JTA: The Global News Service of the Jewish People

12/31/09 01:53 AM

Pis XII saved a few Jews and thousands of Nazis whose way to South American he and his fascist pals paid for with concentration camp gold.  He will make a great catholic saint.

12/31/09 02:30 AM

It is to be hoped that Pius XII did more to save Jewish lives than is commonly
believed.  However, there is one thing he could have done, but for whatever
reason, and according to the agenda of the Vatican and the Catholic Church
possibly good and necessary, but did not.
On the morning of October 16, 1943, the Germans then in occupation of Rome,
did a raid primarily in the old Ghetto, rounding up whatever Jews they could lay
their hands on.  I believe some 1000 Jews were gathered up in one of the Ghetto
piazzas before being brought to one of the Roman train stations, and then deported East where most of them were murdered.  These Jews were largely
the Pope’s Jews, some of them may have been born papal subjects.  (Rome
was taken by the new Kingdom of Italy only in 1870.)
Pius XII could have practically seen the ongoing raid and deportation from
his window.  The Ghetto is walking distance from the Vatican.  Why didn’t the
Pope go immediately to the Ghetto and try to prevent these innocent people being taken
from the Holy and Eternal City of Rome?
Earlier that year, in July 1943, there was an Allied bombing raid in the San
Lorenzo district of Rome.  As soon as Pius XII was informed of the attack, he
ordered his limousine to take to San Lorenzo and he was there within minutes
to comfort and aid his people.  There is a well-known photograph of Pius XII
in the midst of his flock of the San Lorenzo district.  He was after all the Bishop
of Rome. 
If Pius XII could have gone to San Lorenzo in July, he could have gone to
the Ghetto in October.  The Ghetto may be a little closer to the Vatican.  Whatever else Pope Pius XII did or didn’t do regarding the Nazis, the Jews and
their fate, this inaction on October 16, 1943 is just unforgivable.

12/31/09 06:26 AM

Pope Pius XII was being BLACKMAILED by Hitler. There were 2000 Catholic Prieats and 400 Protestant ministers incarcerated in Dachau concentration camp, rescued at the end of the war. Records are publicly available at the Dachau museum. Also read, “Christ in Dachau”, by Fr. John Lenz, one of the priest inmates. It is available through Amazon aned other book sellers

12/31/09 10:50 AM

Might I suggest reviewing the very comprehensive research gathered by The Jewish Virtual Library [http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/pius.html].

Shira Schoenberg writes, “The Pope’s reaction to the Holocaust was complex and inconsistent. At times, he tried to help the Jews and was successful. But these successes only highlight the amount of influence he might have had, if he not chosen to remain silent on so many other occasions. No one knows for sure the motives behind Pius XII’s actions, or lack thereof, since the Vatican archives have only been fully opened to select researchers. Historians offer many reasons why Pope Pius XII was not a stronger public advocate for the Jews: A fear of Nazi reprisals, a feeling that public speech would have no effect and might harm the Jews, the idea that private intervention could accomplish more, the anxiety that acting against the German government could provoke a schism among German Catholics, the church’s traditional role of being politically neutral and the fear of the growth of communism were the Nazis to be defeated.(34) Whatever his motivation, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the Pope, like so many others in positions of power and influence, could have done more to save the Jews.”

Accordingly, it seems implausible to consider Pius XII for Beatification. .. But, I am NOT Catholic.

01/02/10 03:53 AM

The beatification process of Eugenio Pacelli, Pope Pius XII, maintains open the question of world leaders, not just the Vatican, of passive complicity in the destruction of European Jewry. Under the Vatican leadership of Pius XII some Jews were protected, as were a few by Churchill’s England and Roosevelt’s United States. Indeed there were Jews who, following the war, hailed Pacelli a hero, as there were those who hailed Churchill and Roosevelt for their assumed efforts in behalf of our victims. But, as with the Vatican, neither of the “world’s leading democracies” made any effort beyond symbolic to save Europe’s Jews. Yes, towards the end of the war Roosevelt hesitantly permitted a few fleeing death to be housed in a refugee camp in upper New York State. England apparently had a somewhat better record of admitting Jews fleeing death. But British-controlled Palestine, the only real refuge for the victims remained closed to them. And the death camps and the rail lines daily feeding our victims remained untouched, free to pursue their obsession to rid Europe and the world of Jews. And allied bombers daily over-flew the death camps and their rail feeder lines daily. 

The claim is made that the Vatican intelligence network was the most extensive regarding the unfolding Holocaust and this may have been so. But this does not change the fact that England’s monitoring of German military communications provided up-to-date reports of Einsatsgruppen success in a Germany’s pre-Auschwitz murder campaign. In less than a year those death squads managed to murder up-close and personal by rifle, machine gun and pistol one million Jews while the allies chose to look the other way.

Did Pacelli’s Vatican assist Nazi’s to evade justice, assist them to find new homes in South America? This is well documented. But so also is the complicity of the US in the effort called, at the time, the Rat Line. But America went a step further by inviting those Nazis considered more valuable to quietly settle in the United States. Among those who found refuge from prosecution for war crimes was, most famously, Hitler’s rocket scientist von Braun, whose efforts involved working his slave laborers to death.

Of guilt enough there is enough to go around. Not just Pacelli’s Vatican, but Roosevelt’s United States, Churchill’s England. And while Germany may have been the inspiration behind the Holocaust that country could not have succeeded in cleansing Europe of its six million Jews without the open and enthusiastic support of the people and governments of Europe itself. France apparently had no problem of conscience rounding up its Jews for transport to death; and not even members of those einsatsgruppe expressed revulsion in those field reports ignored by the allies at the excesses of East European townspeople, inspired by their German occupiers, clubbing their Jewish neighbors to death. Even after the war, its tiny Jewish remnant returning from the death camps, the citizens of Yavne, a small town in Poland, were herded by their pre-war friends and neighbors into a barn and set ablaze. Who needed the “Nazis” to inspire and blame? 

None of which is justification for the beatification of Eugenio Pacelli, of course. But then how should we respond to the same complicity-by-passivity of, say, Franklin Delano Roosevelt? Let us not, we Jews who by accident of birth location survived the Holocaust, be distracted by the celebrity of a single high profile instance of Holocaust denial. Conclusions must be drawn also from the obvious fact that our leaders also are guilty, also complicit in the murder of Europe’s Jews. 

Holocaust denial comes in many shades and serves many purposes. When not intentionally antisemitic, its proponents may simply be attempting to distance Christendom’s murder of Jews in the 1940’s from Christianity’s gospel-inspired theology of Jew-hatred. Persecuting and murdering the Jews is, after all, as long as the Diaspora in Europe. And while no less reprehensible, this motive is at least understandable. But what’s in for we Jews who ourselves deny the implications of the Holocaust? What do we gain from criticizing the Vatican move to promote to sainthood an individual clearly flawed as judged by his response to the unfolding policy of the Holocaust; at the same time choosing not to judge our own national leadership who were no less guilty?

Viewed through the same moral lens by which we criticize the beatification of the head of the Holocaust-era Vatican, Roosevelt comes out no less blemished. We Jews are justifiably outraged by this Vatican action; at the same time we choose to ignore that of our own national leaders. Towards what purpose?

As long as Shoah occurred “over there,” perpetrated by leaders “over there” we, resident of our own “exceptional” Diaspora haven can rest easy. As did our relatives in Germany in the 1920’s we can deny our continuing Diaspora history of victimhood and assure ourselves of a continuing and happy future, a safe haven for our children, and theirs.

Are we, Shoah’s victims, responsible for the Holocaust, No. Our responsibility lies in our denying the significance of Shoah for our children. By choosing to ignore the lessons of our Diaspora history in Christendom, by that choice do we perpetuate our victimhood.

It is this choice that defines Jewish Holocaust denial.