The Vatican Statement on the Holocaust, “We Remember: a Reflection on the Shoah”

An American Catholic Journalist

Pope Pius XII: Victim of the Christian-Bashers

By William Hughes

“Time’s glory is to calm contending Kings, to unmask falsehoods and bring truth to light.”—William Shakespeare

As the “Iron Curtain” has disintegrated over Eastern Europe, the memory of one of dictator Josef Stalin’s most heroic opponents, the late Eugenio Pacelli, has come to mind. He was known to the world as Pope Pius XII. His pontificate lasted from 1939 to his death in 1958. By force of strong character, a rich intellectual heritage, and genuine spirituality, Pius XII led the Church through one of its most turbulent periods—World War II (1939-1945).

As his pontificate unfolded, he faced perilous dangers to his own person, to the Church, and to the survival of Catholicism. Pius XII was a virtual hostage, Lebanese-style, in the Vatican during most of the WW II period. Italy was then under the absolute domination of the fascist, anticlerical dictator, Benito Mussolini. Adolf Hitler’s Germany, also rabidly anti-Catholic , was preparing to invade Poland, with Stalin’s Bolshevik regime, and Italy, as its Axis cronies.

Stalin, the quintessential cult-of-personality psychopath, despised the Church. His warped communist ideology, enforced by fanatical Bolshevik cadres and commissars, was dedicated to destroying everything associated with the peoples of the Christian West. Nevertheless, the pope bravely blasted Hitler’s pact with Stalin and railed against the rape of Poland by the Nazis.

In the mega-carnage that followed, an estimated 50 million people lost their lives. Stalin would later join the Allies—the U.S., Britain and France—but only after Hitler’s surprise invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. In the summer of 1943, after Mussolini was overthrown by partisans, the Nazis took over total control of the city of Rome. It is beyond dispute that Hitler, then paranoid over heavy military losses sustained on the Eastern front against the Red Army, easily could have dissolved the entire Vatican establishment in one murderous raid.

Fortunately, Pius XII lived to see the Church survive. He never wavered in his abhorrence of Hitler or Stalin. After WW II, evidence of the “Jewish Holocaust” (the mass killing of European Jewry by the Nazis) became known. World opinion was outraged. There also was created the need for scapegoats and a cleverly crafted red herring when awkward questions arose for the surviving Jewish people.

“Why did the Jews, through their own leaders, cooperate with the Nazis in their own destruction?”; “Why did the Jews abandon their apparently successful economic boycott of pre-WW II Nazi Germany?”; and, “Why did millions of Jews go to their deaths like lambs to the slaughter?”

These were just some of the major queries raised by Jewish intellectuals and historians like Ben Hecht and, especially, Hannah Arendt. Arendt called the Zionist complicity in the tragedy one of the “darkest pages” in the history of their race. Many found the questions raised by Arendt and Hecht too painful to face directly.

Pius XII, now dead, became a convenient target for revenge and a distraction from the issue of Zionist complicity raised by the dissidents. Both Zionists and non-Jews began accusing Pius XII of responsibility for the death of the Jews by his so-called “silence” regarding the mass exterminations.

The Christian-bashers regularly portrayed Pius XII, in plays, articles, books, movies and television documentaries, as a tool of the capitalists, an uncaring bureaucrat, and a heartless cleric. Nothing could have been further from the truth, but these slanders continue until the present day.

Although some have bravely spoken out on this matter, most have elected not to do so for fear of being labeled an “anti-Semite” by Zionist zealots. The truth, however, must be told, and Pius XII, like other historical figures, is entitled to a defense.

First, some background on Pius XII. As a young priest, he was trained in diplomacy and Canon Law. He came from an ancient Roman family that had long been in the service of the Vatican. He was known as a tireless worker, well-read, and experienced in global affairs.

In 1929, the young Eugenio Pacelli was appointed secretary of state for the papacy. During his tenure, a compelling papal encyclical, Mit Brennender Sorge, was issued in German in 1937. No epithets were omitted in its condemnation of Nazism. Hitler was described as a “mad prophet of repulsive arrogance.” It is beyond rebuttal that such a provocative encyclical could not have been issued without the consent of Pacelli.

After Hitler’s success in the Czech Sudetenland, however, and his diplomatic coup in reaching the “Munich Agreement” with Britain and France, he secured the overwhelming support of the German populace. Despite all of that, Nicholas Cheetham said in his Keeper of the Keys, that the outspoken German bishops, with approval of the Vatican, which included Pacelli, a key diplomat, “courageously denounced concentration camps, mass deportations, the organized euthanasia of the infirm, the confiscation of Church properties, and the corruption of the youth by semi-pagan teachings.”

Respected historians now agree that the “Jewish Holocaust” didn’t begin until after the Wannsee Conference, held by the Nazi leadership on Jan. 20, 1942. The meeting was chaired by SS Gestapo Chief Reinhard Heydrich, Heinrich Himmler’s deputy.

As late as Christmas Day 1942, Pius XII still persisted in publicly denouncing the evils of totalitarianism, which invoked violent German protest. He was repeatedly threatened with physical retaliation. The Vatican, under his stewardship, had saved over 400,000 Jews from certain death, more than all other institutions, churches and governments put together. Records at Israel’s Yad Vashem memorial now indicate, according to the author of Pius XII: Greatest Dishonored, that the pope’s humanitarian efforts actually saved over 860,000 Jewish lives.

Margherita Marchinone underscores in her book, Yours Is a Precious Witness, that while “67 percent of European Jews were killed, 85 percent of Italy’s Jews were saved” and that the people who know best “credit Pius XII for this moral victory.” Thousands of Catholic priests and nuns also paid the supreme penalty for opposing Hitler.

Recent events have demonstrated that Pius XII’s role during this period has been subjected to a double standard by his vindictive Zionist critics. While he was expected to express opinions against the Nazis, despite being under the equivalent of house arrest, Zionists today regularly refuse to speak out against Israeli atrocities in the West Bank, Gaza and southern Lebanon. What flagrant hypocrisy!

A celebrity Jewish Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel, was requested to give his opinion on the intifada, the gallant Palestinian uprising in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. He declined to condemn Israel’s barbaric treatment of the Palestinian people, which has been documented by leading human rights groups such as Amnesty International and by the United Nations.

Wiesel’s excuse, despite living in the safety of the Christian West, was that his answer might aid Israel’s enemies. The deafening silence of the vast majority of the American Zionists to Israel’s abysmal human rights record must also be taken into account in this brouhaha.

Just imagine if the shoe were on the other foot in this controversy. Suppose Christian intellectuals had accused Judaism of being responsible for the crimes of Stalin, since many of the Bolshevik leaders were indeed Jewish (See Stuart Kahan, The Wolf of the Kremlin, and Malcolm Muggeridge’s Winter in Moscow). The outcry from the Zionists would have been monumental. In fact, Karl Marx, the founder of Communism, and Leon Trotsky, a Bolshevik leader who became Stalin’s top rival, were Jewish, while the sinister Vladmir Lenin, whose Bolsheviks snuffed out an attempt at democracy by Russia’s Mensheviks, was half-Jewish.

Question: Why did the Zionists at a world conference of members, according to the Lon don Daily Express (03/24/34), target Germany for destruction, and not also the Soviet Union, where Christians were being butchered left and right? And, what, if any, explanation is there for the Zionist silence about Stalin’s genocide against the Christian masses? It is estimated that tens of millions died under the Communist “Evil Empire.”

On the media front, one of Pius XII’s severest critics has been The New York Times, long a vehicle for Zionist misinformation and a shameless apologist for Israel’s wrongdoing. In a book by S.J. Taylor, Walter Duranty: Stalin’s Apologist, it was revealed that the NYT’s reporter on the Soviet Union, the late, British-born Walter Duranty, was a shill for Stalin’s propaganda machine.

The Ukraine genocide/famine of 1932-33 was one of the greatest man-made disasters in history. Stalin’s henchman in this massive crime against humanity was Lazar Kaganovich. Kaganovich, a Jew, also was one of the signers of the genocide document which condemned to death 25,000 Polish Catholic officers at the Katyn Forest Massacre in the spring of 1940.

Millions of peasants perished in the forced collectivizations in the Ukraine. The NYT not only missed the story, but also covered it up. The tragedy was called “mostly bunk.” Stalin’s bloody purge trials of 1928, 1934, and 1936 also were reported as nothing more than “justice served.”

Meanwhile, the Washington Times has reported (7/17/90) that one million Jews died at Auschwitz, a Polish death camp, and not the four million originally claimed by the Zionists. Three hundred thousand non-Jews also perished there.

Researchers at Israel’s Yad Vashem memorial have admitted the new Polish figures were correct. This new evidence, if true, would cut in half the Zionists’ original claim that six million Jews had died under the Nazi regime. It would also raise the questions of, “Why did the Zionists grossly exaggerate the original numbers of Jewish victims?”

Finally, it must be stated that Pius XII’s conduct can be fairly judged only within the context of the unique circumstances of WWII in Europe. When that is done, the vile canard against his reputation by the Christian-bashers will be seen as a compassionate friend of humanity and a humble servant of his God.

(Author’s note: This article updates a commentary on the same subject matter by the author, which was originally published in The Eternal Call, a national Catholic newspaper, Spring 1991 issue, Arlington Heights, Illinois.)

References: See Hannah Arendt’s A Report on the Banality of Evil: Eichmann in Jerusalem, Penguin Books (1963); The Jew as Pariah, Hannah Arendt, Grove Press (1978); Ben Hecht’s Perfidy, Messner (1961); Zionism in the Age of Dictators, Lennie Brenner, Crown Heim, London and H. Hill, Westport, Conn. (1983); Pius XII and the Holocaust, a Reader, Catholic League Publication (1988); Keepers of the Keys, Nicholas Cheetham, Charles Scribner’s Sons (1983); Pius XII: Greatness Dishonored, Michael O’Carroll, C.S.Sp., Latare Press, Blackrock, Co. Dublin; “In Memory of the Katyn Massacre,” Washington Times, 3/27/95; “The Other Holocaust—The Terror Famine in Ukraine,” Peter J. Lorder, Barnes Review, 7/96; “Stalinist Boss Dies; Oversaw Reign of Terror,” David Remnick, Washington Post, 7/27/91; “L.M. Kag anovich, ‘Stalwart of Stalin’ Dies at 97,” New York Times, Francis X. Clines, 7/27/91; Jewish History, Jewish Religion, Israel Shahak, Pluto Press (1994); “A Pop Quiz on the Middle East,” Charlie Reese, Orlando Sentinel, 2/8/98; and “What Price Holocaustomania?,” Dr. Alfred M. Lilienthal, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, 4/98.

William Hughes is a Baltimore-based writer and radio commentator.