CAN YOU GIVE ME PLEASE REFERENCES ON THE INTERNET WHERE RABBIS SAID PUIS 12 HELPED THE JEWS IN WORLD WAR 2,BECAUSE ONE FRIEND OF MINE KEEPS TELLING ME THAT PUIS 12 DID NOTHING

-- PUNKER (GREG_PISAHOV@HOTMAIL.COM), January 10, 2005

Answers

-- (bump@bump.bump), January 10, 2005.

Check out the "Church and WWII thread." Its pretty recent. There was some discussion about it there. You can google search it. You'll find plenty of anti-Pius articles, but if you "wade" a bit you'll also find some that more accurately describe his situation and the careful line he had to walk.

BTW for many years I too believed Pius XII was a "do nothing" and was embarassed (even as a fallen away Catholic turned agnostic) by what I thought I knew about him. I was proven wrong despite myself.

He was an execllent Pope.

-- Jim (furst@flash.net), January 10, 2005.

Your friend is either a stubbornly ignorant dupe, or a vicious bigot who thinks that if he keeps repeating a lie often enough it becomes true.

“December of 1940, in an article published in Time magazine, the renowned Nobel Prize winning physicist Albert Einstein, himself a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, paid tribute to the moral "courage" of Pope Pius and the Catholic Church in opposing "the Hitlerian onslaught" on liberty:

Being a lover of freedom, when the Nazi revolution came in Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but, no, the universities immediately were silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers, whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom: but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks. Only the Catholic Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing the truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised, I now praise unreservedly. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, tributes to Pope Pius came from several other Jewish leaders who praised him for his role in saving Jews during the war. In 1943, Chaim Weizmann, who would become Israel's first president, wrote that "the Holy See is lending its powerful help wherever it can, to mitigate the fate of my persecuted co-religionists." Moshe Sharett, who would become Israel's first Foreign Minister and second Prime Minister, reinforced these feelings of gratitude when he met with Pius in the closing days of World War II: "I told him [the Pope] that my first duty was to thank him, and through him the Catholic Church, on behalf of the Jewish public for all they had done in the various countries to rescue Jews…We are deeply grateful to the Catholic Church." In 1945, Rabbi Isaac Herzog, the Chief Rabbi of Israel, sent a message to Msgr. Angelo Roncalli (the future Pope John XXIII), expressing his gratitude for the actions taken by Pope Pius XII on behalf of the Jewish people. "The people of Israel," wrote Rabbi Herzog, "will never forget what His Holiness and his illustrious delegates, inspired by the eternal principles of religion, which form the foundation of true civilization, are doing for our unfortunate brothers and sisters in the most tragic hour of our history, which is living proof of Divine Providence in this world." In September 1945, Dr. Leon Kubowitzky, the Secretary General of the World Jewish Congress, personally thanked the Pope in Rome for his interventions on behalf of Jews, and the World Jewish Congress donated $20,000 to Vatican charities "in recognition of the work of the Holy See in rescuing Jews from Fascist and Nazi persecutions." Dr. Raffael Cantoni, head of the Italian Jewish community's wartime Jewish Assistance Committee, who would subsequently become the President of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, similarly expressed his gratitude to the Vatican, stating that "six million of my co-religionists have been murdered by the Nazis, but there could have been many more victims had it not been for the efficacious intervention of Pius XII." On April 5, 1946, his Union of Italian Jewish Communities, meeting for the first time after the War, sent an official message of thanks to Pope Pius XII:

The delegates of the Congress of the Italian Jewish Communities, held in Rome for the first time after the Liberation, feel that it is imperative to extend reverent homage to Your Holiness, and to express the most profound gratitude that animates all Jews for your fraternal humanity toward them during the years of persecution when their lives were endangered by Nazi-Fascist barbarism. Many times priests suffered imprisonment and were sent to concentration camps, and offered their lives to assist Jews in every way. This demonstration of goodness and charity that still animates the just, has served to lessen the shame and torture and sadness that afflicted millions of human beings.

Many other Jewish tributes to Pius came in the years just proceeding, and in the immediate aftermath, of the Pontiff's death. In 1955, when Italy celebrated the tenth anniversary of its liberation, the Union of Italian Jewish Communities proclaimed April 17 as a "Day of Gratitude" for the Pope's wartime assistance in defying the Nazis. Dozens of Italian Catholics, including several priests and nuns, were awarded gold medals "for their outstanding rescue work during the Nazi terror." A few weeks later, on May 26, 1955, the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra flew to Rome to give a special performance of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, at the Vatican's Consistory Hall, to express the State of Israel's enduring gratitude for the help that the Pope and the Catholic Church had given to the Jewish people persecuted by the Nazis during the Holocaust. That the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra so joined the rest of the Jewish world in warmly honoring the achievements and legacy of Pope Pius XII is of more than passing significance. As a matter of state policy, the Israeli Philharmonic has never played the music of the nineteenth century composer Richard Wagner because of Wagner's well- known reputation as an anti-Semite and as Hitler's "favorite composer," and as one of the cultural patron saints of the Third Reich, whose music was played at Nazi party functions and ceremonies. Despite requests from music lovers and specialists, the official state ban on the Israeli Philharmonic's playing Wagner's music has never been lifted. During the 1950's and 1960's, especially, a significant sector of the Israeli public, hundreds of thousands of whom were survivors of the Nazi concentration and death camps, still viewed his music, and even his name, as a symbol of the Hitler regime. That being the case, it is inconceivable that the Israeli government would have paid the travel expenses for the entire Philharmonic to travel to Rome for a special concert to pay tribute to a church leader who was considered to have been "Hitler's Pope." On the contrary: The Israeli Philharmonic's historic and unprecedented visit to Rome to perform for Pius XII at the Vatican was a unique Jewish communal gesture of collective recognition and gratitude to a great world leader and friend of the Jewish people for his instrumental role in saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of Jews.

On the day of Pius XII's death in 1958, Golda Meir, Israel's Foreign Minister and later Prime Minister, cabled the following message of condolence to the Vatican: "We share in the grief of humanity...When fearful martyrdom came to our people in the decade of Nazi terror, the voice of the Pope was raised for the victims. The life of our times was enriched by a voice speaking out on the great moral truths above the tumult of daily conflict. We mourn a great servant of peace." Before beginning a concert of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, conductor Leonard Bernstein called for a minute of silence "for the passing of a very great man, Pope Pius XII." Similar sentiments were expressed in the many tributes and eulogies for Pius by numerous rabbis and Jewish communal leaders, as well as by most of the Israeli press, several of whose readers suggested in open letters that a "Pope Pius XII Forest" be planted in the hills of Judea "in order to perpetuate fittingly the humane services rendered by the late pontiff to European Jewry." During and for close to two decades after World War II, Jewish praise and gratitude for Pius XII's efforts on behalf of European Jewry were virtually unanimous. Indeed, as (the eminent Jewish historian)Pinchas Lapide has so aptly stated: "No Pope in history has been thanked more heartily by Jews." Because of Pius XII's exemplary humanity toward European Jewry, no other Pope has earned such gratitude from the Jewish people. Pius XII was indeed a very "righteous gentile," a true friend of the Jewish people, who saved more Jewish lives than any other person, including Raoul Wallenberg and Oskar Schindler.”

- Rabbi David G. Dalin.

See http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/facts/fm0020.html

-- Steve (55555@aol.com), January 11, 2005.

try again

-- Steve (55555@aol.com), January 11, 2005.

Pius XII did anything but nothing. He is the one that signed the cordats that put Mussolini and Hitler into power in exchange that they would require their citizens to be Catholic.

{AH THE MALODRAMA ... now for reality. The concart origionaly siend in 1933 with hitler was signed a eyar after he wa elected chounsilor, and a full 5 years after Musilini took pwr in italy. The Pope doid NOT eeelvat ehtem to powr. at th time, the concar was a simpel treaty that allowed Cahtolsism to be practiced freley in germany,whose official state rleigion sine he reformaiton has always been Lutheren.It was a standard concart, the same used with wngland, poland, and may allied coutnries...}-Zarove

The Vatican saw the Holocaust as a great act of God.

{And as evidence we present... what documentation?}-Zarove

After the war, the Vatican helped thousands of Nazi war criminals escape to South America and other places of refuge.

{this is shokcing! why, it proves the atholci Churhc is he Chruhc run by SATAN HIMSELF! all we need nw to olace he nails ont he coffin is documentation! do you have any?}-Zarove

Pius XII was not just called "Hitler's Pope" for nothing.

{No, he was claled it to sell books becaue Anti_Catolisism is big busness, and few peoel bother to check the facts...}-Zarove

Hitler was a devout Catholic and was never excommunicated by the church; instead he was praised.

{Praised how, pray tell? heck, His right hand man rudolf Hess openly citised the Pope and claled him an Obsticle in hw ay fot he riech, see his dieries...}-Zarove

-- Zarove, Non-Catholic, tired of Bigoted half-baked rmakrs made out of malice and lacking in the Charity the apostle Paul spoke of,a nd Jesus taught to all... (Zaroff3@juno.com), January 12, 2005.