Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Yad Vashem's mistake


Yad Vashem's mistake


The following are some uncontested historical facts about the role of Pope Pius XII during the Holocaust:


Pius XII never condemned Hitler or the Nazis by name.

He never mentioned specifically the suffering of the Jews, though many people, both clergy and lay diplomats, pleaded with him to issue a public condemnation.

In October, 1943, the Jews were rounded up in Rome itself; the cattle trucks drove past St. Peter’s, with the tiny, shivering hands of the incarcerated children hanging through the slats. The Pope, sitting in St. Peter’s, still said nothing at all.

I mention these facts because I have just learned of the decision of Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Museum and Memorial, to change the wording of an exhibit on Pope Pius XII’s actions during World War II. The changes were meant to soften the criticism of the original wording, which was neither inaccurate nor overly harsh to begin with. 

We are all familiar with the arguments put forward to explain the behavior of the Pope: that he feared a furious reaction from the Nazis if he were to speak out publicly; that Nazi retaliation might have made things worse for the Jews; that church interests in Europe would have been harmed, surely a legitimate papal concern; that the Pope encouraged help for the Jews in secret, and that this help was forthcoming in innumerable cases.

I have done my best to understand these points. They are weighty arguments, and the history of the period is not simple. But I keep coming back to those Jewish children in Rome, being transported past St. Peter’s, and I simply cannot understand the failure of the Pope to speak out. This failure is a great moral stain that can never be wiped away.

I write as someone who is an enthusiastic advocate of Jewish-Catholic dialogue and cooperation, and as someone who believes—and has publicly stated innumerable times—that more progress has been made in Catholic-Jewish relations in the last 60 years than was made in the previous two millennia. Led and inspired by John XXIII and John Paul II, the Church has taken vigorous and daring steps to promote a new relationship with Judaism and the Jewish people. Indeed, I doubt if we could find any other example in history of a church initiating a process of such profound repentance, acknowledging the sins of its members over a 2000 year period against the practitioners of the religious tradition from which it sprang.

But I remember the words of my teacher and friend, the late Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg. Rabbi Hertzberg was both liberal in outlook and a fervent bridge builder; he believed that the values of the Jewish tradition and the realities of the modern world required that the Jewish people and the State of Israel cultivate strong relations with the Catholic Church, as well as with the Moslem world and all major faith traditions. Yet he was also a serious historian who had studied the actions of Pius XII during the Holocaust and had been repelled by them, and he had been infuriated by the refusal of the Vatican to open to scholars its archives of the period. 

By all means, he would say to me, let us look to the future and build strong ties with the Church. But, he warned me, let no one alter the historical record, and above all, don’t forget those children.

Rabbi Hertzberg, I believe, would not be pleased by the actions of Yad Vashem. If he were here, he would protest, and so do I.

 http://blogs.jpost.com/content/yad-vashems-mistake

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