Revisionist history gives no credit to the one major world figure who spoke out against Hitler's persecution of Jews:
February 5, 2002
When the Communist Party seized control of Russia more than 80 years ago, it tried to eliminate two things: Christianity and “anti-Semitism.” Tens of thousands of priests and bishops were murdered, ancient churches were razed to the ground, believers were forced to worship secretly, and atheism was taught to children in the state schools. Though “anti-Semitism” was never precisely defined — like many key terms in the Soviet vocabulary — whatever it was, it became a capital crime.
In the democratic West we are seeing a renewed conflation of Christianity and “anti-Semitism.” A flood of books and articles have tried to blame anti-Semitism (still vaguely defined) on Christian doctrine, especially Catholic doctrine. Many of the attacks focus on Pope Pius XII, who has been called “Hitler’s Pope.” Some actually blame Christianity for the murder of six million Jews.
The latest and most audacious entry in the campaign to equate Catholicism and anti-Semitism is that of Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, author of the forthcoming book A Moral Reckoning: The Catholic Church during the Holocaust and Today, to be published by Knopf. A long excerpt has just appeared in The New Republic.
Goldhagen goes far beyond the now-routine charge that Pius XII was culpably “silent” during the Holocaust. This charge, by the way, falls under the heading of Virtual Truth — a falsehood repeated so often that it becomes futile to refute it. During World War II, the New York Times praised Pius for being the only major figure in Europe who was not silent about racial persecution: “a lonely voice crying out in the silence of a continent.” Today you get the impression that he was the only one keeping silent — though “heroes” like Winston Churchill, who was silent on the subject even in his postwar memoirs, are given a pass. |
