Under pressure from Vatican, Yad Vashem rewords Pius XII wall text
By Nir Hasson | Jul.01, 2012
Yad Vashem is due to unveil a new wall text on Sunday describing the actions of Pope Pius XII during World War II, softening a previous message which stated that the head of the Catholic Church had not protested verbally or in writing to the murder of Jews by the Nazis.
The initial wall text sparked a diplomatic incident in 2007. The new wall text still blames Pius XII for the fact that the Church did not intervene on the Jews’s behalf at the time. But it paints a more complex picture of his conduct and contains veiled criticism of the Vatican for refusing to open its archive to allow historians to scrutinize the actions of the Holy See during the war.
In April 2007, the papal nuncio to Israel, Antonio Franco, refused to take part in the Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony because of the wall text, installed when the new Yad Vashem Holocaust History Museum opened in 2007. Yad Vashem said the wall text would be changed only if the Vatican opened its archive to researchers, and if subsequent research revealed new information about the actions of the Holy See during the war. Franco did eventually attend the ceremony.
The old wall text, entitled “Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust,” read: “Pius XII’s reaction to the murder of the Jews during the Holocaust is a matter of controversy. In 1933, when he was Secretary of the Vatican State, he was active in obtaining a Concordat with the German regime to preserve the Church’s rights in Germany, even if this meant recognizing the Nazi racist regime. When he was elected Pope in 1939, he shelved a letter against racism and anti-Semitism that his predecessor had prepared. Even when reports about the murder of Jews reached the Vatican, the Pope did not protest either verbally or in writing.
“In December 1942, he abstained from signing the Allied declaration condemning the extermination of the Jews. When Jews were deported from Rome to Auschwitz, the Pope did not intervene. The Pope maintained his neutral position throughout the war, with the exception of appeals to the rulers of Hungary and Slovakia toward its end. His silence and the absence of guidelines obliged Churchmen throughout Europe to decide on their own how to react.”
The new wall text is headed: “The Vatican and the Holocaust.” It notes that it was Pius XII’s predecessor, Pius XI, who signed the Concordat with Nazi Germany. It reiterates the fact that Pius XII did not sign the Allied declaration but mentions that a few days later, during a Christmas radio broadcast, the Pope mentioned “the hundreds of thousands of persons who without any fault on their part, sometimes only because of their nationality or ethnic origin have been consigned to death or slow decline.” The wall text notes that Pius XII did not mention the Jews specifically.
The new wall text also mentions the Pope’s nonintervention during the deportation of the Jews of Rome to Auschwitz in contrast to his appeal for the Jews of Hungary and Slovakia, and uses the term “moral failure” − which the previous wall text did not.
“The Pope’s critics claim that his decision to abstain from condemning the murder of the Jews by Nazi Germany constitutes a moral failure: the lack of clear guidance left room for many to collaborate with Nazi Germany, reassured by the thought that this did not contradict the Church’s moral teachings,” it reads.
“It also left the initiative to rescue Jews to individual clerics and laymen. His defenders maintain that this neutrality prevented harsher measures against the Vatican and the Church’s institutions throughout Europe, thus enabling a considerable number of secret rescue activities to take place at different levels of the Church.
Moreover, they point to cases in which the Pontiff offered encouragement to activities in which Jews were rescued. Until all relevant material is available to scholars, this topic will remain open to further inquiry,” the wall text concludes.
“In my opinion, the connection between the Vatican and rescue activities remains to be proven. I do not see that this has been proven yet,” said Prof. Dan Michman, director of Yad Vashem’s International School for Holocaust Studies. Yad Vashem added there had been no negotiation or coordination with the Vatican regarding the wording of the wall text.
Michman said the wall text was changed in response to additional research after the Vatican allowed scholars to examine documents dating up to 1939, and in response to questions by visitors to the museum.
Pius’ role in the Holocaust deserves more scrutiny
The new captions at Yad Vashem send a clear message to the incumbent pope: Do not glamorize Pius XII before the Vatican reviews and publishes all documents concerning his activities during the Holocaust.
By Tom Segev | Jul.01, 2012
www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-news/pius-role-in-the-holocaust-deserves-more-scrutiny-1.448042
From the beginning, the Yad Vashem Museum was created to reflect Israel’s official concept regarding the Holocaust, and obviously it serves as a justification of Zionist ideology and of the need to establish the State of Israel and guarantee its security. Almost sixty years later, the new museum, which opened in 2005 and was inspired by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, presents the original political foundations in a new style: less indoctrination and more room for various points of view regarding numerous subjects, some of them sensitive and controversial.
At the entrance the visitor is greeted by an old clip of Jewish children in the Ukraine singing “Hatikva,” the national anthem. The visit ends with the establishment of the State of Israel. Still, one notable difference is that the Arabs are no longer presented as Nazis: the placing of the 1941 photo of Hitler meeting the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem is no longer as accentuated as before. The museum has also adopted a neutral stance concerning the Nazi-established “Jewish Councils,” otherwise known as Judenrat. The visitors can now draw up their judgment of the councils based on their activities in both the Warsaw and Lodz ghettos. The impression now is that the Judenrat leaders too, were victims of the Holocaust. Formerly, they were all considered villains.
One of the striking differences concerns the museum’s depiction of Rejso, Israel Kestner, one the leaders of Hungarian Jewry. In 1955, an Israeli court ruled that Kestner had “sold his soul to the devil” after he was accused of being a Nazi collaborator. He was murdered two years later in Tel Aviv. Now, Kestner’s contacts with the Nazis are depicted as praiseworthy actions that saved Jews. The change is due, partially, to the fact that Kestner’s friend, Yosef “Tommy” Lapid, served as Yad Vashem’s chairman. The wording under Kestner’s photograph – as in all other captions in the museum – is formulated in an extremely cautious manner, weighing the meaning of every single word. The English version is slightly more positive than the Hebrew.
Many captions were dictated by diplomatic sensitivity, so as not to cause tension with foreign states. The lines dealing with the question of why the allies didn’t bomb Auschwitz are more restrained than the more explicit criticism of the same issue in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
The new captions dealing with Pope Pius XII, are ‘cleaner,’ and reflect a measure of openness and recognition of different opinions. Pius XII now receives a parcel of textual ‘discounts’: the new wording stresses the fact that the Reichskonkordat with Germany was signed before he was appointed, and deletes the former declaration that the accord was signed “even at the price of recognizing the Nazi regime.” It does not mention that Pius XII shelved the prepared draft of an encyclical condemning racism, colonialism and anti-Semitism, drafted for Pius XI. If the Pope actually shelved such an encyclical, there’s no reason to ignore it. The mention of his 1942 Christmas address and his appeals to the leaders of Hungary and Slovakia are relevant. Pius XII actually gains some points due to the detailed controversy surrounding his term.
Still, he isn’t portrayed as a righteous man, but the issue calls for more study. Politically, the new captions send a clear Jewish and Israeli message to the incumbent pope, German-born Benedict XVI: Do not glamorize Pius XII before the Vatican reviews and publishes all documents concerning his activities during the Holocaust.