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On July 23, 2001, Seymour Reich, the chairman of the International
Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations (IJCIC), announced the
suspension of The International Catholic-Jewish Historical Commission
evaluating a collection of Vatican documents on Pope Pius XII's actions
during the Holocaust. What went wrong?
The Commission, which was set up by the IJCIC and the Vatican's
Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations with Jews, concluded that
the documents left many unanswered questions and requested the opening
of the Vatican archives. Reich told the press that Walter Cardinal
Kasper, the current president of the Pontifical Commission, explained
that "technical reasons" were keeping the archives closed for
the present. Without additional materials, the scholars on the panel
said that they could not continue their inquiry.
Reich expressed his "deep disappointment" with the
Vatican's decision, and the Jewish scholars on the Commission publicly
criticized the Vatican.
On August 8 L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper,
published a reply by the Rev. Peter Gumpel, S.J., the Vatican official
who is the independent judge for Pius XII's beatification. Gumpel
asserted that the Commission did a poor job of evaluating the material
and accused some of the Jewish scholars of undermining the Vatican's
initial co-operation with the Commission by leaking confidential
information to the press and making false, inflammatory statements
against the Vatican. Many Jewish groups were angered by Gumpel's
statement, insisting that his charges were "totally
unfounded."
How did the International Catholic-Jewish Historical Commission come
into existence, and what went wrong?
In March 1998 the Vatican issued its statement on the Holocaust, We
Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah, which was drafted by a
committee headed by Edward Cardinal Cassidy, then president of the
Pontifical Commission. Some Jewish organizations strongly objected to
the statement's defense of Pope Pius XII and called on the Vatican to
open its archives from World War II. The Vatican replied that it already
published many documents from its archives in the 11-volume collection
with the French title Actes et documents du Saint Siege relatifs a la
Seconde Guerre Mondiale (Actes), which has received little
attention from historians and journalists.
In response to Rolf Hochhuth's play The Deputy (1963), which
condemned Pius XII for his "silence" during the Holocaust,
Pope Paul VI in 1964 asked a team of three Jesuit historians, the Rev.
Pierre Blet, S.J., the Rev. Burkhart Schneider, S.J., and the Rev.
Angelo Martini, S.J., to conduct research in the Vatican archives and
publish the relevant documents from the war. A few years later, the
three Jesuits were joined by the Rev. Robert A. Graham, S.J., the author
of an acclaimed book about Vatican diplomacy. The first volume was
published in 1965, the last in 1981.
In each volume the documents are presented in their original
languages, with most in Italian. Volumes I, IV, V, VII, and XI detail
the Vatican's diplomatic relations with all the belligerent governments
during the war. Volumes VI, VIII, IX, and X record the Vatican's efforts
to alleviate the suffering of civilians, especially the Jews. Volume II
is a collection of Pius XII's private wartime letters to the German
bishops. Volume III, which is published in two parts, discusses the
persecution of the Catholic Church in Poland and the Baltic nations.
The Actes reveal that until his death in August 1944, Vatican
Secretary of State Luigi Cardinal Maglione, the first person to see the
Pope every morning, frequently instructed the Vatican's diplomatic
representatives in many Nazi-occupied and Axis nations, including Japan,
to intervene on behalf of endangered Jews. After Cardinal Maglione's
death, his deputy, Msgr. Domenico Tardini, the Secretary of the
Congregation of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, continued to send
out instructions until the end of the war.
Dismayed by the criticism of We Remember and the continued
attacks on Pius XII, Cardinal Cassidy, in 1998, proposed the creation of
a joint panel of Catholic and Jewish scholars to study the Actes.
At first, Jewish groups rejected the offer. In a letter to the editor
published in The New York Times (Nov. 7, 1998), Reich explained
that "the published items were selectively chosen by Vatican
administrators and constituted a small fraction of the total wartime
archive." Reich added that until "independent
researchers" were given free access to the complete archives, Pius
XII's role during the Holocaust "will remain an enigma." The
implication was that the four Jesuit editors may have refused to publish
incriminating documents.
In late 1999 Reich changed his mind without any public explanation
and agreed to Cassidy's proposal. Cassidy recruited Dr. Eugene Fisher,
the American bishops' highly respected representative in dialogue with
Jewish organizations, to serve as the "Catholic coordinator"
for the Commission. Reich named Rabbi Leon Feldman, a Professor Emeritus
in Hebraic Studies at Rutgers University in New Jersey, to serve as the
"Jewish coordinator." Reich and Cassidy agreed to a panel of
six scholars, three Jewish and three Catholic, who were assigned to
study the Actes. On Fisher's recommendation, Cassidy appointed
the Rev. Gerald Fogarty, SJ., Professor of Religious Studies and History
at the University of Virginia, the theologian Eva Fleischner, Professor
Emerita at Montclair State University in New Jersey, and the Rev. John
F. Morley, Professor of Religious Studies at Seton Hall University in
New Jersey. On the Jewish side, Reich selected Michael Marrus, Professor
of Holocaust Studies at the University of Toronto, Robert S. Wistrich,
Professor of History at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and Bernard
Suchecky, a researcher with the Free University in Brussels, Belgium.
The Commission's makeup immediately caused concern. Five out of the
six scholars, Fleischner, Morley, Marrus, Wistrich, and Suchecky, had
previously criticized Pius XII in their writings and public statements.
For example, in an interview with the Jerusalem Report (Dec. 20,
1999), Wistrich said, "Pius XII did not perform in a way that
reflects any credit on the Vatican or on the Catholic church. He wound
up in a position where he was complicit in German policy." Marrus
told the Toronto Star (Nov. 24, 1999) that the Pope's top
priorities during World War II were preserving "the institutions of
the church so souls can be saved...this was the supreme value over
everything else, including the victims of the Holocaust." According
to the National Catholic Reporter (Apr. 10, 1998), Morley
described The Deputy as a good thing "because it forced the
Vatican to start making statements." In 1997 Fleischner and Michael
Phayer co-wrote the book, Cries in the Night. Women Who Challenged
the Holocaust, which contrasted the heroic actions of individual
Catholics to save Jews with the indifference of the Vatican. (The odd
man out, Catholic scholar Fogarty, had published books on the Holy Sees
relations with the American bishops, but was not known for defending
Pius XII.) Several observers asked why other scholars with different
perspectives on this controversy, such as the Rev. Vincent Lapomarda,
S.J., the Rev. John Jay Hughes, Sr. Margherita Marchione, John Conway,
William Rubinstein, John Lukacs, Sir Martin Gilbert, Michael Tagliacozzo,
Monica Biffi, Ronald Rychlak, Owen Chadwick, the Rev. Michael O'Carroll,
Michael Feldkamp, Emma Fattorini, and many others, were not approached.
The makeup of the Commission invited allegations that it was
deliberately stacked with scholars who were critical of Pius XII in
order to ensure that it reached unfavorable conclusions.
In October 2000 the Commission submitted its preliminary report to
the Vatican. "No edited collection can put such an important
historical issue definitely to rest," the report said. "It is
plain from the [Actes] that important pieces of the historical
puzzle are missing from that collection." The Commission drew up 47
questions, which it claimed could not be answered by the Actes or
other sources. In the same month, the six scholars, Fisher, Reich, and
Feldman all traveled to Rome to see if the questions could be answered
by opening the archives.
The Vatican referred the Commission to Gumpel, who prepared detailed
answers to all 47 questions, many of which could be easily answered. The
Jesuit said that his meeting with the scholars, which was recorded on
tape, was cordial. At one point, Rabbi Feldman said that he personally
remembered Eugenio Pacelli, the papal nuncio in Germany and future Pius
XII, keeping silent and not doing anything as he watched the Nazis burn
books in Berlin in 1933. Gumpel politely replied that this was
impossible since Pacelli had left Berlin in 1929 to become the Vatican
Secretary of State and never returned. "After that," Gumpel
told this writer, "Feldman sat back down, didn't say another word,
and eventually fell asleep."
After Gumpel answered about six of the questions, Bernard Suchecky
leaked the report to the Paris daily Le Monde and attacked Pius
XII in an interview with the newspaper on October 25, 2000. The
worldwide publicity that followed ended Gumpel's co-operation with the
Commission. Despite the Vatican's outrage over the leak, Reich never
removed Suchecky from the panel.
Several months before the Commission's work was suspended, Reich,
Fogarty, and Marcus all publicly said how they were still waiting for
the Vatican to reply to the report, acting as if the meeting with Gumpel
never took place. (Fleischner resigned from the Commission in December
2000, and no replacement was announced.) Wistrich even attacked Gumpel
and the Vatican in the German magazine Der Spiegel (Apr. 24,
2001) and told the Jerusalem Report (Jul. 2, 2001) that the
Vatican had acted in "bad faith" by refusing to open the
archives. Reich and Wistrich have asserted that "the Vatican"
promised them the scholars would have access to the archives, a claim
that both Fisher and Fogarty have denied. There isn't a single statement
in the public record by Pope John Paul II, Vatican Secretary of State
Angelo Cardinal Sodano, or any other Vatican official making such a
promise. If Reich and Wistrich received an assurance in private from a
Vatican official, then they should have little difficulty in revealing
his name, but they have refused to do so.
The Commission's 47 questions are prefaced with general statements
that provide small pieces of information. Apart from this, the report
provides few insights into what the 11 volumes contain and does not
address to what extent the documents refute the allegations against Pius
XII. A review of the report shows that the six scholars ignored many
documents in the Actes and other sources that answered many of
their questions. Space allows me to answer 11 of the questions.
The second question asks if the "archives reveal internal
discussions among Vatican officials" regarding an appropriate
response to Kristallnacht in November 1938. The Vatican's
response is well known. Over a two-week period, the Vatican newspaper
published many articles about Kristallnacht, noting the moral
outrage around the world and quoting the critical dispatches of the
Jewish-owned Havas News Agency. Pope Pius XI instructed three prominent
cardinals, Idelfonso Schuster of Milan, Pierre Verdier of Paris, and
Joseph-Ernest Van Roey of Belgium, to publicly condemn Nazi racism.
"Very close to us, in the name of racial rights, thousands and
thousands of people were tracked down like wild beasts, stripped of
their possessions, veritable pariahs who are seeking in vain in the
heart of civilization for shelter and a piece of bread," Cardinal
Verdier said. "There you have the result of the racial
theory." In November 1938 the Vatican newspaper published all three
statements and a strong attack on totalitarianism delivered by Michael
Cardinal Faulhaber of Munich. The New York Times (Nov. 12, 1938)
quoted Pius XI during the beatification ceremony of Mother Cabrini as
saying, "It is necessary to pray as our Divine Redeemer has taught,
recommended and ordered you because you know there are forces which are
seeking to ruin souls. It is necessary, very beloved children, to do
what we can and what is in our power to react against these powers of
evil." Was the Pope talking about events in Germany? The New York
Times believed he was and placed his statements below an article about Kristallnacht.
The Commission's seventh question alleges that Giovanni Montini, the
Substitute Secretary of State and future Pope Paul VI, and Msgr. Tardini
told Leon Berard, Vichy France's Ambassador to the Vatican, that the
Vatican had no objections to France's anti-Semitic laws just as long as
they "were administered with justice and charity and did not
restrict the prerogatives of the Church." During a diplomatic
reception, Msgr. Valerio Valeri, the papal nuncio in France, personally
objected to the anti-Semitic laws with Marshall Henri Philippe Petain,
the French head of state. Petain replied that he consulted with Vatican
officials, who had no objections to the laws. Valeri immediately
informed Cardinal Maglione about what Petain had claimed (Actes,
vol. VIII, pp. 295-297). The Cardinal looked into the matter and
discovered that Berard had, in fact, met with both Montini and Tardini.
However, neither of them told Berard anything that could be interpreted
as approval of France's anti-Semitic laws. On October 31, 1941, Cardinal
Maglione replied to Valeri (vol. VIII, pp. 333-334). After clarifying
the matter, the Cardinal backed up the protest that Valeri had made to
the anti-Semitic laws and encouraged him and Pierre Cardinal Gerlier of
Lyon to intervene with the Vichy regime in order to soften the
application of the laws.
The ninth question asks if the Vatican approved of the interventions
on behalf of Jews by Msgr. Andrea Cassulo, the papal nuncio in Romania.
In his January 14, 1943, letter to Cassulo, Cardinal Maglione wrote that
he "read with particular attention…all the steps that you made,
behind the instructions of the Holy See, on behalf of Jews in general
and the Jews converted to Catholicism especially..." (vol. IX, p.
81). The Cardinal asked Cassulo to inform him if reports about the
mistreatment of Romanian Jews were accurate, and if so, to act with
prudence and a charitable spirit to "modify certain measures that
are in contrast with the directives of Christian morality." On
February 15, 1943, Cardinal Maglione sent Cassulo a sum of money to help
alleviate the miserable conditions of Jews who were imprisoned in
Romania's concentration camps (vol. IX, p. 129).
In question 11 the Commission asks if then Archbishop Adam Sapieha of
Krakow, Poland, ever informed the Vatican about the extermination of
Jews since the notorious Auschwitz death camp was located in his
diocese. In his book The Pope and Poland in World War! (1968),
Fr. Graham already answered this very question, writing, "Sapieha
and the Polish bishops, guarded as they were in writing about the
concentration camps where their own Catholic faithful were languishing
and dying, refrained even from mentioning the systematic murder of the
Jews which had been going on throughout the length and breadth of
Poland." Additionally, the Gestapo kept Sapieha under constant
surveillance, and communication between the Holy See and the Polish
bishops who weren't exiled or sent to concentration camps was limited.
In question 13 the Commission acknowledges that then Archbishop
Aloysius Stepinac of Zagreb, Croatia, "condemned atrocities against
Serbs and Jews and established an organization to rescue Jews."
However, in order to answer a few unspecified questions, the Commission
requests more documents from the Vatican archives and Stepinac's
beatification. The 11 volumes provide ample documentation of his
actions. For example, an appendix to document 130 in volume IX of the Actes
lists 34 separate interventions by Stepinac against the persecution of
Jews and Serbs in Croatia from 19411943. The scholars could have
consulted two excellent books, The Case of Cardinal Aloysius Stepinac
(1954) by Richard Pattee and Il Processo dell'archivesco di Zagrabia
(1947) by the Rev. Fiorello Cavalli, S.J. Both books reproduce many
documents and address the allegations against Stepinac. In an interview
with the Croatian newspaper Glas Concila (Apr. 21, 1996), Amiel
Shomrony, the personal secretary of Zagreb's Chief Rabbi Miroslav
Freiberger of Zagreb, who died at Auschwitz in 1943, recalled that
Stepinac "personally saved a lot of people and children by hiding
them. He gave the community flour every month and financially supported
Jews who had been left without any means of support by the
persecution," as quoted in the book Croatia: A Nation Forged in
War (1997) by Marcus Tanner. During his meeting with the Commission,
Gumpel noted that the French-Jewish scholar Alain Finkielkraut defended
Stepinac in an article written for Le Monde (Oct. 7, 1998).
According to Antonio Gaspari's book Gli Ebrei Salvati da Pio XII
(2000), Wistrich dismissed Finkielkraut's testimony by observing that he
had a Croatian wife.
Question 21 notes that Casmir Papee, Poland's Ambassador to the
Vatican, on April 23, 1943, sent Cardinal Maglione an article from a
Swiss newspaper that describes "the martyrdom of many Polish
priests interned at Dachau." The scholars ask if there are any
documents in the archives that detail how the Vatican responded to Nazi
atrocities against the Church in Poland. This question overlooks an
important document. On March 2, 1943, Cardinal Maglione sent a long
letter protesting the Nazi persecution of the Catholic Church in Poland
to German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop (Actes, vol.
III, part 2, pp. 742-752). The letter cited atrocity after atrocity
against the Church. "No less painful was the fate reserved for the
regular clergy," the Cardinal wrote. "Many religious were shot
or otherwise killed; the great majority of the others were imprisoned,
deported or expelled." When asked about this Vatican protest by
Allied interrogators after the war, Ribbentrop replied, "I don't
recollect it at the moment…but we had a whole deskful [sic] of
protests from the Vatican" (Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression,
Supplement B, p. 1,235).
Question 26 asks if the Vatican ever gave any encouragement before
November 1944 to Msgr. Angelo Rotta, the papal nuncio in Hungary, who
aggressively opposed the deportations of Jews. It seems the Commission
failed to read volume X carefully. The Nazis invaded Hungary on March
23, 1944. Jewish groups around the world were alarmed, rightly thinking
that Hungary's one million Jews were in danger. The American War Refugee
Board appealed to the Vatican two days later to bring the threat against
the Hungarian Jews to Rotta's attention. On March 28, 1944, the Vatican
telegraphed the nuncio, instructing him to see to what could be done to
protect Hungary's Jews. Cardinal Maglione repeated these instructions to
Rotta on April 5. Two days later, Rotta replied that he intervened in
the name of the Holy See with the Hungarian government to mitigate the
anti-Jewish measures, but his efforts were unsuccessful. The
deportations of Jews began in May 1944. On June 25, 1944, Pius XII
addressed an open telegram to Hungarian Regent Nicholas Horthy, urging
him to stop the deportations. The combined protests of Pius XII, King
Gustav of Sweden, President Franklin Roosevelt, and the International
Red Cross brought a temporary halt to the deportations. When the
deportations resumed in the fall, Rotta, acting on instructions from
Rome, made more protests.
In question 34 the Commission asks how the Vatican replied to a
memorandum dated March 17, 1942, by Gerhart Riegner, a representative of
the World Jewish Congress in Geneva and Richard Lichtheim, a
representative of the Jewish Agency for Palestine. Riegner and Lichtheim
submitted a memorandum that detailed the persecution of Jews in several
countries to Archbishop Filippo Bernadini, the papal nuncio in
Switzerland, who immediately forwarded it to the Vatican (Actes,
vol. VIII, p. 466). Contrary to what is frequently alleged, the
memorandum made no mention of Jews being exterminated in gas chambers in
concentration camps. In volume VIII of Archives of the Holocaust
(1990), there is a letter dated April 2, 1942, from Bernadini to Riegner
and Lichtheim that states, "I have just received the information
from His Eminence, the Cardinal Maglione, according to which the Holy
See has already undertaken steps to attempt to influence the Slovak
authorities to revoke the recent measures set under way in that country
against the `non-Aryans.'" In their reply to Bernadini on April 8,
1942, Riegner and Lichtheim wrote, "We also note with great
satisfaction the steps undertaken by His Excellency, the Cardinal
Maglione, with the authorities of Slovakia on behalf of the Jews...and
we ask you kindly to transmit to the Secretariat of State of the Holy
See the expression of our profound gratitude," as quoted in the
book Hitler, the War, and the Pope (2000) by Ronald Rychlak.
Question 42 admits that there is little evidence that Pius XII
favored the Nazis as a bulwark against the Soviet Union, citing
"the Vatican promotion of the American bishops' support for the
alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union in order to
oppose Nazism." The Commission, however, asks if there is
"further evidence on this question." In response to diplomatic
appeals made by President Franklin Roosevelt in the fall of 1941, Pius
XII agreed that American Catholics could support the extension of
military aid, through the Lend-Lease program, to the Soviet Union after
it was invaded by the Nazis (Actes, vol. V, pp. 170-300). As for
"further evidence," the scholars could have consulted the book
The Undeclared War, 1940-1941 (1953) by William L. Langer and S.
Everett Gleason. The two authors discuss Pius XII's surprising
concession to Roosevelt by citing documents in the American archives.
In question 44 the Commission wants to see a report prepared by the
Jesuits at the Vatican's request that defends the Pope's reserved policy
toward Poland. I found the report myself several years ago in the
Library of Congress. The report is actually a pamphlet, Pope Pius and
Poland, which was anonymously written (by Zygmunt Jakubowski) and
published by America Press in 1942. The pamphlet summarizes the
Vatican's relief efforts on behalf of the Polish people and quotes Pius
XII's speeches, Vatican Radio broadcasts, and articles from L'Osservatore
Romano that concern Poland.
Question 45 tries to discredit the many tributes that Pius XII
received from Jews during the war by asserting that such statements were
actually desperate appeals for help "couched in language of
effusive praise." The scholars ask for specific cases where
expressions of thanks from Jews follow a specific action on their behalf
by the Vatican. Many examples from the Actes and other sources
can be cited. On April 14, 1942 the leaders of the Jewish inmates at the
Ferramonti concentration camp in southern Italy wrote to the Vatican,
thanking the Pope who sent an "abundant supply of clothing and
linen" to the children at the camp (vol. VIII, pp. 505507). On
February 23, 1943 Msgr. Joseph Marcone, the Vatican's "apostolic
visitor" in Croatia, reported that Chief Rabbi Freiberger expressed
his gratitude to the Vatican for helping a group of Croatian Jewish
children, including Freiberger's son, find refuge in Turkey (vol. IX, p.
139). In his February 14, 1944, letter to Cassulo, Chief Rabbi Alexander
Shafran of Bucharest, Romania acknowledged the concern of the
"Supreme Pontiff, who offered a large sum to relieve the sufferings
of Romanian Jews" (vol. X, pp. 291-292). On July 21, 1944, several
weeks after the liberation of Rome, the National Jewish Welfare Board
cabled the Vatican, lauding Pius XII for saving most of Rome's Jews
(vol. X, pp. 358-359).
How could the six scholars have overlooked so much evidence that
answered their questions? In an e-mail submitted to the American
bishops, Fisher revealed that each scholar read no more than two volumes
each. Inside the Vatican magazine (Jan. 2000) reported that none
of the Jewish scholars read Italian, the language of most of the
documents. It seems that a group of first-graders studying Italian could
have done a better job understanding this material than the Commission,
whose members were all hailed by Fisher as "top-notch people."
Speaking Italian since birth and being fluent in Italian, I have read
through the 11 volumes many times. Although I agree that the material
leaves some questions unanswered, I have no doubt that the documents
overwhelmingly contradict the allegations that Pius XII did
"little" or "nothing" to help Jews and
"collaborated" with the Nazis. The Actes along with
documentary collections from the U.S., Germany, Italy, France, the
United Kingdom, and other sources provide a clear and balanced portrait
of Pope Pius XII during World War II.
In an article published in the Vatican journal La Civilta
Cattolica (Mar. 21, 1998), Fr. Blet wrote, "We did not
deliberately leave out any meaningful document because it seemed to us
that it might harm the Pope's image or the Holy See’s
reputation." He added that releasing the documents not published in
the Actes will not alter what is already known about Pius XII. In
an interview with the Associated Press (July 24, 2001), Fr. Fogarty, who
appears to be the most sensible member of the Commission, said that
there were no "smoking guns" in the Vatican's archives.
Unfortunately, critics have placed the Vatican in a position where it
has to prove its innocence against every allegation. In February 2002
the Vatican announced that it will open its archives from 1922-1939 in
2003 and release more documents from the papacy of Pius XII by 2005. No
doubt legitimate scholars, whether they are Catholic or Jewish, will
find this material valuable in shedding light on those turbulent times.
However, if evidence that establishes the Vatican's guilt is not found,
then we can expect pseudo-scholars, political activists, anti-Catholic
journalists, Catholic dissidents, and bigots to accuse the Vatican of
destroying any incriminating documents or still hiding them somewhere,
along with the Roswell UFO.
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