The controversy over Pope Pius XII never seems to die out. Was he “Hitler’s Pope” and an antisemite to boot, as the British historian John Cornwell has claimed, or a hero and a saint worthy of the beatification that his admirers have long advocated? Frankly, I do not believe in either the sanctification or demonization of this complex, tortured, enigmatic, and intriguing personality. In my new book, Hitler and the Holocaust, I try to place Pius’s actions and his inaction—in notorious “silence” about the Holocaust of European Jewry—in a broader context. His failure of imagination, of political insight into Nazism, and his relative indifference to or complicity with antisemitism was very much of its time and place, no better and no worse for example than that of British and American officials in the face of genocide. On the other hand, Pius XII claimed to be the “Vicar of Christ” and was regarded by hundreds of millions of Catholics as the supreme moral authority. Jews in their despair and anguish turned to him as a kind of refuge for the persecuted. Perhaps they exaggerated his influence, but many believed that had he intervened more strongly, the de-portations to the East might have been slowed down or stopped. In recent years, the controversy has intensified, especially after it appeared that Pius XII—the most controversial pope in modern history—might actually be on the fast track to sainthood.
This prospect was part of the background to the creation of a Catholic-Jewish Historical Commission two years ago, consisting of three Catholic and three Jewish scholars—the former appointed by the Vatican and the latter by an umbrella grouping of predominantly American Jewish organizations. Another factor in its emergence was the general disappointment of many Jews at the Vatican document on the Shoah, “We Remember,” which had appeared in March 1998, and contained unmitigated praise for Pius XII’s wartime role, while ignoring the existence of any criticism or controversy.
Edward Idris Cardinal Cassidy seemed to think that one way out of the impasse was to defuse the passions and political polemics surrounding “We Remember” by handing over the issue of Pius XII to a joint team of scholars. After some delay, this proposal was accepted by the Jewish side. The brief was to study the 12 volumes of acts and documents produced by the Holy See that specifically relate to the Vatican’s activity during the war years and the Holocaust. The collection, edited by four Jesuits between 1965 and 1981, contains dispatches, correspondence, and telegrams from nuncios and Vatican representatives in Nazi-controlled Europe and other parts of the world, as well as communications from ambassadors accredited with the Holy See or from other prominent persons. There are many appeals for assistance to the pope and his staff from Poles, Jews, and other victims of the war. There are private notes and memoranda produced by the Secretariat of State and its top officials. an entire volume in German consists of Pius XII’s letters to the German episcopate during the war, which provides direct insight into his state of mind. In short, this is an indispensable source of information, less well known than it should be but necessarily beyond the average reader’s capacity, since all the documents are in the original language—the bulk in Italian but a sizeable number in French, German, English, and Latin.
When I agreed to review these volumes as part of my work on the Commission, there were two aspects that primarily interested me as a scholar. First, what could they reveal about the response of Pius XII and Vatican officials to the developing mass murder of the Jews? How much did they know, what did they do about it, and why did they act as they did? There was another no less important if open-ended challenge—namely, to raise questions that we felt required further clarification—as many as we wished, in fact. For me (and for my colleagues), it was evident that there would be many such questions. After all, the original editors had not published everything. They had made a selection, and their principles could be questioned. To judge their work, and to receive a fuller picture of what had really happened, we would need to go into the archives ourselves at some point. Hence, already at our first joint meeting in New York in December 1999, we collectively affirmed that our search for the truth about this period depended upon “full access to archival documentation and other historical evidence.” This was reaffirmed in every subsequent declaration of our group, however much it may not have been to the liking of the Vatican Secretariat of State that controls access to the archives.
After ten months of joint study, our team of historians arrived in Rome in October 2000 with a “preliminary report” of 21 pages for the Vatican containing 47 pointed questions. These we meant to be illustrative of the kind of unresolved issues that we felt required further access to the secret Vatican archives for the Holocaust period. Our reception was more than chilly. Why had we not given our verdict on the volumes and on Pius XII? (This was strange coming from Cardinal Cassidy, since we had provided him with 150 pages of our collective scholarly analysis some months earlier, and he had declared himself very satisfied with our progress). Where were the references to what Pius XII had supposedly done for the Jews? Why were we asking for Vatican archives, when all the answers to our questions could be found elsewhere—in British, American, French, Polish or German archives, for example? Finally, we were told that the Vatican could not break its own precedent. Thus, at present, the Holy See releases documents by pontificates, and the last pontificate for which the material is open is that of Pope Benedict XV, who died in 1922. According to this model, the successor of Pope John Paul II might allow access to the end of the pontificate of Pope Pius XI (1922-1939), who had followed Benedikt XV. Only the next pope after that could open up the archives of Pius XII’s papacy. Against this, I pointed to Pope Paul VI—who in 1965 waived the then existing 75-year moratorium on publishing materials from the archives—precisely in relation to the Holocaust. Stung by Rolf Hochhuth’s sensational play, The Deputy, a worldwide hit in 1963 that had caricatured Pius XII as a cold, callous, and calculating pontiff who displayed near-criminal weakness during the Shoah, Paul VI gave four loyal Jesuit scholars the free run of the archives. Surely this was a decisive precedent. If it was good for the Jesuits, why not our mixed group—in the spirit of a new era of dialogue? Why should we be denied a look at the original materials? Indeed, why not open these archives to all serious scholars, so that the frequent and wounding accusations that the Vatican has something to hid could finally be put to rest? These were the kinds of arguments that I and my colleagues put forward in Rome last October.

 

About the author

Robert S. Wistrich holds the Neuberger Chair of Modern Jewish History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and is the author of the newly published Hitler and the Holocaust (2001, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson and New York: Random House).