What the Vatican and Pius XII knew about the Holocaust

 

In an interview, German historian Dr. Michael Hesemann, a scholar and expert who has studied thousands of documents in the Vatican Archives, describes to Vatican News how Pius XII’s efforts “did more to save Jews and to stop the killings, than any politician or religious leader of his time.”

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By Deborah Castellano Lubov

“New documents from the pontificate of Pope Pius XII and their meaning for Jewish-Christian relations – a dialogue between historians and theologians” is the subject of an upcoming international conference held at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome from October 9-11, 2023. In March 2020, Pope Francis opened the Vatican Archives for the acts and documents of the wartime pontificate. During the last three years, historians searched and evaluated thousands of hitherto unknown documents and made several sensational discoveries. Some of them will be revealed at the conference in Rome for the first time. We interviewed the German historian Michael Hesemann, who has studied Pius XII in the Vatican Archives for the last 14 years, on the latest discoveries and their consequences.

Dr. Michael Hesemann studied history at Göttingen University and works for the American Pave the Way Foundation, promoting the reconciliation of Catholics and Jews. Since 2009, he has studied thousands of documents in the Vatican Archives, both on the Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide.

Mr. Hesemann, at an international conference at the Gregorian, new documents will be presented: A list of about 3200 Jews hidden in religious Institutions in Rome and a letter written to the Pope’s secretary, Fr. Leiber, describing the Holocaust. Will the history have to be rewritten?

Yes and no. What has to be rewritten is the “black legend” of the silent and disinterested Pope which was originally promoted by Rolf Hochhuth in his 1963 play “The Deputy” and lately recycled by David Kertzer in his 2022 book “The Pope at War”. Today we know that Pius XII. not only mentioned the horrible fate of the Jews in three public speeches but also tried so save as many as possible. Already in 1939, he tried to obtain 200,000 visas for German Jews, but only received not even 10,000. In over 40 diplomatic interventions in Hitler’s vassal states like Vichy France, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania or Bulgaria, he managed to have that numerous deportations were either postponed or even cancelled, what saved the lives of 947,000 Jews, as I prove in my book. None of these facts are questioned by the newly-discovered documents. Instead, they are additional stones of a mosaic, rounding up the general picture.

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On the big question, it’s clear: Pius XII never publicly criticised the Nazis for the mass murder they were committing of the Jews of Europe – and he knew from the very beginning that mass murder was taking place. Various clerics and others were pressing him to speak out, and he declined to do so.

“Although there is a lot of testimony showing that the church did protect Jews in Rome, when more than 1,000 were rounded up on 16 October 1943 and held for two days adjacent to the Vatican [before deportation to the death camps], Pius decided not to publicly protest or even privately send a plea to Hitler not to send them to their deaths in Auschwitz. 

 

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