Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust: a reply to Daniel Goldhagen

Modern Age, Summer, 2003 by Dimitri Cavalli

In Italy the Vatican protected foreign Jews who were being detained at the Ferramonti concentration camp in the southern part of the country. When the roundups of Roman Jews began in October 1943, Pius XII took prompt action. He ordered Cardinal Maglione to make a strong protest with the German ambassador and had an Austrian bishop living in Rome protest the arrests with the German military governor of Rome. Additionally, thousands of Jews were given shelter in convents, monasteries, and the Vatican itself. On June 25, 1944, Pius XII sent an open telegram to Nicholas Horthy, the Regent of Hungary, urging him to stop the deportations of Jews. The Pope's intervention, along with those of President Roosevelt, King Gustav of Sweden, and the Red Cross, brought a temporary halt to the deportations.

Goldhagen is wrong when he asserts that the Pope "never privately instructed all European cardinals, bishops, priests, and nuns to do whatever they could to save Jews." Scores of witnesses have testified that they received instructions from the Pope and his top aides to help and to protect Jews. The witnesses include Pietro Cardinal Palazzini and Tibor Baranski, who were both honored as "Righteous Gentiles" by the State of Israel; Paolo Cardinal Dezza, S. J.; the aforementioned Cardinal Gerlier, who was quoted in the Australian Jewish News (April 16, 1943) that he was obeying Pius XII by opposing the Vichy regime's anti-Semitic policies; and Monsignor J. Patrick Carroll-Abbing, who died recently. In his books, Nascosti in Conventi ("Hidden in Convents," 1999) and Gli Ebrei Salvati da Pio XII ("The Jews Saved by Pius XII," 2001), the Italian journalist Antonio Gaspari interviewed priests and nuns and many others who said they were encouraged by the Vatican to shelter Jews in Rome. Recently, two Vatican letters were discovered in the archives of the diocese of Campagna in Italy. In October and November 1940, Cardinal Maglione and Monsignor Giovanni Montini, the Substitute Secretary of State and future Pope Paul VI, sent sums of money to Bishop Giuseppe Palatucci of Campagna, informing him that the Pope wanted it spent on behalf of Jews detained in Italian concentration camps and other persons who were being persecuted because of their race.

During the war, many Jewish groups and leaders around the world thanked Pope Pius XII for his efforts many times. For example, in his August 4, 1942, letter to the Pope, Chief Rabbi Miroslav Freiberger of Zagreb, Croatia, appreciated "the limitless goodness that the representatives of the Holy See and the leaders of the Church showed to our poor brothers." In his letter dated February 28, 1944, to the papal nuncio in Romania, Chief Rabbi Isaac Herzog of Jerusalem wrote, "The people of Israel will never forget what His Holiness and his illustrious delegates ... are doing for our unfortunate brothers and sisters in this most tragic hour of history, which is living proof of divine Providence in this world." On April 7, 1944, Chief Rabbi Alexander Shafran of Bucharest, Romania, sent a letter to the same nuncio, writing, "It is not easy for us to find the right words to express the warmth and consolation we experienced because of the concern of the Supreme Pontiff, who offered a large sum to relive the sufferings of deported Jews .... The Jews of Romania will never forget these facts of historic importance." Jewish organizations such as the World Jewish Congress, American Jewish Congress, American Jewish Committee, and the Anti-Defamation league, which frequently condemn Pius XII today, also praised him during the war and gracefully eulogized him when he died in 1958.