Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust 

 

Cardinal Pacelli was elected pope in the spring of 1939 and took the name Pius XII. By September, Germany inaugurated World War II by attacking Poland. The Nazi war against Europe’s Jews, however, started much earlier, beginning with Hitler’s appointment as German Chancellor in 1933. Pius XII, who was pro-German, has been described by biographers as “dispassionate” and cold with a particular talent for diplomatic ambiguity. His role during the Holocaust earned him the epitaph “Hitler’s Pope,” and the recent decision to proceed with his beatification has been severely criticized by Jewish groups.

 

Nazi Germany and the Catholic Hierarchy

 

As early as 1933 Edith Stein wrote a letter to Pope Pius XI alerting him to the Nazi program of anti-Semitism and calling upon the Vatican to issue strong condemnations. She never received an answer. Stein, a brilliant philosopher who had converted to Catholicism, was a Carmelite nun, eventually deported to Auschwitz and gassed.

 

Within Germany, Catholic prelates, with minor exception, approved of the Nazi agenda and stated so in sermons and articles. Such attitudes were based on 1,500 years of anti-Semitism, often expressed violently. Hitler, himself a Catholic, reminded papal representatives of this long history several times, referring to Jews as “parasites.”

 

Cardinal Faulhaber’s 1933 Advent sermons are an example of these on-going attitudes. Although some writers have attempted to demonstrate that the sermons actually criticized anti-Jewish feeling, University of Massachusetts government professor Guenter Lewy (deceased) wrote that “It…is little short of fabrication of history when Faulhaber’s sermons in 1933 are hailed by one recent Catholic writer as a ‘condemnation of the persecution of the Jews.’”

 

The Silence of Pope Pius XII

 

Despite numerous attempts requesting Pius XII to issue a statement on the mass deportations of Jews and other non-Aryans, including a note from United States Secretary of State Hull, the pope remained silent. Pius XII said nothing when the Nazis deported the Jews of Rome, two thirds of them women and children, to eastern death camps; only 14 survived. The pope’s silence was duly noted by the Nazi leadership. On one occasion, Heinrich Himmler thanked the papal nuncio for the “discretion” of the Vatican. There is documented evidence that as early as 1942 the pope was made aware of the atrocities.

 

Reacting to Pope Benedict XVI’s decision to move the case of Pius XII toward beatification and sainthood, Isaac Herzog, Israeli Social Affairs Minister, stated recently that, “Throughout the period of the Holocaust, the Vatican knew very well what was happening in Europe.” The Vatican, however, points to the many Jews hidden during the war in monasteries and other Catholic institutions. But it is also a fact that, “In sharp contrast to the countries of western Europe, in Germany only a handful of Jews were hidden by the clergy…” (Lewy)

 

In Hungary, the last large Jewish community was saved not by the nuncio but by the Swedish government under the leadership of Raoul Wallenberg. It was Wallenberg who rallied the neutral Budapest legations into action, including that of the Vatican.

 

Heroic Virtues and Moral Corruption

 

Benedict XVI’s reference to “heroic virtues,” attributed to Pius XII, can only be justified if the so-called “secret” archives salient to the war period are fully disclosed to neutral researchers. Until that occurs, Pius XII will be tainted with his silence, a silence that one historian has described as “moral corruption.”

 

Pius XII may have saved the German Catholic Church by his silence and averted a conflict of conscience for German soldiers, but the price was the deaths of millions of innocents. As the American Jewish Committee wrote in a December 19, 2009 press release, the Vatican must take into account the sensitivities of the Jewish people in regard to the Holocaust era.

 

Sources:

 

John Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII (Penguin, 2008)

Guenter Lewy, The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany (McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1964)

Michael Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust 1930-1965 (Indiana University Press, 2001)

Published December 20, 2009 in Suite101 by M.Streich, copyright