… Pius XII in World War II
"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. Increasingly, with the evidence of their own experience, local and world Jewish representatives learned to turn to the pope for help. This confidence was never disappointed. Uninfluenced by anti-Semitic propaganda or overawed by the ruthless Axis power visible on all sides, the Vatican, that is, Pius XII, intervened on behalf of Jews, individuals and groups, at strategic moments. This action it took either on its own initiative or following representations coming to it from numerous Jewish rescue organizations keeping vigilance over the unfolding drama. Such assistance was not sporadic or incidental or perfunctory but consistent — and persistent. It was not the accidental product of some curious circumstance, but the result of policy and principle. And the local Jewish leadership, with the world Jewish organizations, recognized this with gratitude. For as the war progressed, it was clear that in a continent writhing in suffering, Jews were easily among the most imperiled.
The full truth of what was happening would become known only later. But enough was known to produce, on the Vatican's side, innumerable interventions with governments still susceptible to admonitions. At the death of Pius XII, Jewish spokesmen, who knew the record, came forward with tributes to the late pontiff's services in the name of humanity, for the victims of the Holocaust.
At this point commences a stupefying paradox. The general assistance of the Vatican to Jews during World War II is fully documented, with chapter and verse, in the archives of both the Vatican and the Jewish organizations, such as the World Jewish Congress and the American Jewish Committee, not to speak of the official U.S. War Refugee Board. How does it come about that, in later years, the wind changes abruptly and violently? The Pope is found violently criticized by those who a short time earlier had been effusive in praise. For it was not until 1963, five years after the Pope was in his grave, that the past was, so to speak, itself buried in silence, as if inconvenient. In the spring of that year, in Berlin, a theatrical piece written by a hitherto unknown young German playwright roused enormous polemics inside and outside of Germany. The debate is continuing, a quarter of a century later…"
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