Catalyst 5/1998)

On March 16, the Vatican issued a long-awaited document on the Holocaust, “We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah.” The document was not an apology, but it was a call for repentance. It stated the Church’s understanding of the causes of Hitlerism, the mixed response of Catholics to the Holocaust and the role which Pope Pius XII played in trying to alleviate the suffering of Jews and others.

The response to the document was anything but uniform. Comments ranged from high praise to high condemnation, and many of the remarks were decidedly mixed. There has already been much analysis of the document, as well as commentary on the reactions to it. The Catholic League’s position has been to respond to those editorials, articles and cartoons that it found unfair.

What follows is a select sampling of the varied response to “We Remember” that surfaced from the Jewish community.

“I believe that the Vatican statement is correct in asserting that Nazi antisemitism ‘had its roots outside of Christianity,’ that it was not derived from anti-Jewish doctrines of the church but rather from an ‘exacerbated nationalism’ and a secular ‘pseudo-scientific’ racism. Nazi texts provide no evidence that the antisemitism of Hitler or Himmler was informed by the Christian characterization of the Jews as Christ-killers, condemned by God because they refused to recognize the messiah. Nazi rhetoric is drawn from different realms.”

Marc Saperstein, professor of Jewish history and director of the program in Judaic studies at George Washington University. Source: Washington Post, April 1, 1998.

“It is highly optimistic of the document to say that the anti-Semitism of Nazi ideology has its roots outside of Christianity. It denies centuries of Christian contempt and persecution of Jews and Judaism. It should be remembered that anti-Judaism created the atmosphere for the possibility of pagan anti-Semitism.”

Rabbi Leon Klenicki, director of Interfaith Affairs, Anti-Defamation League. Source: Quoted in Chicago Tribune, March 17, 1998.

“I am sad, sad and deeply disappointed. Tomorrow morning when my Jewish neighbors in my building read the paper, they’ll come to me and say, ‘Didn’t I tell you, they ain’t going to change?’ And they may be right.”

Rabbi Leon Klenicki, director of Interfaith Affairs, Anti-Defamation League.Source: Rabbi Klenicki’s published “Reading” on the document.

“We [Jews] should understand that, if we were in their [Catholic’s] shoes, we might wonder if the dialogue is a bank from which Jews only make withdrawals.”

“The organized Jewish community has to educate our people about the tremendous positive changes in the Catholic Church since Vatican II, three decades ago, and especially under the present Pope. I suspect most Jews do not fully understand, if at all, what progress has been made.

“As we desire more study and expression from the Church on sensitive matters, we too should be forthcoming on issues of concern for them. For example, we might at least discuss, if not re-evaluate, our present positions on school vouchers and partial-birth abortion. Most of all, we should be sensitive to what Catholics perceive as a widespread tendency towards ‘Catholic-bashing’ in American society.

“The Roman Catholic Church is the Jewish people’s best partner in interreligious affairs. It is time for our laity to realize that fact and for our leaders to respond accordingly.”

Rabbi Moses A. Birnbaum, spiritual leader of Plainview Jewish Center in Long Island, and a veteran of interreligious dialogue. Source: Jewish Week, March 27, 1998.

“There are elements in there [the document] that are positive, that hopefully will be picked up and used and made part of Catholic life. And there are some disappointing areas where I think it could have been strengthened greatly.”

Rabbi A. James Rudin, director of interreligious affairs, American Jewish Committee. Source: Quoted in Newsday, March 17, 1998.

“To take 10 years and find absolutely no fault in the role of Pope Pius XII calls into question the seriousness of this document.”

Rabbi Marvin Hier, Simon Wiesenthal Center. Source: Quoted by Richard Z. Chesnoff, Daily News, March 18, 1998.

“They [American Jews] did next to nothing to save the Jews of Europe, and worse, they demonized the Jews and Christians who gave their all to turn FDR. Ben Hecht and Peter Bergson were the Jews who led the fight to save the Jews of Europe. They went after FDR with great advertisements in the press in an effort to awaken the nation to the conspiracy of silence that was burying the Jews.

“The court Jews, led by Rabbi Stephen Wise, FDR’s great buddy, went after Hecht and Bergson, told the Jews of America that ‘these guys’ were the enemies of Jews…. Wise was aided in this endeavor by The New York Times and The Washington Post, both papers owned by Jews. And by one of the top Jews in Congress, Sol Bloom.

“What bothers me as a Jew is the chutzpah of the Jewish leaders. Let them look into their own archives, let them examine what their ancestors didn’t do to save the Jews of Europe. And the same for the Israelis, who have plenty to answer for.”

Sidney Zion, columnist for the Daily News. Source: Daily News, March 30, 1998.

“What’s lacking is taking moral and historical responsibility for Christian anti-Semitism. It [the document] fails to identify the direct link between the church’s historic teachings of contempt toward the Jews and the cultural environment that facilitated the Holocaust.”

Abraham Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League. Source: Quoted in New York Post, March 17, 1998.

“It is too little, too late. I have no doubt that the church did not do everything it could have to save people…. [Pius XII’s] silence cost millions of human lives.”

Meir Lau, Israel’s chief rabbi. Source: Quoted in Los Angeles Times, March 17, 1998.

“I expected much more from the Vatican and much more from this Pope. The document took long in coming, and it does not contain what I believe to be the full story of the Church’s role during the Holocaust years.”

Seymour Reich, former president of B’nai B’rith. Source: Jewish Week, March 20, 1998.

“Spectacular. They are repudiating anti-Semitism.”

Rabbi Jack Bemporad, director of the Center for Interfaith Understanding, Ramapo College. Source: Quoted in New York Times, March 17, 1998.

“Those of us who have engaged in dialogue have not yet succeeded.”

Elan Steinberg, director of the World Jewish Congress. Source: Jewish Week, March 20, 1998.

“What this document demonstrates is that those of us who are engaged in this dialogue have not yet succeeded and there is a need to strengthen the dialogue.”

Rabbi Marc Schneier, Hampton Synagogue, Westhampton Beach, Long Island. Source: Newsday, March 23, 1998.

“It should never be said that Christians were responsible for the Holocaust—Nazis were. Blaming Christians would be as unjustified as holding Jews accountable for the death of Jesus. Individuals were responsible in both situations.”

Ed Koch, former mayor of New York. Source: Daily News, March 27, 1998.

“The butchers were all baptised. The truth is that the majority of Christians did not lift a finger because in their parishes they heard repeated every day that Jews are the perfidious Christ-killers.”

Elie Wiesel, Nobel Prize winner. Source: Quoted in Reuters news story, March 17, 1998.

“The Jewish response now needs to be cautious and devoid of needless hyperbole. Dialogue is our objective, not diatribe.”

Rabbi Mark L. Shook, Congregation Temple Israel, St. Louis. Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 25, 1998.

by Sr. Margherita Marchione, M.P.F.

(Catalyst 4/1999)

Members of the media seem to deliberately falsify historical facts about the Holocaust, periodically renewing their attacks on Pope Pius XII. Unfortunately these false statements can engender the same hateful feelings that in the past have led to both anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism.

In the words of the Jewish-Hungarian scholar, Jeno Levai, it is a “particularly regrettable irony that the one person [Pope Pius XII] in all of occupied Europe who did more than anyone else to halt the dreadful crime and alleviate its consequences is today made the scapegoat for the failures of others.”

On October 15, 1944, John W. Pehle, executive director of the United States War Refugee Board, paid tribute to many non-Jewish groups and individuals who had shown a true Christian spirit in support of the persecuted during World War II. He stated: “The record of the Catholic Church in this regard has been inspiring. All over Europe, Catholic priests have furnished hiding places and protection to the persecuted. His Holiness, Pope Pius XII, has interceded on many occasions in behalf of refugees in danger.”

Pehle’s words, in a speech delivered in Boston, to “move forward onto a world of peace, where human dignity and the brotherhood of man may once more prevail,” re-echo the sentiments of the “Architect for Peace” during this period, Pope Pius XII, whose contribution toward peace and justice cannot be denied.

Indeed, Pius XII was the personification of faith in a terror-torn world and a bulwark of peace. His words may well be applied to present-day media: “That which seems to us not only the greatest evil but the root of all evil is this—often the lie is substituted for the truth and is then used as an instrument of dispute.”

The Holocaust was both anti-Jewish and anti-Christian. Far from Christian in origin, Nazism was pagan and racist.

On May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered unconditionally to the Allies. More than 11 million civilians had been murdered since the German invasion of Poland. In the Introduction to Atlas of the Holocaust, Martin Gilbert states that “in addition to the six million Jewish men, women, and children who were murdered, at least an equal number of non-Jews was also killed, not in the heat of the battle, not by military siege, aerial bombardment or the harsh conditions of modern war, but by deliberate, planned murder.”

The Vatican document, “We remember: A Reflection on the Shoah” issued on March 18, 1998, received mixed reviews in the media. On May 15, 1998, Edward Cardinal Cassidy, chairman of the Pontifical Commission that issued this document responded to the reactions of Jewish leaders at the 92^nd annual meeting of the American Jewish Committee taking place in Washington, D.C. He condemned as myth the accusation that Pope Pius XII did not do enough to stop the Holocaust: “It is our conviction that in recent years his memory has been unjustly denigrated…. Monstrous calumnies… have gradually become accepted facts especially within the Jewish community.” He reiterated that the “anti-Semitism of the Nazis was the fruit of a thoroughly neo-pagan regime with its roots outside of Christianity, and in pursuing its aims it did not hesitate to oppose the Church and persecute its members also.”

Examples abound to document Cardinal Cassidy’s contention. In 1940, in a letter to be read in all churches entitled Opere et Caritate (“By Work and by Love”), Pope Pius XII instructed the Catholic bishops of Europe to assist all people suffering from racial discrimination at the hands of the Nazis.

Two years later, on July 26, 1942, the day after the Dutch bishops ordered – in all Catholic churches — a strong denunciation of the Nazi deportation of Jews, the Nazi occupation officers met in The Hague. The record of the meeting clearly states that because the Catholic bishops interfered in something that did not concern them, deportation of all Catholic Jews would be completed within that week and no appeals for clemency would be considered.

Among those sent to the Auschwitz gas chamber at that time was Edith Stein, a distinguished intellectual who, after her conversion from Judaism to Catholicism, became a Carmelite nun. On October 11, 1998, Edith Stein, known as Sister Benedicta of the Cross (1891-1942), was canonized by Pope John Paul II. Edith Stein was killed because she was Jewish, but is also true that the Nazis sent her and other converts to Auschwitz in retaliation for the Dutch Catholic bishops’ pastoral letter condemning Nazi atrocities.

Today there seems to be a great deal of space devoted to Pope Pius XII. Incredibly, despite the documentation available, countless inaccuracies and accusations continue to dominate the media. It is difficult to understand the criticism and false statements of contemporary “experts,” who undoubtedly fail to consult the 12 volumes of Vatican documents printed between 1965-1981, four of which deal exclusively with the humanitarian efforts of Pope Pius XII.

Indeed, it is time to right the injustice toward Pope Pius XII who saved more Jews than any other person, including Oscar Schindler and Raoul Wallenberg. Vatican records indicate that Pope Pius XII operated an underground railroad that rescued European Jews from the Holocaust. He used all possible diplomatic means to condemn Nazi atrocities and aid the persecuted Jews.

It is a known fact that both the International Red Cross and the World Council of Churches agreed with the Vatican that relief efforts for the Jews would be more effective if the agencies remained quiet. When the Catholic hierarchy of Amsterdam spoke out vigorously against the Nazi treatment of the Jews, the Nazi response was redoubling of deportations. Ninety percent of the Jews in Amsterdam were deported to the concentration camps.

On the morning of October 16, 1943, the Nazis started a roundup of Rome’s eight thousand Jews who were marked for elimination: one thousand were captured. The Jews of Rome disappeared into Rome’s monasteries and convents, where they were safe until the war was over. There is documentation about an official, personal protest through the papal secretary of state. He delivered it on Pope Pius XII’s orders that same fateful morning. The operation was suspended, no doubt because of the Pope’s intervention. This gave the remaining eight thousand Jews the opportunity to hide from the Nazis.

If Pope Pius XII had protested, not only would he have been unsuccessful in halting the destruction, but he would have endangered the lives of thousands of Jews hidden in the Vatican, convents, and monasteries.

One story of compassion and love appeared in the November 1, 1943, issue of Life magazine. It began in 1941, when 150 German Jews fled from Germany armed with visas for the United Sates. In order to obtain transportation, they sought refuge in Italy. But soon, the war had become a World War. The Jews were immediately chained and arrested.

For three years they were interned in the town of Campagna, near the Bay of Salerno, living in a monastery and enjoying the loving care of the local residents. When the Allies bombed the monastery, the Jews fled to the mountains. Within days the Nazis took control of the town and they began shooting the Italians.

When the Jews learned that the Italians were without medical assistance, four Jewish surgeons, returned to the town to care for the many casualties. These Jews knew the Nazis were searching for them; if caught, they would have been shot or deported. Yet, they did not hesitate. Without medical equipment, they performed 40 major operations in two days and saved the Italians.

At the end of World War II, Dr. Joseph Nathan, representing the Hebrew Commission, addressed the Jewish Community and expressed heartfelt gratitude to those who protected and saved Jews during the Nazi-Fascist persecutions. “Above all,” he stated, “we acknowledge the Supreme Pontiff and the religious men and women who, executing the directives of the Holy Father, recognized the persecuted as their brother and, with great abnegation, hastened to help them, disregarding the terrible dangers to which they were exposed.”

It is a sad but indisputable fact that the official publications of the Holy See, documents of the Nuremberg Trial Proceedings, state papers of the warring countries, and published Vatican War Documents have been largely ignored by those who would impugn the Pope’s integrity. The twelve volumes of The Acts and Documents of the Holy See demonstrate the close collaboration between the Holy See, Jewish representative bodies, the international Red Cross, and allied governments. No one can deny that numerous protests were made by Pius XII. Despite the wealth of documentary evidence proving Pius XII’s heroism, one of the biggest lies of our times – that the Pope was “silent” about Hitler’s efforts to exterminate the Jewish people – continues.

In an effort to rectify the calumnies that the media continue to print about the role of Pius XII, the Vatican Press Office Director Joaquin Navarro-Valls responded to accusations that the Holy See has not opened its archives from the period of the Holocaust.

Navarro-Valls repeated that documents covering the period from March 1939 to May 1945 have been published and there is nothing to add to the five thousand documents already published in twelve volumes. On December 3, 1998, the Vatican Press Officer stated: “The exhaustive scrutiny of documents of the Vatican Archives allows us to state that there is nothing – I repeat, nothing – to add to what has already been published…. Whoever makes insinuations contrary to what the Holy See has repeatedly stated, should produce concrete evidence. This has, naturally, never happened.”

The media have covered the accusations; what about covering the responses? Few, if any, have been printed.

 

by Richard C. Lukas

(Catalyst 5/1998)

On March 16, the Vatican issued a long-awaited document on the Holocaust, “We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah.” The document was not an apology, but it was a call for repentance. It stated the Church’s understanding of the causes of Hitlerism, the mixed response of Catholics to the Holocaust and the role which Pope Pius XII played in trying to alleviate the suffering of Jews and others.

The response to the document was anything but uniform. Comments ranged from high praise to high condemnation, and many of the remarks were decidedly mixed. There has already been much analysis of the document, as well as commentary on the reactions to it. The Catholic League’s position has been to respond to those editorials, articles and cartoons that it found unfair.

What follows is a select sampling of the varied response to “We Remember” that surfaced from the Jewish community.

“I believe that the Vatican statement is correct in asserting that Nazi antisemitism ‘had its roots outside of Christianity,’ that it was not derived from anti-Jewish doctrines of the church but rather from an ‘exacerbated nationalism’ and a secular ‘pseudo-scientific’ racism. Nazi texts provide no evidence that the antisemitism of Hitler or Himmler was informed by the Christian characterization of the Jews as Christ-killers, condemned by God because they refused to recognize the messiah. Nazi rhetoric is drawn from different realms.”

Marc Saperstein, professor of Jewish history and director of the program in Judaic studies at George Washington University. Source: Washington Post, April 1, 1998.

“It is highly optimistic of the document to say that the anti-Semitism of Nazi ideology has its roots outside of Christianity. It denies centuries of Christian contempt and persecution of Jews and Judaism. It should be remembered that anti-Judaism created the atmosphere for the possibility of pagan anti-Semitism.”

Rabbi Leon Klenicki, director of Interfaith Affairs, Anti-Defamation League. Source: Quoted in Chicago Tribune, March 17, 1998.

“I am sad, sad and deeply disappointed. Tomorrow morning when my Jewish neighbors in my building read the paper, they’ll come to me and say, ‘Didn’t I tell you, they ain’t going to change?’ And they may be right.”

Rabbi Leon Klenicki, director of Interfaith Affairs, Anti-Defamation League. Source: Rabbi Klenicki’s published “Reading” on the document.

“We [Jews] should understand that, if we were in their [Catholic’s] shoes, we might wonder if the dialogue is a bank from which Jews only make withdrawals.”

“The organized Jewish community has to educate our people about the tremendous positive changes in the Catholic Church since Vatican II, three decades ago, and especially under the present Pope. I suspect most Jews do not fully understand, if at all, what progress has been made.

“As we desire more study and expression from the Church on sensitive matters, we too should be forthcoming on issues of concern for them. For example, we might at least discuss, if not re-evaluate, our present positions on school vouchers and partial-birth abortion. Most of all, we should be sensitive to what Catholics perceive as a widespread tendency towards ‘Catholic-bashing’ in American society.

“The Roman Catholic Church is the Jewish people’s best partner in interreligious affairs. It is time for our laity to realize that fact and for our leaders to respond accordingly.”

Rabbi Moses A. Birnbaum, spiritual leader of Plainview Jewish Center in Long Island, and a veteran of interreligious dialogue. Source: Jewish Week, March 27, 1998.

“There are elements in there [the document] that are positive, that hopefully will be picked up and used and made part of Catholic life. And there are some disappointing areas where I think it could have been strengthened greatly.”

Rabbi A. James Rudin, director of interreligious affairs, American Jewish Committee. Source: Quoted in Newsday, March 17, 1998.

“To take 10 years and find absolutely no fault in the role of Pope Pius XII calls into question the seriousness of this document.”

Rabbi Marvin Hier, Simon Wiesenthal Center. Source: Quoted by Richard Z. Chesnoff, Daily News, March 18, 1998.

“They [American Jews] did next to nothing to save the Jews of Europe, and worse, they demonized the Jews and Christians who gave their all to turn FDR. Ben Hecht and Peter Bergson were the Jews who led the fight to save the Jews of Europe. They went after FDR with great advertisements in the press in an effort to awaken the nation to the conspiracy of silence that was burying the Jews.

“The court Jews, led by Rabbi Stephen Wise, FDR’s great buddy, went after Hecht and Bergson, told the Jews of America that ‘these guys’ were the enemies of Jews…. Wise was aided in this endeavor by The New York Times and The Washington Post, both papers owned by Jews. And by one of the top Jews in Congress, Sol Bloom.

“What bothers me as a Jew is the chutzpah of the Jewish leaders. Let them look into their own archives, let them examine what their ancestors didn’t do to save the Jews of Europe. And the same for the Israelis, who have plenty to answer for.”

Sidney Zion, columnist for the Daily News. Source: Daily News, March 30, 1998.

“What’s lacking is taking moral and historical responsibility for Christian anti-Semitism. It [the document] fails to identify the direct link between the church’s historic teachings of contempt toward the Jews and the cultural environment that facilitated the Holocaust.”

Abraham Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League. Source: Quoted in New York Post, March 17, 1998.

“It is too little, too late. I have no doubt that the church did not do everything it could have to save people…. [Pius XII’s] silence cost millions of human lives.”

Meir Lau, Israel’s chief rabbi. Source: Quoted in Los Angeles Times, March 17, 1998.

“I expected much more from the Vatican and much more from this Pope. The document took long in coming, and it does not contain what I believe to be the full story of the Church’s role during the Holocaust years.”

Seymour Reich, former president of B’nai B’rith. Source:Jewish Week, March 20, 1998.

“Spectacular. They are repudiating anti-Semitism.”

Rabbi Jack Bemporad, director of the Center for Interfaith Understanding, Ramapo College. Source: Quoted in New York Times, March 17, 1998.

“Those of us who have engaged in dialogue have not yet succeeded.”

Elan Steinberg, director of the World Jewish Congress.Source: Jewish Week, March 20, 1998.

“What this document demonstrates is that those of us who are engaged in this dialogue have not yet succeeded and there is a need to strengthen the dialogue.”

Rabbi Marc Schneier, Hampton Synagogue, Westhampton Beach, Long Island. Source: Newsday, March 23, 1998.

“It should never be said that Christians were responsible for the Holocaust—Nazis were. Blaming Christians would be as unjustified as holding Jews accountable for the death of Jesus. Individuals were responsible in both situations.”

Ed Koch, former mayor of New York. Source: Daily News, March 27, 1998.

“The butchers were all baptised. The truth is that the majority of Christians did not lift a finger because in their parishes they heard repeated every day that Jews are the perfidious Christ-killers.”

Elie Wiesel, Nobel Prize winner. Source: Quoted in Reuters news story, March 17, 1998.

“The Jewish response now needs to be cautious and devoid of needless hyperbole. Dialogue is our objective, not diatribe.”

Rabbi Mark L. Shook, Congregation Temple Israel, St. Louis.Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 25, 1998.