Note that the quotes in this article are taken from Fr. Michael O'Carroll's book Greatness Dishonoured, Dublin 1980.
860,000 Lives Saved-- The Truth about Pius XII and the Jews
People often ask: why did Pius XII, Eugenio Pacelli, not speak out more forcefully against Hitler? Historian Fr. Dermot Fenlon of the Birmingham Oratory looks at the facts and sets the record straight.
The answer is recounted by a former inmate of Dachau, Mgr. Jean Bernard, later Bishop of Luxembourg:
"The deatined priests trembled every time news reached us of some protest by a religious authority, but particularly by the Vatican. We all had the impression that our warders made us atone heavily for the fury these protests evoked... whenever the way we were treated became more brutal, the Protestant pastors among the prisoners used to vent their indignation on the Catholic priests: 'Again your big naive Pope and those simpletons, your bishops, are shooting their mouths off... why don't they get the idea once and for all, and shut up. They play the heroes, and we have to pay the bill.'"
Albrecht van Kessel, an official at the German Embassy to the Holy See during the war, wrote in 1963:
"We were convinced that a fiery protest by Pius XII against the persecution of the Jews... would certainly not have saved the life of a single Jew. Hitler, like a trapped beast, would react to any menace that he felt directed at him, with cruel violence."
The real question is, therefore, not what did the Pope say, but what did the Pope do? Actions speak louder than words. Papal policy in Nazi Europe was directed with an eye to local conditions. It was coordinated with local hierarchies. Nazi policy towards the Jews varied from country to country. Thus, although anti-Jewish measures were met in France by public protest from Archbishop Saliege of Toulouse, together with Archbishop Gerlier of Lyons and Bishop Thias of Mantauban, their protest was backed by a highly effective rescue and shelter campaign. 200,000 lives were saved. In Holland, as Fr. Michael O'Carroll writes, the outcome was "tragically different". The Jewish historian Pinchas Lapide sums it up:
"The saddest and most thought-provoking conclusion is that whilst the Catholic clergy of Holland protested more loudly, expressly and frequently against Jewish persecutions than the religious hierarchy of any other Nazi-occupied country, more Jews-- some 11,000 or 79% of the total-- were deported from Holland; more than anywhere else in the West."
Van Kessel's view is therefore borne out by the experience of Nazi Holland: protest made for more reprisals.
What of Rome itself? In 1943 the German Ambasador to the Holy See, Von Weizsaecker, sent a telegram to Berlin. The telegram has been cited as damning "evidnece" against Pius XII.
"Although under pressure from all sides, the Pope has not let himself be drawn into any demonstrative censure of the deportation of Jews from Rome... As there is probably no reason to expect other German actions against the Jews of Rome we can consider that a question so disturbing to German-Vatican relations has not been liquidated."
Von Weizsaecker's telegram was in fact a warning not to proceed with the proposed deportation of Roman Jews: "there is probably no reason to expect other German actions against the Jews of Rome." Von Weizsaecker's action was backed by a warning to Hitler from Pius XII: if the pursuit and arrest of Roman Jews was not halted, the Holy Father would have to make a public protest. Together the joint action of Von Weizsaecker and Pius XII ended the Nazi manhunt against the Jews of Rome. 7,000 lives were saved.
In Hungary, an estimated 80,000 baptismal certificates were issued by Church authorities to Jews. In other areas of Eastern Europe the Vatican escape network (organized via Bulgaria by the Nuncio Roncalli-- later John XXIII) has impressed those who have studied the subject with the effectiveness of the Church's rescue operation. David Herstig concludes his book on the subject thus:
"Those rescued by Pius XII are today living all over the world. There went to Israel alone from Romania 360,000 to the year 1965."
The vindication of Pius XII has been established principally by Jewish writers and by Israeli archives. It is now established that the Pope supervised a rescue network which saved 860,000 Jewish lives-- more than all the international agencies put together.
After the war the Chief Rabbi of Israel thanked Pius XII for what he had done. The Chief Rabbi of Rome went one step furhter. He became a Catholic. He took the name Eugenio.
"At Dachau alone 2,700 priests were imprisoned (of which 1,000 died), and were subject to the most awful tortures, including the medical experiments of Dr. Rascher....By the end of the war, 3 million Polish Catholics had been killed in concentration camps..."
"Pope Pius XI, who had condemned Nazism in his 1937 encyclical "Mit Brennender Sorge", died in February 1939, and Pope Pius XII followed him....Hitler had plans to depose Pius XII, appoint his own 'puppet' pope, and move the Vatican administration to Germany....Nevertheless, Pius XII spoke out.... In his Christmas message of 1942, he specifically denounced the extermination of the Jews: the New York Times praised this message, writing,
'This Christmas more than ever Pope Pius XII is a lonely voice crying out in the silence of a continent. The pulpit whence he speaks is more than ever like the Rock in which the Church was founded, a tiny island lashed and surrounded by a sea of war...'"
"The Vatican persistently issued communications to protest to Hitler which were attested to by Von Ribbentrop at the Nuremburg war trials, who said, 'I do not recollect [how many] at the moment, but I know we had a whole deskful of protests from the Vatican. There were very many we did not even read or reply to.'"
"According to Israeli archives, papal relief programs saved at least 860,000 Jews...His Holiness also allowed the Vatican diplomatic corps, which were protected by diplomatic immunity, to carry messages between the allied powers. Vatican Information Service also sent over 5 million messages for soldiers....He also lifted cloister restrictions, allowing religious houses to offer refuge to Jews..."
"We must remember that any defiance of the Nazi regime meant immediate and severe retaliation....Cardinal Sapieha, Archbishop of Krakow, wrote to Pius XII in 1942, 'We must deplore that we cannot communicate Your Holiness' letter to the faithful, for that would provide a pretext for fresh persecution. We already have many who are victims because they were suspected of being in secret communication with the Apostolic See.'"
"When Pope Pius XII died on October 9, 1958, Golda Meir, then Israeli delegate to the United Nations, sent official condolences: 'When fearful martrydom 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.'"
