Holocaust survivors: 'Silence has marked our lives'

I by now means want to minimize or invalidate the desperate feeling of isolation felt by so many during the Holocaust. It is clear that the statements of Pius XII voiced during those years did not reach many ears to give comfort.

It is incorrect, however, to say that nobody raised their voices. Here is part of a New York Times editorial from 1941:
The voice of Pius XII is a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping Europe this Christmas. The Pope reiterates what he has said before. In general, he repeats, although with greater definiteness, the five-point plan for peace which he first enunciated in his Christmas message after the war broke out in 1939. His program agrees in fundamentals with the Roosevelt-Churchill eight-point declaration. It calls for respect for treaties and the end of the possibility of aggression, equal treatment for minorities, freedom from religious persecution...Yet his words sound strange and bold in the Europe of today, and we comprehend the complete submergence and enslavement of great nations, the very sources of our civilization, as we realize that he is about the only ruler left o the Continent of Europe who dares to raise his voice at all. The last tiny islands of neutrality are so hemmed in and overshadowed by war and fear that no one but the Pope is still able to speak aloud in the name of the Prince of Peace. This is indeed a measure of the "moral devastation" he describes as the accompaniment of physical ruin and inconceivable human suffering.

Again, a 1942 editorial:
No Christmas sermon reaches a larger congregation than the message Pope Pius XII addresses to a war-torn world at this season. This Christmas more than ever he is a lonely voice crying out of the silence of a continent. The Pulpit whence he speaks is more than ever like the Rock on which the Church was founded, a tiny island lashed and surrounded by a sea of war. In these circumstances, in any circumstances, indeed, no one would expect the Pope to speak as a political leader, or a war leader, or in any other role than that of a preacher ordained to stand above the battle, tied impartially, as he says, to all people and willing to collaborate in any new order which will bring a just peace.
But just because the Pope speaks to and in some sense for all the peoples at war, the clear stand he takes on the fundamental issues of the conflict has greater weight and authority. When a leader bound impartially to nations on both sides condemns as heresy the new form of national state which subordinates everything to itself: when he declares that whoever wants peace must protect against "arbitrary attacks" the "juridical safety of individuals:" when he assails violent occupation of territory, the exile and persecution of human beings for no reason other than race or political opinion: when he says that people must fight for a just and decent peace, a "total peace" — the "impartial judgment" is like a verdict in a high court of justice.
Pope Pius expresses as passionately as any leader on our side the war aims of the struggle for freedom when he says that those who aim at building a new world must fight for free choice of government and religious order. They must refuse that the state should make of individuals a herd of whom the state disposes as if they were a lifeless thing.

Yet, Pius' words were a source of consolation for at least one person. Upon his death, Gold Meir wrote, "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."

I grew up during the 1930's when this terrible tragedy of the Holocaust
took place. I was a child but I remember how terrible an experience this
was for the Jewish people. I lived in a predominitely Jewish Community and
I knew these people, those who were lucky enough to escape the Nazi persecution. Admittedly, I was not aware of all the horrors that took place.
but after the war and through the years was when most of the world learned
how terrible it realy was.

I want to know who these people are who kept silent when they could have done
more. Was it Pius Xll alone? Was it other Catholics and other Christians?
Historians tell us (Jewish historians as well) the number of Convents and
Monasterys that took in Jews and protected them, the number of other Catholics
and other Christions who protected Jews, that we don't even know about. To say
nothing of those who lost their own lives at the expense of saving others. Is
the complaint that not enough of us did that?... I am not anti Jewish and
never have been. I am very much in favor of workng to improve relations among
us, but it seems to me, that we can never do enough. Please tell me, what is the real problem? I can't figure it out fom the above post.

Pope Pius XII should have spoken out LOUDLY and CLEARLY, to the people of Rome, of Italy, of Europe, and of the world, demanding that they do whatever it took to stop the genocide, and insisting that they take into their homes all who were being pursued by Hitler's forces.

Instead, silence. And now, the apologists for Pius XII try to give him credit for whatever was done by individuals. and Benedict XVI claims that "The Apostolic See itself provided assistance, often in a hidden and discreet way.”

Why hidden and discreet? Why not open and incessant? How can this cowardice not be considered complicity? And how can Catholics be expected to venerate a "saint" who kept silent while millions of people were being tortured, starved, gassed?

No one should be really surprised at Benedict’s actions. After all, he lifted the excommunication to a Holocaust-denying bishop, he spoke at Auschwitz but forgot to mention that the Holocaust was caused by pathological antisemitism, and of course neglected to mention where antisemitism might have come from. Also, he has been extolling Pope Pius XII's "heroic virtues" and has been promoting his canonization. People should be even less surprised at any residual animosity toward the wartime pope, Pius XII. After all, that pope had the power, but not the will, to make a difference during the war yet he chose to remain silent.

It’s highly misleading to make so much hoopla about the Pius XII’ putative actions in defense of the Jews during the war: they were meager, largely ineffective, and many times they were made to create precisely the type of appearance of action we are seeing defended today. As Pius’ close aide, Msgr. Tardini, explained in an internal Vatican memo after a tepid admonition to the Slovakian President-priest Tiso, “This will make known to the world that the Holy See fulfills its duty of charity.” Or, when Jesuit Father Tacchi Venturi made a symbolic inquiry about the fate of the Jews of Rome, he then informed his superiors that “A step like this by the Holy See, even if it does not obtain the desired effect, will without doubt help increase the veneration and gratitude toward the August Person of the Holy Father.” In a similar case a Holy See official mentioned some potential actions the Holy See could take on behalf of the Jews, knowing that they would be totally ineffective and they would fail. He did this knowing that “if nothing else, it will always be possible to say that the Holy See has done everything possible to help these unhappy people.”

The Church claims that propelling Pius XII into the sainthood is a reflection of his religious actions, and that may be so. However, Pius XII was not just a religious figure: he was the pope, the leader of an international organization responsible for the care of hundreds of millions of souls, and he was the leader of a state with a fully operational government with influence on a global scale. So his actions—or inactions—cannot be measured solely based on what his contributions to the advancement of faith was. Certainly not for someone who ruled over the Catholic Church at a time when almost half the German population and the vast majority of Austrian, French, Polish, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Latvian, Hungarian and other populations that collaborated with the Germans in executing the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” were Catholic.

Gabriel Wilensky

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Author
Six Million Crucifixions:
How Christian Teachings About Jews Paved the Road to the Holocaust
http://www.SixMillionCrucifixions.com
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