People often ask: why did Pius XII, Eugenio Pacelli, not
speak out more forcefully against Hitler? Historian Fr Dermot Fenlon of the
Birmingham Oratory looks at the facts and sets the record straight.
The answer is recounted by a former inmate of Dachau,
Mgr Jean Bernard, later Bishop of Luxembourg:
"The detained priests trembled every time news
reached us of some protest by a religious authority, but particularly by
the Vatican. We all had the impression that our warders made us atone
heavily for the fury these protests evoked ... whenever the way we were
treated became more brutal, the Protestant pastors among the prisoners used
to vent their indignation on the Catholic priests: 'Again your big naive
Pope and those simpletons, your bishops, are shooting their mouths off ..
why don't they get the idea once and for all, and shut up. They play the
heroes and we have to pay the bill.'"
Albrecht von Kessel, an official at the German Embassy
to the Holy See during the war, wrote in 1963:
"We were convinced that a fiery protest by Pius XII
against the persecution of the Jews ... would certainly not have saved the
life of a single Jew. Hitler, like a trapped beast, would react to any
menace that he felt directed at him, with cruel violence."
The real question is, therefore, not what did the Pope
say, but what did the Pope do? Actions speak louder than words. Papal
policy in Nazi Europe was directed with an eye to local conditions. It was
co- ordinated with local hierarchies. Nazi policy towards the Jews varied
from country to country. Thus, although anti-Jewish measures were met in
France by public protest from Archbishop Saliege of Toulouse, together with
Archbishop Gerlier of Lyons and Bishop Thias of Mantauban, their protest
was backed by a highly effective rescue and shelter campaign. 200,000 lives
were saved. In Holland, as Fr Michael O'Carroll writes, the outcome was
'tragically different'. The Jewish historian Pinchas Lapide sums it up:
"The saddest and most thought provoking conclusion
is that whilst the Catholic clergy of Holland protested more loudly,
expressly and frequently against Jewish persecutions than the religious
hierarchy of any other Nazi-occupied country, more Jews - some 11,000 or
79% of the total - were deported from Holland; more than anywhere else in
the West."
Van Kessel's view is therefore borne out by the
experience of Nazi Holland: protest merely made for more reprisals.
What of Rome itself? In 1943 the German ambassador to
the Holy See, Von Weizsaecker, sent a telegram to Berlin. The telegram has
been cited as damning 'evidence' against Pius XII.
"Although under pressure from all sides, the Pope
has not let himself be drawn into any demonstrative censure of the
deportation of Jews from Rome ... As there is probably no reason to expect
other German actions against the Jews of Rome we can consider that a
question so disturbing to German-Vatican relations has been
liquidated."
Von Weizsaecker's telegram was in fact a warning not to
proceed with the proposed deportation of the Roman Jews: 'there is probably
no reason to expect other German actions against the Jews of Rome'. Von
Weizsaecker's action was backed by a warning to Hitler from Pius XII: if
the pursuit and arrest of Roman Jews was not halted, the Holy Father would
have to make a public protest. together the joint action of Von Weizsaecker
and Pius XII ended the Nazi manhunt against the Jews of Rome. 7,000 lives
were saved.
In Hungary, an estimated 80,000 baptismal certificates
were issued by Church authorities to Jews. In other areas of Eastern Europe
the Vatican escape network (organised via Bulgaria by the Nuncio Roncalli -
later John XXIII) has impressed those writers who have studied the subject,
with the effectiveness of the Church's rescue operation. David Herstig
concludes his book on the subject thus:
"Those rescued by Pius are today living all over
the world. There went to Israel alone from Romania 360,000 to the year
1965."
The vindication of Pius XII has been established
principally by Jewish writers and from Israeli archives. It is now
established that the Pope supervised a rescue network which saved 860,000
Jewish lives - more than all the international agencies put together.
After the war the Chief Rabbi of Israel thanked Pius XII
for what he had done. The Chief Rabbi of Rome went one step further. He
became a Catholic. He took the name Eugenio.
Note that the quotes in this article are take from Fr
Michael O'Carroll's book,
Dublin, 1980.
Sources: Eternal Word Television Network
This article first appeared in Catholic Family #10, Autumn 1991. Electronic
version of this text copyright (c) 1995 National Association of Catholic
Families. It can be distributed freely provided the text and this copyright
notice are preserved intact. For further information contact [email protected]