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.
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