The prosecution has rallied behind a young German playwright named Rolf Hochhuth, whose play, Der Stellvertreter (The Representative*), first performed in Berlin on February 20, 1963, and in London September 25, carries a message summed up in the words of its main protagonist, the young Jesuit Riccardo Fontana: "A Vicar of Christ who sees these things before his eyes and still remains silent because of state policies, who delays even one day . . . such a pope . . . is a criminal?"
To substantiate his accusation, Mr. Hochhuth adds 46 pages of documentation to the printed play,10 and excerpts quotations from the writings of two well-known contemporary thinkers, among others: the Catholic Francois Mauriac and the Jew Leon Poliakov.
The documentation which the playwright presents has impressed a good many people, especially reviewers, most of whom mention this factual substantiation in their treatment of the play. Hochhuth's efforts are indeed commendable, though a student of the history of the period will notice — obviously — the bias created by lacunae (the playwright is only interested, of course, in supporting his thesis) and — more subtly — unjustified conclusions. An example is found on page 312 of the English edition of the play, where Hochhuth writes:
But what Donati reported to the Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine (Documents CC XVII-78) about the official attitude of the diplomats of the Holy See, should be quoted. In the autumn of 1942, Donati had a note referring to the situation of the Jews in Southern France delivered to the Pope through the agency of the Father General of the Capuchins, in which he asked for Papal assistance. It was not forthcoming.
The Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine in Paris contains abundant and thoroughly validated material on the relations between Angelo Donati, an Italian Jew to whom (as Hochhuth points out) many of his co-religionists owe their lives, and the Capuchin Father Marie-Benoit, as well as on the Vatican's actual response to pleas from Donati and others; I will summarize that material later in this article. Hochhuth's conclusion, [Papal assistance] was not forthcoming, cannot be other than a deliberate distortion.
One of the several quotations which appear in the front of both the German and the English published versions of The Representative suffers from similar distortion. To Hochhuth's credit, when he was called to account on this matter, he promised to correct the English edition, which he has done. In the German printing, M. Mauriac is quoted as follows: "We have not yet had the consolation of hearing the successor to the Galilean Simon Peter condemn, unequivocally and clearly and not with diplomatic allusions, the crucifixion of these countless `brothers of the Lord.' ... a crime of such magnitude falls in no small measure to the responsibility of those witnesses who never cried out against it whatever the reason for their silence." However, the missing middle sentence — which Hochhuth reinstates in the English edition of the play — reads: "No doubt the occupying forces were able to bring irresistible pressure to bear, no doubt the silence of the Pope and his cardinals was a most terrible duty; the important thing was to avoid even worse misfortunes."11 Mauriac, like Poliakov, as we shall see, was obviously not blind to the incredible dilemma Pope Pius found himself in, Hochhuth's selective quotation notwithstanding.
Dr. Poliakov's emphasis, in his book The Jews under the Italian Occupation and elsewhere, has been the same; granted, Pius XII did extend help and comfort to the Jews the record is quite clear on this score — but he did not do enough. This "enough" would have been a firm protest, a formal statement, from the Vatican against the German "solution of the Jewish problem." Yet Poliakov says also that during the Hitler terror, the clergy acted untiringly and unceasingly to give humane help, with the approval and on the prompting of the Vatican. Furthermore:
This direct aid given the persecuted Jews by the Pope in his capacity as bishop of Rome was the symbolic expression of an activity that was extended throughout the whole of Europe, encouraging and promoting the efforts put forth by the Catholic churches in the majority of countries. It is certain that secret instructions were sent out by the Vatican, urging the national churches to intervene in behalf of the Jews.12
These instructions, Poliakov adds, rendered special papal instructions or statements unnecessary. It is known that in 1940 Pius XII sent out a secret instruction to the Catholic bishops of Europe entitled Opere et caritate (By Work and Love). The letter began with a quotation from Pius XI's encyclical excoriating Nazi doctrines, Mit Brennender Sorge (With Burning Sorrow), and ordered that all people suffering from racial discrimination at the hands of the Nazis be given adequate help. The letter was to be read in churches with the comment that racism was incompatible with the teachings of the Catholic faith.
Poliakov's position, then, is essentially negative, though with noteworthy qualifications:
The humanitarian activities of the Vatican were necessarily circumscribed with prudence and caution. The immense responsibilities on the Pope's shoulders and the powerful weapons the Nazis could use against the Holy See undoubtedly combined to prevent him from making a formal public protest, though the persecuted keenly hoped to hear one. It is sad to have to say that during the entire war, while the laboratories of death worked to capacity, the Pope kept his silence.13
It is a matter of record, of course, that Pope Pius XII did not launch a verbal attack directly against the Third Reich; the statements he did make during World War II, with rare exceptions, were general expressions of sorrow and sympathy for all victims of oppression of any kind, and did not name names. As Von Weizsacker wrote in a report to the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Berlin on October 28, 1943:
Regardless of the advice of many, the Pope has not yet let himself be persuaded to make an official condemnation of the deportation of the Roman Jews. Despite the fact that he must expect his attitude to be criticized by our enemies and attacked by the Protestants in Anglo-Saxon countries, who will use it in their anti-Catholic propaganda, he has thus far achieved the impossible in these delicate circumstances in order not to put his relations with the German government and with its representatives at Rome to the test. Since it is currently thought that the Germans will take no further steps against the Jews in Rome, the question of our relations with the Vatican may be considered closed.
In any case, it appears that such is the viewpoint of the Vatican. L'Osservatore Romano of October 25-26, however, published an official statement on the Pope's charitable activities. The statement, which was couched in the usual abstract and vague Vatican terminology, said that the Pope expressed his paternal solicitude for all men without regard to race, nationality, or religion. The many activities of the Pope would be increased because so many were suffering so much misfortune.
One could not raise any objection to this statement because few will recognize a direct reference to the Jewish problem in it.14
According to the March, 1961, article "Pius XII and the Jews, 1943-1944" in the Jesuit publication Civilta Cattolica, by Father Robert Leiber, Pius XII's personal assistant from 1924 to 1959, the Pope directly denounced an illegal procedure only once during the entire war; the German invasion of Holland, Belgium, and Luxemburg on May 10, 1940, prompted the now famous telegrams to the heads of the three invaded states. These messages aside, Pius XII followed the policy of Benedict XV during World War I, and protested in general terms against injustices and violence wherever these might be found.
But is it correct to say that Pius XII was otherwise silent on the subject of Nazi atrocities? Had he utterly ignored the plight of the Jews, the term would be appropriate; had he spoken directly in their cause, he might today be called foolhardy — if we are to carry even his accusers' admissions to their logical conclusion. In effect, he chose a third course, one dictated by his long experience as a Vatican statesman and his great desire to save lives.
Many persons have already taken up the dispute, and some of their comments will be quoted in the present article. Rolf Hochhuth was a child during the period in question; further, his primary motivation was to write a good play and not an accurate record, and his historic perspective – like that of us all — is insufficient for a just critique of Pius' actions. If he were the only accuser, we could dismiss the issue; too much noise has been made about Hochhuth's drama qua drama as it is. But the controversy, coming on the heels of Dr. Hannah Arendt's question of why the Jews did not defend themselves better, has drawn more thoughtful minds into its wake. Some Jewish leaders who had none but words of praise for Pius' efforts on behalf of the Jews now point fingers of blame at him, effectively reversing their position of fifteen and twenty years' standing.
I think it would be well to examine more closely the record, as far as we now know it, of what Pope Pius actually said and did, how his words and actions were received by both Catholics and non-Catholics, and — perhaps most important — what motives are attributed to him; for in our Western culture, motivation is an essential factor in any discussion of a man's probity.
That the Pope was deeply antagonistic to the racism the National-Socialists advocated is evident from his work prior to his election to the papacy. The famous Mit Brennender Sorge shows the hand of Pacelli, then Vatican Secretary of State; more directly, as papal legate, Pacelli spoke these scathing words to 250,000 pilgrims at Lourdes on April 28, 1935:
They [The Nazis] are in reality only miserable plagiarists who dress up old errors with new tinsel. It does not make any difference whether they flock to the banners of the social revolution, whether they are guided by a false conception of the world and of life, or whether they are possessed by the superstition of a race and blood cult.15
Pacelli had obviously established his position clearly, for the Fascist governments of both Italy and Germany spoke out vigorously against the possibility of his election to succeed Pius XI in March of 1939, though the cardinal secretary of state had served as papal nuncio in Germany from 1917 to 1929 and had been instrumental in the signing of a concordat between Germany and the Vatican. The day after his election, the Berlin Morgenpost said: "The election of Cardinal Pacelli is not accepted with favor in Germany because he was always opposed to Nazism and practically determined the policies of the Vatican under his predecessor."
As I wrote in the Anti-Defamation League Bulletin for October, 1958, the new Vicar of Christ showed no softening after his election toward Hitler's brutal policies; Pius the Pope was the same man as Pacelli the priest. Von Ribbentrop, granted a formal audience on March 11, 1940, went into a lengthy harangue on the invincibility of the Third Reich, the inevitability of a Nazi victory, and the futility of papal alignment with the enemies of the Fuhrer. Pius XII heard Von Ribbentrop out politely and impassively. Then he opened an enormous ledger on his desk and, in his perfect German, began to recite a catalogue of the persecutions inflicted by the Third Reich in Poland, listing the date, place, and precise details of each crime. The audience was terminated; the Pope's position was clearly unshakable.
Summi Pontificatus, the first encyclical of his pontificate, issued October 20, 1939, had strongly attacked the doctrines of totalitarianism, racism, and materialism. The encyclical read in part: "The first of these pernicious errors, today so widespread, is the disregard for that law of human solidarity and charity dictated and imposed . . . by the common origin and equality in their rational nature of all men, regardless of the people to which they belong.16 In his Christmas Message of 1942 and in similar terms on June 2, 1943, he deplored the treatment of:
...hundreds of thousands of persons who, through no fault of their own and by the single fact of their nationality or race, have been condemned to death or to progressive extinction...." It is a consolation for Us that, through the moral and spiritual assistance of Our representatives and through Our financial assistance, We have been able to comfort a great many of the refugees, homeless, and emigrants, including non-Aryans.17
That assistance was of inestimable value. It can be divided roughly into the two categories Pius XII names in the above broadcast; the work of the Vatican's representatives — the nuncios, bishops, clergy and religious, and laymen — and the financial assistance and other material services rendered the persecuted either directly by the Vatican or through appeals from the Holy See.