Tuesday, March 19, AD 2024 4:40am

The Pope’s Jews

 

Christopher Johnson at The Midwest Conservative is at it again.  He is a non-Catholic who has taken up the cudgels so ofen in defense of the Faith that I have designated him Defender of the Faith.  He enters the lists now on behalf of the most unjustly maligned man of the last century, Pope Pius XII:

or, Whoops There Goes Another Liberal Cliche:

Pius XII has long been vilified as “Hitler’s pope”, accused of failing publicly to condemn the genocide of Europe’s Jews. Now a British author has unearthed extensive material that Vatican insiders believe will restore his reputation, revealing the part that he played in saving lives and opposing nazism. Gordon Thomas,

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.  Who is this guy, some trad Catholic?  Dude, that’s special pleading, that’s not genuine research, you blithering idiot.

a Protestant,

Never mind.

was given access to previously unpublished Vatican documents and tracked down victims, priests and others who had not told their stories before.

The Pope’s Jews, which will be published next month, details how Pius gave his blessing to the establishment of safe houses in the Vatican and Europe’s convents and monasteries. He oversaw a secret operation with code names and fake documents for priests who risked their lives to shelter Jews, some of whom were even made Vatican subjects.

Thomas shows, for example, that priests were instructed to issue baptism certificates to hundreds of Jews hidden in Genoa, Rome and elsewhere in Italy. More than 2,000 Jews in Hungary were given fabricated Vatican documents identifying them as Catholics and a network saved German Jews by bringing them to Rome. The pope appointed a priest with extensive funds with which to provide food, clothing and medicine. More than 4,000 Jews were hidden in convents and monasteries across Italy.

During and immediately after the war, the pope was considered a Jewish saviour. Jewish leaders – such as Jerusalem’s chief rabbi in 1944 – said the people of Israel would never forget what he and his delegates “are doing for our unfortunate brothers and sisters at the most tragic hour”. Jewish newspapers in Britain and America echoed that praise, and Hitler branded him “a Jew lover”.

Go here to read the rest.  The book has been out since October in this country.  Go here to see it on Amazon.  I have not yet read it yet, the eternal problem of too many books and too little time, but I shall, as I have read endless books and articles on this subject.  Of all the historical controversies that I have examined over the years, the one over Pius XII has to be the most mendacious.  Everyone, the Nazis, the Allies and the Jews, knew where Pope Pius XII stood during the War.  Pope Pius was regarded as a hero by all who opposed the Nazis and the Nazis regarded him as a bitter enemy.  The controversy arose after his death, instigated by playwright Rolf Hochhuth and his historically worthless anti-Catholic diatribe The Deputy (1963), a play which sought to cast Pius XII as coldly indifferent to the fate of the Jews, a reverse mirror image of the actual historical record.  Haters of the Church eagerly seized upon this thesis as a club to belabor the Church for her stances in current controversies.  There has never been any historical validity to the thesis:  zilch, zero, none.  Its persistence has much to do with anti-Catholicism and nothing to do with History.

 

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George Haberberger
George Haberberger
Sunday, February 10, AD 2013 10:22am

“During and immediately after the war, the pope was considered a Jewish saviour. Jewish leaders – such as Jerusalem’s chief rabbi in 1944 – said the people of Israel would never forget what he and his delegates “are doing for our unfortunate brothers and sisters at the most tragic hour”.

This is very gratifying to read but it makes me wonder why the opposite opinion ever gained traction in the culture. When that play by Hochhuth came out, the lies it contained should have been refuted immediately.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Sunday, February 10, AD 2013 12:02pm

GH: It’s not about the war on Pope Pius. It’s about the war on Holy Mother Church, which they hate for the same reasons the devil hates Holy Water.

Whatever the lying sacs of excrement say says more about them than about Pope Pius XII, of blessed memory, or any other subverted subject they spout.

Foxfier
Admin
Sunday, February 10, AD 2013 1:54pm

IIRC, the Pope even hid many folks in Castle Gandalfo.

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Sunday, February 10, AD 2013 2:00pm

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Robert A.Rowland
Robert A.Rowland
Sunday, February 10, AD 2013 5:14pm

The Pope’s Actions caused the Chief Rabbi of Rome to convert to the Catholic Church. The Israeli Prime Minister, Golda Meir, praised Pius XII highly for saving over 700,000 Jews , and I believe she named him a Righteous Gentile.

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Monday, February 11, AD 2013 12:02am

[…] The Pope’s Jews – Donald R. McClarey, The American Catholic […]

Jay Anderson
Monday, February 11, AD 2013 12:20am

“He oversaw a secret operation with code names and fake documents for priests who risked their lives to shelter Jews, some of whom were even made Vatican subjects.

Thomas shows, for example, that priests were instructed to issue baptism certificates to hundreds of Jews hidden in Genoa, Rome and elsewhere in Italy. More than 2,000 Jews in Hungary were given fabricated Vatican documents identifying them as Catholics …”

Uh oh. Don’t tell you-know-who that Pius XII is a “liar for Jesus”, just like Lila Rose.

John Nolan
John Nolan
Monday, February 11, AD 2013 8:31am

Don’t forget that there was a Soviet disinformation campaign against Pius XII; the KGB and its predecessors were masters of this. There are historians today who still repeat stories of atrocities committed by Ukrainian nationalists which never happened, and the attempt to blame the Katyn massacre on the Germans involved the wholesale manufacture of bogus forensic science evidence. As late as the 1970s their version was still being given credence by the British government.

Hochhuth could have been a stooge, but more likely was one of Lenin’s “useful idiots”.

Ivan
Ivan
Monday, February 11, AD 2013 8:20pm

The Soviet campaign died in the 60s. Long after the demise of the Soviet Union, it seemed that hardly a year passed without some claimed revelation about Pius XII, Hitler’s pope. And who can forget those historians and muckrakers, not all of them disgruntled Catholics, who hinted darkly that the Vatican had a lot of skeletons to hide. But now that the Vatican archives have been catalogued into the war years where are they now? Like many others I too was taken in by the propaganda. Pius could not save his closest brothers and sisters, the priests and nuns who died in the thousands at the hands of the Nazis, all his diplomatic skills could not spare Catholic Poland, yet somehow a word from him was enough to save the Jews. The man endured a living martyrdom, how he must have suffered in those years.

Fabio P.Barbieri
Wednesday, February 13, AD 2013 3:40pm

Why did people begin to believe the lies about Pius XII about 1965? I’ll tell you why. Because that is when it began to be blazingly clear that the record of ALL the main allies in WWII in the matter of Jewish persecution stank; that Great Britain and the USA had both positively refused to help any persecuted Jews, and, in the full knowledge that Hitler was systematically having them butchered, pretty much said “good luck to it”; that, after the war, the British practically took the place of the Germans as enemies of the Jews, to the point of having Jews thrown into German bamps guarded by German guards, and of systematically supporting and arming the Jews’ enemies in Palestine; and that when President Truman took the elementary step of giving Israel diplomatic recognition, half the Administration was against him. The Soviet Union’s record on matters Jewish, of course, is best left unmentioned. These were countries, the British Empire and the USA, who could perfectly well have let in as many Jews as they wished, countries in fact that lived on immigration; they just did not want them, and they did not want them because they were Jewish. If Hitler killed the lot, well, too bad for them, but really, he’s solved our problem for us. And when the infamy of Britain and America, let alone Russia, in this matter, became clear, there was need of a scapegoat, someone to take the blame, so that we don’t have to dwell on our fathers’ guilt. I have given a larger account of my views here: http://fpb.livejournal.com/565171.html

Jon
Jon
Wednesday, February 13, AD 2013 10:08pm

Yes, it is true that during WWII no one of political importance really cared about the Jewish situation and that was in keeping with the zeitgeist. The Zionist movement was rather countercultural, I guess.

Mary De Voe
Wednesday, February 13, AD 2013 11:54pm

Jay Anderson: “Uh oh. Don’t tell you-know-who that Pius XII is a “liar for Jesus”, just like Lila Rose.”
Any law may be broken to save a human life. This is law. The only country willing to take Jews was Haiti and Papa Doc Trujillo would only accept baptized Catholic Jews. Over 800,000 Jews were accepted into Haiti. The baptismal certificates were wishes for the future. Many of the Jews were baptized by desire.

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