Albert Einstein Defended the CC's Wartime Record

[KyivAndrew]

I have known for decades most of the truth of what went on during the war due to a ‘uniqueness’ of my family dynamics. (Germans / Italians / Pasificas - soldiers & clergymen)

Funny, the first time my father heard the 6million figure killed by Nazis he wondered how the population of Ireland, Scotland, New Zealand and the entire South Pacific could be erased from existence yet flourish within a generation to fight Egypt and the surrounding Arabs to a standstill. Were they using babies as soldiers? Not that he denies the hundreds of thousands and probable million, maybe two, who suffered death at the hands of his countrymen!

Deconi, I do not believe Kaninchen was dodging anything and she is right where she states that she has not “said anything against Pius on this thread”. I am not sure why you are ascribing motives to her that are not there. I agree with her that Pius XII was between a rock and a hard place.

Also, I must state that it angers me as a Catholic when someone with an axe to grind like Daniel Jay Goldhagen makes a run at the Church over the Holocaust and goes for the jugular in demanding Christianity remove the Cross from its center. The prominent American magazine The New Republic some years back gave him a whole issue to make that case.

The best response to that line of attack and the best concise defense of Pius XII I have seen was by Ronald Rychlak in the Religious Journal First Things here: firstthings.com/article/2007/01/goldhagen-v-pius-xii-23

Kaninchen was asking for precision and there is nothing wrong with that. I mean these were complex times for the entire world and even the world’s Jews before World War Two were not a monolithic body fully in agreement as argued here by Einstein’s biographer in the most recent issue of The Atlantic: theatlantic.com/doc/200912/isaacson-einstein

Still, the most troubling portion of anything anyone has written on this thread for me is what I quoted above from you. What exactly are you saying?

My parents’ families on both sides suffered personally under the Nazis AND the Communists with their lives hanging in the balance several times through World War Two. They were in a part of Europe that was overrun several times by Hitler and Stalin and it almost killed them with arrests, imprisonments, and forced labor.

Are you suggesting above as I think you are that only “hundreds of thousands, probably million, maybe two million” Jews died in the Holocaust? Is that what you are arguing and, if you are, what reputable historians have ever held such a view? As for the Jews fighting the Arabs to a standstill, what makes you think this required some overwhelming force other than what they had in the Haganah/IDF? Surely you must have also heard of the some 600,000 Jews on top of the displaced European Jews who were kicked out of the Arab countries in the Middle East (Iraq, Egypt, etc) concurrently?

By way of background, when I grew up there was a large segment of the academic world that denied that Stalin had ever engaged in genocide. My parents were Ukrainian and I absolutely hated it when scholars denied that Ukrainians died in the millions in the years 1932-33 during Stalin’s Collectivization and concurrent Anti-Ukrainization campaign. We knew people who personally had suffered yet "revisionist’ scholars avoided these peoples’ memoirs and bought the Soviet Union’s lies and official statistics. Then Robert Conquest came out with a study showing the deaths of 7 million in Harvest of Sorrow. Finally, some non-Ukrainian scholars recognized the deaths. Since then and the downfall of the Soviet Union the number of Famine Deaths recognized has gone up (5-7) and down (3.8 million by some, Stanislav Kulchytsky) and I actually have met Ukraine’s leading scholars on the death toll. The archives are now open EXCEPT the central Moscow archives in Putin’s Russia which makes the calculations more difficult for Ukraine (an independent country) because Moscow to this day denies there was anything genocidal in the deaths as this would acknowledge Ukrainian vs. Russian suffering. (Indeed, there remains one ahem “historian” who still buys the Soviet line hook-line-and-sinker that there was no Artificial Famine in Ukraine.)

I still remember the revulsion I had when people blatantly denied the Ukrainian death toll or called it ant-Soviet lies. It really angered me when people would willingly avoid facing the truth because of wishful thinking about Soviet Communism.

HOWEVER, the Nazis have opened their archives LONG AGO. It is all there to see - the tremendous evil that was the Nazi-run Annihilation of the World’s Jews. The camps, Eichmann, biographies, memoirs. The death toll is there and has been worked and reworked. SIX MILLION. If I were Jewish, I’d wager I would feel the same way I did when somebody belittled my parents’ nations suffering. Never mind that, I actually do feel something sick when someone avers that maybe only “hundreds of thousands” Jews died in the Holocaust. Please correct me: Is this what you are arguing in the quote I put at the top?

 

[scout64]

The Polish Catholics, by the way, weren’t killed because they were Catholics but because they were ‘subhuman’ Poles.

I wish you well in your investigations but be very careful in accepting numbers quoted as being saved in Eastern Europe particularly - how they survived is much more complex than it may seem.

I may be a simpleton, but I am still able to perform the basic functions necessary for research. Do not misunderstand me, I am simply supplying data for the sake of furthering the discussion.

I disagree with what you have written, while I would agree that many Polish Catholics who did die were not killed simply for being Catholics, the Church was on the radar, and was targeted as an organization. Reinhard Heydrich wrote to Oberst Wagner ( Chief of Staff to the OKH) who in turn reported to Halder, who recorded this in his diary :

“(a)- missions must be known to the Army. Liason Officers Himmler/ Brauchitsch
(b)- Housecleaning: Jews, intelligentsia, clergy, nobility.
(c)- the Army insists that ‘housecleaning’ be deffered until the Army has withdrawn and the country has been turned over to the civil administration…”
(source- Sword and Swastika by Telford Taylor)

Some background info on that
statement: Poland had just been Captured and the machinery and administration of the SS was to be set in motion. Himmler feared that his actions would not go unnoticed by the Wehrmacht who then proceeded to inform the Army High command of his intended targets.

While the Army stated that the elimination of Clergy was not practical, Thousands were killed, and much of the lay members of those churches were massacred ( mostly in Rural Communities). Many of whom were killed as an act of reprisal by the occupational forces, and not always without provocation, the Catholic churches of eastern Europe were major supporters and even active members of the resistance.

To understand why the Churches were often targeted we can look to the Regional Governors of the Reich. They were by definition allowed some freedom of action, but that was not be the case. Surprisingly these Governors were not answering directly to Hitler, but to Martin Bormann, who was rabidly Anti-Catholic ( and the rest of Christianity). These Governors were manged by Bormann who in turn picked out those he thought to be too weak for the position. They in turn attacked those Bormann thought to be enemies of the State.

(suggested reading- Jochem von Lang’s The Secretary , and William L. Shirer’s, The Rise and Fall of the Third Riech)

Bearing all of this in mind I would be willing to bet that more were killed in the name of there church than one would guess. Remember, the situation was somewhat complex, and there were many factors involved.
Figures on the Holocaust are never easily verifiable, and likely never will be. So we must observe the sources we do have and attempt to discern which can or cannot be trusted. As it is I have heard that the “Holocaust Chronicles” is supposed to be at least some what reliable and respected.

I have gone on off on a bit of a tangent so I will return to the topic at hand. The figure representing those saved during the Holocaust is merely a estimation, as are most all of the figures on the Holocaust. Bearing this in mind, I understand why you are skeptical of the figure, so it would be silly for me to be critical of your argument.

Cheers
Scout

 

[Kaninchen]

I have gone on off on a bit of a tangent so I will return to the topic at hand. The figure representing those saved during the Holocaust is merely a estimation, as are most all of the figures on the Holocaust. Bearing this in mind, I understand why you are skeptical of the figure, so it would be silly for me to be critical of your argument.

Well, we’re not really in that much disagreement I think. The clergy/Church question has to be taken alongside actions like the elimination of the Polish ‘intelligentsia’, I would suggest. Given the power (by which I mean the power over the Polish ‘imagination’, the Polish way of ‘be-ing’) of the Church then the Polish Church was a target for persecution - as were any group in Poland that could be the focus of Polish identity, of Polish civilization.

The crucial word, though, is ‘Polish’ - once we Jews were out of the way, the Poles (and much of the rest of the Slavs) were next.

 

[Kaninchen]

I still remember the revulsion I had when people blatantly denied the Ukrainian death toll or called it ant-Soviet lies. It really angered me when people would willingly avoid facing the truth because of wishful thinking about Soviet Communism.

I do think it’s hard for people isolated from such events to imagine the cultural devastation that remains long afterwards - an example would be Ireland and how much the ‘Famine’ of the 1840’s still haunts the Irish imagination.

As to ‘deniers’, for me the interesting question is always ‘why are they denying it/what advantage to them is there in denying it?’

 

[chosen_people]

These might be some starting points:

Catholic animosity to the Weimar republic and the reasons behind it

The ideas and acceptance of the ideas in the book Katholizismus und vaterland by Father Erhard Schuland

The vote by the Zentrum party for the Hitler enabling act

The Reichskonkordat

The rescinding of the ban for Catholics to join the Nazi party

The cooperation of the Catholic Church in providing Church records to ascertain the religion of civil servants

Archbishop Konrad Grober

Bishop Hilfrich

Jedwabne Poland July 1941

 

[MercyMia]

I don’t think that this was mentioned by anyone yet, but forgive is this is a repeat. A little know and never reported fact is that the Cheif Rabbi of Rome and his wife converted to the Catholic Church after the war ended because they were so convinced of Christ by the way Catholics, specifically the Pope, treated them.

 

[chosen_people]

I don’t think that this was mentioned by anyone yet, but forgive is this is a repeat. A little know and never reported fact is that the Cheif Rabbi of Rome and his wife converted to the Catholic Church after the war ended because they were so convinced of Christ by the way Catholics, specifically the Pope, treated them.

He hid out with his family in the Vatican while the Jews of Rome were eventually systematically rounded up and murdered. This led to his and his family’s being totally ostracized from the Jewish community and eventually he and his family converted. Even though he was supposed be the spiritual leader of Rome’s Jewish community his only interest was self interest. He and his family were saved and thousands of Jews died. If he utilized his stay to learn about Christianity I do not know. However there is apparently no evidence that he utilized his time and safety in the Vatican to bring about the rescue of more Jews.

 

[crazzeto]

He hid out with his family in the Vatican while the Jews of Rome were eventually systematically rounded up and murdered. This led to his and his family’s being totally ostracized from the Jewish community and eventually he and his family converted. Even though he was supposed be the spiritual leader of Rome’s Jewish community his only interest was self interest. He and his family were saved and thousands of Jews died. If he utilized his stay to learn about Christianity I do not know. However there is apparently no evidence that he utilized his time and safety in the Vatican to bring about the rescue of more Jews.

Some where, unfortunetly the Church could not save all of them as much as they tried. I’d recommend doing some true historical research on this subject, the Church went to heroic lengths to save as many Jews as possible. They went to such lengths, that Hitler actually began planning an invasion of the Vatican, he backed off only because of a large percentage of German Catholics in his own nation. He feared riots at home. There are a number of resources you can use to confirm all this, one such is the book I already recommended in this thread.

The story, is not the story of a “traitor against his flock” as you try and characterise it. What the Rabbi saw was the Church saving thousands of Jews.

 

[MercyMia]

He hid out with his family in the Vatican while the Jews of Rome were eventually systematically rounded up and murdered. This led to his and his family’s being totally ostracized from the Jewish community and eventually he and his family converted. Even though he was supposed be the spiritual leader of Rome’s Jewish community his only interest was self interest. He and his family were saved and thousands of Jews died. If he utilized his stay to learn about Christianity I do not know. However there is apparently no evidence that he utilized his time and safety in the Vatican to bring about the rescue of more Jews.

I had read from what I considered to be viable sources that the Rabbi was not able to leave Rome during the occupation. Several times, he was faced with being told he had to give x amount of money or x amount of Jews would be killed…having lost everything the Rabbi would often get the money (or gold or coins) from the Pope.
Remember, both the Pope and Rabbi were in a very hard spot because they had thousands of Jews hidden in Europe and even in Rome itself and the Vatican. To make a stir, could mean the death of these Jews and the Catholics hiding them. It is not like the Pope or the Rabbi had an army at their command. They did not have a full picture of what was going on in Europe…even the US soldiers who liberated the camps where shocked at what they found. It was worse than anyone had imagined.

 

[MercyMia]

Some where, unfortunetly the Church could not save all of them as much as they tried. I’d recommend doing some true historical research on this subject, the Church went to heroic lengths to save as many Jews as possible. They went to such lengths, that Hitler actually began planning an invasion of the Vatican, he backed off only because of a large percentage of German Catholics in his own nation. He feared riots at home. There are a number of resources you can use to confirm all this, one such is the book I already recommended in this thread.

The story, is not the story of a “traitor against his flock” as you try and characterise it. What the Rabbi saw was the Church saving thousands of Jews.

You’re right…Hitler actually had plans to kidnap and kill the Pope. These documents have been unearthed. He feared doing anything too public because he thought he might have a revolt of the German Catholics.

 

[chosen_people]

Some where, unfortunetly the Church could not save all of them as much as they tried. I’d recommend doing some true historical research on this subject, the Church went to heroic lengths to save as many Jews as possible. They went to such lengths, that Hitler actually began planning an invasion of the Vatican, he backed off only because of a large percentage of German Catholics in his own nation. He feared riots at home. There are a number of resources you can use to confirm all this, one such is the book I already recommended in this thread.

The story, is not the story of a “traitor against his flock” as you try and characterise it. What the Rabbi saw was the Church saving thousands of Jews.

In post #25 I too gave some pointers for historical research. If you like I can give you some more.