<div dir="ltr"><h1>Another Jewish historian concludes that the latest research ‘erases’ the image of a Pius XII indifferent to the fate of the Jews</h1>
<div><p><span style="background-color:rgb(0,255,0)">Ha zavar a kiemelés, kérlek, kattints a linkre:</span></p><p><a href="http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2014/02/07/another-jewish-historian-concludes-that-the-latest-research-erases-the-image-of-a-pius-xii-indifferent-to-the-fate-of-the-jews/">http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2014/02/07/another-jewish-historian-concludes-that-the-latest-research-erases-the-image-of-a-pius-xii-indifferent-to-the-fate-of-the-jews/</a><br>
</p><p>Rabbi Dalin thinks that Pope Pius should be declared Righteous among the Nations: it would only be common justice if he were</p>
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<p>By <span><a href="http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/author/william-oddie/" title="Posts by William Oddie" rel="author" target="_blank">William Oddie</a></span> on Friday, 7 February 2014 <br></p>
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<img src="http://d2jkk5z9de9jwi.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/userphoto/william-oddie.thumbnail.jpg" alt="William Oddie" height="50" width="40"> <h3><a href="http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/author/william-oddie/" title="Posts by William Oddie" rel="author" target="_blank">William Oddie</a></h3>
<p>Dr William Oddie is a leading English Catholic
writer and broadcaster. He edited The Catholic Herald from 1998 to 2004
and is the author of The Roman Option and Chesterton and the Romance of
Orthodoxy. </p><p></p><p>Related articles:<br style="clear:both"></p> <a href="http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2013/08/09/the-lie-of-hitlers-pope-collapses-little-by-lttle-now-an-important-new-book-shows-how-pius-xiis-protection-of-the-jews-worked-on-the-ground/" target="_blank">The
lie of ‘Hitler’s Pope’ collapses, little by little: now, an important
new book shows how Pius XII’s protection of the Jews worked on the
ground</a></div><div><div><div><ul><li><a href="http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2010/07/08/how-to-kill-the-myth-of-hitlers-pope/" target="_blank">How to kill the myth of Hitler’s Pope</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2010/07/01/i-hope-you-dont-mind-my-asking-but-why-were-you-catholics-so-awful-to-the-jews-during-the-war/" target="_blank">‘Why were you Catholics so awful to the Jews during the War?’</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2013/11/14/pope-francis-leaves-the-exposition-of-doctrine-to-others-and-reserves-for-himself-the-merciful-style-of-the-care-of-souls-is-he-playing-a-dangerous-game/" target="_blank">Pope
Francis ‘leaves the exposition of doctrine to others, and reserves for
himself the merciful style of the care of souls’: is he playing a
dangerous game?</a></li><li><a href="http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2013/06/25/morning-catholic-must-reads-250613/" target="_blank">Morning Catholic must-reads: 25/06/13</a></li></ul><div><a href="http://www.zemanta.com/?wp-related-posts" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Zemanta</a></div>
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<img src="http://d2jkk5z9de9jwi.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/PA-8654211.jpg" alt="Pope Pius XII makes a radio broadcast in 1947 (AP)" height="299" width="440"><p>Pope Pius XII makes a radio broadcast in 1947 (AP)</p>
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<p>I am writing this having just spotted<u style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"><b> a piece I missed when it first appeared <a href="http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/?eng=y" target="_blank">on Sandro Magister’s website</a>
two weeks ago</b></u>. The piece was headlined <u style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"><b>“The Thousands of Jews Saved in
Churches and Convents”, and drew attention to an article by the Jewish
historian Anna Foa</b></u> which had been picked up by L’Osservatore Romano, and
also to the fact that <u style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"><b>Pope Francis will as soon as possible make
available the complete documentation
of the pontificate of Pius XII, from 1939 to 1958,</b></u> a documentation that
runs to 16 million pages, more than 15,000 folders, and 2,500 files.
The work of organising this vast mound of papers has been going on for
six years, in order to make it practically accessible to scholars. The
prefect of the Vatican secret archive, Bishop Sergio Pagano, has told
Corriere della Sera that “it will take another year, year and a half”.</p>
<p>The point that emerges from Anna Foa’s researches, however, is that
t<u style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"><b>he question of access to this huge archive has dominated the whole
controversy of what the pope did or didn’t do for the Jews quite wrongly
for many years</b></u>, <u><b>with frequent insinuations of its inaccessibility being
motivated by attempts to keep quiet about the shameful secrets it
supposedly contains</b></u>. Now, <u style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"><b>Anna Foa suggests that this was quite
unnecessary, since there was always plenty of evidence of what was
happening during the German occupation</b></u>, outside the archives, in the
witness of those Jews directly involved. This is now being properly
researched by historians like Dr Foa, who insists that, as a result, we
can be sure that the “more recent image of the aid given to Jews by the
Church arises not from pro-Catholic ideological positions, but above all
from thorough research into the lives of Jews during the occupation,
from the reconstruction of the stories of families or individuals. From
field work,
in short.” The research in this regard, notes Sandro Magister, is
highly advanced. And <u style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"><b>from this it is becoming ever more clear that the
saving of many Jews was not only permitted but also coordinated by the
highest leadership of the Church</b></u>. And as Anna Foa unambiguously makes
clear, <u style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"><b>this research “<i>erases</i> (my emphasis) the image proposed
in the 1960s of a Pope Pius XII indifferent to the fate of Jews or even
an accomplice of the Nazis”</b></u>.</p>
<p>A couple of years ago, I <a href="http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2012/07/04/the-yad-vashem-holocaust-museum-has-qualified-its-hostile-representation-of-pius-xiis-policy-towards-the-jews-but-this-though-welcome-is-not-enough/" target="_blank">wrote a piece</a>
suggesting that the anti-Pius XII lobby of a few years ago was already
looking weaker as Jewish opinion moved, little by little, in the general
direction of the Jewish consensus of the immediate post-war years,
which was that the Pope’s covert actions had saved many thousands of
Jewish lives during the German occupation of Italy and that everything
he could have done was in fact done.</p>
<p><u style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"><b>In the immediate aftermath of the war, when memories were fresh, Jews
remembered that he had spoken out publicly against the Nazis</b></u> (contrary
to the post-Hochhuth orthodoxy that he had shamefully remained totally
silent) <u style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"><b>even though he had been careful about what he he said. That
lasted until the 1960s</b></u>, <u style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b>when it was blown out of the water by Hochhuth’s
defamatory play “The Vicar”</b></u>; but <u style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"><b>when Pius died in 1958, it was still
quite natural that Golda Meir, then Israeli prime minister , should send
a cable to the Holy See paying tribute to him</b></u>. “During the Nazi
terror,” she recalled, “when fearful martyrdom came to our people in the
decade of Nazi terror, the voice of the Pope was raised for the
victims. The life of our times was enriched by a voice speaking out on
the great moral truths, above the tumult of daily conflict. We mourn a
great servant of peace.” </p>
<p>All that collapsed, of course; not only did Jewish opinion harden
against Pius XII in the aftermath of <u style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b>Hochhuth’s play depicting him
virtually as a Nazi collaborator, but the Holocaust became an article of
indictment in the general liberal Catholic campaign against the papacy,
and especially against popes Benedict and John Paul</b></u>: as Rabbi David
Dalin put it: “Almost none of the recent books about Pius XII and the
Holocaust is actually about Pius XII and the Holocaust. Their real topic
proves to be an intra-Catholic argument about the direction of the
Church today, with <u style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b>the Holocaust simply the biggest club available for
liberal Catholics to use against traditionalists.”</b></u></p>
<p>Well, we all understand now, or should if we didn’t, all about <u style="background-color:rgb(234,209,220)"><b>books
like John Cornwell’s shamefully entitled Hitler’s Pope</b></u>, as evidence from
the Vatican archives emerges little by little. In my post I drew
attention to something of a minor volte face a<span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">t</span><u style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"><b style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"> the museum at </span></b><b style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">Yad
Vashem</b></u><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">, the memorial of the Shoah in Jerusalem. Though a wall panel at
the museum still listed occasions when Pope Pius failed to protest
against the slaughter of European Jews, it now also mentioned the views
of those who say the Church’s “neutrality” helped to save lives. The
museum </span><u style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)"><b>issued a statement to say that this was “an update to reflect
research that has been done in the recent years and presents a more
complex picture than previously presented”.</b></u></p>
<p>Well, that was something, but nothing like enough: it might have
recalled <u style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"><b>Golda Meir’s tribute</b></u>, for instance, which <u style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"><b>recognised that the
the Church was <i>not neutral</i>.</b></u> But still, a step in the right
direction. But Yad Vashem has also been undermining its own post-1960s
view of the Church of which Pius XII was supreme pontiff in other ways,
by declaring a perhaps surprising number of Catholic individuals as
being “Righteous among the Nations”. One name can perhaps be singled
out: that of <u style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"><b>Cardinal Elia Angelo Dalla Costa, who organised the rescue
of hundreds of Jews in Florence. Yad Vashem’s </b></u><a href="http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/pressroom/pressreleases/pr_details.asp?cid=766" target="_blank"><u style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"><b>accoun</b></u>t of what he did</a> is worth reading:</p>
<blockquote><p>During the Holocaust, <u style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"><b>Florence</b></u> became <u style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"><b>the scene of a
major rescue endeavor</b></u>. Initiated by Rabbi Nathan Cassuto and Raffaele
Cantoni, it became a joint effort of Church people, guided by Cardinal
Elia Angelo Dalla Costa, Archbishop of Florence, and Jewish
personalities. This<u style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"><b> Jewish-Christian network, set up following the
German occupation of Italy and the onset of deportation of Jews, saved
hundreds of local Jews and Jewish refugees</b></u> from territories which had previously been under Italian control, mostly in France and Yugoslavia.</p>
<p><u style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"><b>Cardinal Dalla Costa initiated and encouraged</b></u> the participation and
activity in the rescue activity of the clergy, and<u style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"><b> appointed his
secretary, Father Meneghello, to be in charge of these dangerous
life-saving operations.</b></u> Dalla Costa played a central role in the
organization and operation of a widespread rescue network, <u style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"><b>recruited
rescuers from among the clergy, supplied letters to his activists so
that they could go to heads of monasteries and convents entreating them
to shelter Jews, and sheltered fleeing Jews in his own palace for short
periods until they were taken to safe places.
</b></u></p></blockquote>
<p>But there are of course <u style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"><b>countless other examples, especially in religious houses </b></u>(see <a href="http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2013/08/09/the-lie-of-hitlers-pope-collapses-little-by-lttle-now-an-important-new-book-shows-how-pius-xiis-protection-of-the-jews-worked-on-the-ground/" target="_blank">my piece</a> about Dame Joanna Bogle’s important book <a href="http://www.gracewing.co.uk/page470.html" target="_blank">Courage and Conviction</a>,
the story of how two English Bridgettine sisters, Mother Riccarda
Hambrough and Mother Katherine Flanagan, sheltered Jews in their
convents during the German occupation of Rome). <u style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"><b>Now, Ana Foa’s article
“When Priests and Jews shared the same food</b></u>” –which Magister
reproduces—adds another important piece to a complex jigsaw. <u style="background-color:rgb(255,255,0)"><b>Rabbi Dalin
thinks that Pope Pius should be declared Righteous among the Nations:
could that really happen one day? It’s surely not entirely unimaginable.
</b></u></p></div>