Ever since Rolf Hochhuth’s, “The Deputy”. made its appearance in 1963, it has been an unshakable axiom of popular mythology that Pope Pius XII was, if not actually a crypto-Nazi, at least guilty of criminal cowardice and insensitivity in the face of the Holocaust. It is accepted as a truism that the Pope’s failure to act or even to speak out against the atrocities of the Nazis made him a silent partner in the massacre of millions. In the hands of some writers, this alleged collaboration of the Pope is adduced as evidence of the anti-Semitic and pro-fascist nature of the Catholic Church as a whole.
The Deputy was more than merely a play. It was a sustained exercise in character assassination that was resoundingly echoed in the popular press. The production of that play coincided closely with the publication of Anne Frank’s Diary and the trial and execution of Adolf Eichmann. The world needed to give vent to its horror, and with no more real Nazis left to punish, the image of a pusillanimous pope offered just the right scapegoat.
So New York Times columnists write about the “unctuous silence” of Pope Pius XII. Specialists in Holocaust studies characterize the Pope as a symbol of moral irresponsibility. The Bronx Museum of Art displays a painting called “Nazi Butchers”, featuring Pius XII in full papal regalia. A certain species of hat-in-hand Catholic writers beat their breasts loudly over the cowardly silence of the Vatican, as if this proves their own liberality of mind. And an ABC News correspondent, covering Pope John Paul II’s visit to Munich, remarks that this city was the cradle of Hitler’s Nazi movement, knowing the allusion will not be lost on a public that has been taught to view the papacy as a pawn of the Third Reich.
Pius XII is beyond harm. He received his final reward a generation ago, and before he died he had the consolation of receiving the gratitude of worldwide Jewry for his noble efforts on their behalf. Yet while his detractors can no longer injure him, their slanders and insinuations continue to plague the Church, for when a pope is defamed, the Church suffers.
Unfortunately, when these cheap accusations began to surface, when they were stealing into popular consciousness and shaping public attitudes, the historical data needed to refute them were not at hand. For more than 15 years, Father Robert Graham, the distinguished Jesuit historian and former editor of America magazine, has been editing the Vatican archives from this tragic period. His work proves beyond any reasonable doubt that in its diplomacy and in its direct humanitarian works, the Holy See was a champion of peace, of compassion and of human dignity in the midst of the most terrible passion and violence.
Father Graham published a brief summary of the contents of Volume X of the Acts and Documents of the Holy See Relative to World War II. It relates the humanitarian efforts undertaken by the Vatican, under the personal direction of Pius XII, during the last stages of the war to alleviate suffering and to protect human life and human rights. It is a record no Catholic need be ashamed of. Before and after Hitler’s seizure of power, the Catholic Church in Germany was a formidable opponent of Nazism — so much that Hermann Goering complained in 1935 that “Catholic believers carry away but one impression from attendance at divine services and that is that the Catholic Church rejects the institutions of the Nationalist State. How could it be otherwise when they are continuously engaging in polemics on political questions or events in their sermons … hardly a Sunday passes but that they abuse the so-called religious atmosphere of the divine service in order to read pastoral letters on purely political subjects”. And the Church was persecuted for these “abuses”. Catholic lay leaders were murdered. Catholic organizations and schools were suppressed. Priests and nuns were framed on false charges and thrown into concentration camps.
In 1937, when the leaders of the Western democracies were scurrying to Munich to negotiate with Hitler, the Holy See condemned the theory and practice of the “Nationalist State” in the encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge.
When Jews felt the cruel sting of Nazi hatred, the German bishops protested, “Whoever wears a human face owns rights which no power on earth is permitted to take away,” echoing Pius XI’s declaration, “We are all spiritual Semites”.
Pius XII had just ascended to the Chair of Peter when the world was engulfed in war, and that war provided a cover for the ultimate Nazi atrocity; the deliberate genocide of an entire people. This called for action, not words, and it was with action that the Holy See responded. While Britain and the United States were refusing to admit refugees to their territories, the Holy See was distributing thousands of false documents — life-saving passports to freedom — to the beleaguered Jews. While the Allies were trying to use the rumors of death camps for war propaganda, Catholic priests, nuns and lay-people were hiding Jews in their flight to safety, and often paying for it with their lives. While the Allied military leaders were refusing to bomb the rail lines into camps, Vatican diplomats were dealing with the leaders of occupied areas, trying to keep Jews off the trains.
Some have accused the Church of taking an interest only in baptized Jews, and it is true that Church spokesmen were able to make a more persuasive case to the Nazis to save the lives of Jewish Catholics. But as Father Graham shows so clearly, the fatherly concern of the Holy See extended to all the victims of war, regardless of race or creed.
In one tragic instance, the Archbishop of Utrecht was warned by the Nazis not to protest the deportation of Dutch Jews. He spoke out anyway and in retaliation the Catholic Jews of Holland were sent to their death. One of them was the Carmelite philosopher and mystic, Edith Stein. It could be asked whether these good works were enough, whether it would have been better for the Pope to have denounced from the rooftops the crimes that were occurring. This thought troubled Pius XII, and he confided afterward to an associate, “No doubt a protest would have gained me the praise and respect of the civilized world, but it would have submitted the poor Jews to an even worse persecution”.
Ever since the play, “The Deputy,” was staged, it has become part of conventional folklore to blame Pope Pius XII for being “silent” during the Holocaust. But that is certainly not what many were saying at the time, including the World Jewish Congress, the American Jewish Committee, Golda Meir, Albert Einstein, and many others—all of whom applauded the efforts of Pius XII to do what he could to save Jews.
Pius XII was one of the few world leaders outside Jewry itself who was quick to recognize the danger of Nazism. Former Israeli diplomat Pinchas Lapide, in his book The Last Three Popes and the Jews demonstrates convincingly the consistent and active protection provided to Jews in Europe by the papacy. He does not shrink from strong criticism of other parts of the Catholic Church where necessary and of some Catholic governments in particular. Further, he commands respect from those reading from a Jewish perspective.
During World War II (1939-1945) Pope Pius XII lent a strong hand in support of the harassed Jews of Europe. The Vatican was one of the few remaining points of assistance left on the Axis-controlled continent.
The Jewish Community publicly acknowledged the wisdom of Pope Pius XII’s diplomacy. In September 1945, Dr. Joseph Nathan—who represented the Hebrew Commission— stated “Above all, we acknowledge the Supreme Pontiff and the religious men and women who, executing the directives of the Holy Father, recognized the persecuted as their brothers and, with great abnegation, hastened to help them, disregarding the terrible dangers to which they were exposed”.
Excerpts from books and periodicals that have covered this subject:
1. The foremost Jewish Scholar of the Holocaust at its height in Hungary, Jeno Levai, insisted some years ago that it was a “particularly regrettable irony that the one person 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”.
2. The Israeli diplomat and scholar Pinchas Lapide concluded his careful review of Pius XII’s wartime activities with the following words: “The Catholic Church under the pontificate of Pius XII was instrumental in saving lives of as many as 860,000 Jews from certain death at Nazi hands”. He went on to add that this “figure far exceeds those saved by all other Churches and rescue organizations combined”. After recounting statements of appreciation from a variety of preeminent Jewish spokespersons, he noted. “No Pope in history has been thanked more heartily by Jews . . . .Several suggested in open letters that a Pope Pius XII forest of 860,000 trees be planted on the hills of Judea in order to fittingly honor the memory of the late Pontiff (“Three Popes and the Jews” pp. 214–215)”. Levai in his own book did not hesitate to argue that the attacks on the Pope’s wartime record are “demonstrably malicious and fabricated . . . . The archives of the Vatican of diocesan authorities of Ribbentrop’s foreign ministry, contain a whole series of protests—direct and indirect, diplomatic and public, secret and open. The nuncios and bishops of the Catholic Church intervened again and again on the instructions of the Pope,” he wrote. Their interventions were just as unsuccessful as the demands and threats of the British and American governments. Moreover, the delicacy of the matter was often heightened by the fact that such protests could put Jews themselves and their protectors at additional corporal risk.
3. Hungarian Jews and the Papacy: The former chief rabbi of Rome during the German occupation, Emilio Zolli, concluded his firsthand account of wartime events thus: “Volumes could be written on the multiform works of Pius XII, and the countless priests, religious and laity who stood with him throughout the world during the war”. “No hero,” he said, “in all of history was more militant, more fought against, none more heroic, than Pius XII in pursuing the works of true charity . . . and thus on behalf of all the suffering children of God”. Zolli was so moved by Pius XII’s work that he became a Catholic after the war and took the Pope’s name (Before the Dawn). Lapide acknowledged in his book that the Church “in an endless flood of sermons, allocutions, pastoral letters and encyclicals was a clear and unrelenting foe to all forms of racism at the time, and everyone knew it—Jews, Poles, Russians and most ominously the Nazi secret police”. Their files mention recalcitrant Catholic clergy in this regard more than any other group.
4. The New York Times in its Christmas editorials of 1941 and 1942 praised Pius XII for his moral leadership as a “lonely voice crying out of the silence of a continent” and for, among other things, assailing “the violent occupation of territory, and the exile and persecution of human beings, for no other reason than race”. No other institution produced more heroes during the Holocaust than the Church: Italian, Slovak, French, Hungarian priests, nuns, and laypersons who risked and often gave their lives for the sake of persecuted Jews. This too deserves remembrance and respect.
5. Golda Meir, Israel’s representative to the United Nations, was the first of the delegates to react to the news of Pope Pius XII’s death. She sent an eloquent message: “We share in the grief of humanity at the passing away of His Holiness, Pope Pius XII. In a generation afflicted by wars and discords he upheld the highest ideals of peace and compassion. When fearful martyrdom came to our people in the decade of Nazi terror, the voice of the Pope was raised for its victims. The life of our times was enriched by a voice speaking out about great moral truths above the tumult of daily conflict. We mourn a great servant of peace”.
6. Leonard Bernstein, on learning of Pope Pius XII’s death while conducting his orchestra in New York’s Carnegie Hall, tapped his baton for a moment of silence to pay tribute to the Pope who had saved the lives of so many people without distinction of race, nationality, or religion.
7. The great Jewish physicist, Albert Einstein, who himself barely escaped annihilation at Nazi hands, made the point well in 1944 when he said, “Being a lover of freedom, when the Nazi revolution came in Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it, but the universities were immediately silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers, but they, like the universities were silenced in a few short weeks. Then I looked to individual writers . . . . they too were mute. Only the Church,” Einstein concluded, “stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing the truth. . . . I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel great affection and admiration . . . . and am forced thus to confess that what I once despised, I now praise unreservedly”. Adapted from the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, Pius XII and the Holocaust. Used with permission.