Robert Ventresca points to the complexities surrounding Pius

I have referred to Professor Robert Ventresca of University of Western Ontario in a previous post.  His work on Pius XII is balanced, critical and highly nuanced.  This interview came from Charles Lewis of the Canadian National Post.  Ventresca makes several highly significant points about context, points that have been argued on this blog since its inception.  I commend the interview.

Taking another look at Pope Pius XII's 

actions during the Holocaust

Charles Lewis, July 6, 2012

Pope Pius XII reigned between 1939 to 1958, a period of catastrophic events. But history seems mainly concerned about his behaviour around the Holocaust. Pius has been accused of being a German sympathizer or at best failing to do his moral duty to help save the Jews of Europe by keeping silent. For others he was a saint who used his skill as a diplomat to save thousands of Jews from Nazi terror. But this week in Jerusalem, Yad Vashem, the world’s most foremost Holocaust museum, softened its criticism of the wartime pope, allowing that despite faults he did help save Jewish lives. The changes in an exhibit on the pope seem subtle, but given the divisions between Roman Catholics and Jews over Pius’ actions, even small changes are considered important. For example, Yad Vashem now acknowledges the 1942 Christmas radio message in which Pius speaks of “the hundreds of thousands of persons who, without any fault of their own, sometimes only because of their nationality or ethnic origin, have been consigned to death or to a slow decline because of their ethnicity.” The National Post’s Charles Lewis spoke to Robert Ventresca, a professor of history at King’s University College at University of Western Ontario in London, Ont., who is completing a biography of Pius XII called Soldier of Christ.

NP: What does the Yad Vashem decision signify?

RV: This rewording constitutes a minor diplomatic victory for the Vatican and the defenders of Pius XII insofar as it seems to correct what was considered to be the decidedly one-sided and inaccurate original description. I think that it’s unfortunate that this decision has sparked the predictable range of polarized opinion — such as saying the exhibit now vindicates Pius. I do think the new wording is remarkably balanced and nuanced not just about Pius but of the Church in general. It conveys clearly there is a range of opinion on this subject.

NP: When Pius died in 1958, he was widely praised by Jewish leaders, including Golda Meir, later Israeli prime minister. Then came Rolf Hochhuth’s 1963 play The Deputy, which vilifies Pius and started the decline in his reputation. Did anyone question his role before?

RV: There was a clear and consistent criticism of his policies, and especially of his diplomatic style and choices, beginning as early as 1939 and continuing through the war years and beyond. It’s important to stress that some of the strongest and most consistent criticism came from within the Catholic world. The lines of the debate have remained fairly constant over the years but intensified after The Deputy. There was the feeling that Pius as the Vicar of Christ was expected to raise his voice in protest. Even after the war, there were Catholics who wanted him to say something explicitly about what had happened to the Jews. The matter always comes back to the nagging doubts about what felt to many like excessive papal caution in the face of unspeakable atrocities.

NP: Was the Jewish leaders’ praise misguided?

RV: It was not so much misguided, as only partly informed, especially considering that when he died in 1958 the historical understanding about the Holocaust was in its early stages. It’s a matter of record that in the months after the war Jewish delegations went to Rome to thank the pope for what the Church had done on their behalf. But as we learned more about the Holocaust, it allowed us to approach the story of rescue with a greater degree of differentiation among the various layers of the Church. In effect, the pope’s indirect role in these efforts has receded into the background, while the courageous efforts of the Catholic rescuers on the ground have moved to the forefront.

NP: For most people Pius is either a saint or the worst sinner. What’s wrong with that analysis?

RV: The problem arises from the tendency to think of Pius XII the way he was presented in The Deputy — as “less a person than an institution.” Thinking of Pius XII that way works only if your intention is to render the man a myth, which can never correspond to the more complex reality of a man who struggled, often unsuccessfully, to reconcile his very human attributes and foibles with the demands of leading a global community whose self-ascribed nature and mission were not of this world. When we approach Pius XII as a person, we find a man of considerable talent, intelligence and imagination, who nonetheless often could not free himself from the norms and conventions of his upbringing and clerical training to grasp fully how the times in which he was living required an extraordinary courage and originality.

NP: So how do you see him after all your research?

RV: There are things about him that are so admirable, but other things at the end of the day that leave me ambivalent. There was an intelligence, an unmistakable spirituality, a keen mind at work. At the same time, he could be very narrow-minded and unyielding. [In terms of the Holocaust during and after] he could be excessively diplomatic rather than evangelical in his criticism. After the war he didn’t appear to want to come to terms with what happened and did not want broach the important question of the role of historical Christian anti-Semitism in leading to the Holocaust.

NP: Was he an anti-Semite?

RV: Much of what we say about Pius and the Jews has to be inferred. There is nothing I recall seeing in the way of a letter or an encyclical or speech that tells us much about what he thought about Jews and Judaism. He was a man of his times. He would have had an appreciation of the Jewish roots of Christianity and a great love of the biblical heritage of Judaism. But there would have been a certain measure of ambivalence, especially of Jews in the social and economic life of European societies. I don’t think he had any special appreciation of sense of duty toward contemporary Jews or Judaism. But he was not indifferent to Jewish suffering. He would have seen the suffering Jews as akin to the suffering of many others who were suffering as a result of destructive modern ideologies, including communism.

NP: What did he think of Nazis?

RV: I think he saw Nazism as a kind of heresy. He saw the nationalism and the racial theories incompatible with Christian teaching.

NP: Why couldn’t he have said just once directly the actions against the Jews were wrong and no Catholic should be a party to them?

RV: That’s the nagging question. There was always this vague allusion to people who were targeted for no reason other than their ethnicity. After the war, for instance, he spoke directly about the persecuted clergy of Poland and the sad fate of German youth, but there is no explicit mention of what happened to the Jews. There it is. When we come back to the question of his relations to Jews, there remains many nagging questions. One of the problems I have with the certain defenders is that they don’t want to deal with the uncomfortable questions.

NP: But did he save Jews?

RV: There are some exaggerated claims made by certain defenders that Pius XII helped to rescued tens if not hundreds of thousands of European Jews, albeit indirectly through the work of papal institutions or other Catholic organizations and religious orders. These claims are not tenable in my view, nor especially instructive, since they would credit the pope with efforts that took place often without his specific knowledge, approval or encouragement This is not to say that his general policy, as well as the work of certain Vatican-related institutions in Rome itself with the Pope’s approval, did not help to save lives. Clearly, Pius XII knew of and approved of initiatives by his representatives or other Catholic individuals and institutions in Italy and parts of Europe to rescue Jews and other civilians. Near the war’s end, the Vatican itself boasted of having helped to save at least 6,000 Jews in Rome alone during the Nazi occupation. Some scholars put that number at closer to 4,000.

Then there is the case of high-level papal intervention with leaders in Hungary and Slovakia during the war to prevent the deportation en masse of tens of thousands of Jews. In the end, the Pope’s intervention was only partly successful, but undoubtedly his direct intervention helped to save lives, though it is difficult to say with great precision just how many.

More on Yad Vashem's decision on Pius XII

While I applaud Yad Vashem for taking a significant step that recognises the developments in understanding Pope Pius XII and his role/s during the Holocaust, I am concerned that the step has been taken by apologists as a definitive act that means they have "won" the "battle" over the war time pope.  And this is the language they are using - "won", "battle", "victory" etc.  This is not how history is done.  The crowing by some in the "canonise him now" camp is, at present, so loud, that any attempt to conduct a rational conversation is all but impossible.


Historians are not interested in "winning victories".  We are interested in establishing as best we can the truth of a particular period in the human story.  For those of us who have spent years researching the years of the Holocaust there are no "simple" solutions.  As the news from Yad Vashem broke and the apologists began publishing "I told you so" style responses, I was reading my way through some of the documents in ADSS concerning the Jews in France in 1941 and 1942 and the involvement of the nuncio, Valerio Valeri, the secretary of state, Luigi Maglione, and through the notations indicating he had seen the reports, the pope.  It is here that that the hard slog work is being done.  


I have not read anything in the popular blogs or news services that would indicate any awareness of the extremely complex realities that confronted the pope and the Vatican during the war years.  And that worries me.  There were no simple answers; there were no simple problems - it was a complex situation that nearly beggars belief.  But this was the reality in which they worked.


One of the oft resurrected chestnuts involves Golda Meir's famous statement of condolence on the death of the pope in 1958.  Yes, the Israeli foreign minister made a profoundly moving statement expressing the gratitude of the Jewish people for what Pius did during the war years; however, I see and read nothing that points to any understanding of things that Meir would have known nothing about, such as the conversations held between the nuncio to France in the early summer of 1942 as the massive round-up of non-French Jews in France began. And it is difficult reading because of the diplomatic tight-rope that Valeri walked, that Maglione walked and that ultimately, Pius walked.  


How do you deal with statements in ADSS 8.449 where Pierre Laval, the vicious Jew-hating Vichy minister tells the nuncio that according to Otto Abetz, the de-facto German ambassador to France, it was for the pope alone to speak on the Church's response to antisemitic laws and actions, not the nuncio?  Why did Laval say that unless he and, presumably Abetz, knew that Pius would be extremely reluctant to speak publicly?  And on what was that based, if it was true?  The statement was made a month after the Dutch bishops' protest in July 1942 and at the time of the protest sermons of Cardinal Gerlier, Bishops Saliege and Theas (ADSS 8.452, 454, 463) and before the Brazilian ambassador's initiative among the allied diplomats in the autumn of the same year to get Pius to speak out clearly and condemn the murder of European Jewry.  The outcome of the Dutch protest was the round-up and deportation of "non-Aryan Christians" including Edith and Rosa Stein.  The outcomes of the French protests was the opposite.  The deportations continued but with significant passive and growing active resistance from the French and evidence of major hiding operations, especially in the unoccupied zone.  (See the work of Lucien Steinberg and Renee Bedarida as two examples)

What did Pius know?  All of the above.  He also knew of the actions of French Protestant Christians, especially the work of Pastor Marc Boegner. I believe, based on the evidence available so far, that as far as France was concerned, the actions of the local bishops - six out of a hierarchy of over 100 - was judged sufficient to let the Vichy regime know what the pope thought about the persecution of the Jews.  And given the reaction of both Vichy and the Germans, the statements appear to have had the desired effect.  It is a simplistic answer, but I lack time to go further.


If all that seems confusing and convoluted, it is.  And this is why I get concerned when I see blog entries such as the one that follows in the next post, that make things look so simple.  If only they were.  And just in case I did not make the point clear enough, the reference to ADSS is to published material, not material from archives that have not been released.  So, if making my way through the available material is so fraught with difficulty and lack of clarity, I doubt the release of archives in 2014 will necessarily make the matter that much clearer.


On a personal note.  I was one of the participants at the 2009 symposium at Yad Vashem to look at recent developments in the study of Pius XII and the Holocaust.  There were no raised voices.  There was a lot of shared opinion and discussion of new material from the archives.  There was a sense that we are moving forward.  I only wish that the apologists and their fellow-travellers would read what we have written, instead of believing every conspiracy theory that flies their way.  


The change of the text next to the portrait of Pius XII is indicative of historians doing their job well.  It is a slow process.

Bishop Jules Saliege 

1870-1956

Bishop Pierre Theas

1894-1977

Pastor Marc Boegner

1881-1970

All three were honoured by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations.