Back in the saddle.

I have been on study leave since mid-October 2013.  The time away from school was a great opportunity to re-charge the batteries, do some serious professional and personal development in areas of Liturgy, Christian art and architecture, history and travel.  Of the latter I did some pretty serious getting around.  Over the last three months I have spent time in different cities in Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Cuba and the United States.  Most of that time was engaged in various forms of "church crawling".  

I kept an eye on news concerning Pius XII but it has been pretty quiet.  The only significant piece of news has been the resurgence of hope that Pope Francis may speed up the opening of the archives for Pius' pontificate.  Much of the story appears to have been promoted by the visit to Rome by Francis' old friend, Rabbi Abraham Skorka of Buenos Aires.  And while Skorka was diplomatically reserved over the nature of his conversations with his old friend, he did suggest that Francis was keen to open the archives in order to "get it all out" about what Pius did and did not do.  Several articles appeared on 19 January and there has been a steady trickle over the last week.  Most appear to borrow from each other.

However, I tend to be rather sceptical having seen more than a few media reports that "it" was about to happen, would happen soon, that the new pope was committed to "it" and so on.  What I do think is solid fact is Francis' commitment to "hasten slowly" on the cause of Pope Pius XII.  His public statements demonstrate a much-welcomed caution that until all the relevant material is examined, Pacelli's cause for canonisation should wait.  This is good news.  For those who wish to read some of the news headlines I suggest these:


19 January: Gidon Ben-zvi writing in The Algemeiner,  Pope may open Holocaust era Vatican archives, possiblt shedding light on Pope Pius XII's role.

19 January: The Jerusalem Post picked up Pope Francis to examine Pius' wartime conduct before deciding on sainthood from the Sunday Times.

20 January: Catholic Culture, a conservative North American news service, reported Pope ready to open secret archives of Pius XII?

20 January: Andrea Tornielli writing in Vatican Insider penned Skorka and the Vatican archives on Pius XII.

25 January:  A very enthusiastic Vaiju Naravane writing for The Hindu informs us the "Pope Francis appears to have taken another bold decision in favour of inter-religious harmony and transparency in the affairs off the Roman Catholic Church.  It has been reported that he has decided to throw open the Vatican's archives on the Holocaust and the role played by Pope Pius XII during Hitler's third Reich when an estimated six million Jews were exterminated".

An interesting start.  However, just in case his readers think this is really what is going on, Naravane goes on to write: "However, the Vatican has still to confirm that Pope Francis has in fact decided to open the archives".  Indeed.  

Personally, I find reading Sandro Magister's column along with more "left of centre" journals, such as the National Catholic Reporter, gives me what may be the best picture of what is happening.

Yad Vashem's mistake - Rabbi Yoffie in the Jerusalem Post

Rabbi Eric Yoffie is Emeritus President of the Union for Reform Judaism in the USA and a long-time significant promoter of dialogue, listening and understanding between the Abrahamic faiths.  He is a regular blogger for the Jerusalem Post  and Huffington Post.  Rabbi Yoffie posted this response to Yad Vashem's rewritten text for Pope Pius XII and the Shoah in The Jerusalem Post yesterday.


Yoffie's comments are representative of many people who share the frustration of many historians who are waiting for the opening of the archives for the war years, and I take his comments very seriously.  I do not agree with the oft-expressed hope or belief that the archives will tell us everything.  I remain convinced that the broad or big picture is known and has been known for nearly fifty years and made more clear through the publishing of ADSS.  The opening of the archives for the 1939-1945 war will add detail and nuance, but not, I believe, alter the generally accepted history of the period.  Nor will it silence those who indulge in conspiracy fantasies and the like, or those who believe Pius should be canonised by the Catholic Church without further delay.


Yad Vashem's mistake.

The following are some uncontested historical facts about the role of Pope Pius XII during the Holocaust:

  

Pius XII never condemned Hitler or the Nazis by name.

 

He never mentioned specifically the suffering of the Jews, though many people, both clergy and lay diplomats, pleaded with him to issue a public condemnation.

 

In October, 1943, the Jews were rounded up in Rome itself; the cattle trucks drove past St. Peter’s, with the tiny, shivering hands of the incarcerated children hanging through the slats. The Pope, sitting in St. Peter’s, still said nothing at all.

 

I mention these facts because I have just learned of the decision of Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Museum and Memorial, to change the wording of an exhibit on Pope Pius XII’s actions during World War II. The changes were meant to soften the criticism of the original wording, which was neither inaccurate nor overly harsh to begin with. 

 

We are all familiar with the arguments put forward to explain the behavior of the Pope: that he feared a furious reaction from the Nazis if he were to speak out publicly; that Nazi retaliation might have made things worse for the Jews; that church interests in Europe would have been harmed, surely a legitimate papal concern; that the Pope encouraged help for the Jews in secret, and that this help was forthcoming in innumerable cases.

 

I have done my best to understand these points. They are weighty arguments, and the history of the period is not simple. But I keep coming back to those Jewish children in Rome, being transported past St. Peter’s, and I simply cannot understand the failure of the Pope to speak out. This failure is a great moral stain that can never be wiped away.

 

I write as someone who is an enthusiastic advocate of Jewish-Catholic dialogue and cooperation, and as someone who believes—and has publicly stated innumerable times—that more progress has been made in Catholic-Jewish relations in the last 60 years than was made in the previous two millennia. Led and inspired by John XXIII and John Paul II, the Church has taken vigorous and daring steps to promote a new relationship with Judaism and the Jewish people. Indeed, I doubt if we could find any other example in history of a church initiating a process of such profound repentance, acknowledging the sins of its members over a 2000 year period against the practitioners of the religious tradition from which it sprang.

 

But I remember the words of my teacher and friend, the late Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg. Rabbi Hertzberg was both liberal in outlook and a fervent bridge builder; he believed that the values of the Jewish tradition and the realities of the modern world required that the Jewish people and the State of Israel cultivate strong relations with the Catholic Church, as well as with the Moslem world and all major faith traditions. Yet he was also a serious historian who had studied the actions of Pius XII during the Holocaust and had been repelled by them, and he had been infuriated by the refusal of the Vatican to open to scholars its archives of the period. 

 

By all means, he would say to me, let us look to the future and build strong ties with the Church. But, he warned me, let no one alter the historical record, and above all, don’t forget those children.

 

Rabbi Hertzberg, I believe, would not be pleased by the actions of Yad Vashem. If he were here, he would protest, and so do I.  

Rabbi Eric Yoffie

 

Brian Freedman: Pius XII and "the other"

This is an interesting article written by Brian Freedman in the Jerusalem Post on 13 June 2012.  It points, yet again, the many levels of complexity surrounding any serious study of Pius XII, the Catholic Church and Judaism, Jews and the Holocaust.  The author is a graduate student studying at Hebrew University, Jerusalem and is active in inter-faith dialogue.  Freedman's conclusions are not new, but are, nonetheless, apt and timely - authentic dialogue is not served when hard truths are avoided.


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If the Catholic Church and World Jewry were in a Facebook relationship, their status would doubtless read: “It's Complicated.”

This was never more evident than at a recent meeting in Jerusalem about Jewish-Catholic relations, in which a Swiss cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church addressed the issue along with two rabbis. But before putting in my two shekels, first a personal anecdote.

At dinner a few nights ago, a Catholic friend of mine put forth the following claim: the Jewish curators of Yad Vashem purposely tarnished the image of Pope Pius XII as revenge on the Catholic Church for its long and macabre history of persecuting Jews.

Any attempt to refute his claim would miss the point.

As Rabbi David Bollag said at the meeting on Jewish- Catholic relations, which took place on May 25 at the Jerusalem Center for Israel Studies: “The importance of the dialogue is to listen what the other side has to say.”

And so, after listening to my friend, I realized that he believes unequivocally that Pope Pius XII was a righteous man who did everything in his power to save Jewish lives during the Holocaust. Therefore, any claim to the contrary must be a malicious smear campaign against his virtuous pope.

It is therefore understandable that my friend, a religious Catholic, is indignant toward how Yad Vashem portrays Pius XII, under whose picture there is a caption that explicitly condemns the pope’s silence during the Holocaust.

One sentence reads: “Even when reports about the murder of Jews reached the Vatican, the Pope did not protest either verbally or in writing.”

It is not my intention to argue for or against the virtue of Pope Pius XII. Suffice it to say that it is a good example of the complex and mercurial relationship between Jews and Catholics.

ANOTHER MANIFESTATION of this controversial issue was witnessed in 2009 after current Pope Benedict XVI bestowed Pius XII with the title of “Venerable” which, according to the Catholic canonization process, declaimed his Heroic Virtue and moved Pius XII one step closer to sainthood.

Many leaders of prominent Jewish organizations were flummoxed, and some,including the president of the World Zionist Congress, the founder of Simon Wiesenthal Center and the chairman of Yad Vashem, were incensed. As they viewed it, it was an insensitive and provocative gesture that offends Jewish memory and, more importantly, living Holocaust survivors.

Other critics of this move said it was premature to grant Pius XII such an honorific because the documents in the Vatican Secret Archives that pertain to the life of Pius XII had not yet been opened. The Vatican releases documents 75 years after an event occurs, meaning documents about Pius XII will open in 2014.

This debate also takes place in scholarship. On one side, there is a book entitled Hitler’s Pope: the Secret History of Pius XII, which was written in 1999 by British journalist John Cornwell, whose general argument is that Pius XII could have done more to save Jewish lives.

On the other side, there is a book published in 2008 and written by German historian Michael Heseman, which bears the title The Pope who Defied Hitler: The Truth about Pius XII. In 2010, after gaining privileged access to Vatican archives, Heseman revealed that Pius XII, then a cardinal, requested that 200,000 Jews be allowed to leave Germany after Kristallnacht.

Another book, written by none other than a rabbi and historian, David G. Dalin, carries the title: The Myth of Hitler’s Pope: How Pope Pius XII Rescued Jews from he Nazis. The book was published in 2005.

The point is that the Holocaust remains an open wound in Jewish-Catholic relations, which explains clearly the reason Swiss Cardinal Kurt Koch, who is also the head of the Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with Jews, expended much breath on the issue during his 10-minute, prepared address on May 25 at the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies.

On one hand, he said that the Catholic Church must admit that Christians were complicit in the perpetration of the Holocaust. However, he took great pains to renounce Adolph Hitler as a Catholic, thus isolating him as a pariah and doubtless not a representative of the Church.

More importantly, Koch noted that the Holocaust was a turning point in Jewish-Catholic relations, forcing the Catholic Church to reconsider its attitudes toward the Jews. This resulted in the Second Vatican Council, which took place from 1962-1965 and produced the document, Nostra Aetate, which was a manifesto for the Church’s new attitude toward non-Christian religions.

Among other noteworthy comments, it exculpates Jews from the murder of Jesus. It also recognizes the similarities between Jews, Muslims and Christians, as all being sons of God. In the spirit of this document, Koch notes in his address “Christianity couldn’t exist without its Jewish roots” and that “with Judaism, we have a relationship that we do not have with any other religion.”

He also admitted that there may be two parallel paths to salvation, and that the Jewish path may be just as legitimate as the Christian one.

RABBI DAVID Bollag, a senior researcher at the Institute of Jewish-Christian Research in Lucerne, Switzerland, was asked to respond to Cardinal Koch’s remarks.

In them two thing were apparent.

First was the refusal of Jews to disassociate the Catholic Church from the Holocaust. Bollag argued that there was a strong connection between the development of Nazism and centuries-old Christian anti- Semitism. He further argues that Nostra Aetate would not have been born had the Catholic Church not felt responsible for the Holocaust. The idea that the Catholic Church played a central role in the Holocaust reverberates in Jewish dismay at the sanctification of Pius XII and also Yad Vashem’s negative portrayal of him and the Catholic Church.

The second issue that was apparent was hypocrisy.

Bollag took advantage of his audience with the cardinal to air his consternation with the Catholic Church’s “Good Friday” prayer for the Jews.

Having undergone many revisions, the prayer in its most current version, as articulated by Pope Benedict XVI reads: “Let us also pray for the Jews: That our God and Lord may illuminate their hearts, that they acknowledge Jesus Christ is the Savior of all men.

Almighty and eternal God, who wants that all men be saved and come to the recognition of the truth, propitiously grant that even as the fullness of the peoples enters Thy Church, all Israel be saved. Through Christ Our Lord. Amen.”

Bollag criticized this version as a major step backward in Jewish-Christian relations, as the prayer clearly exhibits a lack of respect for the Jewish religion. Bollag was suggesting the Church has not learned the lessons of the Holocaust, and that rather than extricating anti-Semitism from its roots, the Church through this prayer is actually disseminating anti-Semitism throughout the Catholic world.

Cardinal Koch responded to Bollag’s criticism, arguing that Bollag took the prayer out of its eschatological context. He said that the prayer refers exclusively to Judgment Day, during which Jewish tradition states that their Messiah will come and save them.

According to Koch, their Messiah, although currently unbeknownst to Jews, will actually be Jesus Christ, whom the Christian hope the Jews will accept at that time.

The hypocrisy in Bollag’s statement was revealed by an audience member, of which there were about 200.

The man rightly noted that the Jewish prayer of “Aleinu,” which is the second most recited prayer in Jewish liturgy after the Kaddish, is read in Israel with the following verse: “It is our duty to praise the Master of all to ascribe greatness to the Author of creation; who has not made us like the nations of the lands nor placed us like the families of the earth; who has not made our portion like theirs, nor our destiny like all their multitudes. For they worship vanity and emptiness, and pray to a god who cannot save.”

The audience member noted that in many American synagogues this verse is omitted, but he was pointing to the fact that both religions, Judaism and Christianity, are particularistic and view their path as the only path. It seems the only difference is that some Christians feel obliged to “save” non-Christians from deviating from the path, while some Jews view their religion more as an exclusive club. You want in, great! If not, it’s your problem.

In the end, it is my opinion that while I applaud Rabbi Bollag’ s call to “listen to what the other has to say,” each side must also engage in self-reflection and, in a sense, listen to what “his or her own side” is saying.

This is what led me not to dismiss outright my Catholic friend’s indignation at his beloved pope’s portrayal at Yad Vashem. While I believe the charge of deliberate besmirching is a bit far-fetched, it is entirely possible that the Jewish attitude toward Pius XII is jaundiced. Maybe when the Vatican archives open in 2014, Jews worldwide will do some self-reflection and reconsider their views on “Hitler’s Pope.”

The author is a master’s student at the Hebrew University, studying Islam and the Middle East. He also has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Maryland.

Mourning Pavelic: Shame in Croatia

I have been following the controversy over memorial Masses for Ante Pavelic the now-long dead leader of Fascist Ustasha Croatia.  Efraim Zuroff is right in expressing his surprise at the lack of reaction to a very provocative act. 

"Controversy" is hardly the right word, since outside of a few media articles scattered here and there, the memorials have generated no reaction outside of The Jerusalem Post, an article in the English language Croatian Times, some of the more fringe hate groups and the academic server, Holocaust H-Net.  Perhaps things will develop over the next few days - I hope so.

Pavelic was a mass murderer of Jews, Roma and Serbs.  He sent his thugs into Serbia to murder Christians as much as Jews.  The Ustasha were so brutal and bloody in their killing frenzies that even the SS counselled moderation.  The Catholic Church was, to its shame, complicit in more than some of the killing, but that may be discussed here at a later time.  What is certain is that the pope, Pius XII knew something of the involvement of Catholic clergy in the murder rampages.

Interestingly, the article in the Croatian Times is a very abbreviated version of the original article and contains a defense from Zvonko Franc of the masses.  It would appear that Franc has little understanding of the canon law demand that the Mass never be used as a means of propaganda or that any memorial service could be seen as a source of scandal for "the Faithful".

The priest mentioned, Vjekoslav Lasic, is a Dominican friar of the Croatian province who has a reputation for supporting the memory of the Pavelic state.  He has travelled throughout Croatian communities abroad, including Australia, giving succour to Croats who yearn for "the good old days", that is, before Tito and Communism.  Lasic is currently listed as a "reserve councillor" for the Dominican province, which suggests that he is regarded as being in good standing with the Order.  Ironically, the motto of the Order of Friars Preacher, is "Veritas" - truth.

Nazi memorial in Croatia a disgrace to Europe



By Efraim Zuroff


04/01/2012


A service for Hitler is unthinkable. So why is the world quiet in response to a service for Ante Paveli?

Imagine for a minute that memorial masses were held in two major cities in Germany on the anniversary of the death of Adolf Hitler. Needless to say, such a ceremony would arouse fury, indignation, and widespread protests not only in Germany, but throughout the entire world. Last week, the local equivalent of such an event took place in Croatia, but instead of anger and demonstrations, not a single word of protest was heard from anywhere in the country.


I am referring to the December 28 memorial masses conducted in Zagreb and Split (and perhaps elsewhere as well) to mark the 51st anniversary of the death of Ante Paveli, the head of state of the infamous Independent State of Croatia, created by the Nazis and their Italian allies in 1941.


Following its establishment, rule was turned over to the local fascist movement, the Ustasha, headed by its Poglavnik (leader) Ante Paveli.



During the entire course of its brief existence (1941- 1945), the Ustasha sought to rid the country (which consisted of the area of today’s Croatia plus most of Bosnia-Herzegovina) of all its minorities, as well as their local political opponents. In order to do so, they established a network of concentration camps all over the country, the largest and most notorious of which was Jasenovac, located on the banks of the Sava River, southeast of Zagreb. There, many tens of thousands of innocent civilians were murdered in a variety of brutal ways, which earned the camp the nickname of the “Auschwitz of the Balkans.”


To this day, there continue to be disputes regarding the total number of civilians murdered by the Ustasha, but the number is certainly no fewer than several hundred thousand, primarily Serbs, along with Jews, Roma and anti-fascist Croats. And while all those who participated in these atrocities bear criminal responsibility, the individual with the greatest culpability was undoubtedly Ante Pavelic, who headed the most lethal regime in Axis-dominated Europe.

THE MEMORIAL masses to honor Pavelic, who died in Spain in 1959 from wounds suffered in an assassination attempt two years earlier, mark a renewal of a tradition which began in the 1990s following the reestablishment of Croatian independence. In the wake of the conviction in
Zagreb of Jasenovac commandant Dinko Sakic and in response to protests by the Wiesenthal Center, the mass was stopped and the priest responsible,Vjekoslav Lasic, left Croatia.

Unfortunately, however, Lasic returned to Zagreb a few years ago and renewed his neo-fascist activity with impunity. At the funeral of Sakic, who insisted on being buried in his Ustasha uniform although in prison for his World War II crimes, it was Lasic who administered final rites.
According to the Dominican priest, although Dinko Sakic did not observe all the Ten Commandments (Thou shalt not murder?), he was a model for all Croatians, and every Croat should be proud of his name.

The question now is, how does such an event to honor the memory of one of the biggest mass murderers of World War II pass with nary a word of protest or condemnation? The obvious address for such indignation would be in Croatia itself, where many people fought with Tito’s partisans against the Ustasha, and a significant sector of the population have a strong anti-fascist tradition. But the same question applies outside the country as well.

Croatia is well on its way to membership in the European Union (slated for 2013), a membership which is ostensibly contingent on the acceptance of EU values and norms. Is a memorial mass for one of Europe’s worst war criminals compatible with EU membership?

The sad truth is that in this respect, the European Union has failed miserably in dealing with the resurgence of neo-fascism and the promotion of Holocaust distortion in its post-Communist members. Once admitted to the EU (and NATO), countries like Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Hungary and Romania have begun to take active steps to rewrite their World War II histories, minimizing or attempting to hide the highly-significant role played by their nationals in Holocaust crimes, with barely a word of protest or condemnation from Brussels.

Instead of actively combating the Prague Declaration of June 3, 2008, which promotes the canard of historical equivalency between Nazi and Communist crimes and undermines the justified status of the Holocaust as a unique case of genocide, the EU has failed to adequately respond to this dangerous challenge to the accepted Western narrative of World War II and

its tragic consequences.

I wish I could conclude with the good news that Israel and the Jewish world have responded appropriately, but unfortunately that is not the case. These developments have been purposely ignored by the Israeli government, which under Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman refuses to

respond to the assault on our past in those countries which have evinced no particular interest in championing the Palestinian cause.


Last week’s masses in honor of Ante Pavelic are a mockery of Christian values and an insult to all the victims of the Ustasha, their relatives, friends, and people of morality and conscience the world over. The time has come for effective protests from within Croatia, as well as from the European Union, the United States and Canada, Israel and the Jewish world.


That is the minimum that we owe the victims of that notorious mass murderer.






The writer is the chief Nazi-hunter of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and director of its Israel Office. His most recent book is, Operation Last Chance; One Man’s Quest to Bring Nazi Criminals to Justice,  (Palgrave/Macmillan).

Dinko Sakic in Ustasha uniform, with wife, concentration camp guard, Nada Lubaric, 1943

Vjekoslav Lasic OP presides at the burial of Sakic in July 2008