Pius XII and the Jews

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Pius XII and the Jews

Throughout history, the Papacy has played a strategic and vital role in world events. The excommunication of Elizabeth I of England led to the final secession of the Anglican Church from the Catholic Church and led to England gaining control of the world's sea routes, which ultimately led to the founding of America.# The power and influence possessed by this chosen man has shaped in many aspects the world as we know it. The pope attempts to use this power to shape the world into a better place for mankind, but sometimes he fails. A failure of Pope Pius XII, pope during World War II, cost the lives of millions upon millions of Jews. Why did Pope Pius XII fail to speak out and denounce the liquidation of European Jews by the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler in hopes of discouraging Hitler and the Third Reich from moving forward with the extermination?

Pleas for the pope's public denouncement of Hitler during the war have been well documented. Many people felt that the pope, being the most powerful religious figure in the world, would have been able to persuade people in the favor of the Jews. Many of the world's most powerful and influential figures during World War II requested for the pope to speak out. Even though the pope had helped to save a couple thousand Jews in Rome, in private, by allowing for them to stay in Catholic churches, his public denunciation of the Nazis could have helped to save millions of Jews. One plea came from Hungary and called for the pope to denounce Hitler and to tell of his support for Christians who stood in resistance of the movement of the Hungarian Jews from Hungary to concentration camps. It came on January , 14, from Wladislaw Raczkiewicz, President of the Polish government, who was in exile. He wrote that his people

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"do not ask so much for material or diplomatic help, because they know their possibilities for receiving such help are slim, but they implore that a voice be raised to show clearly and plainly where the evil lies and to condemn those in the service of evil. If these people can be reinforced in their conviction that divine law knows no compromise and that it stands above any human consideration of the moment, they will, I am sure, find the strength to resist."#This plea came only nine days after the pope's Christmas Message in which he hinted to the actions of the Germans but never said specifically who was committing the acts and that it should cease. The passage in question reads "humanity owes this vow to hundreds of thousands of people who through no fault of their own and solely because of their nation or their race, have been condemned to death or progressive extinction."#This is the closest the pope came in his address in reference to the Jews. But, as one may read, never was Hitler, Nazis, or Jews mentioned in this excerpt. The Pope had made the vague statement in hope that it would silence his critics. The Pope devoted only one or two sentences of a lengthy speech to one of the most pressing and disgusting acts of World War II. This is the only documented negative public mention of the events transpiring in Europe that the pope made the entire time during the war. Pius stated later that he felt he had been very clear in his meaning. In an interview with Harold Tittman# shortly afterwards, Tittman wrote" The pope gave me the impression that he was sincere in believing that he had spoken therein clearly enough to satisfy all those who had been insisting in the past that he utter some word of condemnation of the Nazi atrocities, and he seemed surprised when I told him that there were some who did not share his belief."#How could the pope not realize how unclear his message had been? Also, the pope merely mentions the fact that people were being killed. Not once did he say who was responsible, nor did he even mention a single word denouncing the parties responsible for the actions. Many of the pope's close friends and confidants have stated that the pope spoke against the Third Reich in private. But the people of Germany did not hear what the pope said in private, they heard only what he said in his speeches and addresses. Tittman also wrote that"He [Pius XII] stated that he "feared" that there was foundation for the atrocity reports of the allies but led me to believe that he felt that there had been some exaggeration for purposes of propaganda."#The second statement is quite alarming. Let's say for a moment that he was right and there was some exaggeration. Is it any more alarming to say the Nazis killed half a million Jews rather than a million? Apparently, it made a difference to the pope, but to the victims and their families, it was still a great loss. Of course countries are going to use propaganda during times of war, but as the old saying goes "where there's smoke there's fire." There are not any documented attempts of the pope to look into the accuracy of these allegations against the Nazis. Another plea to the pope came on September 5, 144. It was sent by Isaac Herzog, the Chief Rabbi of Palestine, to the Papal Delegate to Egypt and Palestine urging that" the pope make a public appeal to the Hungarian people and call upon them to place obstacles in the way of the deportation; that he declare in public that any person obstructing the deportation will receive the blessing of the church, whereas any person aiding the Germans will be denounced."#Nobody can be sure if an appeal made by the pope would have made an impact, but we will never know because the pope failed to speak out. But we do know that by failing to speak out the pope did not help matters. It is possible that by speaking out, the pope would have possibly infuriated Hitler and made things worse for the Jews. But how could things be worse? The Nazi's were already killing Jews as fast as possible. They would stuff hundreds in cattle cars to move them to locations where they would put hundreds in large gas chambers.

It is certain that the German church feared the possibility of the pope taking a stand against them. It is clear that any country involved in a war would not want the most powerful religious figure in the world to be against them, but it was especially pertinent to the Nazis because of the type of situation it entailed. In the fall of 14 the Germans began rounding up Jews in Rome. On October 15, Bishop Hudal, the Head of the German Church in Rome, wrote a letter to General Stahel, the German Military Commander in Rome. The letter stated" I have just been informed by a high Vatican office in the immediate circle of the holy father that the arrests of Jews of Italian nationality have begun this morning. In the interest of the good relations which have existed between the Vatican and the high German Military Command... I would be very grateful if you would give an order to stop these arrests in Rome and its vicinity right away; I fear that otherwise the pope will have to make an open stand which will serve the anti-German propaganda as a weapon against us."#This lone letter establishes the feelings of the German Church. It proves that the Church of Germany feared that if the pope was to take a stand against them, it would hurt them, and they wanted to avoid this if at all possible. Yet, as a thousand Roman Jews were collected by the Nazi's, the pope still remained silent. This lack of action by the pope served to the Germans as a demonstration of the pope's desire not to speak out against their actions. They felt that by not being against them he must be for them. On October 8, Ernst Heinrich Von Weizsacker, German ambassador to the Vatican, wrote to Germany " Although under pressure from all sides , the pope has not let himself be drawn into any demonstrative censure of the deportation of the Jews from Rome. Although he must expect that his attitude will be criticized by our enemies and exploited by the Protestant and Anglo-Saxon countries in their propaganda against Catholicism, he has done everything he could I this delicate matter not to strain relations with the German government and German circles in Rome. As there is probably no reason to expect other German actions against the Jews of Rome, wee can consider that a question so disturbing to German-Vatican relations has been liquidated."#Weizsacker clearly felt that the pope had no desire to speak out against Germany. By his failure to speak out he hurt himself and the Jews but he helped the Nazis. Why did Pius XII not want to speak out against Germany? One of the most highly debated arguments is that the pope's hatred for communism in the Soviet Union was motivation enough for him to allow the Nazi's to continue their mass killings because at the same time they were battling the Bolsheviks. Possibly Pius felt that he had to decide between the millions of Jews that were being massacred and the suffering Christians living in the Soviet Union. By denouncing Nazism, the pope felt that he would be taking the side of the allies and condoning communism. It was as if the pope had to decide between the greater of two evils, genocide or Communism. The pope obviously chose communism as the greater evil. Whether this was the right decision is a matter of opinion. The pope said this of socialism in his Christmas message to the world on December 4, 14"The Church always moved by religious motives, has condemned the various forms of Marxist Socialism, and she condemns them today, because it is her permanent right and duty to safeguard mankind from currents of thought and influences that jeopardise its eternal salvation."#This quote is somewhat strange in that Jews were mankind and Nazism was a current of thought and influence but the pope was not speaking out against it. The pope clearly stood in opposition to Communism. Whether this was the true motivation for the pope's behavior, one will never know. It is merely a hypothesis as to an explanation of the pope's actions. Yet, there are so many documented occasions of the pope denouncing Communism publicly, and none of the pope attacking Nazism, other than in private, that one would be led to believe that his distaste for Communism was far greater than that for Nazism. The pope spoke out against Communism again in his Christmas Message to the World on December 4, 155."We [The Catholic Church] reject Communism as a social system by virtue of Christ's doctrine, and we have a particular obligation to proclaim the fundamental principles of natural law. For the same reason we likewise reject the opinion that the Christian ought today to see Communism as a phenomenon or a stage in the course of history, almost a necessary point in its evolution, and consequently to accept it as if it were decreed by Divine Providence."#Another explanation that has been adopted in reference to the pope's silence is that the pope had little or no knowledge as to the actual killing of the Jews. But is that really possible? This is what many of the pope's friends and members of the catholic church claim. In an interview in 166, Father Robert Leiber, secretary and personal confidant to the pope, stated"He [Pius XII] thought there were two types of Jews to be distinguished; those that were to be "liquidated," which happened in general in the concentration camps, especially at Auschwitz; and those who were allowed to live, as at Threesienstaddt. The pope was not entirely correct there. But that was learned only much later, after the war was over. The "Final Solution",no, he did not know of that! I can remember. We learned much, but not everything!"#This is the stance taken by many of the defenders of Pius. But it just does not seem to hold water. There are documents upon documents outlining what was occurring in Germany. How could the pope, one of the most connected and learned men in the entire world, be completely oblivious to the killings of millions of people? Some of these people even came from the very city in which he resided. There were many occasions when notes and letters were sent to the Vatican outlining the movement and killing of Jews. One such note was sent from Myron C. Taylor, United States President Roosevelt's Special Envoy to the Holy See, to Cardinal Luigi Maglione# on September 6, 14. The note itself is entirely too long to be reproduced completely but one of the more important sections reads" Without any distinction, all Jews, irrespective of age or sex, are being removed from the Warsaw ghetto in groups and shot. Their corpses are utilized for making fats, and their bones for the manufacture of fertilizer."#The note goes on to say that 100,000 Jews in Warsaw had already been executed. The sheer brutality and savageness of the events outlined in this letter are horrific. There is no doubt that the Pope saw this note. Yet, he still remained silent. Did he not believe it or did he just choose to ignore it? It would be comprehendable that he did not believe it if it had been an isolated letter and no other letters stated anything similar to this one's content. One even more dependable letter, which stated much of the same facts, was given by Colonel Kurt Gerstein of the SS to Msgr. Preysing, Archbishop of Berlin, with the request that it be forwarded to the Holy See. To this day, the Holy See has not denied receiving this report. It gives a vivid account of Jews being forced from cattle cars into gas chambers by the hundreds. This note was written by one of the people in charge of the executions. How much more reliability could the pope want? Why would a man purposely make up something like that in order to hurt the country that he served?

Another argument in favor of the pope's silence is that by publicly speaking out he would only be causing more deaths. On October 6, 14, Tittman informed the U.S. State Department that"The Holy See is apparently convinced that a forthright denunciation by the Pope of Nazi atrocities, in at least so far as Poland is concerned, would only result in the violent deaths of many more people."# There is foundation in this argument, but had he spoken out there would have been, for all intensive purposes, two possible outcomes. The first being that the Pope was right and Hitler would not only kill the Jews but the Catholics who impeded the extermination. The latter being that many Catholics within and outside of Germany would realize the maliciousness of Hitler's actions and slow if not stop the killing machine. Nobody will ever know for sure which one of these outcomes would have occurred had the pope spoken out. Pius chose to let the Jews die in vain. Even if Hitler had killed some Catholics, they would have died as heroes, martyrs even, who stood up for what they felt to be right. Pius also feared that by speaking out he could be endangering himself. But if the pope is too scared to stand up and sacrifice himself for what is right, then what kind of world have we become. It is bad enough that we already have a man trying to kill an entire race of people. It only makes it worse when the one man in the world who is supposed to be the epitome of piety, love, and sacrifice is too terrified to stand up for what is right and sacrifice himself for the benefit of all mankind.

Most estimates today pertaining to the number of Jews killed by the Nazi "extermination machine" are in the area of six million. Even if the Pope failed to know the full extent of German actions, how could he choose not to speak out, knowing that even a million were killed. The Pope had two possible paths to take. The first, which he chose, was to be silent and to allow the Germans to kill millions upon millions of Jews in an attempt to eradicate all the Jews of Europe, or he could have broken his silence and denounced Hitler and Nazism. The latter of which could have at least had a chance of stopping Hitler. It will never be known without a doubt what would have resulted had Pope Pius XII broken his silence, but we do know that his decision could have very well cost the lives of millions of Jews.

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