Article

2007-04-12 Israel-Palestine-Jordan

The Vatican ambassador to the Holy Land said Thursday that he would not attend the annual Holocaust Remembrance Day state ceremony at Yad Vashem because of a caption at the Holocaust Museum that referred to Pope Pius XII's controversial role during World War Two.
The meter is tickling

Posted by gromgoru 2007-04-12 07:48|| || Front Page|| [11134 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Pius was a man of his time, conditioned by education and society.

Judging someone like that by contemporary standards can have only one result.
Likewise trying to pretend he did not have these attitudes is silly.

While researching a new book on the Allies' policy towards bombing Rome, the historian Umberto Gentiloni Silveri stumbled across an intriguing telegram sent to London by the then British ambassador to the Holy See, Sir D'Arcy Osborne (later Duke of Leeds).

Dated January 26, 1944, it reported the substance of a conversation with Pope Pius XII just days after the landings at Anzio and Nettuno, south of the capital.

"The pope hopes that there will not be Allied coloured troops among the units deployed in Rome," wrote the ambassador. Sir D'Arcy seems to have been rather bemused by the request, for - with a hint of sarcasm - he went on to say that the pontiff "had hastened to add that the Holy See has not fixed a limit to the range of colours".

Gentiloni Silveri told La Repubblica that the pope's "embarrassing" appeal reflected the view of the Holy See throughout the conflict: that Rome was a "symbol of Western culture ... a patrimony to be entrusted to the care of the white race".

Posted by John Frum 2007-04-12 10:35|| 2007-04-12 10:35|| Front Page Top

#2 Yeah, right. Context, Frum.

The troops in question were from northern Africa, under French command. Quoting a snide Brit telegram in order to slime a Catholic Pontiff without the full story is a bit much.

From the Guardian (hardly a bastion of Catholicism):

Gentiloni Silveri told La Repubblica that the pope's "embarrassing" appeal reflected the view of the Holy See throughout the conflict: that Rome was a "symbol of Western culture ... a patrimony to be entrusted to the care of the white race".

Today, the conservative Il Giornale hit back with an article insisting Pius XII was "not in any way a racist". But that he had good reason to fear the arrival of troops from North Africa.

"As apostolic nuncio in Bavaria, immediately after the end of the [First World] War, he had been a witness to what happened in the regions of the Rhineland and Ruhr, which were occupied by French troops," it said.

North African soldiers were accused of numerous rapes and, although the scale of the problem was deliberately exaggerated by local people, even the French acknowledged several dozen had taken place.

It is a matter of historical record that North African troops under French command committed many atrocities in the area known as Ciociaria south of Rome. Alberto Moravia wrote about them in his novel La Ciociara and, in the film of the book, Sophia Loren won an Oscar for her performance in the title role.

Il Giornale's explanation, however, leaves at least two questions unanswered. Why, if the pope was worried about North African soldiers, did he not make that clear to the British ambassador?

And, if he was concerned about a repetition of what had happened in Germany, why should he want the French troops kept out of Rome? Surely they could wreak far more havoc out in the countryside than under the eye of their officers in a city.

John Hooper reports for the Guardian from Rome

It's not that we don't have contemporary accounts of North African behaviors to consider as context, either..

Posted by mrp 2007-04-12 11:24|| 2007-04-12 11:24|| Front Page Top

#3 Wait a minute. Frum - my excerpt appears to come from the same source as yours. Was the text in my excerpt in your source article, or did you just happen to leave it out?

Posted by mrp 2007-04-12 11:30|| 2007-04-12 11:30|| Front Page Top

#4 Pius XII source article here.

Posted by mrp 2007-04-12 11:33|| 2007-04-12 11:33|| Front Page Top

#5 Europe is still trapped in that WWII guilt-trip; obession with the dead WWII jew and its victim image, and hostility to the modern-day israeli jew seen as a bully. I wonder if we're going to die from this neurosis, from which the current opinion-makers, decision-takers,... draw their legitimacy (the 60's leftist students turned Enlightened Elites, piling upon the stalinist subversion before and after WWII), or if we'll be able to somehow get over it.

By the way, a large part of the anti"zionist" resentment in France, from the right, from the left, comes from that forcefed Holocaust obsession (IIRC, it is commemorated in 5 different occasion a year, plus the omnipresent speech, tv dramas, documentaries, movies...), and the ensuing feeling that the Establishment is suited to and dominated by the jews and the "zionists".

Judeomania (to borrow a word I find very appropriate) at home, antizionism abroad, or how to get fixated upon and shamed into neurosis and impotence by a past genocide, and yet, collaborating with people who wish and promise to re-do it as soon as they can.

Posted by anonymous5089 2007-04-12 11:54|| 2007-04-12 11:54|| Front Page Top

#6 Also, hostility to Israel, in addition to the sweeping propaganda from the EE, is also probably due to a reaction to that perpetuated guilt. If you're "told" from your childhood that "you" killed the jews, by school, by the media complex, by the pols,... and that the Holocaust is the defining point of european History, then, seeing the israelis as "bad guys" help you escape that. And from that, it's easy to nazify the israelis, as the liberals (or at least the leftists) are so busy doing so. If the jews are nazis, then you don't have to feel guilty anymore.

Posted by anonymous5089 2007-04-12 11:59|| 2007-04-12 11:59|| Front Page Top

#7 None of this seems to address the "blood libel" that Catholicism so cheerfully perpetuated down through the centuries. That alone should have been enough to motivate the Holy See's attendance at Yad Vashem. It is quite discouraging to see Pope Benedict withdraw from the field in such disarray. Especially in light of how his initial sorties seemed so very promising.

The Catholic Church has within its reach immense power to drive change for the better. Should they allow attempts to conceal their well-established culpability in enabling so much of the medieval European pogroms and even the Holocaust itself to outweigh the current need for excoriating Islam's general hostility to all other parties, then they make themselves irrelevant. How sad to think that Pope Benedict might even consider such abject defiance of Christ's word.

Posted by Zenster">Zenster 2007-04-12 21:38|| 2007-04-12 21:38|| Front Page Top