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

Contrary to Goldhagen's claims, there is plenty of evidence that shows that Pius XII had very pro-Jewish attitudes. As a young student in Rome, Eugenio Pacelli went to school with Jews, notably Guido Mendes. In 1939 the Vatican provided Mendes and his family with exit visas to escape to Palestine. Mendes settled in the Tel Aviv suburb Ramat Gan, eventually becoming a prominent physician in Israel. In 1917, Pacelli, who was still serving as an aide to Cardinal Gasparri, helped organize a meeting between Pope Benedict XV and the Zionist leader Nahum Sokolow. In February 2003 the Vatican began the process of opening its archives from 1933-1945 to scholars. One of the first documents that was found was a letter dated April 4, 1933, from Cardinal Pacelli, who was named the Vatican Secretary of State in December 1929, to Monsignor Cesare Orsenigo, the papal nuncio in Germany. "Important Jewish personalities have appealed to the Holy Father [Pope Pius XI] to ask for his intervention against the danger of anti-Semitic excesses in Germany," Pacelli wrote. "Given that it is part of the traditions of the Holy See to carry out its mission of universal peace and charity toward all men, regardless of the social or religious condition to which they belong, by offering, if necessary, its charitable offices, the Holy Father asks Your Excellency to see if and how it is possible to be involved in the desired way."

In March 1940, Pope Pius XII appointed Jewish scholars, who lost their jobs when Italy's anti-Semitic laws went into effect, to posts in the Vatican Library. On March 2, 1940, the front page of New York Times announced the appointment of Roberto Almagia, one of the Jewish scholars. An editorial in the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle (March 29, 1940) observed that the appointments revealed the Pope's "disapproval of the dastardly anti-Semitic decrees." During the Nazi occupation of Rome from 1943-1944, the Pope secured kosher food for Jews who were hiding in Vatican territory. An editorial dated July 14, 1944, in the Congress Weekly, the official journal of the American Jewish Congress, noted that by providing the refugees with kosher food, "the Catholic Church laid emphasis on the fact that it is saving the lives not merely of human beings or compatriots but of Jews."

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Goldhagen's article provides little discussion as to what Pope Pius XII actually said during World War II, and, more importantly, how his statements were interpreted by both the Allied and the Axis powers.

In his memoirs, Huit Ans au Vatican ("Eight Years at the Vatican," 1947), Francois Charles-Roux, the French Republic's Ambassador to the Vatican, described Pius XII's first encyclical, Summi Pontificatus, issued on October 20, 1939, as a condemnation of "exacerbated nationalism, the idolatry of the state, totalitarianism, racism, the cult of brutal force, contempt for international agreements ... all the characteristics of Hitler's political system ...." In his 1939 Christmas message, the Pope warned the belligerent nations that "[a]trocities and the illegal use of violence even against noncombatants and refugees ... cries out for the vengeance of God." In the same speech, he also articulated his conditions for a "just and honorable peace," which included the protection of all racial minorities, a fact ignored by Goldhagen. An editorial in the London Jewish Chronicle (March 10, 1940) described these conditions as a "welcome feature" and hailed the Pope for standing up "for the rights of the common man."