We can agree to question or at least to have serious doubts about Pius XII’s attitude during the years leading up to the Second World War and during the years when the deportation of the Jews was known and even experienced close to the Vatican. The silence of the Church can surprise us and even shock us deeply.

It is for good reason that we are calling for the Vatican archives to be opened. This request is all the more justified because the Vatican had established itself as a State and that a State that manages public interest must open its archives after only a relative period of secrecy.

Thus to remind the Pope and the Catholic Church of our unceasing and justified request to see the archives opened, in particular those covering the period when Jews were hunted down and destroyed in Christian lands, appears to me totally legitimate. However, to protest a measure that is internal to the Church – in the context of procedures over which it alone has control and to which we have no access and which, moreover, do not concern us – is to take the debate into territory where the Church has all the resources it needs to defend itself and all the justifications to not take our reactions into account.

To react to this is to assume the position of someone who would claim to give his opinion on the sanctification of a figure who has died. This procedure is totally foreign to us and, it seems to me, more or less without consequence other than writing something into the Church calendar.

Moreover, were we to examine under what conditions, for which actions and based on which attitudes toward the Jewish people various “saints” were admitted into this sanctification process, we would no doubt have to multiply, ad infinitum, the number of our protests.

I add that, when one has a leading position in the main bodies of our community and that, for this reason, one is in regular contact with, in particular, the representatives of the Catholic Church in France, the most useful and most effective thing to do is to go to speak to our Catholic counterparts, instead of congratulating and encouraging reactions that are purely community reactions.

Théo Klein, CRIF Honorary President, Past President

The term “heroic virtues”, we are told, has a purely spiritual meaning and does not constitute an opinion about temporal issues. However, I doubt if this is how it is understood [by ordinary people]. We are what we do and the hero who today is pronounced “venerable”, possibly “blessed” tomorrow, is seen as a compass showing the way for the faithful through the uncertainties of their existence, when faith is needed to orient their actions. All the more so if the said hero has lived through dramatic times. Consequently, are Pius XII’s choices - while the extermination of the Jews was taking place (and about which the papal nuncio to Slovakia, at the very least, had informed him in March 1942) – a model to be followed?

There were quite a number of Jews who in the immediate post-war period thanked Pius XII for his action. Mention is often made of a delegation of survivors in the Vatican in 1946, of a cheque given by the World Jewish Congress, of a statement by Golda Meir in 1958, of the book by Pinchas Lapide, Israel’s Consul in Milan and the more recent publication by Rabbi Dalin from New York. Mention is often made of the conversion of the Rabbi of Rome, Israel (later Eugenio) Zelli, which was in fact a consequence of his rejection by the community after the war because of his cowardice.

Such praise often takes for granted that the unforgettable help given to Jews by members of the Roman Catholic Church in Europe was the consequence of secret instructions coming from the Pope. This however was not the case in general, even though some priests and nuns thought it was so; in fact, the direct involvement of Pius XII in the rescue networks, such as the network of Roman monasteries organised by the admirable Father Marie Benoit, is still being debated. For Cardinal Palazzini, a Righteous among the Nations and Vice-Rector of the Pontifical Seminary in Rome at the time, it was fundamental, but for others it was merely likely and “implicit”. Hence the often repeated need to open up the Vatican archives.

There is no doubt, contrary to a sinister legend, that Pius XII opposed the Nazi doctrine of racial inequality, so contrary to the very foundations of Christianity. He expressed it in particular in the encyclical “Mit brennende Sorge” that he wrote and which was published under the pontificate of his predecessor Pius XI and read out in Germany’s Catholic churches.

However, in this encyclical, as in all his public statements, the word “Jew” itself does appear. There is a terrible parallel between the effacing of this name and the annihilation of the human beings who bore it. Saying nothing said something. And for a Pope, whose only power is the word, to say is to do, and to say nothing was a decision to do nothing. How is it possible to call the faithful to disobedience and risk their lives purely on the basis of subtle allusions? The name Jew was damned. It’s possible that pronouncing it would have increased the Nazi fury and added to the danger faced by converted Jews (as happened to Edith Stein in the Netherlands, following the declaration of Dutch bishops) and possibly the Catholic Church itself. Indeed. But Pius XII had the example of his friend von Galen, Bishop of Munster, who with just his voice obliged the regime to suspend its euthanasia programme (even if today we know it was only a transitory measure).

The truth, it seems to me, is that the extermination of the Jews was, in the Pope’s mental universe, no more than a regrettable, but secondary, event. His concern was first and foremost to not insult the future, to think about the survival of the Church in a world that was going to be dominated by Nazism or threatened by communism. There was no question of removing Orsenigo, the papal nuncio in Berlin, who had shown himself so accommodating toward Hitler. The Pope had to remain an “impartial” diplomat (impartial between the Jews and the Nazis?).

And once the war had been won by the Allies, the primary concern was for the Church to recover its former glory, allergic to introspection. The Holocaust did not lead Pius XII to change the teaching of contempt, nor to publish the slightest moral or doctrinal text on the Jews. We had to wait for his successors.

A journalist asked me why I was surprised that the Pope during the war had not favoured first and foremost the safety of his own people, the Catholics. I answered that I had naively thought that, faced with a universal crime, there was a need for a universal response, the word of a prophet. Are not the courage of a word of testimony and strength and spiritual insight far more “heroic” virtues than those of managing power play?

Richard Prasquier, President of CRIF

Obama and the Jews: disruption or continuity?

So it will be Barack Obama. A magnificent campaign, an extraordinary country. Exactly sixty years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, an African American is elected to the most powerful position in the world. Racism has been sent to the refuse bin of history. As Jews, let us greet the power of this symbol.

The personality of the President of the United States and his ideas on the Middle East will have major repercussions on Israel’s policy. Personal relations between the leaders of the two countries have often played a decisive role.

Three months after the American election, Israelis will also be voting to replace their Prime Minister. The world’s two largest Jewish communities will therefore have had to express their opinion for these capital choices. (…)

Obama’s victory is clear and the Jewish vote had no influence. It had been intensely courted. (…) How did Jews vote? Surveys show a majority of between 60 and 70% for Obama, even though Mc Cain was unanimously considered to be close ally of Israel. (…). This has in fact been a constant: the only Republican to have garnered more Jewish votes than a Democrat was the very mediocre President Harding in 1920, because 40% of Jews had voted for a socialist who obtained… 3% of the votes. This underlines the revolutionary commitment of many Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. Their children have for the most part remained faithful to the Democrats and have been major supporters of that party.

(…) No one can predict what Obama’s policy will be towards Israel, for which he did not spare his declarations of friendship during the campaign. The incendiary declarations of his former pastor or those of Jesse Jackson seem to be outside the scope of those involved in any decisions, but his links with Khalidi, a professor at Columbia University, seem real. The worrying choice of Brzezinski as an advisor was followed by the importance given to Dennis Ross and other friends of Israel. Above all it is geostrategic constraints – and common sense – that will limit the possible shifts in alliances, all the more so as Barack Obama is highly pragmatic. The support of the American population for Israel is very strong, despite the increasing number of denunciations of the “pro-Israeli lobby” (cf. the mediocre book by Mearsheimer and Walt), and despite the fact that accusations that “Zionists” have been behind the recent financial crisis have, as usual, found their way into the gutters of Internet.

We all know that the most serious and pressing foreign policy issue is going to be Iran, where the failure of economic measures is obvious and where we can no longer afford to be naively optimistic. The new president of the USA will need to take difficult and possibly unpopular decisions. Let us wish him lucidity and courage, which are not incompatible with his message of fraternity.

Richard Prasquier

Marine Le Pen would like to succeed her father at the head of the NF. There are still a few obstacles in her path, chief among which another pretender to Jean-Marie Le Pen’s succession, Bruno Gollnisch, general delegate of the party. The latter can count on the support of traditionalist Catholics.

Marine Le Pen has sought to revamp her party and make it more acceptable. It would appear that she is trying to be a moderating influence on her father, because she is aware that his declarations, whenever they have to do with the Occupation of France or with the Jews, are damaging for the NF. On 11 October 2004 during a press conference in Lyon, Bruno Gollnisch reacted to a report by historian Henry Rousso on negationism at the University of Lyon-III. On this occasion, Gollnisch declared that “there no longer exists any serious historian who supports the conclusions of the Nuremberg trial in their entirety”. “I do not question the existence of the concentration camps but as to the number of dead, historians can debate the question. As for the existence of the gas chambers, it is up to the historians to decide,” continued the number 2 of this extreme right party. On the 18^th of October, the National Front’s policy committee voted in favour of a communiqué supporting Bruno Gollnisch, with six close supporters of Marine Le Pen abstaining. Marine Le Pen, after having the same day made a declaration, that deserves to be taken seriously, condemning Gollnisch’s statements and referring to “the martyrdom of the Jewish people by the Nazis”, eventually ended up voting the communiqué.

Marine Le Pen has sought to revamp her party and make it more acceptable. It would appear that she is trying to be a moderating influence on her father, because she is aware that his declarations, whenever they have to do with the Occupation of France or with the Jews, are damaging for the NF. On 11 October 2004 during a press conference in Lyon, Bruno Gollnisch reacted to a report by historian Henry Rousso on negationism at the University of Lyon-III. On this occasion, Gollnisch declared that “there no longer exists any serious historian who supports the conclusions of the Nuremberg trial in their entirety”. “I do not question the existence of the concentration camps but as to the number of dead, historians can debate the question. As for the existence of the gas chambers, it is up to the historians to decide,” continued the number 2 of this extreme right party. On the 18^th of October, the National Front’s policy committee voted in favour of a communiqué supporting Bruno Gollnisch, with six close supporters of Marine Le Pen abstaining. Marine Le Pen, after having the same day made a declaration, that deserves to be taken seriously, condemning Gollnisch’s statements and referring to “the martyrdom of the Jewish people by the Nazis”, eventually ended up voting the communiqué.

Whatever may be said about Marine Le Pen’s position – that it is a tactical position that in no way reneges the party platform of the National Front and does not yield an inch on the ideological “foundations” of the party – she is nevertheless the vice-president of the NF. This fact alone would make a visit to Israel by Marine Le Pen incomprehensible and a disgrace.

Marc Knobel