Pius XII and Yad Vashem - 2

This is the second article related to the change in the text alongside the picture of Pius XII at Yad Vashem.

Tom Segev's article marks an important step forward in our study of the pope . The last paragraph is also a warning that needs to be heeded by people of good who are keen to see the hsitorical record of Pius clarified.

Pius' role in the Holocaust deserves more scrutiny

The new captions at Yad Vashem send a clear message to the incumbent pope: Do not glamorize Pius XII before the Vatican reviews and publishes all documents concerning his activities during the Holocaust.

From the beginning, the Yad Vashem Museum was created to reflect Israel's official concept regarding the Holocaust, and obviously it serves as a justification of Zionist ideology and of the need to establish the State of Israel and guarantee its security. Almost sixty years later, the new museum, which opened in 2005 and was inspired by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, presents the original political foundations in a new style: less indoctrination and more room for various points of view regarding numerous subjects, some of them sensitive and controversial.

At the entrance the visitor is greeted by an old clip of Jewish children in the Ukraine singing "Hatikva," the national anthem. The visit ends with the establishment of the State of Israel. Still, one notable difference is that the Arabs are no longer presented as Nazis: the placing of the 1941 photo of Hitler meeting the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem is no longer as accentuated as before. The museum has also adopted a neutral stance concerning the Nazi-established "Jewish Councils," otherwise known as Judenrat. The visitors can now draw up their judgment of the councils based on their activities in both the Warsaw and Lodz ghettos. The impression now is that the Judenrat leaders too, were victims of the Holocaust. Formerly, they were all considered villains.

One of the striking differences concerns the museum's depiction of Rejso, Israel Kestner, one the leaders of Hungarian Jewry. In 1955, an Israeli court ruled that Kestner had "sold his soul to the devil" after he was accused of being a Nazi collaborator. He was murdered two years later in Tel Aviv. Now, Kestner's contacts with the Nazis are depicted as praiseworthy actions that saved Jews. The change is due, partially, to the fact that Kestner's friend, Yosef "Tommy" Lapid, served as Yad Vashem's chairman. The wording under Kestner's photograph – as in all other captions in the museum – is formulated in an extremely cautious manner, weighing the meaning of every single word. The English version is slightly more positive than the Hebrew.

Many captions were dictated by diplomatic sensitivity, so as not to cause tension with foreign states. The lines dealing with the question of why the allies didn't bomb Auschwitz are more restrained than the more explicit criticism of the same issue in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.


The new captions dealing with Pope Pius XII, are 'cleaner,' and reflect a measure of openness and recognition of different opinions. Pius XII now receives a parcel of textual 'discounts': the new wording stresses the fact that the Reichskonkordat with Germany was signed before he was appointed, and deletes the former declaration that the accord was signed "even at the price of recognizing the Nazi regime." It does not mention that Pius XII shelved the prepared draft of an encyclical condemning racism, colonialism and anti-Semitism, drafted for Pius XI. If the Pope actually shelved such an encyclical, there's no reason to ignore it. The mention of his 1942 Christmas address and his appeals to the leaders of Hungary and Slovakia are relevant. Pius XII actually gains some points due to the detailed controversy surrounding his term.

Still, he isn't portrayed as a righteous man, but the issue calls for more study. Politically, the new captions send a clear Jewish and Israeli message to the incumbent pope, German-born Benedict XVI: Do not glamorize Pius XII before the Vatican reviews and publishes all documents concerning his activities during the Holocaust.




Tom Segev

Pius XII and Yad Vashem

I am grateful to Philip Bliss in Melbourne for alerting me to this breaking news.  (I had only received a headline alert as of this morning.)


The major Israeli daily, Haaretz published two articles in the last 24 hours on Yad Vashem, the national Holocaust Memorial and Museum in Jerusalem.  Since 2007 there has been a diplomatic push to have the text below the picture of Pius XII changed.  I saw the image of Pius and the text when I visited Yad Vashem in 2009 as part of the International Symposium on Pius XII and the Holocaust.  I remember standing before the image and text and thinking that it was a   very blunt, but also thinking that it could only be changed if there was a greater study done on the man and his times.  This is what has happened.  


I applaud Yad Vashem for continuing to undertake serious historical study on the role of Pope Pius XII in collaboration with historians around the world in order to reach an historically satisfying position.  The journey is not over, but the changing of the text points to the slow process that historians engage in and to the high value placed on historical honesty over ideology and polemic.  There will be people who will say the changes are not warranted or that they are insufficient; and they are entitled to their opinion. However, history deals with the truth of the past, not wish lists or imagined and hypothetical cases.  The text under Pius' portrait may change again when the archives for the war years are opened.  In the meantime, we will continue to research, read and study.  This is a wonderful example of historians at their best.

The 2007 image of Pius and accompanying text.

From Haaretz, 1 July 2012:


Yad Vashem is due to unveil a new wall text on Sunday describing the
actions of Pope Pius XII during World War II, softening a previous
message which stated that the head of the Catholic Church had not
protested verbally or in writing to the murder of Jews by the Nazis.

The initial wall text sparked a diplomatic incident in 2007. The new
wall text still blames Pius XII for the fact that the Church did not
intervene on the Jews˙s behalf at the time. But it paints a more complex
picture of his conduct and contains veiled criticism of the Vatican for
refusing to open its archive to allow historians to scrutinize the
actions of the Holy See during the war.

In April 2007, the papal nuncio to Israel, Antonio Franco, refused to
take part in the Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony because of the wall
text, installed when the new Yad Vashem Holocaust History Museum opened
in 2007. Yad Vashem said the wall text would be changed only if the
Vatican opened its archive to researchers, and if subsequent research
revealed new information about the actions of the Holy See during the
war. Franco did eventually attend the ceremony.

The old wall text, entitled "Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust", read:
"Pius XII˙s reaction to the murder of the Jews during the Holocaust is a
matter of controversy. In 1933, when he was Secretary of the Vatican
State, he was active in obtaining a Concordat with the German regime to
preserve the Church˙s rights in Germany, even if this meant recognizing
the Nazi racist regime. When he was elected Pope in 1939, he shelved a
letter against racism and anti-Semitism that his predecessor had
prepared. Even when reports about the murder of Jews reached the
Vatican, the Pope did not protest either verbally or in writing.

"In December 1942, he abstained from signing the Allied declaration
condemning the extermination of the Jews. When Jews were deported from
Rome to Auschwitz, the Pope did not intervene. The Pope maintained his
neutral position throughout the war, with the exception of appeals to
the rulers of Hungary and Slovakia toward its end. His silence and the
absence of guidelines obliged Churchmen throughout Europe to decide on
their own how to react."

The new wall text is headed: "The Vatican and the Holocaust." It notes
that it was Pius XII˙s predecessor, Pius XI, who signed the Concordat
with Nazi Germany. It reiterates the fact that Pius XII did not sign the
Allied declaration but mentions that a few days later, during a
Christmas radio broadcast, the Pope mentioned "the hundreds of thousands
of persons who without any fault on their part, sometimes only because
of their nationality or ethnic origin have been consigned to death or
slow decline." The wall text notes that Pius XII did not mention the
Jews specifically.

The new wall text also mentions the Pope˙s nonintervention during the
deportation of the Jews of Rome to Auschwitz in contrast to his appeal
for the Jews of Hungary and Slovakia, and uses the term "moral failure"‚ 

which the previous wall text did not.

"The Pope˙s critics claim that his decision to abstain from condemning
the murder of the Jews by Nazi Germany constitutes a moral failure: the
lack of clear guidance left room for many to collaborate with Nazi
Germany, reassured by the thought that this did not contradict the
Church˙s moral teachings, it reads.


"It also left the initiative to rescue Jews to individual clerics and
laymen. His defenders maintain that this neutrality prevented harsher
measures against the Vatican and the Church˙s institutions throughout
Europe, thus enabling a considerable number of secret rescue activities
to take place at different levels of the Church.

Moreover, they point to cases in which the Pontiff offered encouragement
to activities in which Jews were rescued. Until all relevant material is
available to scholars, this topic will remain open to further inquiry",
the wall text concludes.

"In my opinion, the connection between the Vatican and rescue activities
remains to be proven. I do not see that this has been proven yet", said
Prof. Dan Michman, director of Yad Vashem˙s International School for
Holocaust Studies. Yad Vashem added there had been no negotiation or
coordination with the Vatican regarding the wording of the wall text.

Michman said the wall text was changed in response to additional
research after the Vatican allowed scholars to examine documents dating
up to 1939, and in response to questions by visitors to the museum.


The second article in Haaretz will follow in the next post.

 

Pope Benedict on Pope Pius

There has been a flurry of news over a book to be published on Tuesday.  For most of the world it has been the Pope's candid and frank comments about the use of condoms that have caught the attention, and rightly so.  Benedict has made some very pastoral and morally positive statements in regard to prevention of illness through the responsible use of condoms.  For those used to Catholic or Vatican-speak, this is a big move forward and may be the harbinger of more developments down the line. 

However, my concern lies in the reporting of his comments on Pius XII.  Recognising that these are the private opinions of Benedict, the comments about Pius are still significant, perhaps even more so because they are personal and private.  I am somewhat alarmed that a man with such an appreciation of history, the value and importance of scholarly research and study and above all the knowledge that the evidence for Pius is still being and still to be considered, studied and weighed, can make these bald claims. I have copied the following report from Haartez sent to me by a colleague in New York.

This incident highlights the significance of the letter sent by historians earlier this year.  To date there has been no reply to the letter.

Jewish leaders dismayed by Benedict's defense of Nazi-era pope



Current pope's new alleged that Pope Pius XII 'saved more Jews than anyone else', despite research criticizing him for turning blind eye to Holocaust.


By Reuters


Jewish leaders reacted with dismay on Sunday to comments in Pope Benedict's new book that his wartime predecessor Pius was a "great, righteous" man who "saved more Jews than anyone else".

Many Jews accuse Pius, who reigned from 1939 to 1958, of having turned a blind eye to the Holocaust. The Vatican says he worked quietly behind the scenes because speaking out would have prompted Nazi reprisals against Catholics and Jews in Europe.

In his book to be published on Tuesday, called "Light of the World: The Pope, the Church, and the Sign of the Times," the German pope says Pius did what he could and did not protest more clearly because he feared the consequences.

In the book-length interview with a German journalist, the pope says of Pius:

"The decisive thing is what he did and what he tried to do, and on that score we really must acknowledge, I believe, that he was one of the great righteous men and that he saved more Jews than anyone else."

Jewish leaders said they were surprised by the comments.


"Pope Benedict's comments fill us with pain and sadness and cast a menacing shadow on Vatican-Jewish relations," said Elan Steinberg, vice president of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants.

"The assertion that Pius saved more Jews than anyone else during the Holocaust is categorically contradicted by the known historical record. As survivors of the Holocaust we have a solemn obligation to the memory of those murdered to defend the truth of the tragedy till our last breath," he said.

When the pope visited Rome's synagogue in January, the leader of the city's Jewish community told him bluntly that Pius should have spoken out more forcefully against the Holocaust to show solidarity with Jews being led to the Auschwitz death camp.

Pius, including the possibility that the Vatican may one day make him a saint, is one of the main points of contention in relations between Jews and the Vatican. The pope's latest comments raised new tensions.

"The Shoah represents the darkest abyss of our history and perhaps of human history," said Rabbi David Rosen, International Director of Interreligious Affairs of the American Jewish Committee, using the Hebrew word for the Holocaust.

"How can one say that any persons did all they could have done in the face of such evil unless they laid down their life to oppose it?"

Last December, Benedict took the decision to advance Pius XII on the path towards sainthood by recognizing his "heroic virtues," a move that almost led to the cancellation of the synagogue visit.


In the book, Benedict says he took the decision after an inspection of unpublished archival records in the Vatican but acknowledged that it was impossible to evaluate the hundreds of thousands of documents in a rigorously scientific manner.

"It is distressing that the pope has found it necessary to come to judgment on Pope Pius XII as he himself admits that the files and archives are not available to make a full judgment," said Abe Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League in the United States.

Jews have asked that the process that could lead to making Pius a saint be frozen until after all the Vatican archives from the period are opened and studied.

"There is certainly enough evidence to refute those who charge that Pius XII stood idly by while the lives of Jews and others were imperiled," said Rosen, who is based in Jerusalem.

"On the other hand it appears that he never directly - certainly not publicly - challenged the Nazi regime regarding the extermination of the Jews; and arguably even more dramatic, never made any mention of this, let alone any expression of regret, subsequent to World War Two," he said.