ROME. Histories of world events and biographies are forever being rewritten according to the changing ideologies of ruling classes. No historian, no matter how self-disciplined and honorable can completely avoid being influenced by an a priori, often subconscious, conditioning. The choice of which facts are to be remembered and considered and which to be discarded in interpreting the past depends to a large extent on the historian’s personal convictions. The terms “hero” or “villain”, “patriot” or “terrorist”, “freedom/Resistence fighter or traitor”, can all be applied interchangeably to the same historic figures, depending on the writer’s national or ideological perspective.
The political and moral context in which the Catholic Church moved for centuries before the Second Vatican Council’s reforms, particularly those regarding relations between Christians and Jews, was drastically different from that of today. Ample proof of the contrast between the “then” and the “now” can be found with even a merely superficial glance at the wartime and pre-Vatican II pages of “Civiltà Cattolica”, the periodical whose contents are traditionally reviewed and approved by the Holy See’s Secretariat of State. Founded in 1850, for over a century they contained a wide sampling of those antisemitic tropes that conditioned the mentality of Christian Europe and contributed to fueling the explosion of one of the most tragic periods of world history. The influence of the same Christian antisemitism of nearly two millenia that contributed to pogroms and massacres, indisputably also helped pave the way towards the Holocaust.
But following World War II, in 1960, a portentous meeting took place between St. John XXIII and the renowned Jewish historian and Holocaust survivor, Jules Isaac, who presented the Pontiff with his research on what he termed “The Teaching of Contempt” in Christianity towards Jews and Judaism. Pope Roncalli’s acknowledgement of the frightful consequences of a mistaken, distorted and hate-filled religious education led him to call for a “document on the Jews”, that evolved into the Ecumenical Council’s “Nostra Aetate” in 1965. Thirty five years on, St. John Paul II sent a moving message to the world by placing the text of a prayer requesting forgiveness, for the sins committed against the Jews , into a crack of Jerusalem’s Western Wall – the Kotel . This text was part of the liturgy of repentance that the Pope composed and held for the Second Millenium in Rome.
The substrata of antisemitic disdain or contempt that was commonly present in most Christian and other circles in pre-Vatican II years has thankfully been substantially rejected . Today we are living in a different era. The implementation of the official guidelines of the Catholic Church has determined a nearly total about-face. With a rediscovery of our common religious, cultural and moral roots, new fraternal relations thrive. Catholics and Jews have become allies; the past has become history. Nonetheless, our memory of the past must survive, as an everlasting reminder that we cannot desist from engaging in the fight against all signs of resurging antisemitism lest its virulent violence once again erupt beyond control. What has been, can be again.
On March 2, 2020, a week before Italy’s first Covid 19 lockdown, Pope Francis announced the opening of the previously “secret” archives of Eugenio Pacelli’s wartime papacy declaring, “We are not afraid of history.” These courageous words are still resounding, as the widely opposing and contradictory conclusions of researchers begin to emerge.
A few leaders of interfaith dialogue have expressed warnings to proceed with caution and restraint in issuing moral verdicts . Rabbi David Rosen, AJC (American Jewish Committee)’s International Director of Interreligious Affairs stresses that “Any new incriminating ‘evidence’ only highlights how dramatic the blessed transformation has been in the approach and attitude of the Vatican and the Church towards Jews and Judaism – something which we must appreciate and celebrate.” Similarly, Rome’s Chief Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni notes that “the Church of those times was very different from today’s Church. In those times not all, but very many priests were conditioned by antisemitism.” Alberto Melloni, Italian historian and holder of the Unesco Chair on Religious Pluralism and Peace, points out that “Historical analysis requires much care in evaluating the different levels of diplomatic dialogue, also with regard to the Holy see. For example, it should be mentioned that Vatican contacts with the Third Reich were foreseen by the Concordat.” He recalls that two distinguished Italian historians, Giovanni Miccoli and Renato Moro, “have written extensively about Pius XII’s dilemmas and silences. The rush to emit a sentence in my opinion, risks creating over-simplified accounts and ends up by absolving the great grey masses of Christians of their responsibility for antisemitism.”
One of the recent books that has spurred discussions anew is that of the historian and scholar David Kertzer, a masterful narrator specialized in Vatican history and Pulitzer Prize winner for a previous study of Pius XI and Mussolini. The programmatic title of his new book is “The Pope at War: the secret history of Pius XII Mussolini and Hitler” (“Un Papa in Guerra: la storia segreta di Mussolini, Hitler e Pio XII”). Backing up the 544 pages of engrossing accounts of historical events in the Italian edition are his 129 pages of references to documents in the archives of the Vatican, the Roman Diocese, the Jesuit Order, and others in Germany, France, Belgium, England etc. His sources include private, personal notes, minutes, and correspondence between the Pope, his entourage and the outside world, many until now hidden from public scrutiny.
However, Kertzer’s riveting, extensively researched narration will not put the lid on the ongoing historical debate. The papacy of Pope Pius XII is still shrouded in mystery. New facts, just like those already known, easily lend themselves to contrasting interpretations. Pacelli will continue to be considered a saint by some and a moral failure by others. His silence, his refraining from speaking out in protest during the worst years of the Nazi genocide of Europe’s Jews was never mentioned and far less, explained by Pacelli himself, and no word of regret was ever expressed in this regard. His policy will continue to be interpreted either positively, as a wise and difficult strategy that enabled him to work behind the scenes and do as much rescuing as humanly possible while simultaneously continuing to protect the Catholic Church and its believers -- or negatively, as a grave flaw and weakness, an unwillingness to risk taking a public stand against the Nazi massacres, favoring Realpolitik over ethics. Others yet will continue to consider him a Hamlet-like figure, a religious leader bearing superhuman responsibilities on his shoulders who was not always sure of which path to take.
David Kertzer recalls that his lasting silence was not limited to nor did it begin with the Holocaust. It began with the German invasion of Poland in 1939 when an anguished Polish Catholic hierarchy failed to move Pius XII to denounce the horrors being committed by Hitler’s Nazis.
Some historians believe that his was a strategic choice expressive of his reflective character as well as of his educational and religious conditioning. Still today, Vatican diplomacy adapts its semantics to fit into a context of neutrality – exemplified in papal declarations regarding the Russian invasion of Ukraine, or the paucity of references to China’s persecutions of Uyghurs and other minorities. The Vatican does speak out against injustices, but without naming the aggressors, nor, at times, even the victims - perhaps in the hopes of clearing space for mediation.
Other important documents made freely available to internet this summer are the special WWII “Jews” files, as announced by Archbishop Gallagher, the Vatican’s Secretary of Relations between States. Nearly 40,000 volumes, containing 170 files with 2.700 requests to Pius XII (70% of the total), from Jewish individuals or groups, for help in avoiding deportations to or liberation from Nazi concentration camps or assistance in finding family members, can now be freely consulted online.
We find that the Vatican intervened in selected cases wherever possible, but often without positive outcomes. Many still remain unknown. Pope Pacelli directly tried to save some respected, personal acquaintances. The German historian and chief archivist of the Bundestag, Michael Feldkamp, has estimated that Pius XII saved 15,000 Jews. However be it, the total number of lives saved was, unfortunately, a drop in the ocean of 6 million.
Kertzer notes that most Vatican interventions regarded converted Jews, and this preference is evidenced by official statistics throughout the war. Yet Pius XII was simply following the example set by Pius XI - whose singular protest against Mussolini’s antisemitic 1938 “Racial Laws” which stripped Jewish citizens of nearly all human and civil rights, was to demand an exemption only for the families of “non Aryan Christians”.
On 0ctober 16, 1943 the Nazis raided the Roman Jewish ghetto. 1,259 people (363 men, 689 women, 207 children) were arrested and imprisoned for 2 days in a German military complex visible from Pacelli’s windows. Of these, 236 “Christians of Jewish origin” were released under Vatican pressure. The remaining 1023 prisoners were identified as Jews and herded, unopposed, onto a train to Auschwitz. Only 15 men and 1 woman survived. While the Vatican refused to accept the Nazi concept of racial antisemitism, a surviving theological antisemitic conditioning was a frequently determining factor in decisions regarding life or death for Jews. Bluntly put, throughout the war it was tacitly deemed morally and tactically correct to save the lives of Jews who had converted to Christianity while passively accepting the sacrifice of those who remained faithful to Judaism. Painful wounds still bleed among Roman Jews today, as often recalled by Rome’s Chief Rabbi, Riccardo Di Segni.
Yet Pius XII did make a diplomatic attempt – however feeble and ineffective - to stop the deportations. Cardinal Luigi Maglione, the then Vatican Secretary of State, recorded in official notes that he had forwarded Pope Pacelli’s pleas for mercy for the Jewish prisoners to German Ambassador Ernst von Weizsàcker. But when Weizsàcker inquired of Maglione how the Vatican would react if the deportations were to proceed, Maglione replied, “The Holy See does not want to be put in the position of pronouncing words of disapproval”. He added that “Should the Holy See be obliged to do so, it would rely on Divine Providence for the consequences.” Nothing more was said, and consequently the Nazis proceeded undisturbed (cf La Stampa, February 27, 2020; “Opening of Pius XII Archives. To speak or not to speak: that was the Question” LP-B).
Certainly the great, humane network of Catholic institutions in Italy, including convents, monasteries, priests, nuns, and the Vatican itself had generously opened their doors and given refuge to all categories of the persecuted, whether they were political objectors, military deserters or Jews. The tacit consent of Pope Pius XII must be considered a given, even if no document recording specific orders to save Jews has been, nor will probably ever be found. The policy followed was simply to apply Christian charity to save lives, all lives whoever they were, even, after Germany’s defeat and during the Nurenberg trials, those of former war criminals.
David Kertzer underlines Pacelli’s great existential fear of the victory of Soviet Communism and the concomitant threat of European Christianity’s destruction. That this was Pius XII’s driving force, overshadowing all other considerations was already confirmed to me in the late 1980s by a famous priest, Fr. Pierre Blet, one of the four Jesuit scholars entrusted by Pope Paul VI to do privileged research in the Secret Archives for the monumental 11 volumes of “Acts and Documents of the Holy See Relating to the Second World War”, published in installments between 1965 and 1981. When I asked Fr. Blet his interpretation of Pacelli’s proverbial “silence”, he shrugged his shoulders and said, “At the time, the overriding aim of the Church was to win the War. Everything else was secondary.”
Pacelli managed both to support Mussolini’s alliance with Nazi Germany (advising all Catholics - especially via the “Azione Cattolica” movement - to vote for Fascism) while also aiding the German Catholic Resistance in their tragically ill-fated efforts to murder Hitler. As a strategic choice based on his belief that Hitler would defeat Stalin, Pius XII maintained an unofficial alignment with Nazi Germany. On 29 March, 1944, Ambassadpr Von Weizsàcker sent a note to Berlin stating that “The Pope works 6 days of the week for Germany; on the seventh he prays for the Allies.”
In an early attempt to reach a deal between Hitler and the Catholic Church, recalls Kertzer, Pius XII accepted top secret encounters with Hitler’s envoy, Prince Philipp von Hessen - the Nazi son-in-law of King Vittorio Emanuele III and husband of Princess Mafalda. His “go-between” services had previously been used by Pius XI in Vatican contacts with Mussolini.
Pius XII’s highly confidential meetings with von Hessen took place outside Vatican walls. Pope Pacelli tried to negotiate for an end to the mounting persecution of the Catholic faithful - its priests, nuns and Church institutions - while Hitler demanded an end to the Church’s “interference” with internal Nazi policies and a pledge to keep mum about “the racial question”. Negotiations were halted by Hitler’s invasion of Poland.
Another major manifestation of Pacelli’s “silence” examined by Kertzer is the Pope’s failure to confirm to US President Roosevelt’s envoy the widely diffused news regarding the shocking massacres of Jews in Eastern Europe and evidence of Nazi plans for their complete extermination. On October 10, 1942, in reply to FDR’s inquiry, Cardinal Maglione handed Harold Tittmann an unsigned note from the Pope acknowledging that while news had been received from various sources regarding “grave measures taken against non-Arians…up to now it has not been possible to verify them with precision”.
There is absolutely no doubt that the Vatican had from the very beginning possessed more than ample evidence through the horrifying reports obtained from the most reliable sources including that of Msgr. Montini, the future Pope Paul VI who on 18 September, 1942 – Kertzer recalls - referred to “frightful, execrating forms and proportions of unbelievable massacres taking place every day in Poland….” And a month prior, on August 10th, the World Jewish Congress’s Gerhard Riegner sent out his famous telegram from WJC offices in Geneva, revealing “alarming reports” of Hitler’s plan to “exterminate…all Jews in countries occupied or controlled by Germany numbering 5 ½ to 4 million…after deportation and concentration in the east…in one blow….” Yet not only Pius XII but all Allied Powers, even the US State Department and the British government dawdled in making public these shocking, frightening facts, restrained by their disbelief in the truth of the horror – or the horror of the truth. And so, the daily slaughter of Europe’s Jews continued unceasingly until war’s end.
These are the facts, etched in stone. Interpretations will continue to differ, but both fans and critics of “the wartime Pope” must acknowledge that the horizon of those years was blackened by suffering and uncertainty, an unfathomable, ubiquitous epidemic of total evil. World leaders, including Pope Pius XII, were faced 24/7 by mind and emotion-blogging choices of heavily consequential decisions.
At Yad Vashem, Israel honors the Righteous of all nations who risked their own lives to save individual Jews and Jewish communities during World War II. Most were simple, average people, men and women, human beings, who with ingenuous innocence would ask, “Wouldn’t you have done the same?” But unfortunately, they were not at the helms of world leadership, nor could they ever be.
* Representative in Italy and Liaison to the Holy See, American Jewish Committee (AJC)
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