hid Jewish families in Castel Gondolfo. All this is confirmed by Jewish experts such as the B’rith’s Joseph Lichten.
The World Jewish Congress donated a great deal of money to the Vatican in gratitude and in 1945 Rabbi Herzog of Jerusalem thanked Pope Pius “for his lifesaving efforts on behalf of the Jews during the occupation of Italy.” When the Pope died in 1958 Golda Meir, then Israeli Foreign Minister, delivered a eulogy at the United Nations praising the man for his work on behalf of her people.
For twenty years it was considered a self-evident truth that the Church was a member of the victim class during the Second World War and Pope Pius was mentioned with Churchill and Roosevelt as part of a triumvirate of good. It was as late as the 1960s that the cultural architecture began to be restructured around this issue and it’s deeply significant that the attacks on the Pope were largely initiated by the German playwright Rolf Hochhuth - who claimed in his play The Deputy that the Vatican had ignored the plight of the Jews. What is seldom mentioned is that Hochhuth was a renowned anti-Catholic who would later champion Holocaust-denier David Irving.
While it is true is that the Pope did not issue an outright attack on the Nazis, this was because the leaders of the Catholic Church in Holland had make a public statement condemning Nazi anti-Semitism and protesting the deportation of the Jewish people and in response the German occupiers had arrested and murdered every Dutch Jewish convert to Catholicism they could find. The group included Edith Stein, who was dragged from her convent to the slaughterhouse of Auschwitz. She was gassed in August 1942.
Hundreds of thousands of Catholic religious and lay people risked their lives and sometimes gave them to help the Jewish victims of the Nazi pagans. To a very large extent their sacrifices have gone uncelebrated, even ignored. Shamefully much of the criticism of the Church comes from within and from critics who use the issue to vicariously attack orthodoxy and Popes John Paul and Benedict. This was precisely the case with John Cornwell’s risible book Hitler’s Pope. In a scholarly response Rabbi David Dalin’s The Myth of Hitler’s Pope stated that people are trying to, “exploit the tragedy of the Jewish people during the Holocaust to foster their own political agenda of forcing changes on the Catholic Church today.”
But the last word should go to another Jewish man. In 1945 the Chief Rabbi of Rome, Israel Zolli, publicly embraced Roman Catholicism. This extraordinary conversion was partly due to Zolli’s admiration for the Pope’s sheltering and saving of Italian Jews. It is sad but true that there are still people who splash around in anti-Semitism and would harm the Jewish people if they could. Catholics are not in that group; on the contrary, Christians now tend to be the Jews’ best friends. Enemies are different now – it’s time to realize that and grasp that the times have changed.
Interesting, did you plan to continue this article?
Doggy
Continue in what way? There is a lot more to say of course but this is one article. Actually I’m writing a book right now for McClelland & Stewart entitled Why The Catholics Are Right and there is a section on the Church and the Holocaust.
Rabbi David Dalin’s acticle called “A Righteous Gentile: Pope Pius XII and the Jews” also supports everything you say.http://www.catholicleague.org/pius/dalinframe.htm
This is very interesting information. The image in popular culture usually fails to reflect all the complexities of an issue. Though the history of Jewish Catholic relations has been mostly about persecution, we must not make uninformed judgments about individuals; there were many unsung heroes.
I ARRIVE at your post by way of the irrepressible Kathy Shaidle, and her Five Feet of Fury.
The German playwright, Rolf Hochhuth connection is a new (for me), and interesting link in the anti-Catholic chain of disinformation that circulates around this issue.
The children of “the Lie” keep fostering this uncharitable rant that the Catholic Church did nothing, or little, to help the Jews during the war. I would like to know what the Jews did themselves, to save themselves, during World War II?
I mean other than hide, or, surrender?
THOSE WHO COMPLAIN about what others are not doing for them, or did for them, seem destined to fail at acknowledging their own personal responsibility, or complicity, in the matter.
Inglourious Basterds is just fantasy.
History correctly records that the Jews, en masse, did little to fight Herr Hitler. Anemic, liberal Jews need to stop scapegoating the Catholic Church for their own leadership failings at the time.
Fortunately, modern Israel stands in incredible, and stark contrast, to this former crisis of identity.
I await your book, for sure—
“Never Was An Arrow II” complains about misrepresentations of the role of the Catholic Church during WW II, while filling his comment with misrepresentations about the targeted victims of the Nazis, i.e. the Jews. Calling them liberal and anemic shows at best deliberate ignorance, more likely antisemitism. There are countless tales of Jewish heroism during the holocaust. It wasn’t possible take up weapons in concentration camps, but there were other forms of resistance, the main one being to remain alive against incredible odds. Jewish partisans (such as my father) fought alongside non-Jewish partisans, only to be turned upon by their ‘allies.’ While France collapsed in a few days, the Warsaw ghetto heroes held off the Germans for weeks.
Unfortunately for “Never Was,” the world isn’t a Quentin Tarantino film. Only an idiot holds that up as a standard. “Never Was” clearly never read much history, or he would know that he is spouting anti-Jewish stupidity.
As for the Catholic Church, there were many heroes, but there were many, many villains, such as the Priest who told the Jews of his village (I heard this story from one of them) that he would protect them if they converted.
Go back in your hole, “Never.” You’re not an arrow, you’re not even a slug.
Nathan,
I think you have misunderstood me. My point is that I wish more Jews were like your father, during the war. But I just watched all 25+ hours of the impartial World At War and the director of the project, Irving, himself a Jew, gave us that impression. There were isolated battles of resistance, but far too much pacifistic collaboration with the Nazi plan.
And yes, the Catholic Church could have done more. We saw Pope John Paul II taking a stronger stand against Russia when it looked like an invasion of Poland was imminent. And it helped.
What I’m really saying is that Hitler had such pervasive, and firmly entrenched systematic control over occupied Europe, that each person who resisted the Nazi death grip was taking enormous personal risks when circumventing any of the Third Reich’s goals.
And let’s be fair and charitable in our assessments of a previous generation of both Jews and Catholic hierarchy, whose lives were in immediate danger from the Nazis, close at hand.
I am no anti-semite.
I have often said that Israel is the only nation that we can truly trust in the middle-east. It’s the Islamist I can’t stand. And all who collaborate with their soft (political) and hard (terrorism) jihad.
The Islamists are the new Nazis.
FYI – The children of “the Lie” or anemic, Liberal Jews statement, WAS NOT a generalized comment levelled at all Jews, as a whole, but only those specific folk who uphold lies against our Catholic hierarchy and who will not acknowledge that there were some Jewish failings during the war as well.
That priest you mentioned absolutely makes me sick. He should be tried as a criminal.
It is a common, and erroneous charge that the Jews were passive victims during the holocaust. It’s a charge that holds the victims guilty for what was done to them.
My father wrote, several decades ago:
“Is the bench of the accused now vacant? No, we, the tortured and slaughtered, the rescued and the survivors, we sit on that bench. Every day of our lives, every hour of our pain, every minute of our agony is analyzed and judged. Did we achieve the heights of heroism in accordance with the formula of Hollywood westerns? Did we provide sufficient honor for our brothers and sisters throughout the world, or was it just a banal death? Did each one of us live as prescribed by the moralists and psychologists who never set foot in Auschwitz, Treblinka, or was there among us a kapo, a Judenrat member, a Jewish policeman who collaborated with the enemy?
“…An episode from early 1940: The Germans had driven the Jews out of a small village in Wartagau… They packed the Jews into trucks, One young woman with a baby in her arms was having difficulty climbing up into the truck. A German solder politely took the child from her and helped her into the vehicle. When she stretched out her arms to take the child he threw it to the ground. The woman jumped from the truck. The German pointed his rifle at her. She didn’t budge. He raved and raged and threatened to shoot her and her child. She still didn’t budge. He then raised the muzzle of his gun and threatened to shoot all the Jews in the truck. The woman dragged herself back into the truck. When they arrived in Warsaw, she was out of her mind.”
Yes, Hochhuth’s play certainly poisoned the well regarding how Pius XII was viewed. The cover picture on Cornwell’s book was also designed to slant opinion against the Pope. It implied that the soldiers in the picture were Nazis, but the picture was actually taken in 1927 when Pius XII was still Archbishop Pacelli and the soldiers were those of the Weimar Republic. The occasion was a birthday reception for President Hindenberg which Ab. Pacelli as Papal Nuncio had attended.
The defamation of Pius XII in the past 40+ years has been scurrilous and his record should need no defense. Too many people who didn’t live through those times are quick to be revisionist about the past, becoming Monday morning quarterbacks. The pre- and post-war attitude of the British and US governments towards Jewish refugees left a lot to be desired also.
I wonder…why were no Nazi’s excommunicated by the Catholic Church for their crimes against humanity?
My understanding is that this controversy could be put to rest by allowing scholars access to Vatican archives covering this historical period, which the Vatican is declining to do. Is there any good reason why the Vatican will not do that to end the issue once and for all?
From the Catholic League:
http://www.catholicleague.org/pius/truth.htm
“Documents show that Pius XII was in contact with the German generals who sought to overthrow Hitler.
Documents also show that… Pius XII’s personal funds ransomed Jews from Nazis.
[4000 Jews were given shelter in the Vatican houses alone. 850 000 Jews were helped to escape by priests, nuns, and laity.]
Papal representatives in Croatia, Hungary, and Romania intervened to stop deportations.
The Pope called for a peace conference involving Italy, France, England, Germany, and Poland in 1939, in a last-minute bid to avert bloodshed.”
Before and during his papacy, Pacelli published countless newspaper articles and gave countless radio speeches. He was the single clearest, most persistent voice against Nazism!
Did he waver? No. Was he mindful that everything he said or did publicly would and did result in deaths among priests, nuns, and Jews? And therefore was he careful? Yes.
“Albert Einstein, disenchanted by the silence of universities and editors of newspapers, stated in Time magazine (December 23, 1940): “Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing truth. …The Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom.”
“The New York Times editorial (December 25, 1942) was specific: ‘The voice of Pius XII is a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping Europe this Christmas…He is about the only ruler left on the Continent of Europe who dares to raise his voice at all.” The Pope’s Christmas message was also interpreted in the Gestapo report: “in a manner never known before…the Pope has repudiated the National Socialist New European Order [Nazism]. It is true, the Pope does not refer to the National Socialists in Germany by name, but his speech is one long attack on everything we stand for. …Here he is clearly speaking on behalf of the Jews’”
Hitler himself said that he considered his greatest enemy to be Pacelli.
“In 1958, at the death of Pope Pius XII, Golda Meir sent an eloquent message: ‘We share in the grief of humanity. …When fearful martyrdom came to our people, the voice of the Pope was raised for its victims. The life of our times was enriched by a voice speaking out about great moral truths above the tumult of daily conflict. We mourn a great servant of peace.’”
Cannonize the man, for heavens sake! It is long long overdue!
Paul Grimes says: “I wonder…why were no Nazis excommunicated by the Catholic Church for their crimes against humanity?”
Because, by joining the Nazi party, they had already excommunicated themselves: Latae sententiae.
Pope Pius XII made this clear in his numerous radio addresses.
Very good, Maureen.
Maureen Chill says:
January 7, 2010 at 1:30 pm
Paul Grimes says: “I wonder…why were no Nazis excommunicated by the Catholic Church for their crimes against humanity?”
Because, by joining the Nazi party, they had already excommunicated themselves: Latae sententiae.
Pope Pius XII made this clear in his numerous radio addresses.
How convenient! Why was it that the first pact Hitler made with another government was the one with the vatican?
Maureen, so the pope never actually excommunicated them officially?
Here is a rabbi’s take on this: http://ncronline.org/news/vatican/time-act-catholic-jewish-reconciliation
Вообще да, мне это напоминает ситуацию с выборами призидента Украины. Выборы прошли, а не факт, кто призедентом будет. Да, блин, демократия. Хех, простите за флуд небольшой, навеяло просто.