New Vatican Archival Evidence Vindicates Pope Pius XII
Pius XII was engaged in the greatest Christian rescue program in the history of the Church. Editorials of the time attest to the fact that **he saved hundreds of thousands of Jews and Christians **from death in the concentration camps and served as a beacon of hope throughout his pontificate. We join his contemporaries and express our gratitude.
The Myth of Hitler’s Pope, by Rabbi David G. Dalin
Written in response to the plethora of attacks on Pope Pius XlI and his Catholic Church during World War II, it is thorough, balanced and jubilantly intelligent. It is also written not by a Catholic but by a Jewish author, Rabbi David G. Dalin.
The book shows that from 1945 until the mid-1960s, it was openly acknowledged that
the Pope and Vatican were heroes of the struggle of the Jewish people against Nazism. Jewish and Israeli leaders praised Pius Xll during his lifetime and then publicly and privately lamented his death. His work in saving and hiding Jews was beyond question.
The Pope hid 3,000 Jews in his country residence and instructed monasteries, churches and convents throughout Italy to do the same. “More than 80% of Europe’s Jews were slaughtered,” says Dalin, "but in Italy more than 80% of the Jews were saved.
“It was in Italy that the Pope had direct control and was able to intervene personally. The idea that he was unconcerned is ridiculous. To allege that he was pro-Nazi is not only deeply insulting but also fundamentally absurd.”
Pope Pius XII: saviour of the Jews in Europe during World War II
At Pope Pius XII’s death in 1958, Golda Meir sent an eloquent message: “We share in the grief of humanity. When fearful martyrdom came to our people in the decade of Nazi terror, the voice of the pope was raised for its victims. The life of our times was enriched by a voice speaking out about great moral truths above the tumult of daily conflict. We mourn a great servant of peace”.
During and after the war, many well-known Jews — Albert Einstein, Moshe Sharett, Rabbi Isaac Herzog, and innumerable others — publicly expressed their gratitude to Pius.
In his 1967 book The Last Three Popes and the Jews, the Israeli diplomat Pinchas Lapide (who served as Israeli consul in Milan and interviewed Italian Holocaust survivors) declared
Pius XII "was instrumental in saving at least 700,000, but probably as many as 860,000 Jews from certain death at Nazi hands".
Michael Tagliacozzo, the leading authority on Roman Jews during the Holocaust, added, “I have a folder on my table in Israel entitled ‘Calumnies Against Pius XII.’ . . . Without him, many of our own would not be alive”.
Richard Breitman (the only historian authorized to study U.S. espionage files from World War II) noted that secret documents prove the extent to which “Hitler distrusted the Holy See because it hid Jews”.
Despite allegations to the contrary, the best historical evidence now confirms both that Pius XII was not silent and that almost no one at the time thought him so.
Any fair and thorough reading of the evidence demonstrates that Pius XII was a persistent critic of Nazism.
Of the forty-four speeches Pacelli gave in Germany as papal nuncio between 1917 and 1929, forty denounced some aspect of the emerging Nazi ideology.
In March 1935, he wrote an open letter to the bishop of Cologne calling the Nazis “false prophets with the pride of Lucifer”.
That same year, he assailed ideologies “possessed by the superstition of race and blood” to an enormous crowd of pilgrims at Lourdes. At Notre Dame in Paris two years later, he named Germany a “nation whom bad shepherds would lead astray into an ideology of race”.
Holocaust survivors such as Marcus Melchior, the chief rabbi of Denmark, argued that “if the pope had spoken out, Hitler would probably have massacred many more than six million Jews”.
Albert Einstein paid tribute to Pope Pius XII for saving so many Jewish lives
As early as December 1940, in an article in Time magazine, Albert Einstein paid tribute to Pius XII: “
Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing the truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised, I now praise unreservedly”.
Moshe Sharett, Israel’s second prime minister, met with Pius XII in the closing days of the war and “told him that
my first duty was to thank him, and through him the Catholic Church, on behalf of the Jewish public for all they had done in the various countries to rescue Jews”.
Chief Rabbi of Rome, Israel Zolli, converted to Roman Catholicism and took the baptismal name of “Eugenio”, the Christian name of Pope Pius XII, in admiration of his help for the Jews.
As a matter of simple historical fact, Rabbi Israel Zolli, the Chief Rabbi of Rome, was received into the Catholic Church in 1945 after the war was over.
He was baptized entirely of his own free will and asked Pius XII, with whom he had worked closely in the saving of Jewish lives, to be his godfather. Dr. Zolli chose the name Eugenio as his baptismal name precisely because it was Pius XII’s own Christian name.
