www.byzcath.org Forums News & Events Church News Pius XII, the Pope who opposed Hitler

Shlomo Lkhoolkhoon,

Here is a great article from Zenit. Read and enjoy.

Fush BaShlomo Lkhoolkhoon,
Yuhannon

Hebrew-Speaking Catholics Affirm Pius XII's Virtues
Say Only God Can Know if He Did Enough to Save Jews

JERUSALEM, DEC. 21, 2009 (Zenit.org).- While the Hebrew-speaking Catholics of Israel acknowledge that it may never be "humanly possible" to determine if Pope Pius XII did "enough" to save Jews during the Holocaust, they are affirming the wartime Pontiff's many virtues.

The Hebrew-Speaking Catholic Vicariate in Israel (www.catholic.co.il [catholic.co.il]) issued a statement today that lent its support to Benedict XVI's move Saturday to approve a decree that testifies to the heroic virtues of Pius XII, a gesture that puts the Pontiff one step away from beatification.

For Pius XII to be declared Blessed by the Church, a decree testifying to a miracle attributed to his intercession must be approved.

The note, signed by the community's vicar, Jesuit Father David Neuhaus, and priests of the vicariate, laments that the move has led to another "storm in the relations between Jews and Catholics."

Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, said in a statement over the weekend that "there are strong concerns about Pope Pius XII's political role during World War II which should not be ignored."

He urged the Vatican to open its archives that concern the wartime years of 1939-1945, and added that until that happens, a "beatification is inopportune and premature."

The statement from Israel's Hebrew-speaking Catholic community, however, notes Pius XII's many accomplishments, including his efforts to promote scientific Biblical research, which "brings together Jews and Christians and influences greatly the definition of the shared Jewish -- Christian Biblical heritage."

"The Pope, who served from 1939 to 1958, was active in many different fields and he left his mark on the Church in the 20th century," the statement affirms. "Catholics remember him and honor his memory in a Church context much wider than just the black years of the Second World War."

Accusations

Regarding those who criticize how Pius XII steered the Church during World War II, the note says they "reject the defamation of Pius XII" and accusations of his "cowardice and even anti-Semitism and collaboration with the Nazi enemy. These accusations are absolutely without foundation.

"Likewise, we reject the interpretations that see any honoring of Pius XII as a minimizing of the importance of the Shoah or as a retreat from the breathtaking progress in the relations between Jews and Catholics in the past decades."

Having said that, the community notes that it does "understand the discomfort of many of our Jewish brothers and sisters who argue that the Pope 'did not do enough' in saving Jews in the hour of their sufferings during the Shoah."

"We understand the cry 'he did not do enough' as a cry of deep pain coming from the sense of betrayal among the Jewish people at the time of their trial," the statement explains. "The world indeed did not do enough as it is an undeniable fact that six million members of the Jewish people were murdered.

"Ultimately, there can be no 'enough' in the attempt to confront a tragedy of the dimensions of the Shoah!"

"Could the Pope have done more?" the note asks. "The question is both legitimate and understandable, however, perhaps there is no human answer to this question.

"Only God can know whether he indeed did everything that he could do."

Father Neuhaus and the other priests of the vicariate, however, acknowledge a large body of historical research that documents Pius XII's diplomatic efforts to end World War II, and his instructions to churches and monasteries to aid Jews fleeing persecution, even to the point of providing them with false documents and smuggling them out of Nazi-controlled areas.

"We continue to pray," the note concludes, "that both in the Church and in the Jewish people we will continue in searching together for the historical truth so that we can educate our children in mutual respect and brotherhood, and that we continue our efforts to collaborate for 'the mending of the world' (tikkun olam)."

Blech! Everything was going so great until that last bit about tikkun olam.

Anyway, ignoring that, I'm glad to see these Hebrew-speaking Catholics are standing behind Venerable Pius' cause. Although I think it should be expected that Catholics, Hebrew-speaking or not, would stand behind the Pontiff's cause.

You know, the outrageous chutzpah (I thought some Yiddish would be fun, given the subject matter) exhibited by the Jews calling for Venerable Pius' cause to be halted, calling him a coward, sometimes calling him a Nazi sympathizer, etc. used to really bother me.

But now that I've seen that the Church has consistently moved ahead with this cause, disregarding the whining and squealing, I try not to pay it much attention.

And lastly, I would hesitate to call the "progress" between Christians and Jews "breathtaking" - after all, no significant number of Jews has decided to enter the Catholic Church. That would be breathtaking progress.

Alexis

Shlomo Lkhoolkhoon,

As many of you all know, I am active in stopping the slander and libels against His Holiness Pius XII. Below is another excellent article to those of you who are his fellow defenders.

Fush BaShlomo Lkhoolkhoon,
Yuhannon

Pius XII, the Pope who opposed Hitler [asianews.it] by Piero Gheddo

Benedict XVI has recognised his heroic virtues. Until the 1960s, Jews praised the war-time Pontiff, and appreciated him for saving hundreds of thousands of Jews; then, things changed. The “dark legend” emerged, aided by the Communist nations.

Milan (AsiaNews) – Pope Benedict XVI has approved the heroic virtues of Pius XII, generating negative reactions in Jewish and secular circles who have always opposed the ‘Pastor Angelicus’, venerated by many who also turn their prayers towards him. I read “Der Papst, der Hitler trotzte” (The Pope who Defied Hitler)” which rebuts the lies about Eugenio Pacelli, according to which he favoured Hitler’s rise to power and was silent about the Jewish Holocaust.

Hesemann’s well-documented research, based on Nazi and German archives, is prefaced by Jesuit Fr Peter Gumpel, postulator of the case of beatification of Pope Pius XII, who wrote, “As our huge work of research and study progressed, my collaborators and I became convinced that an actual “dark legend’ was created around Pius XII.”

As nuncio to Germany, Eugenio Pacelli was against Hitler from the start. Nothing good would come from that “crazy fanatic”, he said. His reports to Rome and his actions in Germany show that view beyond the shadow of a doubt.

As Pope Pius XII, Pacelli mobilised Vatican diplomatic resources and the Church’s network of dioceses, parishes, institutes and agencies to save Jews, and during the war, he was able to obtain hundreds of thousands of entry visas to Argentina, the Dominican Republic and Latin America for refugees from Nazi Germany.

“In the meantime, the nations at war [against Nazi Germany] were doing nothing to stop the Holocaust. Many nations, including Switzerland and the United States, turned back Jewish refugees, and sent them to Germany where they ended up in gas chambers. The allied planes flew over Auschwitz several times, took pictures of the crematoria, but did not bother to target the railway lines leading to the camps.”

Despite Pius XII’s efforts, a violent campaign was launched against his “silence” but no one protested against the silence of Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, not even that of the Red Cross, which was involved in rescuing refugees from Nazism and forced into silence to save as many as possible.

According to research by Israeli historian Pinchas Lapide, the Catholic Church directly helped save between 847,000 and 882,000 Jews (250,000 in Romania, 200,000 in France and Hungary, 55,000 in Italy, etc.).

Hesemann reprints statements from Jewish figures who until 1963 thanked Pope Pius XII.

In 1943, Chaim Weizmann (future first president of the State of Israel) wrote that the “Holy See is lending its powerful help wherever it can, to mitigate the fate of my persecuted co-religionists”.

Isaac Herzog, Chief Rabbi of British Palestine, in 1944 expressed gratitude for what the Pope and his delegates “are doing for our unfortunate brothers and sisters in the most tragic hour of our history”.

On 21 September 1945, Leon Kubowitzky, secretary general of the World Jewish Congress, thanked the Pope for his interventions, and the World Jewish Congress donated $20,000 to Vatican charities “in recognition of the work of the Holy See in rescuing Jews from Fascist and Nazi persecutions”.

In the closing days of the war Moshe Sharett, Israel’s second prime minister, met with Pius and “told him 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”.

Raffaele Cantoni, president of the UCEI (Union of Jewish Communities in Italy) said after the war “that six million of my coreligionists were murdered by the Nazis but the number could have been much higher without the efficacious intervention of Pius XII.”

In 1955, the Union of Italian Jewish Communities proclaimed 17 April“Day of Gratitude” for the Pope’s wartime assistance.

On 26 May 1955, the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra flew to Rome to give a special performance of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, at the Vatican's Consistory Hall, “to express the State of Israel's enduring gratitude for the help that the Pope and the Catholic Church had given to the Jewish people persecuted by the Nazis during the Holocaust.”

Until the 1960s, Jews had only praise for Pius XII’s action in rescuing persecuted Jews. However, in 1963, a campaign against the Pontiff began in earnest when a play titled ‘The deputy’ was published. It was written by an unknown German, Rolf Hohhot, who had never consulted Vatican or Nazi archives.

Hesemann’s book shows that Hochhuth’s play was the work of the Soviet KGB. Hopefully, Russia will open its archives from the Soviet era. Yet the issue went unnoticed in the world press.

“The Deputy’ had an immediate success. Soon it was being around the world, backed by Communist parties in the West and leftwing publications. Whenever the claims made in play were denied, there were no echoes in the international press.

Never the less in March 1963, Germany issued a press release in which it said, “The Federal Government regrets that accusations have been made against Pope Pius XII. The late Pontiff on several occasions had raised his voice against racial persecution by the Third Reich and freed as many Jews as possible from the hands of their persecutors.”

Wasn't there a well-known case of an Italian Jew who actually converted to Catholicism because of Pope Pius XII?Pope Pius XII was said to be pro-German which is not the same as being pro-Nazi.There was also the Russian Orthodox Metropolitan Seraphim(Lade) of Berlin.The Metropolitan was an ethnic German from Ukraine,but not a Nazi,as evidenced by the fact that he remained the ruling bishop of ROCOR for Germany after WWII and the defeat of Hitler.

The case of the Italian Jew who became a Catholic sounds as though it might be a misunderstanding of Pius IX and a boy who eventually became a priest. He died in Belgium, a year or so before the German invasion.

Fr. Serge

Fr. Al is thinking of a very prominent Italian rabbi, who did indeed convert to Catholicism after World War II as a result of meeting Pope Pius XII. I can look up his name, but not right now.

Until the middle of the 1960s, Pope Pius had a very high reputation among Jews worldwide. It was the publication of a play called The Deputy, by a Marxist playwright (and Soviet agent) named Rolf Hochhuth, which was mainly a tissue of lies. Most other historians since that time have bought into Hochhuth's fiction, hook, line and sinker.

However, the tide seems to be turning: John Cornwell's salacious biography, Hitler's Pope, came in for significant criticism, the turning point being Rabbi David Dalin's The Myth of Hitler's Pope, which, together with such works as Rylchak's Hitler, the War and the Pope, systematically demolished not only Cornwell's scholarship but that of many earlier writers as well.

link [en.wikipedia.org]

A Catholic appraisal at the time. link [catholic.com]

A questioning Jewish appraisal. link [outreachjudaism.org]

The Jew in question was Chief Rabbi Zolli of Rome.

I'm no particular fan of Pius XII, and certainly don't understand why he is being considered for canonization, but I have to say that the "questioning Jewish appraisal" seems rather snippy and ascribes motives to Rabbi Zolli that the writer could not possibly know. Sour grapes?

Our late Holiness of Blessed memory, Pope Pius XII was a very holy man and a true Holy Father to all people of good will!!!! I hope that he will soon be beatified as he is certainly most worthy of this great honour! He saved many Jews from concentration camps!!!!!!

How ironic... on one hand, we poor Catholics are accused of not fighting for the rights of the defenseless (the Jews and other minorities during WWII) and then we are accused of imposing our beliefs when it comes to abortion and euthenasia. I wonder if some day we'll be accused of not doing enough to save the unborn, the sick, and the dying.

I agree, Alexis, that would be breathtaking progress. ALthough conversions still do take place, they have slowed down to a crawl. This is no surprise considering the Liturgical chaos in the Latin Rite. A number of years ago, I read the memoirs of Glueckel of Hameln, a 17th century Jewish Matriarch from Germany. In her writings, she often expressed hope that the Messiah would soon come and, "Redeem Israel." I felt so sorry for her, thinking, "You poor woman! You poor, poor woman! Why can you not see that He has already come?"

"For I am the Lord Thy God, who brought Thee out of the Land of Egypt. Open Thy mouth wide and I will fill it. But My People heard not my voice: and Israel hearkened not to me. So I let them go according to the desires of their heart: they shall walk in their own inventions."
Psalms 80:11-13.
Douay-Rheims Translation.

Shlomo Lkhoolkhoon,

Here are a couple of articles that help to affirm that Blessed Pius XII did fight the NAZI's.

Fush BaShlomo Lkhoolkhoon,
Yuhannon

Pius XII Defended in Israeli Newspaper [zenit.org]

American Scholar Says Defamation is "Doomed to Failure"



JERUSALEM, FEB. 1, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Similar to a defense of Pope Pius XII by French scholar Bernard-Henri Levy, American writer Dimitri Cavalli has published an article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in the same vein.

Cavalli hails from New York where he is writing a book on Pius XII. His articles have been published in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times; L'Osservatore Romano reported on the Haaretz report today.

In that piece, Cavalli asserted that the "campaign against Pope Pius XII is doomed to failure."

"[H]is detractors cannot sustain their main charges against him -- that he was silent, pro-Nazi, and did little or nothing to help the Jews -- with evidence," Cavalli contended.

The author said the proof that exists shows the contrary.

He noted that in 1933, when Cardinal Pacelli [the future Pius XII] was still secretary of state, he "instructed the papal nuncio in Germany to see what he could do to oppose the Nazis' anti-Semitic policies."

The author also points out that Pope Pius XI's 1937 encyclical "Mit brennender Sorge," which was drafted by Cardinal Pacelli, was considered by the Germans as a "security threat."

Then, Cavalli continued, when Cardinal Pacelli was elected Pope on March 2, 1939, "[o]n March 4, Joseph Goebbels, the German propaganda minister, wrote in his diary: 'Midday with the Fuehrer. He is considering whether we should abrogate the concordat with Rome in light of Pacelli's election as Pope.'"

Moreover, Cavalli continued, "During the war, the Pope was far from silent."

And, he asserted: "Unlike many of the Pope's latter-day detractors, the Nazis understood him very well.

"After studying Pius XII's 1942 Christmas message, the Reich Central Security Office concluded: 'In a manner never known before the Pope has repudiated the National Socialist New European Order. ... Here he is virtually accusing the German people of injustice toward the Jews and makes himself the mouthpiece of the Jewish war criminals.'"

"Pick up any book that criticizes Pius XII, and you won't find any mention of this important report," Cavalli reflected.

The author reiterated that during the War, representatives of the Pope "frequently ordered the Vatican's diplomatic representatives in many Nazi-occupied and Axis countries to intervene on behalf of endangered Jews."

And he observed that until the Holy Father's death in 1958 "many Jewish organizations, newspapers and leaders lauded his efforts." He cited in this regard a 1944 letter to the papal nuncio in Romania, from Alexander Shafran, chief rabbi of Bucharest.

Cavalli concludes, saying, "Perhaps only in a backward world such as ours would the one man who did more than any other wartime leader to help Jews and other Nazi victims, receive the greatest condemnation."

Here is the Israeli article in full:

Much-maligned pontiff [haaretz.com]
By Dimitri Cavalli

Some things never go away. The controversy over Pope Pius XII's actions during World War II was recently reignited when Pope Benedict XVI signed a decree affirming that his predecessor displayed "heroic virtues" during his lifetime. When the pope visited the Great Synagogue of Rome on Sunday, Riccardo Pacifici, president of Rome's Jewish community, told him: "The silence of Pius XII before the Shoah still hurts because something should have been done."

This was not the first time the wartime pope, who is now a step closer to beatification, has been accused of keeping silent during the Holocaust, of doing little or nothing to help the Jews, and even of collaborating with the Nazis. To what extent, if any, does the evidence back up these allegations, which have been repeated since the early 1960s?

On April 4, 1933, Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli, the Vatican secretary of state, instructed the papal nuncio in Germany to see what he could do to oppose the Nazis' anti-Semitic policies. On behalf of Pope Pius XI, Cardinal Pacelli drafted an encyclical, entitled "Mit brennender Sorge" ("With Burning Anxiety"), that condemned Nazi doctrines and persecution of the Catholic Church. The encyclical was smuggled into Germany and read from Catholic pulpits on March 21, 1937.

Although many Vatican critics today dismiss the encyclical as a light slap on the wrist, the Germans saw it as a security threat. For example, on March 26, 1937, Hans Dieckhoff, an official in the German foreign ministry, wrote that the "encyclical contains attacks of the severest nature upon the German government, calls upon Catholic citizens to rebel against the authority of the state, and therefore signifies an attempt to endanger internal peace."

Both Great Britain and France should have interpreted the document as a warning that they should not trust Adolf Hitler or try to appease him.

After the death of Pius XI, Cardinal Pacelli was elected pope, on March 2, 1939. The Nazis were displeased with the new pontiff, who took the name Pius XII. On March 4, Joseph Goebbels, the German propaganda minister, wrote in his diary: "Midday with the Fuehrer. He is considering whether we should abrogate the concordat with Rome in light of Pacelli's election as pope."

During the war, the pope was far from silent: In numerous speeches and encyclicals, he championed human rights for all people and called on the belligerent nations to respect the rights of all civilians and prisoners of war. Unlike many of the pope's latter-day detractors, the Nazis understood him very well. After studying Pius XII's 1942 Christmas message, the Reich Central Security Office concluded: "In a manner never known before the pope has repudiated the National Socialist New European Order ... Here he is virtually accusing the German people of injustice toward the Jews and makes himself the mouthpiece of the Jewish war criminals." (Pick up any book that criticizes Pius XII, and you won't find any mention of this important report.)

In early 1940, the pope acted as an intermediary between a group of German generals who wanted to overthrow Hitler and the British government. Although the conspiracy never went forward, Pius XII kept in close contact with the German resistance and heard about two other plots against Hitler. In the fall of 1941, through diplomatic channels, the pope agreed with Franklin Delano Roosevelt that America's Catholics could support the president's plans to extend military aid to the Soviet Union after it was invaded by the Nazis. On behalf of the Vatican, John T. McNicholas, the archbishop of Cincinnati, Ohio, delivered a well-publicized address that explained that the extension of assistance to the Soviets could be morally justified because it helped the Russian people, who were the innocent victims of German aggression.

Throughout the war, the pope's deputies frequently ordered the Vatican's diplomatic representatives in many Nazi-occupied and Axis countries to intervene on behalf of endangered Jews. Up until Pius XII's death in 1958, many Jewish organizations, newspapers and leaders lauded his efforts. To cite one of many examples, in his April 7, 1944, letter to the papal nuncio in Romania, Alexander Shafran, chief rabbi 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 relieve the sufferings of deported Jews ... The Jews of Romania will never forget these facts of historic importance."

The campaign against Pope Pius XII is doomed to failure because his detractors cannot sustain their main charges against him - that he was silent, pro-Nazi, and did little or nothing to help the Jews - with evidence. Perhaps only in a backward world such as ours would the one man who did more than any other wartime leader to help Jews and other Nazi victims, receive the greatest condemnation.

Dimitri Cavalli is an editor and writer in New York City. He is working on books on both Pope Pius XII and Joe McCarthy, the late manager of the New York Yankees.

One should note that Pius XI was also strongly opposed to Hitler and the Nazis.

Fr. Serge