Vatican archivist defends Pope Pius XII’s response to the Holocaust

VATICAN CITY (RNS) — For many years, historians have argued over the function performed by the Vatican and Pope Pius XII within the persecution of Jews through the German Third Reich and the Second World Warfare. Johan Ickx, director of the Vatican archives, defends Pius, saying the pope selected to stay silent whilst he instructed clergy all over the world to assist Jewish communities.

However, Ickx stated in a latest interview, don’t maintain your breath in search of proof.

“Pius XII was conscious of his silence,” Ickx informed a small group of Vatican journalists on Tuesday (Dec. 6). However “silence is golden” on the planet of diplomacy, Ickx argued, and Pius’ silence was important in permitting the church freedom of motion to assist and save persecuted Jewry.

“It was the pope who gave the instruction to do that,” he stated, regardless of “the good concern of being found.”

Pius XII reigned within the turbulent interval between March 1939 and October 1958. Earlier than his election, he had been a Vatican diplomat in Germany and in England, and his expertise dictated his delicate and conciliatory method of speech as pope. After aligning itself with Germany through the First World Warfare, the Vatican publicly saved its distance from the Nazi regime and drew nearer to the Western powers, Ickx stated. Paperwork present Pius supported the German resistance and labored carefully with Allied forces.

The pope’s public silence on the Holocaust turned particularly controversial after the publication of “Hitler’s Pope,” a 1999 ebook by the journalist John Cornwell, which portrayed Pius XII as an antisemite extra involved about securing the long run stability of the Vatican than saving Jewish lives. Critics and supporters of this view took to writing books and articles defending their interpretation of historical past in what have been later often known as the “Pius Wars.”

Historians and researchers heatedly debate the pope’s lack of condemnation of Hitler and his genocidal regime to today.

As of June 2022, Pope Francis allowed anybody to have digital entry to the Historical Archive of the Secretariat of State pertaining to Pius XII’s hold forth as much as 1948. (The information had already been made out there to researchers in March 2020.) With greater than twenty years of expertise within the Vatican archives and Roman Curia, Ickx was chosen to supervise the digitization of the large quantity of knowledge saved in bins contained in the Catholic city-state.

“It was like launching with a spaceship towards the closest galaxy,” he stated, referring to the hassle of digitizing greater than 1.6 million paperwork. Ickx stated he was “shocked” when he discovered a complete folder devoted to “Jews,” which contained beforehand unknown historical past of the Vatican’s wartime actions. Whereas he had been conscious that the church had saved various Jews, he had by no means understood the place the order had come from.

“The enter got here from Rome, specifically from the Secretariat of State,” he stated, which had established “a thick community in Italy and on the planet” that helped deliver Jewish households to security.

Folders marked with labels studying “Pius XII” are seen by means of a grating throughout a guided tour for media of the Vatican library on Pope Pius XII, on the Vatican, Feb. 27, 2020. The Vatican’s apostolic library on Pope Pius XII, the World Warfare II-era pope, and his document through the Holocaust opened to researchers on March 2, 2020. (AP Picture/Gregorio Borgia)

The folder contained greater than 2,800 pleas for assist from Jews directed to the pope; 15,000 extra have been despatched to the workplace of the substitute, equal to a chief of workers. Papal nunzios, the pope’s representatives to nations across the globe, performed an important function in offering assist for Jews persecuted all through Europe, in keeping with Ickx.

The shortage of written proof, particularly the direct mandate from Rome to assist persecuted jews, is because of Vatican officers’ need for secrecy. “They didn’t need to depart any hint,” Ickx stated. However he stated the proof is the variety of Jewish households the church was in a position to transfer throughout European borders and different frontiers through the conflict.

Final June, the sociologist and anthropologist David Kertzer revealed “The Pope at Warfare: The Secret Historical past of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler,” which drew from the newly revealed Vatican data. Kertzer implies within the ebook that the Vatican was principally involved with saving Jews who had transformed to Catholicism and underlined the church’s problematic historical past with selling antisemitism in Europe and past.

“The Pope At Warfare: The Secret Historical past of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler” by David Kertzer. Courtesy picture

The ebook additionally revealed that the pope had engaged in personal dialogues with Hitler although a German prince who was a Nazi sympathizer. Kertzer additionally reported that Pius’ advisers urged him to not brazenly problem the racial legal guidelines enacted by the Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.

When, in 1943, 1,260 Italian Jews have been rounded up by the Nazis inside earshot of Vatican Metropolis, Pius didn’t condemn the occasion however labored behind the scenes to help the Jewish group, in keeping with Kertzer’s ebook. About 250 of them may show to be “non-Aryan Catholics” and have been spared. Of these remaining, solely 16 individuals returned from the focus camps.

Ickx known as Kertzer’s declare that the pope principally centered on saving baptized Jews “false” however didn’t current proof to counter it. Many Jews saved by the church have been baptized, he stated, and generally got pretend baptism certificates to guard them from persecution or deportation. Ickx described it as a “door to security for Jews,” as those that have been baptized happy a authorized loophole the Vatican may exploit to intervene extra straight on their behalf. 

However, Ickx added, “this doesn’t exclude serving to different Jews.”

Relating to Pius’ silence, the problem is extra nuanced, the archivist stated. It was Pius who first questioned if his “silence relating to the conduct of the Nazis wouldn’t be judged negatively,” throughout a gathering with Bishop Angelo Roncalli (later Pope John XXIII) on the Vatican in 1941.

In response to Ickx, many historians at the moment don’t perceive the coded vocabulary utilized by the pope in his public pronouncements. He stated Pius referred to Hitler and the Jews between 130 and 250 occasions in his speeches, with out ever brazenly condemning them. However he admitted that the pope knew very nicely what was occurring to Jews throughout Europe.

“Was it silence? Sure, but it surely was an lively silence,” he stated.