The Vatican and the Middle East

By the Rev. L. Humphrey Walz

When Pope John Paul II came to the US in September, among the first people to address him was Rabbi Mordechai Waxman. As spokesman for a group of 196 Jews who journeyed to Miami's Center for the Fine Arts for the occasion, he proceeded to give the pontiff his interpretation of Hitler's holocaust as a natural product of long-standing, on-going Christian anti-Semitism as expressed in what he terms "the teaching contempt for the Jews and Judaism." From this he went on to deplore the "absence of formal Vatican recognition of the state of Israel" as a "major point of dissension between Jews and the Vatican."

His context was rather more diplomatic than these condensed extracts might suggest. However, his introduction of a Middle Eastern political issue into a holocaust context has already elicited worried comment from some Palestinian Christians. They see this as part of a pattern for inducing guilt feelings, fears, and cover-ups which can be manipulated to affect their future adversely.

Presumably they have not read Dan Greenburg's 1964/5 best-seller, How to Be a Jewish Mother, with its section on "Making Guilt Work." However, they have watched—and felt repercussions from—the way imputations of guilt for anti-Semitism have been used to press legislators, journalists, clergy, and others to pursue "atonement" for same at the expense of Palestinians.

They're also anxious lest increased Jewish acceptance of this version of Christian history may scare Diaspora Jews into more vigorous financial and political support for Tehiyist, Kakhist, Herutist, and other Israeli schemes to displace more Palestinians to make room for future waves of Jewish escapees from "inevitable" resurgences of anti-Semitism.

Meanwhile, Palestinians suffering from erosion of their human rights under Israel believe that the limited coverage of their plight in the Western media stems largely from reporters withholding unpalatable but crucial facts through fear of being condemned as potential holocaust revivers.

One hopes that such concerns will receive careful evaluation by the International Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee when, this December, it holds its first meeting on US soil to initiate studies on the religious and historical implications of the holocaust for Christians and Jews. One also hopes that its conclusions will find their way, a year or so hence, into the papal encyclical on past and present anti-Semitism and the holocaust.

Pending such developments, there have been various Catholic publications which, without evasion of "Christian" guilt or Jewish suffering, have revealed something of the extent of Christian martyrdom and self-sacrifice in the Nazi heyday.

One such item I referred to in passing in my November 1986 column on "Holocaust and Middle East Peace." It cited Father William J. O'Malley's America article, entitled "The Gentile Holocaust," which has since been re-printed separately at 25 cents per copy, postpaid, by The Catholic League, 1100 W. Wells St., Milwaukee, WI 53233. "The Gentile Holocaust" tells in grim detail how "9 to 10 million Slavs (Poles, Ukrainians, Russians) were annihilated—not in the war—but purposefully—for precisely the same racial reasons" as were Jews. This knowledge should reduce any sense of Jewish loneliness in suffering and replace Christian feelings of corporate guilt with gratitude for an heroic example.

Lengthier (48 pp.) is Dr. Juozas Prunski's 1979 Lithuanian Jews and the Holocaust. Available at $1 a copy from the Lithuanian American Council, 2606 W. 63, Chicago, IL 60629, it relies almost exclusively on Jewish sources to describe the Nazi invaders' excruciating—and virtually unsuccessful—pressures to mobilize Lithuanians into their cause. The Hitlerite brutality became increasingly harsh with the general refusal, stimulated by Christian clergy and authorities, to cooperate in the repression and extermination of Jews.

The popular conviction to the contrary is a tribute to the power of Nazi propaganda. Says the Encyclopedia Judaica (Vol. XI, p. 487): "On the surface the impression had to be created that it was the local population which had initiated the anti-Jewish measures." The Nazis shot Lithuanian police and others who refused to kill Jews, then dressed their own executioners in Lithuanian uniforms and filmed them at their dirty work. The Lithuanian American Council's archives include long lists of both those Christians who paid the full price and those who, though never caught, risked all to protect their Jewish neighbors. One published list gives detailed descriptions of "the mortal danger faced by some 1,000 named Lithuanians who hid and saved Jews."

My November 1986 column cited film director Claude Lanzmann's $4 million, nine-and-a-half-hour TV mini-series, Shoah, as conveying the horrors of the Nazi persecution and elimination of Jews. Subsequently my attention was called to Prof. Samuel Shapiro's Fidelity magazine article entitled "Blaming the Victim: Shoah, Polish Catholics, and the Holocaust." It confirms my judgment as far as it went but goes on to show how, by "cinematographic sleight of hand" and carefully chosen omissions, Lanzmann led viewers to conclude that "just about all Poles were willing collaborators with the German murderers...(and) the Catholic Church in Poland shared responsibility for the holocaust with neo-pagan German Nazism." Among the omissions Shapiro notes as necessary to put across his impression are: The open Nazi hostility to the Christian Church and Gospel; the general Polish insurrection against the Nazis at the cost of 250,000 lives; some Jewish collaboration with the Nazis—mentioned also by Prunskis and elaborated on in Ben Hecht's Perfidy (Messner, 1961); the killing of 27 percent of the Polish Catholic clergy and three million Polish Catholics in the unfinished Nazi plan to exterminate all Poles as "untermenschen" (subhumans); the many Polish common people who were ready to take supreme risks for their Jewish neighbors; and the Vatican's telegram bombardments of key Nazi offices as facts became known. (For a copy of this article with three others bearing on Christian-Jewish relations, send $1.00 to 206 Marquette Ave., South Bend, IN 46617, for the July 1986 Fidelity).

These grim facts and their ongoing consequences reemphasize, in a negative way, the continuing urgency of Micah 6:8: "God, having shown us what is good, requires us to do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with Him." This Hebrew challenge from the ancient Middle East, maintained in both Christian and Jewish traditions, will doubtless be in the minds of both parties to the International Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee's December dialogue. Applied there to current problems of anti-Semitism, Palestinian displacement, and other matters in the wake of the holocaust, it could add momentum to peacemaking worldwide, especially in the region of its origin.

Rev. L. Humphrey Walz, D.D.'s early career overlapped the rise and fall of the Nazi regime, in the course of which he worked closely with escapees from and survivors of the holocaust. After the allied defeat of Hitler, the US departments of Defense (OMGUS) and then State (HICOG) assigned him to Germany as a consultant (he rejects the official designation of "expert") on refugee affairs.