Pius XII
and the Holocaust
Until 1963
the efforts of Pius XII in behalf of the Jews during WWII were well
known. The facts spoke for themselves. After the war many Jews publicly
thanked Pius XII for his help. But in 1963 the world was ripe for
anti-Catholicism. That year Rolf Hochuch's play "The Deputy" accused
Pius XII for failing to condemn the killing of Jews. The media seized
the opportunity without bothering to find the facts. Since then other
defamatory works have been produced.
We cannot allow lies to poison our understanding of history.
The truth about Pope Pius XII needs to be said.
Books and Articles Concerning Pius
XII and the Holocaust
PiusXII_Holocaust_Articles
cfpeople.org
Pius XII and the Second World
War: According to the Archives of the Vatican
Pierre Blet S.J., Lawrence J.
Johnson (Translator)
Paulist Press
September 1999
Hardcover - 416 pages illustrate edition
Available @ $20.00 (November 1999) from
The Catholic Book
Club
Fr. Blet was one of the four editors who
spent 17 years working on the 12-volume The Acts and Documents of the
Holy See Relative to World War II. The short article,
Pius XII is
victim of calumny, scholar says, lays out some of Fr. Blet's views.
Personal Observations on Pius XII and
the jews
Christopher McGath
Prior to reading the Newsweek
article by Kenneth Woodward listed below, I too shared the belief
that, while Pius XII may not have been indifferent or anti-Semitic as
John Cornwell alleges in Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius
XII, he had certainly done too little to oppose Nazism and aid its
Jewish victims. As a Catholic, I was ashamed of that. After reading
Mr. Woodward's piece, however, I did some digging and found several
articles on the Internet that speak favorably about Pius's attitude
toward the Jewish people and his activities during World War II. Given
how widespread the belief that Pius did not do enough is, these articles
astounded me. What struck me most is that, first, many of the defenders
of Pius XII are Jews who testify to what they know about Pius's
actions.and, second, that it is Nazis who make the strongest argument
that Pius was anti-Nazi. Based on what I have read, I am very skeptical
about Mr. Cornwell's conclusions.
The majority of the sites supporting
Pius's actions are by conservative Catholic sources. However, the most
of the evidence they present is voluminous testimony from Jewish
sources. I find it difficult to believe that so many of these people
could be so wrong about Pius's actions. A good summary of the testimony
they present comes from The Last Three Popes and the Jews, by
Israeli diplomat, scholar, and, finally, Orthodox Rabbi Pinchas Lapide.
He states: "No Pope in history has been thanked more heartily by Jews."
Upon his death in 1958, "Several suggested in open letters that a Pope
Pius XII forest of 860,000 trees be planted on the hills of Judea in
order to fittingly honor the memory of the late Pontiff", because they
believed: "The Catholic Church under the pontificate of Pius XII was
instrumental in saving the lives of as many as 860,000 Jews from certain
death at Nazi hands."
The most critical point in this issue is
Pius's "silence" in the face of the Holocaust. During Pope John Paul
II's visit to the Middle East, almost every media piece raised the point
that some were disturbed that John Paul II did not apologize for the
Church's failure to act against the Holocaust. What seems to be common
knowledge here too is wrong. It is known that Pius was in fact
preparing a statement in 1942 condemning the Nazi's persecution of the
Jews. However, as a result of the Nazis' reaction to the Dutch Bishops'
protest against the exportation of their Jewish co-nationals, he decided
against making a public protest. In Pius XII As He Really Was
[1], Dr. Peter Gumpel S.J. writes:
The action of the Dutch bishops had
important repercussions. Pius XII had already prepared the text of
a public protest against the persecution of the Jews. Shortly before
this text was sent to L’Osservatore Romano, news reached him
of the disastrous consequences of the Dutch bishops’ initiative. He
concluded that public protests, far from alleviating the fate of the
Jews, aggravated their persecution and he decided that he could not
take the responsibility of his own intervention having similar and
probably even much more serious consequences. Therefore he burnt the
text he had prepared. The International Red Cross, the nascent
World Council of Churches and other Christian Churches were fully
aware of such consequences of vehement public protests and, like
Pius XII, they wisely avoided them.
As for Pius's attitude toward Nazism, in an
address at Lourdes in April 1935, before he was elected pope, he stated:
[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
the social revolution, whether they are guided by a false conception
of the world and of life, or whether they are possessed by the
superstition of a race and blood cult.
A month after Hitler's suicide, Pope Pius
XII, speaking before the College of Cardinals, called Hitler a "satanic
apparition."[2]
These sources also present several statements by Nazis, both before and
during the war, that indicate that they considered Pius anti-Nazi. The
day after his election, the Berlin Morgenpost reported: 'The
election of cardinal Pacelli is not accepted with favor in Germany
because he was always opposed to Nazism and practically determined the
policies of the Vatican under his predecessor." A few weeks after
Pacelli was elected pope, the German Reich's Chief Security Service
issued a report on the new Pope that stated. "Pacelli has already made
himself prominent by his attacks on National Socialism during his tenure
as Cardinal Secretary of State, a fact which earned him the hearty
approval of the Democratic States during the papal elections."
An analysis of Pius's 1942 Christmas
message by Reinhard Heydrich's Reich Central Security Office concluded:
In a manner never known before, the Pope
has repudiated the National Socialist New European Order. His radio
allocution was a masterpiece of clerical falsification of the
National Socialist Weltanschauung...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...God, he says, regards all
peoples and races as worthy of the same consideration. Here he is
clearly speaking on behalf of the Jews...That this speech is
directed exclusively against the New Order in Europe as seen in
National Socialism is clear in the papal statement that mankind owes
a debt to 'all who during the war have lost their Fatherland and
who, although personally blameless have, simply on account of their
nationality and origin, been killed or reduced to utter
destitution.' Here he is virtually accusing the German people of
injustice towards the Jews, and makes himself the mouthpiece of the
Jewish war criminals.
Several items I have found make it
impossible for me to believe Mr. Cornwell's accusation that Pius XII was
anti-Semitic. In the papal encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge, whose
final form Pius XI attributed to then-Cardinal Pacelli, he made the
statement that Catholics must never be anti-Semitic because "we are all
Semites spiritually" and ought to hold the Jewish people in high regard
accordingly. Rabbi Lapide relates that shortly after his election, Pius
reaffirmed: "It is impossible for a Catholic to be an anti-Semite;
spiritually all of us are Semites." In "The Real Story of Pius XII and
the Jews" in The Salisbury Review, Spring 1996, James Bogel
writes:
After the war was over, Pius XII
received a large delegation of Roman Jews in the Vatican and ordered
that the Imperial steps be opened for them to enter by. These steps
were usually reserved for crowned Heads of State...The Pope received
them in the Sistine chapel and, seeing that his Jewish visitors felt
uncomfortable in that place, he came down from his throne and warmly
welcomed them telling them to feel completely at home, saying "I am
only the Vicar of Christ but you are His very kith and kin."
I have reached the same conclusion as Dr.
Joseph Lichten, a Jewish Polish lawyer who served as the Director on
International Affairs Department for the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai
B'rith. In A Question of Judgment: Pius XII and the Jews, which
he wrote in response to the publication of Roch Hochhuth's play, The
Deputy, in 1963, Dr. Lichten called the criticism leveled at Pius
XII after the play's publication "a stupefying paradox", because: "No
one who reads the record of Pius XII's actions on behalf of Jews can
subscribe to Hochhuth's accusation." If I were asked to recommend one
thing that someone who was considering this subject should read, I would
suggest this work. It is available at
The Jewish Student Online Research Center (JSOURCE).
Please note that this page is not
intended to be a plug for Pius XII's canonization (sainthood). I know
too little about the man to have an opinion about his saintliness. My
intent is to do what little I can to keep Mr. Cornwell's book from
deepening the cynicism that exists concerning religion in general and
organized religion in particular and from poisoning Jewish-Catholic
relations. For this reason, I think that it is vital that the truth
concerning Pius's attitude toward the Jewish people and his actions
during World War II be known.
I hope you find these sources as
convincing as I do. (And, if my conclusion about Pius XII's attitude and
actions changes, I will setup a page that presents evidence for that
view.)
1/ Peter Gumpel, S.J.
Church historian who has studied Pius extensively as relator for his
canonization process.
The Tablet, February 13, 1999
From article:
[A]s a German I know the history of my country and have lived under the
Nazi regime in both Germany and Holland. The fact that several members
of my family were killed by the Nazis and that I myself had twice to go
into exile in order to avoid a similar fate, allows me to be
particularly sensitive to the monstrous crime of the Holocaust and to
the justified reactions of Jews to what millions of their people have
suffered.
2/ Walter Sundberg
in "Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil", a review
of The Hitler of History, by John Lukacs in First Things,
February, 1999, pp. 56-59. (I chose to note this rather than creating a
link to the source because it is a single line in a long article.)
Christopher McGath
March 31, 2000
