PIUS XII AND THE JEWS: The War Years,
as reported by the New York Times   
by Msgr. Stephen M. DiGiovanni, H.E.D.  

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The Moral Order and the Human Person: 

Mit Brennender Sorge (1937) of Pius XI,  and Summi Pontificatus (1939) of Pius XII, formed the basis for every protest against Nazi and Fascist policies by the Church, either by the Vatican, the popes themselves, or by local bishops and hierarchies.

“In the first encyclical of his reign Pius XII. . . denounced the violation of treaties, the ruin of Poland and the forcible transfer of populations and proclaimed his determination to fight the Church’s pagan enemies and defend the rights of family and individual against dictatorial encroachments.” So reported the N. Y. Times (Oct. 28, 1939, p. 1, 4), under the front page banner, “POPE CONDEMNS DICTATORS, TREATY VIOLATORS, RACISM; URGES RESTORING OF POLAND.”  Without compromising his or the Church’s position super partes, above the political fray, the pope condemned the moral foundations of these regimes.

To underscore his teaching of racial equality before God, he ordained twelve native priests as bishops of missionary dioceses the day after the publication of his first encyclical in 1939.  On November 10^th, the feast of Pope Leo the Great, who sent missionaries to the lands of the “barbarians” in the fifth century, during a routine address to a new ambassador to the Vatican, the Pope repeated his teaching that the natural law must be the basis of the modern state, that law must rule, not force, and that there is an equality among all men, based upon the unity of mankind: no race is inferior.   The new black ambassador was Haiti’s. ( N.Y. Times, Nov. 11, 1939, p. 1, 6)

In January, 1940, against protests by Mussolini’s government, the Vatican appointed two Jews to the Vatican Academy of Science. (N.Y. Times, Jan. 10, 1940)  In March, he appointed another Jewish professor to the Vatican Library to restore ancient maps, twelve hours before the new Italian laws went into effect prohibiting Jews from all professional life . (N.Y. Times, March 2, 1940 )

Near the Ides of March, the German Foreign Secretary, Joachim von Ribbentrop came to the Vatican for an official visit. The Times reported that the Pope defended the Jews in Germany and Poland, and that von Ribbentrop left the audience “downcast”.  The Times called the visit, “Hitler’s Canossa.” (N.Y. Times, March 14, 1940)  

In a letter to the editor of the Times, the Provost of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America reminded the readers that the foundational concept of democracy is the “supreme worth and dignity of the individual.”  Louis Finkelstein continued, “The hostility to all forms of religion, characteristic of modern totalitarianism, is directed at this most fundamental religious concept, and leads us to the conclusion that the preservation of freedom is inextricably bound to the preservation of religion.”  He then stated that it was the Christian churches that offered resistance to the Third Reich. “No keener rebuke has come to Nazism than from Pope Pius XI and his successor, Pope Pius XII.” (N.Y. Times, March 31, 1940, p. 8, 7)

Later in that month, Albert Einstein spoke out in favor of the Pope, as quoted above.

In his Christmas address to the College of Cardinals, Pius XII once again took aim at Hitler.  The Times editorialized,

“If the Pope in his Christmas message had intended to condemn Hitler’s system, he could not have done it more effectively than by describing the ‘moral order’ which must govern human society. . . . The Pontiff pointed out that the foundation of the moral order is trust, ‘fidelity in the observance of pacts.’  Without trust–and this war has demonstrated the truth of his words–the coexistence of powerful and weak peoples is impossible. The moral order, he added, cannot be based on hatred, on the principle that ‘might makes right,’ on economic maladjustment, on ‘the spirit of cold egoism’ which leads to the             violation of the sovereignty of states and the liberty of their citizens.  The moral order, in a word, is in complete contradiction to Hitler’s order.” (N.Y. Times, Dec. 25, 1940, p. 26,2)

 

The Church and the Jewish Community.

 Defending the Dignity of the Human Person:

 

The Catholic hierarchies throughout Europe followed the lead of Popes Pius XI and Pius XII and spoke out against the racist, and in particular anti-Semitic, policies of the Nazi government as pursued in Germany and in all the occupied countries.  Their words, both written and spoken, were based on the encyclicals of these two popes, often quoting directly from them, especially once the deportation of the Jews began. These protests continued throughout the war and in most European countries.

For example, the New York Times reported that Bishop Fidel Garcia y Martinez, Bishop of Calahorra in Spain, condemned Nazi propaganda and racism in a pastoral letter published in February, 1942, based on Mit Brennender Sorge of Pope Pius XI.  In his pastoral letter, the bishop included texts by the German Catholic Bishops in their 1941 pastoral letter from Fulda as well as sections from the pastoral letter by the Catholic bishops of the Netherlands. Circulation of all these works, the Times pointed out, was forbidden in Germany. (N.Y. Times, May 24, 1942, p.4, 1-2)

The German Catholic bishops issued a second pastoral letter on March 22, 1942, the first having been published in the autumn of 1941.  Both were formal protests against policies of the Nazi regime, and were read publicly in every Catholic pulpit throughout Germany.  The first was a general condemnation of Nazi doctrines.  The second, read on Passion Sunday, protested vehemently against Hitler’s then new policies of interfering in Church affairs and education, and strongly protested against “all violations of personal freedom,” against the killing of insane persons and the proposal to kill incurables, against unjust seizure of individuals and of property. (N.Y. Times, June 7, 1942, p. 12, 1-5)

The Times expressed its opinion in an editorial on June 8, 1942, “A courage no less exalted than that of the Christian martyrs in pagan Rome inspires the Passion Sunday letter of the German Bishops read in all Catholic churches of the Reich.”  After listing the Reich’s atrocities as denounced by the bishops, the editorial continued, “They [the bishops] go on to show with irrefutable logic that this assault on the church is only part of a broader attack on all human rights, human freedom and the human spirit.”

Late in the summer of 1942, the Vichy government began its deportation of Jews in unoccupied France.  Pope Pius XII intervened to save the Jews, joined by what the Times called a “spirited written protest against racial and religious persecution” by Emanuel Celestine Cardinal Suhard, Archbishop of Paris, and by Pierre Cardinal Gerlier, Archbishop of Lyon.  The local bishops protested the government’s action after the Vatican learned that the Germans had asked for Jewish deportations to supplement farm and mine labor in Silesia and Poland, and was to extend this policy throughout Germany, Austria, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the Baltic states to include all Jews who had sought refuge since 1936. (N.Y. Times, August 27, 1942, p. 3,5) The Times editor called the Church’s work “a noble insistence” to the Vichy government to save the Jews. (N.Y. Times, August 29, 1942, p. 14, 2)

In its September 3, 1942 number, the Times reported that the French people were aiding Jews throughout the country to avoid arrest and deportation. The Vatican, through the Papal Nuncio to Vichy, “repeated its past appeals to the Vichy government for tolerance for the Jews,

“. . . but the Vichy government said they could do nothing in the face of German demands. (N.Y. Times, September 3, 1942, p. 5, 1) Bishop Aliege of Toulouse denounced the Jewish persecution openly.  In a pastoral letter read from all pulpits of Diocese of Toulouse in late August, 1942, the bishop said, “In the concentration camps in our diocese horrible things are happening against the Jews, who are human beings like we are.  Every imaginable cruelty is permitted against them.  There are rights of man given by God to the human race which should not be violated.  Jewish children, women and men are treated like cattle.”  (ibid.)  Numerous other protests by Catholic and Protestant leaders against the mistreatment of Jews were made, and the Times noted, “Some of their remarks have scarcely been veiled.” (N.Y. Times, September 5, 1942, p. 3, 1)  

Efforts by the Church to save the Jews in France and elsewhere went beyond words, as the Times noted later in the year. “Many Catholic leaders in unoccupied France are sheltering children of Jews, and their defiance of orders to surrender them has brought about an open rift between the Vichy government and priests.” (N.Y. Time, September 9, 1942, p.9, 4, 5) In Belgium, a priest was shot for having hidden 100 Jewish children. (N.Y. Times, January 10, 1943, p. 9, 1) In occupied France the letters and protests by the Catholic bishops were read from church pulpits urging Catholics to help persecuted Jews.

The numerous protests by the Catholic hierarchy against the treatment of Jews in France created a “difficult situation” for the Vichy government, according to the Times. “It is semi-officially reported from Vatican sources that Pope Pius, through the Nuncio in Vichy, has sent to Marshal Petain a personal message in which he intimated his approval of the initiative of the French Cardinals and Bishops on behalf of the Jews and foreigners being handed over to the Germans.  It is understood the Pope asked the French Chief of State to intervene.” (N.Y. Times, September 10, 1942, p. 9, 7, 8)  Later in the month, Pius XII met for more than ninety minutes with Myron Taylor, President Roosevelt’s personal representative to the Vatican. The Times expressed the general opinion that the Vatican was on the verge of doing something more directly to help the Jews in the various occupied countries. (N.Y. Times, September 20, 1942, p. 25, 5)

In early January, 1943, the Times reported that Cardinal Suhard of Paris visited Rome “with a detailed report on the results of French collaboration with the Axis, particularly the trend toward complete elimination of Jews from France.” (N.Y. Times, January 8, 1943, p. 4, 6) After the war, Pius XII removed a number of French bishops who had cooperated with the Germans and Vichy Governments. (N.Y. Times, November 7, 1945, p. 12, 4)  As the situation worsened, the pope received various petitions from Jewish rabbis and groups asking his help.  One came from Rabbi Herzog, the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, to which to pope replied promising “to do all in his personal power to aid persecuted Jews in Europe.” (N.Y. Times, February 7, 1943, p. 29, 4)

The manner in which the pope spoke out was from the point of view of the papacy as a moral authority.  As such, he had to speak to the moral issues, and not descend to the level of politics. He condemned the ideologies supporting the political policies and actions of the governments, but remained above the political fray.

Both Protestant and Catholic clergy in the Netherlands sent an open letter to Arthur Seyss-Inquart, the Reich Commissar. The letter decried the regime’s treatment of Jews and other minorities.  Thereupon the Reich Commissar threatened both Protestants and Catholics to remain silent, lest baptized Jews be rounded up.  The Catholic Church refused, and there followed a Catholic pastoral letter read from all Catholic pulpits in the Netherlands on  February 21, 1943.

“In all the injustices that are now being committed,”  the Catholic bishops wrote, “our sympathy goes out particularly to the youths who are being violently taken away from their parental homes.  It goes out to the Catholic believers of Jewish origin and to those persecuted for their belief in religious freedom.

“Moreover, we are deeply moved [with shame] that in the execution of this persecution against our charges the collaboration of our own fellow-countrymen has been demanded.

“Conscience cannot allow collaboration in such things. If the refusal to collaborate implies sacrifices for the individual, then he must be strong and steadfast in the knowledge that he is doing his duty before God and man.

“The church does not wish to take sides in the conflict between States and people attempting to solve immense problems of national collaboration, but only as long as they respect divine law.  With the mandate of Christ as guardian of Christian principles, it must not fail to proclaim inviolate the word of God, which is to obey Him rather than man.” (N.Y. Times, March 14, 1943, p. 10, 6)

The response of the National Socialist Mayor of Rotterdam was, “when the terrorism of the church widens its scope and calls for sabotage, as it did in these letters, the time has come for the party to react in an appropriate manner.”(N.Y. Times, March 14, 1943, p. 10, 6) Jewish converts to Catholicism were rounded up, as a consequence, including Blessed Edith Stein, and sent to the camps; Jewish converts to Protestantism were left unharmed.

Similar protests by eight Catholic bishops were sent to the Minister of Justice, Thune Jacobsen in Denmark later that year.  The arbitrary arrest of Danes, as well as the German anti-Semitic propaganda, were condemned. (N.Y. Times, April 1, 1943, p. 10, 2) Later in the month both Protestant and Catholic bishops issued a joint pastoral letter condemning the deportation of 400 Jewish children from Eastern Europe, and against the German treatment of Jews. (N.Y. Times, April 22, 1943, p.7,2)

Catholic protests continued through May and June, following mass deportations of youths, and the implementation by German occupation authorities in the Netherlands of a policy of forced sterilization of those entering mixed-marriages between Jewish and non-Jewish parties.  The bishops wrote, “After all that has befallen the Jewish citizens of our country there is now taking place something so monstrous that it is impossible for us to refrain from addressing you in the name of Our Lord.” (N.Y. Times, June 11, 1943, p. 4, 1)

The Times published a report in that same issue, “Reich Churches resist Nazi Rule”. The paper stated that the Catholic and Protestant Churches had been hard at work against the Nazi regime. It refuted charges made by some religious leaders in other countries that German churches followed a policy of resignation and inactivity in the face of Nazi tyranny.  The churches had, in fact, protested frequently against the persecution of Jews, working hard for their benefit.  Catholic bishops, the report continued, had protested the persecution “of both Poles and Jews by affirming the fundamental rights of all men. . .” (N.Y. Times, June 11, 1943, p. 4, 4)

Later in June, the Times reported a marked rise in the opposition to Roman Catholicism in particular, and Christianity in general by the Nazi party in the occupied countries. Storm, the official organ of the Netherlands Nazi party, attacked the Catholic clergy in the Netherlands as “the prime instigator” of the general strike in May. The strikers, according to Storm, were “mostly sheep of the Roman Catholic Church, who incited our people until they stood opposite German firing squads.”

The Nazi Norwegian publication Ragnaroek stated “We Nazis reject Christianity because we reject Judaism, and have acknowledged that both are inextricable allies.  As a consequence both are capable of doing anything against us.  “We reject Christianity because we consider the Bible in its entirety a Jewish delusion, created in order to break the earthly will for life and the immortal belief of all Nordic peoples in their own part in things divine.”

The Times also reported a fresh wave of opposition against the French Catholic clergy because of its protests against the Vichy Government. (N.Y. Times, June 19, 1943, p. 2, 5) Broadcasting to occupied France, the Vatican Radio reiterated its denunciation of the Nazi racial laws, stating that “He who makes a distinction between Jews and other men is unfaithful to God and is in conflict with God’s commands.” (N.Y. Times, June 27, 1943, p. 16, 2)  The Vatican continued,  “the peace of the world order and justice will always be compromised so long as men discriminate between members of the human family.” Paraphrasing Scripture, the Vatican continued, “There are neither Greeks nor Jews.  There are only men facing their God and their Father, and those who make distinctions between them abandon God and enter into disorder.” (N.Y. Times, June 28, 1943, p. 8, 3)

By July, the Catholic hierarchy in Germany incurred the wrath of the Nazi regime again. All Catholic bishops in Nazi Germany signed a protest against the Nazi party plan to extend the wearing of the Star of David to “mischlings”, the offspring of mixed marriages.  The three most outspoken of Germany’s Catholic bishops, Michael Cardinal von Faulhaber Archbishop of Munich, Clemens Count von Galen Bishop of Muenster, and Konrad Count von Preysling Archbishop of Berlin, were subjected to house arrest.  The Nazi response was to seize convents, Catholic hospitals and other church property throughout Germany; Catholic labor organizations were disbanded, and religious images removed from schools. (N.Y. Times, July 6, 1943, p. 9, 1)

In August, during their annual meeting known as the Fulda Conference, the German Catholic bishops reiterated their protests against the Nazi practices and teachings. The Times reported the bishops’ pastoral letter, writing that,  “The letter abounds in sly but fearless thrusts at the false god and Nazi tenets.  The Bishops addressed themselves also to ‘those who saw fit to create a god after their own hearts, or one designed only for national or racial consumption.’” They ended by thanking Pope Pius XII for leading the way in seeking peace and preserving human dignity. (N.Y. Times, September 6, 1943, p. 7, 1)

By early December, the Vatican protested the decision of the Italian government to intern all Jews in Italy, even Catholics of Jewish descent, and to confiscate their property. (N.Y. Times, December 5, 1943, p. 3, 4)

Churches began to be searched early in 1944 in Rome, as the church continued its work to save Jews. In February, the Roman police forced entry into the Basilica of St. Paul’s Outside the Walls and arrested eighty-four persons, including twenty-eight Jews who had been given sanctuary there. Any priest assisting “traitors” were to be arrested. (N.Y. Times, February 8, 1944, p. 7, 1; February 9, p. 7, 4; February 11, 1944, p. 3, 2) After the protests by the Pope, Castel Gandolfo was bombed three times, along with other Vatican property. (ibid.)

By Spring, 1944, Nazi attacks began in earnest against the Jewish communities in Hungary.  Justinian Cardinal Seredi, Catholic Primate of Hungary, protested against the forced movement of over 300,000 Jews to “collection camps” in Hungary.  (N.Y. Times, April 28, 1944, p. 5, 5).   This was one of many protests by the Cardinal.  His first was in 1934, according to the Times, when the Cardinal attacked totalitarian principles and ideologies.  In a pastoral letter that year, Cardinal Seredi wrote, “It is not possible for a Catholic priest to approve Nazi principles, and I decidedly prohibit participation in this movement or even a benevolent attitude of any of my priests toward it.” (N.Y. Times, April 14, 1945, p. 15, 1)  Repeating the principles put forward by Pius XI and XII, Seredi issued his first attack against Nazi inspired racial discrimination in 1940. In 1942, he again protested, stating, “ Christ’s teachings do not acknowledge differences between men and do not know prerogatives which would entitle a man or a nation to oppress another man or nation on racial or national basis.” (ibid.)  In another protest he said, “Slavery and oppression are the antithesis of freedom. The Christian Church declared war on slavery and oppression because they are in contradiction to Christ’s teachings.  The Church is fighting not only against the physical but also against the spiritual oppression of humanity.  Even if we see today that international law has received a new interpretation and innocent people have to suffer under physical and spiritual oppression, the church is fighting with all its might against the fashionable currents and for the protection of human rights. . . . The endeavors which we witness today and which caused so much sufferings also to the Christian church, will provoke such reaction, such vengeance, that also innocent people will fall its victims.” (N.Y. Times, January 23, 1943, p. 3, 8)

Despite the Church’s repeated interventions, by the summer of 1944, hope for Hungarian Jews was nearly gone.  In an address to the English House of Commons, Foreign Secretary Eden stated, “‘The principal hope of terminating this tragic state of affairs must remain the speedy victory of the allied nations.’” (N.Y. Times , July 6, 1944, p. 6, 6)

In her weekly column “Abroad”, Ann O’Hare McCormick of the Times observed that despite the horrors of the war, there was hope that it would end.  Even in the face of the tragic persecution of the Jews in Hungary, there was hope.  She wrote,

“But as long as they exercised any authority in their own house, the Hungarians tried to protect the Jews.  The Italians, according to the testimony of the chief rabbi and every hunted Jew in Rome, did not carry out the Fascist racial laws, and endangered their own lives to hide Jews when the Germans took over.  The Pope doe not think it is hopeless. The Vatican and the religious institutions under its authority were sanctuaries not only for Italian but for refugee Jews in Italy, of whom there were many, and Pius XII now addresses an urgent appeal to Admiral Horthy and instructs Cardinal Seredi of Budapest to intervene in behalf of the Jews of Hungary.

“It is not hopeless because we can still count on forces of Christianity and humanity inside Europe to resist Nazi fury.”

 This, plus the Russian advance into Germany, gave hope that the atrocities of the Nazi regime would soon come to an end. (N.Y. Times,  July 15, 1944, p. 12, 5)

Just one week after McCormick’s column, Rome was liberated.  The Pope, who gave no audiences to German forces during the war, received more than 150,000 Allied soldiers, according to the paper.  The chief Rabbi of Rome, Israele Anton Zolli, formally expressed the gratitude of Roman Jews “for all the moral and material aid the Vatican gave them during the Nazi occupation.” (N.Y. Times, July 27, 1944, p. 3, 4)

Anne O’Hare McCormick added her observations in her weekly column, “Abroad.”

“Presiding over a world-wide church in a world-wide war that is also a civil and religious war, Pius XII comes out of the ordeal a stronger figure, as far as liberated Italy is concerned, than he was before.”  She interviewed “an old liberal” about the Italian Christian Democratic party in the coalition, who said, “‘The last thing that I expected in the crisis was the resurgence of the Catholic party in greater force than the Communists and Socialists.  An equally surprising phenomenon is the rising prestige of the Pope.  Mussolini has gone, the King has gone, and nobody mourns. The Pope remains the winner of Italy’s one victory--the saving of Rome.’” (N.Y. Times, August 21, 1944, p. 14, 5)  

McCormick continued that the Pope was credited with having saved Rome. “But this is not the only cause for the popularity of Pius XII”, she continued. “During the nine months between the armistice and the entry into Rome, the Vatican was a refuge for thousands of fugitives from the Nazi-Fascist reign of terror.  Jews received first priority--Italian Jews and Jews who escaped here from Germany and other occupied countries--but all the hunted found sanctuary in the Vatican and its hundreds of convents and monasteries in the Rome region.” 

“What the Pope did was to create an attitude in favor of the persecuted and hunted that the city was quick to adopt, so that hiding someone ‘on the run’ became the thing to do.  This secret sharing of danger cleared away fascism more effectively than an official purge. The Vatican is still sheltering refugees.  Almost 100,000 homeless persons from the war zone and devastated areas are fed there every day.”

The Times used the word “purge” to describe the pope’s acceptance of forced resignations, which began in November, 1945,  of Catholic bishops in France who had spoken out against the French resistance and the Allies, and cooperated with the German occupational forces.  (N.Y. Times, November 7, 1945, p. 12, 4)

After the war, numerous tributes and public gratitude were given to the Pope, the Church and the clergy for their work to save the Jews in Italy and throughout Europe. One was in the form of a gift of $20,000. to the Vatican by the World Jewish Congress “in recognition of the work of the Holy See in rescuing Jews from Fascist and Nazi persecution.”  (N.Y. Times, October 11, 1945, p. 12, 2)

It was clear from reading Hitler’s writings, or listening to his speeches, that the Jews were his immediate target for persecution and extermination--they were charged with being the cause of every evil in the Reich.  The Roman Catholic Church was the next target, and Hitler pursued a systematic and tireless war against the Church throughout the war years.