What did the Holy Father say Monday at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jersusalem, where he lay a wreath and rekindled its eternal flame?
I can only imagine the joyful expectation of their parents as they anxiously awaited the birth of their children. What name shall we give this child? What is to become of him or her? Who could have imagined that they would be condemned to such a deplorable fate. As we stand here in silence, their cry still echoes in our hearts...
The Pope also said during his visit:
Sadly anti-Semitism continues to rear its ugly head in many parts of the world. This is totally unacceptable. Every effort must be made to combat anti-Semitism whereever it is found, and to promote respect and esteem for the members of every people, tribe, language and nation across the globe.
Yet many Jewish groups were critical, including the top two Jewish officials for the site, arguing the Pope did not apologize for the Holocaust or the Catholic Church's alleged unresponsiveness to the victims at the time, used the term "killed" instead of "murdered", and did not specifically mention "regret", express empathy, or condemn the Germans or Nazis by name...
In my judgment, this kind of judgmental parsing is morally reprehensible; the historical problem was with a godless Nazi government, not the Catholic Church. [Well, perhaps I'm overstating the case. Baldur von Schirach of Hitler Youth declared: "We are a Youth that believes in God, because we serve the Divine Law that is called Germany."]
The Nazis, in fact, despised the "slave" ideology of Christianity, which they regarded as the bastard child of Judaism. According to Karol Gajewski, "Each race also possessed a religious impulse (in the case of the Aryan Germans, this was the pagan cult of Wotan, king of the gods). Christianity, for Rosenberg, was the distorted product of Semitic tribes who had tricked the Aryans into jettisoning their pagan truth."
Whereas there is no legitimate comparison with the unspeakable, undeniable, and disproportionate suffering of the Jews under Nazi Germany, the Christian problem was on Hitler's list, but, as Hitler decided in 1939, execution of the war had a higher priority.
Examples of Catholic persecution under the Hitler regime include:
- According to Gajewski: "The famous ‘Currency’ and ‘Immorality’ trials which peaked in 1935 and 1936, resulted in the imprisonment and fining of hundreds of clergy.The ‘Immorality’ trials sought to destroy the reputation of Catholic religious, aimed in particular at those working in primary and secondary schools. Priests, monks, lay-brothers and nuns were accused of “perverted and immoral” lifestyles — euphemisms for homosexuality and paedophilia. The Gestapo set numerous traps in order to furnish bogus evidence. The New York Times carried a report in May 1936 describing priests who had been summoned to hotel rooms after desperate messages to administer the last sacraments were received. When the priest entered, the ‘caller’ would turn out to be a prostitute, planted by government agents. Photos would be later produced in court as irrefutable evidence of corruption."
- the murder of 2600 Catholic priests from 24 countries at Dacchau
- the murder of 3000 Catholic priests in Poland (two-thirds in concentration camps)
I'm particularly offended by revisionist smears (e.g., Daniel Goldhagen, John Cornwell, and James Carroll, and, of course, Rolf Hochhuth's 1963 play, The Deputy) against the reputation and memory of a truly holy and great man, Eugenio Pacelli (Pope Pius XII).
According to the Jewish historian, Sir Martin Gilbert:
Christians were among the first victims of the Nazis and the churches took a very powerful stand...What we have here is another evil — and it is one in the face of which we cannot be silent. It is a smear campaign against Pius XII, mounted by misguided Jews and misinformed Catholics...If he had denounced Adolf Hitler more explicitly, the Nazis would have responded with even more ferocity. Personally and through his representatives, Pius XII employed all the means at his disposal to save Jews and other refugees during World War II. As a moral leader and a diplomat forced to limit his words, he privately took action and, despite insurmountable obstacles, saved hundreds of thousands of Jews from the gas chambers. The pope was loved and respected. Of those mourning his death in 1958, Jews — who credited Pius XII with being one of their greatest defenders and benefactors in their hour of greatest need — stood in the forefront.
Pinchas E. Lapide, author of Three Popes and the Jews, estimated that Pope Pius XII had saved 860,000 Jews. Thomas Craughwell writes:
To offset any accusation of relying upon hearsay, Lapide supplies the names of the rescuers, the numbers of people they saved, and the dates of the rescue operations. Giuseppe Maria Palatucci, Bishop of Campagna, with two members of his family, hid 961 Jews. The effort cost the life of the Bishop's relative, Dr. Giovanni Palatucci, who was arrested by the Nazis and murdered in Dachau. The Franciscan Sisters in Budapest, Hungary, hid 150 Jews—120 children and 30 adults—in their convent. In addition, the nuns, under their tireless Mother Superior Maria-Etela, produced thousands of pontifical passports and letters of protection which the Papal Nuncio, Msgr. Angelo Rotta, distributed among the Jews of Hungary. In the last days of the war, Mother Maria-Etela was killed by an exploding hand grenade. Between 1942 and December 1943, the number of the Pope's Palatine Guard rose from 300 members to 4,000—all of them carrying the invaluable Vatican City passport. Of these 4,000 "guards," at least 400 were Jews, 240 of whom were hidden in the Vatican itself. Another 3,000 Jews were kept safe in the papal summer residence, Castel Gandolfo....
[Among] Lapide's...documents that attest to Pius XII's work [was] an especially moving request from 20,000 rescued Jews of central Europe who petitioned Pius XII, "Allow us to ask the great honor of being able to thank personally His Holiness for the generosity he has shown us when we were persecuted during the terrible period of Nazi Fascism."
George Johston, author of The Holocaust and the Vatican, says:
Jewish relief officials were in complete agreement that a public Vatican attack on the Nazis would not have the slightest effect on Hitler yet would jeopardize the lives of Jews hidden by the Church.
From James Bogle's The Real Story of Pius XII and the Jews:
Thereafter, Pius XII adopted his policy of not naming the Jews explicitly. This was partly because of his experience of the diplomatic ‘deafness’ of the Allied governments and partly because of his knowledge and experience of the increased persecution of Jews which followed the condemnatory statements made in the two mentioned encyclicals. He devoted himself instead to the covert rescue operation which resulted in the saving of approximately 800,000 Jewish lives during WWII.
Jim Carew SFO quotes:
Look at what happened to the Jews in the Netherlands when the Catholic Church spoke out. When it became known on June 29th 1942, that all Jews in the Netherlands were to be deported, the Catholic Church and nine Protestant churches sent a formal protest telegram to "Reichskommissar"...It also became known to the occupation authorities that this protest should be read in all church services on Sunday, 26th July 1942...The Catholic Church refused to alter their protest. The revenge of the Reichskommissar was directed only against the Catholic Church. On Sunday, August 2nd, 245 Catholic Jews were arrested by the Sicherheitspolizei and the Ordnungspolizei...From this number 133 were deported to Auschwitz and Sobibor, mostly in that same month, including Dr. Edith Stein (St Teresia Benedicta) and many nuns and priests in their religious clothing with a bright yellow star on it.
In 1995 the World Council of Jews declared that it was satisfied, from evidence revealed by its own investigations, that the Catholic Church was responsible for saving at least 850,000 Jews from the Nazis during the Holocaust.
Dr. Margherita Marchione writes:
The message found in the recently-discovered document, “Massacre Pius XII with the entire Vatican,” proves that Adolf Hitler intended to assassinate the Pope along with all the Vatican Cardinals. The document refers to the plan as “Rabat-Fohn.”. It names the unit assigned to execute the plan to be the Eighth Division of the SS Cavalry, “Florian Geyer,” and the reason to be “The Papal Protest in Favor of the Jews.” In December of 1943, Hitler personally chose Heinrich Himmler and Heinrich Müller, the head of the Gestapo, to study and execute a plan that would eliminate the Pope...New troops of the Panzer Division Hermann Göring and the parachutists would intervene to kill the disguised partisans and thus leave no witnesses to survive...."The persecution of the Catholic Church would begin with mass deportations to Germany of all ecclesiastics in Italy and throughout the world. They are to be considered the cause of ignorance, of domination, of conspiracies...."In his testimony at the Adolf Eichmann Nazi War Crime Trials, Jewish scholar Jenö Levai stated: “Pius XII—the one person who did more than anyone else to halt the dreadful crime and alleviate its consequences—is today made the scapegoat for the failures of others.”Throughout World War II, Pius XII so provoked the Nazis that they called him “a mouthpiece of the Jewish war criminals.” Robert Kempner, the American deputy chief of the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal, stated: “All the arguments and writings eventually used by the Catholic Church only provoked suicide; the execution of Jews was followed by that of Catholic priests.”
Perhaps the greatest testimony was Hitler himself who consistently complained of the opposition of Pope Pius XII. The truth of the matter is that Pope Pius XII condemned Hitler and protested [his actions] more than 60 times. Politically the pope could do nothing; however, in a humanitarian effort to save the lives of Jews and other victims of Nazism, he did more than any other world leader.
Pave the Way Foundation founder Gary Krupp says in the May 3 NY Daily News:
More evidence shows Pius secretly moved Jews out of Europe. We conducted dozens of video interviews, among them a witness account of a priest who revealed a secret "underground railroad," directly ordered by the Pope, sending more than 10,000 Jews to the U.S. via the Dominican Republic. Many countries would not accept "Jews," so they were given false baptismal papers to travel as Catholics. Pius successfully stopped the deportation of tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews when he appealed to the Regent of Hungary. Similarly, he desperately tried to impact the deportation policies of many other countries to, in his words, "save this vibrant community."Aware of Hitler's plan to kidnap him and seize the Vatican, Pius formed a government in exile and still managed to directly stop the arrest of Roman Jews on Oct. 16, 1943. In literally one day, the Vatican managed to hide, feed and support more than 7,000 Jews in Catholic institutions and private homes - all with German rifles posted 200 yards beneath Pius' windows.Jewish teaching says, if you save one life you save all humanity. We must acknowledge what Pius actually did rather than criticize him for what he should have done. Pope Pius should be commended for his courageous actions that saved more Jewish lives than all the world's leaders combined.
The protests of revisionist historians have paused the process towards canonizing Eugenio Pacelli as saint. I am convinced of his leadership and holiness under some of the most horrific times the world has ever seen. I look forward to the day the world will celebrate his sainthood.
As for John Ratzinger, probably my favorite pope (I just LOVE having a world-class scholar as Pope, he is a true man of peace, and I feel blessed to have him as my religious leader): Viva il Papa!
