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The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–1965 Ii Introduction Introduction Iii Introduction i The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–1965 ii Introduction Introduction iii The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930 –1965 Michael Phayer INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS Bloomington and Indianapolis iv Introduction This book is a publication of Indiana University Press 601 North Morton Street Bloomington, IN 47404-3797 USA http://www.indiana.edu/~iupress Telephone orders 800-842-6796 Fax orders 812-855-7931 Orders by e-mail [email protected] © 2000 by John Michael Phayer All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and re- cording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of Ameri- can University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Perma- nence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984. Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Phayer, Michael, date. The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–1965 / Michael Phayer. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-253-33725-9 (alk. paper) 1. Pius XII, Pope, 1876–1958—Relations with Jews. 2. Judaism —Relations—Catholic Church. 3. Catholic Church—Relations— Judaism. 4. Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945) 5. World War, 1939– 1945—Religious aspects—Catholic Church. 6. Christianity and an- tisemitism—History—20th century. I. Title. BX1378 .P49 2000 282'.09'044—dc21 99-087415 ISBN 0-253-21471-8 (pbk.) 2 3 4 5 6 05 04 03 02 01 Introduction v C O N T E N T S Acknowledgments ix Introduction xi 1. Catholic Attitudes toward Jews before the Holocaust 1 2. Genocide before the Holocaust: Poland, 1939 20 3. Genocide before the Holocaust: Croatia, 1941 31 4. The Holocaust and the Priorities of Pope Pius XII 41 5. In the Eye of the Storm: German Bishops and the Holocaust 67 6. European Bishops and the Holocaust 82 7. Catholic Rescue Efforts during the Holocaust 111 8. Answering for the Holocaust: The United States Confronts Germany 133 viii Contents 9. The Holocaust and the Priorities of Pius XII during the Cold War 159 10. Catholics and Jews after the Holocaust 184 11. The Holocaust Recalled, Antisemitism Renounced: The Second Vatican Council 203 12. Epilogue 217 Notes 227 References 273 Index 295 A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S It is not possible to write a book such as this without borrowing exten- sively from other historians’ studies. Often I refer by name in the text to those to whom I am indebted. I have learned much from them and many others, and can only hope that in using their research I have not misused data or taken ideas out of context. Other scholars have contributed even more directly to my efforts. John Conway and Doris Bergen read parts of the manuscript and gener- ously provided me with many corrections and alternative points of view. Ronald Modras offered many improvements for the first two chapters, as did Eva Fleischner for the last two. Although I benefited a great deal from the suggestions of these reviewers, mistakes of fact or interpreta- tion are mine alone. I want to thank Derek Ciemniewski for translations from Polish; my brother, Richard Phayer, for translating Italian passag- es; and John Patrick Donnelly, S.J., for help with a difficult Latin docu- ment. I also want to acknowledge the work of a dozen or more gradu- ate students from whose research and historical interpretations I have learned a great deal over the years. Historical research is expensive, especially in Europe. Had I not been awarded a Senior Fulbright Research Fellowship in 1992–93, I could not have gone forward with this study. The fellowship allowed me to spend the better part of a year at the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in Mu- nich and in other German and European archives. Munich’s famous in- stitute afforded me both a hospitable and superior workplace. In Janu- ary of 1993 I visited Auschwitz and Treblinka alone in the cold. I want to thank the Holocaust Educational Foundation and its president, Theo- dore Z. Weiss, for providing funds for this momentous experience. Mar- quette University also generously underwrote my research project in the form of two faculty fellowships and two research fellowships, one of which came from the Bradley Institute for the Study of Democracy and x Acknowledgments Public Values. This assistance provided me with travel funds to work in archives in the United States and time to work on the manuscript. Working in German church archives is profitable to the extent of the helpfulness of their archivists. For this reason I must pay special thanks to Wolfgang Strecker of the Deutscher Caritasverband and to archivist Gotthard Klein in Berlin. Kolbsheim, France, is a difficult place to get to, but René Mougel of the Maritain Archives made my trip well worth while. I very much want to thank Dietrich Goldschmidt for making a tape-recorded interview of Gertrud Luckner available to me. In January 1993, Cardinal John Willebrands and his associate, Stjepan Schmidt, S.J., graciously afforded me a very valuable two-hour interview. State- side, Martin McGann of the National Archives in College Park, Mary- land, was a knowledgeable and ready guide. Special thanks to Stephen Feinstein, Director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota, for locating the jacket illustration, created by Fritz Hirschberger, a survivor who exhibits widely in the U.S. My fellow student at the University of Munich during the 1960s, Helmut Rankl, now a Privatdozent at our alma mater, made my year of research in Germany go by quickly and enjoyably with his hospitality. Finally, I owe a special debt of gratitude to my wife, Pat, and my late father-in- law, Peter Katsune. During my research trips both kept the home fires burning and both were very much missed. I N T R O D U C T I O N The Mosaic law of Hebrew Scripture, “Thou shalt not kill,” became part of the moral code of all Christian churches. Why is it, then, that when prominent scholars write books about the murder of the Jews, church leaders receive scant mention? Contrariwise, those who have written about rescue of Jews during the Holocaust often deal at length with ordinary Christians. Why are the names of these rescuers obscure to us? This book deals specifically with the Catholic response to the Holo- caust. True to form, I found that Pope Pius XII did relatively little for Jews in their hour of greatest need, and that ordinary Catholics did a great deal more. It was never my intention to write a book solely about Pius XII’s response to the Holocaust, yet the pope stands center stage or in the wings of nearly every chapter of this study, overshadowing ordi- nary men and women who acted heroically but had little or no authority in their church. If the Catholic response to the Holocaust was somehow backward or upside down, how is this to be explained? Catholics in modern times had grown accustomed to the leadership of their pope, especially since the promulgation of the dogma of infallibility in 1870. During the Holo- caust the table was reversed. Instead of leading, Pope Pius XII said that the church’s bishops spoke for him when the Nazis came for the Jews. But the bishops, not used to acting independently, said nothing or very little. In the end, when it came down to actual rescue work, a few Catho- lics, people in the pulpits and pews, left to their own devices, acted cou- rageously. This explanation, while essentially valid, generalizes too much and analyzes too little. There were highly placed churchmen who partici- pated in rescue; I refer to the Vatican’s diplomatic corps operating in eastern Europe near the fulcrum of the Holocaust. This select group xii Introduction included Angelo Roncalli, the future pope. Even if the impetus to inter- vene for Jews was limited and usually came from the papal diplomats rather than from Rome, the diplomatic corps worked under the direct supervision of the pope. For this reason we may assert that through his diplomatic corps Pope Pius XII intervened at times to save Jews. It was all well and good, of course, that the pope used diplomatic channels to save Jews. In the matter of genocide, however, diplomacy proved more of a weakness than a strength. Diplomacy functions with- in the boundaries of civilized behavior. The Holocaust ruptured those bounds beyond all measure. Hitler did not know or care to know the language of diplomacy. Pius XII’s greatest failure, both during and after the Holocaust, lay in his attempt to use a diplomatic remedy for a moral outrage. Fear of communism was a thread that ran through Pius XII’s pa- pacy. Filled with anxiety about communism’s spread into central Europe during the war and its successes in western Europe after the war, Pius engaged the Vatican in no-holds-barred diplomatic solutions to the Red threat. Defying international efforts to bring Holocaust perpetrators to judicial accountability, the Vatican allowed fascist war criminals and fugitives from justice to become engaged in the postwar struggle against communism. The ethical credibility of the papacy fell to its lowest level in modern times. Those who have debated Pius XII’s response to the Holocaust—and they are numerous—either condemn him for cowardice for not speaking out or praise him for a gallant prudence for keeping silent so as not to endanger more Jewish lives.
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