“The assertion that Pius saved more Jews than anyone else during the Holocaust is categorically contradicted by the known historical record”.
Pope Pius XII greeted by the Nazis. He was Papal Nunico to Nazi-Germany before he was ellected Pope in 1939.
These are the words of Elan Steinberg, vice president of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants.
He rebukes the Pope, who again has claimed that Pope Pius XII ‘saved more Jews than anyone else’, despite research criticizing him for turning blind eye to Holocaust.
Jewish leaders reacted with dismay on Sunday to comments in Pope Benedict’s new book that his wartime predecessor Pius was a “great, righteous” man who “saved more Jews than anyone else”.
Many Jews accuse Pius, who reigned from 1939 to 1958, of having turned a blind eye to the Holocaust. The Vatican says he worked quietly behind the scenes because speaking out would have prompted Nazi reprisals against Catholics and Jews in Europe.
Jewish leaders said they were surprised by the comments. “Pope Benedict’s comments fill us with pain and sadness and cast a menacing shadow on Vatican-Jewish relations,” said Elan Steinberg, vice president of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants.
Elan Steinberg
“The assertion that Pius saved more Jews than anyone else during the Holocaust is categorically contradicted by the known historical record. As survivors of the Holocaust we have a solemn obligation to the memory of those murdered to defend the truth of the tragedy till our last breath,” he said.
When the pope visited Rome’s synagogue in January, the leader of the city’s Jewish community told him bluntly that Pius should have spoken out more forcefully against the Holocaust to show solidarity with Jews being led to the Auschwitz death camp.
Pius, including the possibility that the Vatican may one day make him a saint, is one of the main points of contention in relations between Jews and the Vatican. The pope’s latest comments raised new tensions.
“Pave the Way Foundation” has got access to some of the secret World War II files in the Vatican.
Pope Pius carried around like an Egyptian King, was willing to help Jews that had converted to the Catholic faith, claims inter faith foundation
Pave the Way Foundation is a promoter of the new faith of “all religions points to the same God” The Pope has guided them to some documents that favor’s the Vatican’s bid to make Pope Pius XII a “saint”. Now they claim that this Pope requested his bishops to help 200.000 “not white German Catholics” and converted Jews who had become Catholics, to get out of Nazi-Germany.
German historian Dr. Michael Hesemann told Jerusalem Post that Pius XII, then known as Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, “wrote to archbishops around the world, asking them to obtain exit visas for “non-Aryan Catholics” and Jewish converts to Christianity”.
First, and most important:
If the pope excluded non-Catholic Jews from his request for exit-VISA assistance, he was bluntly a sectarian racist.
Second:
Can we trust this Interfaith foundation, that have been allowed to read some selected documents in the secret files in the Vatican?
Lets take a look at their slogan, or what we can say is their statement of faith:
“The meaning of our slogan is simple. We must embody the messages of charity, love, and responsibility for every human being, common to all of our faiths, our beliefs and to the code of human behavior”
The problem with such a message, is that it might defend the Vatican, but delete the gospel.
Pope Pius XII
There is no message of Jesus being the only way to our Father in Heaven. Catholics who believe this message have surrendered to the father of all lies. The Bible explains this to be Satan. He has many children.
The Vatican is the only statehood that has not opened its World War II archives. The War time Pope was silent when 1021 Jews were deported from Rome to Auschwitz in October 1943.
Political and Church powers hand in hand. Roman Catholic Bishops and Joseph Goebbels honoring Adolf Hitler.
To this day, the Vatican has produced no hard evidence that Pius uttered a word or lifted a finger to help when, on October 16, 1943, the Germans rounded up 1,021 Roman Jews and held them for two days just across the Tiber from the Vatican before sending them to Auschwitz. Only 17 returned after the war.
«The cries of the victims were met by Pius with silence» said Elan Steinberg, vice president of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants.
The present pope told his audience on Sunday that the Church had aided Jews in a «hidden and discreet way» during the Holocaust, but he offered no specifics about Pius’s own involvement.
If there is evidence it lies buried deep in the Vatican vaults. For a decade the Church has been promising to open its wartime records to scholars «soon» but the latest word is it will be at least another five years. When some prewar archives were opened to a handpicked Catholic scholar, John Cornwell, to write a Vatican-sanctioned biography of Pius, he was shocked by what he found.
Pius, who as Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, was the papal nuncio in Germany in the 1920s, the Vatican’s secretary of state in the 1930s and became pontiff in 1939. He drew the Church «into complicity with the darkest forces of the era», Cornwell wrote.
Eugenio Pacelli, later Pope Pius XII, signs the "Reichskonkordat" with the Nazi-government on July 20, 1933. Vice-Chancellor Von Papen (left) signed on behalf of Hitler.
Pius «was the ideal pope for Hitler’s unspeakable plan. He was Hitler’s pawn. He was Hitler’s pope… [He was] not only an ideal pope for the Nazis’ Final Solution, but a hypocrite… to his everlasting shame and to the shame of the Catholic Church».
Tad Szulc, Pope John Paul II’s biographer, called Pacelli «The Fuhrer’s best imaginable ally». Pacelli even betrayed Catholic leaders who might have challenged Hitler and his extermination policies.
«He prevented Catholic protest in defense of Jews, even if they’d converted to Christianity» Cornwell wrote. Pius also rebuffed a personal plea from president Franklin D. Roosevelt in late 1942 to publicly condemn Hitler’s extermination of the Jews and refused to meet the chief rabbi of Jerusalem, Isaac Herzog, who came to appeal for his help in saving Jewish lives.
Pius’s defenders say he worked quietly and behind the scenes, and had he spoken out forcefully, it would have only made matters worse for Jews and Catholics in Nazi-controlled countries. It is difficult to imagine how much worse conditions could have been for the Jews had he acted.
If Pius really was helpful, it should be easy enough to prove. The 65 years since the fall of the Nazis are enough time to sort through the archives for evidence of the pontiff’s saintly efforts to help the Jews. The Vatican is the only country that has not opened its wartime archives to scholars, Steinberg said. He is the vice president of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants.
Source: Jerusalem Post
My comment:
It might not have been to easy for the Pope to speak out against Adolf Hitler in 1943. Anybody would in the middle of the war have risked getting a bullet in his head.
It is more fruitful to look into what Pope Pius XII did before World War II. Did he raise his voice whan the Fascists came to Power in Italy in 1922?
What did He do in 1929, when the Pope was given back his statehood in Rome by Mussolini?
Was anything given in exchange for this gesture, like some Papal support for the dictator?
What did Pius do in 1933, when the Nazis came to power in Germany?
Pope Pius XII
Did Pius and the Vatican speak out against the Fascists and Nazis when there was peace in Europe?
What you would find, is hard core evidence of a Pope that supported the culprits, and the two worst enemies of the whole of mankind that walked on Earth in the last century. The Pope basically bet on the Axis Power`s winning the War.
Pius had a simple motive:
If Hitler and Mussolini could win the war and be the undisputed leaders of the political World, than they would let the Pope become the undisputed leader of the religious World.
Hitler and Mussolini had a vision that a one World political power would rule the World. The Popes have always wanted to be the rulers of the worldwide Church and religious affairs.
The Pope supported Hitler. When Hitler rose to Power, the head of the Roman Catholic Church saw a «Third Reich» that could bring back «The Holy Roman Empire».
Martin Luther called the Pope in Rome for an anti-Christ hundreds of years before World War II. Luther spoke the truth. Pope Pius XII was also an anti-Christ.
The Vatican could have got the control over Jerusalem in 1948. But Pope Pius XII chose to bet on Hitler and Mussolini winning World War II.
In the middle of the Holocaust, the Vatican warned the US over a return of Jews to Zion.
The discovery of the documents in U.S. archives cast new light on a pope whose failure to speak out publicly against the persecution of the Jews during the war is still causing controversy, especially now that the Vatican is considering him for sainthood.
In one document, a Vatican spokesman informed the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt that the Pope’s help in saving 4,000 Slovakian Jewish children and getting them to Palestine must not be construed as a sign that he was in favour of setting up a Jewish homeland there.
«It is true that at one time Palestine was inhabited by the Hebrew, but there is no axiom in history to substantiate the necessity of a people returning to a country they left 19 centuries before», said the letter the apostolic delegate to Washington, Archbishop A.G. Cicognani, wrote to FDR’s special envoy to the Vatican, Ambassador Myron Taylor.
Rabbi Marvin Hier, the dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Los Angeles, said his group discovered the letter in a collection of documents that Taylor had bound in leather and presented to the Library of Congress.
Cicognani added in the letter dated June 22, 1943:
«If a Hebrew home is desired, it would not be too difficult to find a more fitting territory than Palestine. With an increase in the Jewish population there, grave new international problems would arise. Catholics the world over would be aroused. The Holy See would be saddened, and justly so, by such a move».
Source: Simon Wiesenthal Centre
My comment:
Because the Catholic Church do not believe in the final authority of the Bible, the Church live with many and serious errors. Like their Pope, Cardinals and Bishops not being able to understand the prophetic Word.
Here is one of many verses that explains the re-gathering of Jews in the ancient homeland:
Jeremiah 31:10 “Hear the word of the LORD, O nations; proclaim it in distant coastlands: ‘He who scattered Israel will gather them and will watch over his flock like a shepherd.’
Read more about the War time Pope`s views on Israel:Click here
ivarfjeld.com 