Under His Very Windows: The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy

Christian Century, Oct 10, 2001 by Victoria Barnett

We do know that the situation facing the Catholic Church throughout Nazi-occupied Europe was complex. Catholics were involved in acts both of rescue and of murder. In Poland, they were persecuted brutally--almost 20 percent of Polish priests died at the hands of the Nazis. In other places, church leaders made an uneasy peace with Nazi authorities. In Croatia, Catholics, including priests, joined the perpetrators in the massacres of Orthodox Serbs. Depending on their own circumstances, Catholic leaders throughout Europe urged the Vatican to speak out, to remain silent or to negotiate. Our main problem is how to interpret the pope's public silence and restraint and how to balance historical research with responsible analysis. The three books reviewed here offer different insights into these questions.

Susan Zuccotti, known for her work on Italy and the Holocaust, has written a detailed description of the pope's response to Nazism and the Vatican's reaction to the events unfolding in Italy. It's a solid, often damning work of historical research that gives much new detail about the persecution and rescue of Jews in that country.

The dramatic heart of Zuccotti's book--the deportations of over 1,000 Jews from Rome in October 1943--exemplifies the historian's dilemma I described above. It is clear that the Vatican knew of the deportation plan and that it could have warned Roman Jewish leaders but did not do so (they were warned by Albrecht von Kessel, a diplomat and member of the German resistance, but did not believe him). The day after the deportations, the Vatican issued a public statement expressing gratitude for the German military's respectful and civil treatment of the Holy See, with no mention of the horrors that had just occurred.

On the other hand, most of the 4,000-5,000 Jews who escaped this roundup did so by hiding in convents and monasteries. Many of the rescuers were priests and members of religious orders. The degree to which such rescue was supported, sanctioned and even ordered by officials is unclear, but Zuccotti concludes that Catholic rescue of Jews in Italy took place despite the pope, not because of him. She bases this conclusion largely upon his silence at other key times. Vatican statements criticizing Nazi policies were so painstakingly and cautiously worded that they can be interpreted in all kinds of ways (although many observers at the time, including the Nazis, viewed them as direct attacks). Once genocide had begun, the pope made only two very general statements on behalf of those suffering, despite pleas from some Catholic leaders and Western diplomats such as Myron Taylor, Roosevelt's emissary to the Vatican, for a more explicit protest.

Yet it is speculation to conclude that the Vatican had nothing to do with the rescue of Jews in Italy. Zuccotti correctly observes that the Vatican had extensive knowledge of the persecution of the Jews and the genocide, once it began. But if Pius XII had such detailed knowledge of these atrocities, it's difficult to believe he didn't know that Jews were being hidden in convents and monasteries. Knowledge that this was happening would, I think, have meant sanctioning it. In fact, the pattern of rescue in Italy reflects a general pattern among Catholics and Protestants throughout Europe. Rescuers were predominately individuals; church leaders consistently exercised what they saw as pragmatic caution and refrained from public protest.