Supporting the Jewish people????? Yeah, supporting them up against a wall as they are shot dead

J.J. Sefton on January 8, 2009 at 4:01 PM

Albert Einstein:

“Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly.”

Golda Meir:

“During the ten years of Nazi terror, when our people went through the horrors of martyrdom, the Pope raised his voice to condemn the persecutors and commiserate with their victims.

Myriam Zolli:

“When the Nazis asked for 50 kilograms of gold to spare the lives of the inhabitants of the Portico d’Ottavia, my father, almost in despair, rushed to the Vatican and spoke with the Vatican’s treasurer, Monsignor Nogara. Through Nogara, Pius XII made it clear to my father that the Vatican would place at his disposition the 15 kilos (33 pounds) that were lacking. From that moment, my father established a relationship of human sympathy, almost of identification, with Pacelli.”

[Myriam Zolli is the daughter of Israel Zolli, once chief Rabbi of Rome, who (along with her father) converted after the war.]

Adolf Eichmann:

“At that time, my office received the copy of a letter, that I immediately gave to my direct superiors, sent by the Catholic Church in Rome, in the person of Bishop Hudal, to the commander of the German forces in Rome, general Stahel. The Church was vigorously protesting the arrest of Jews of Italian citizenship, requesting that such actions be interrupted immediately throughout Rome and its surroundings. To the contrary, the Pope would denounce it publicly. The Curia was especially angry because these incidents were taking place practically under Vatican windows. But, precisely at that time, without paying any attention to the Church’s position, the Italian fascist government passed a law ordering the deportation of all Italian Jews to concentration camps,” Eichmann wrote in his diary.

“The objections given and the excessive delay in the steps necessary to complete the implementation of the operation, resulted in a great part of Italian Jews being able to hide and escape capture,”

Faint praise from those who don’t want to give it to him.

unclesmrgol on January 8, 2009 at 5:25 PM

The issue is not that Pius did nothing but whether he could/should have done more.

Blake on January 8, 2009 at 5:59 PM

Marvin Hier says that Pius was “silent”. Do you agree with him?

What the Pope did was to learn from the Edith Stein incident, which was that, whenever the clergy spoke, they weren’t the ones killed or punished — their parishioners were. In the case of Edith Stein, there was supposed to be a day of solidarity in the Netherlands, where from every pulpit (both Catholic and Lutheran), condemnation of the Nazi pogram would be issued. Interestingly, when the day came, the condemnation came from Catholic pulpits, but not from Lutheran ones. As a result, the Germans ordered as an example all Jewish converts to Catholicism rounded up and deported; Edith Stein was amongst them. No priests were harmed in this atrocity.

Would you speak out, knowing that your opponent would kill, not you, but your spouse and children? For a priest, his parishioners are like his spouse and children. This was designed to silence clerical dissent, and it was “successful” to the extent that opposition went underground.

The Pope did speak out, privately. When the Hungarian bishops indicated that they liked the Nazis and what the Nazis intended for the Jews, the Pope sent a nuncio to them and made them toe his line. I quoted Adolf Eichmann to give a sense of what the Nazis thought of this Pope. I quoted two prominent Jews to give a sense of what they thought of Pius. And, finally, a quote from someone who was there in Rome during the time the Nazis were rounding up Jews to give a sense of what they thought was happening.

The “silent pope” meme was something thought up by an anti-Catholic German Protestant and put into a play — none of the Pope’s contemporaries thought him silent or inactive.

This Pope isn’t being silent or inactive either. His underlings slightly overstate things when they speak of Gaza as a concentration camp, but they would be absolutely correct if they called it a ghetto — a place where the people whose property you have taken are put to languish in poverty.

unclesmrgol on January 8, 2009 at 8:32 PM

Go sing your terrorist sympathizer song elsewhere.

runner on January 8, 2009 at 5:02 PM

No, it’s based on Google Mapping Gaza, coupled with stories like those associated with Canada Park.

I’m not giving Hamas an inch in targeting noncombatant civilians with rockets and suicide bombers, but “what goes around comes around” is, unfortunately, a historical axiom. Google “king david hotel bombing” or read Moshe Dayan’s autobiography to put things into perspective.

Then reconsider you kneejerk response.

unclesmrgol on January 9, 2009 at 10:43 AM