Foundation Hails Myth-Debunking Book on Pius XII

[struggle4progress]

Says Rabbi Reveals "Other Side of the Coin"

BUENOS AIRES, AUG. 29, 2006 (Zenit.org).- The founder of the Raoul Wallenberg Foundation said a new book written by an American Rabbi on Pope Pius XII reveals another side of the debate surrounding the Pontiff.

Baruj Tenembaum, speaking at an interconfessional meeting in Buenos Aires, said that David Dalin's "The Myth of Hitler's Pope: How Pius XII Rescued Jews from the Nazis" demonstrates that how the Holy Father rescued many Jews from the Holocaust ...

Of Rome's 5,715 Jews registered by Germany for deportation, 4,715 were sheltered in 150 Catholic institutions, and of the total, 477 were in Vatican sanctuaries. The British ambassador to the Vatican confirmed this fact ...

Dalin also mentions in his book the message sent by Golda Meir, Israel's minister of foreign affairs, on the occasion of the death of Pius XII: "We mourn. We have lost a servant of peace. The Pope's voice during Nazism was clear and in defense of the victims" ...

http://www.zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=93946

[nealhughes]

1. I have heard of the revisionism. Evidently he feared that if he was "too"

outspoken then Hitler would simply give orders to the Quirnal and have Mussolini annex the Vatican, leaving him a hostage in Berlin. Evidently he did indeed give a great deal of refuge in Rome and his castle and on sovereign lands under Vatican control in Rome belonging to the Knights of Malta.
I would imagine the people of Italy were pretty sick of Mussolini after Princess Mafalda of Bulgaria/Italy was in Buchenwald...
I'm sure the Pope COULD have done more, but what is the lingering question? Had he been willing to have become a matyr and go to the camps and order every Catholic in the world to lay down arms under penalty of permanent excommunication, he would be a saint today and one of the Righteous Gentiles, like Prince Phillip, the Duke of Edinburgh's mother, who sheltered a great many Jews in Athens in her nunnery.
She was willing to take the risk.

[beam me up scottie]

2. "The Pope's voice during Nazism was clear" Really? Clear to whom?

Dalin also mentions in his book the message sent by Golda Meir, Israel's minister of foreign affairs, on the occasion of the death of Pius XII: "We mourn. We have lost a servant of peace. The Pope's voice during Nazism was clear and in defense of the victims."


From the Jewish Virtual Library: Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust

Cries for Help

Throughout the Holocaust, Pius XII was consistently besieged with pleas for help on behalf of the Jews.

In the spring of 1940, the Chief Rabbi of Palestine, Isaac Herzog, asked the papal Secretary of State, Cardinal Luigi Maglione to intercede to keep Jews in Spain from being deported to Germany. He later made a similar request for Jews in Lithuania. The papacy did nothing.(5)

Within the Pope's own church, Cardinal Theodor Innitzer of Vienna told Pius XII about Jewish deportations in 1941. In 1942, the Slovakian charge d'affaires, a position under the supervision of the Pope, reported to Rome that Slovakian Jews were being systematically deported and sent to death camps.(6)

In October 1941, the Assistant Chief of the U.S. delegation to the Vatican, Harold Tittman, asked the Pope to condemn the atrocities. The response came that the Holy See wanted to remain "neutral," and that condemning the atrocities would have a negative influence on Catholics in German-held lands.(7)

In late August 1942, after more than 200,000 Ukrainian Jews had been killed, Ukrainian Metropolitan Andrej Septyckyj wrote a long letter to the Pope, referring to the German government as a regime of terror and corruption, more diabolical than that of the Bolsheviks. The Pope replied by quoting verses from Psalms and advising Septyckyj to "bear adversity with serene patience."(8)

On September 18, 1942, Monsignor Giovanni Battista Montini, the future Pope Paul VI, wrote, "The massacres of the Jews reach frightening proportions and forms."(9) Yet, that same month when Myron Taylor, U.S. representative to the Vatican, warned the Pope that his silence was endangering his moral prestige, the Secretary of State responded on the Pope's behalf that it was impossible to verify rumors about crimes committed against the Jews.(10)

Wladislaw Raczkiewicz, president of the Polish government-in-exile, appealed to the Pope in January 1943 to publicly denounce Nazi violence. Bishop Preysing of Berlin did the same, at least twice. Pius XII refused.(11)
Papal Reasons and Responses

The Pope finally gave a reason for his consistent refusals to make a public statement in December 1942. The Allied governments issued a declaration, "German Policy of Extermination of the Jewish Race," which stated that there would be retribution for the perpetrators of Jewish murders. When Tittman asked Secretary of State Maglione if the Pope could issue a similar proclamation, Maglione said the papacy was "unable to denounce publicly particular atrocities."(12) One reason for this position was that the staunchly anti-communist Pope felt he could not denounce the Nazis without including the Communists; therefore, Pius XII would only condemn general atrocities.(13)

The Pope did speak generally against the extermination campaign. On January 18, 1940, after the death toll of Polish civilians was estimated at 15,000, the Pope said in a broadcast, "The horror and inexcusable excesses committed on a helpless and a homeless people have been established by the unimpeachable testimony of eye-witnesses."(14) During his Christmas Eve radio broadcast in 1942, he referred to the "hundreds of thousands who through no fault of their own, and solely because of their nation or race, have been condemned to death or progressive extinction."(15) The Pope never mentioned the Jews by name.

The Pope's indifference to the mistreatment of Jews was often clear. In 1941, for example, after being asked by French Marshal Henri Philippe Petain if the Vatican would object to anti-Jewish laws, Pius XII answered that the church condemned racism, but did not repudiate every rule against the Jews.(16) When Petain's French puppet government introduced "Jewish statutes," the Vichy ambassador to the Holy See informed Petain that the Vatican did not consider the legislation in conflict with Catholic teachings, as long as they were carried out with "charity" and "justice."(17)

In a September 1940 broadcast, the Vatican called its policy "neutrality," but stated in the same broadcast that where morality was involved, no neutrality was possible.(18) This could only imply that mass murder was not a moral issue.

On September 8, 1943, the Nazis invaded Italy and, suddenly, the Vatican was the local authority. The Nazis gave the Jews 36 hours to come up with 50 kilograms of gold or else the Nazis would take 300 hostages. The Vatican was willing to loan 15 kilos, an offer that eventually proved unnecessary when the Jews obtained an extension for the delivery.(19)

Pius XII knew that Jewish deportations from Italy were impending. The Vatican even found out from SS First Lieutenant Kurt Gerstein the fate of those who were to be deported.(20) Publicly, the Pope stayed silent. Privately, Pius did instruct Catholic institutions to take in Jews. The Vatican itself hid 477 Jews and another 4,238 Jews were protected in Roman monasteries and convents.(21)

On October 16, the Nazis arrested 1,007 Roman Jews, the majority of whom were women and children. They were taken to Auschwitz, where 811 were gassed immediately. Of those sent to the concentration camp, 16 survived.(22)

*****

Conclusion

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.(33) 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.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/pius.html

David Dalin's "The Myth of Hitler's Pope: How Pius XII Rescued Jews from the Nazis" demonstrates that how the Holy Father rescued many Jews from the Holocaust.

While condemning countless others to an unimaginable hell.

[Ian David]

4. Monsters often find peace with themselves by occasionally showing mercy...

They tell themselves that by sparing a few here and there, that it gives them absolution for all their other atrocities... that it demonstrates some sort of humanity within themselves.

There's never been such a thing as a good pope.

[beam me up scottie]

5. You know, I don't even care if people want to believe he was a hero.

Just as long as they don't try to whitewash history in order to support their delusion.

The victims of the Holocaust deserve better.




Not surprising that this bit of sloppy revisionist history is featured on Conservative Book Service's website, is it?

Right alongside Ann Coulter's latest spittle-flecked diatribe.

And, look, customers who bought his book also bought "How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization" by Thomas Woods, Jr. and "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades)" by Robert Spencer.

[beam me up scottie]

3. Too bad he couldn't interview two-year-old Fiorella Anticoli

Liliana Picciotto Fargion. Il Libro della Memoria. Gli Ebrei deportati dall'Italia (1943-1945). Milan: Mursia, 1991.






This meticulously and painstakingly researched work reconstructs the deportation of Italian Jewry to the German death camps. Out of a Jewish population that by 1943 had been reduced by emigration to slightly over 40,000 (of whom 6,500 were foreigners), 6,746 were deported from Italy proper, and another 1,820 from the Dodecanese, Italian possessions in the Aegean. An additional 303 Jews were killed on Italian soil. Identities of at least 900-1,100 other victims have not been established.

The present work lists in precise demographic detail the names of the known deceased together with the date and place of each arrest, initial place of incarceration, date of departure for Auschwitz, convoy number (forty-four trains set out from Italy), date of debarkation at the camp (the journey took about five days), and date of execution. For most, this was the same day as arrival.

The cover photo shows two-year-old Fiorella Anticoli, seized with her entire family in the infamous roundup of almost 1,300 Roman Jews on 16 October 1943. The arrests were carried out by units of the S.S. specially trained for such "actions" and sent to the Italian capital for the purpose. Working under the very walls of the Vatican, the operation had to be carried out as efficiently and with as little tumult and commotion as possible.

http://www.library.wisc.edu/libraries/dpf/Fascism/Images/FRY63.html