Holocaust museum defends
modified caption on Pius XII
against Rome rabbi's polemic
Translated from the 7/7/12 issue of
JERUSALEM, July 6 - The management of Yad Vashem Museum has responded with a detailed letter to the polemical commentary of the Chief Rabbi of Rome, Riccardo Di Segni, against the modification of the caption for the Pius XII panel in the Museum's photo gallery.
The letter was signed by historians Dan Michman, Dina Porat and Bella Gutterman, the top scientists at Yad Vashem, and Museum consultant Yehuda Bauman, internationally recognized authority on Shoah studies.
They denied any political pressure on the matter and defended the decision as having been made for better clarity in the light of new historical evidence accepted by the Museum.
After citing the 'international reputation' of the Museum's 'academic integrity, the Museum management deplored 'disinformatiom' that the modification was made in response to 'any pressure from the Vatican:, which they called 'totally unfounded'.
Rather, the new caption was an updating that "reflects ongoing research and information gathering" which, in 2009, had prompted the late David Bankier, then chief of the Shoah Research Institute of Yad Vashem, to convoke an international seminar of historians of various orientations in order to examine more deeply and re-evaluate the acts of Pope Pius XII during the Second World War.
The acts of the seminar, which will soon be published, were the bases for the new caption, the museum officials said. They also added that they took into consideration the observations of visitors to the Museum who found the presentation of Pius XII 'controversial' and demanded more precision.
The letter to Di Segni goes over the statements in the new caption point by point, and points out that it states the charges made against the Pope for 'moral failure', along with the reasons given in his defense. Once against, the Museum officials request the opening of the full Vatican archive on the documents of Pius XII's Pontificate.
[The Vatican has already said that should be expected by 2014, after the papers are completely catalogued.]
P.S. July 9, 2012
Now that I've had time to check back on previous reports I had posted about the Yad Vashem captions, I find I had forgotten the most significant objection I had posed at the time - that the Pius XII panel is located within the Hall of Shame of Yad Vashem's photo gallery. Why has the Vatican not protested that placement itself?
Panel with old caption:
The old caption:
Pope Pius XII
In 1933, when he was Secretary of the Vatican State, he was active in obtaining a Concordat with the German regime to preserve the Church's rights in Germany, even if this meant recognizing the Nazi racist regime. When he was elected Pope in 1939, he shelved a letter against racism and anti-Semitism that his predecessor had prepared. Even when reports about the murder of Jews reached the Vatican, the Pope did not protest either verbally or in writing. In December 1942, he abstained from signing the Allied declaration condemning the extermination of the Jews. When Jews were deported from Rome to Auschwitz, the Pope did not intervene. The Pope maintained his neutral position throughout the war, with the exception of appeals to the rulers of Hungary and Slovakia towards its end. His silence and the absence of guidelines obliged Churchmen throughout Europe to decide on their own how to react.
Panel with new caption:
The new text:
The Vatican
The Vatican, under Pius XI, Achille Ratti, and represented by the Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli, signed a concordat with Nazi Germany in July 1933, in order to preserve the rights of the Catholic Church in Germany.
The reaction of Pius XII, Eugenio Pacelli, to the murder of the Jews during the Holocaust is a matter of controversy among scholars. From the onset of World War II, the Vatican maintained a policy of neutrality. The Pontiff abstained from signing the Allies' declaration of December 17, 1942 condemning the extermination of the Jews. Yet, in his Christmas radio address of December 24, 1942 he referred to “the hundreds of thousands of persons who, without any fault on their part, sometimes only because of their nationality or ethnic origin (stirpe), have been consigned to death or to a slow decline.” Jews were not explicitly mentioned. When Jews were deported from Rome to Auschwitz, the Pontiff did not publicly protest. The Holy See appealed separately to the rulers of Slovakia and Hungary on behalf of the Jews.
The Pope’s critics claim that his decision to abstain from condemning the murder of the Jews by Nazi Germany constitutes a moral failure: the lack of clear guidance left room for many to collaborate with Nazi Germany, reassured by the thought that this did not contradict the Church’s moral teachings. It also left the initiative to rescue Jews to individual clerics and laymen.
His defenders maintain that this neutrality prevented harsher measures against the Vatican and the Church's institutions throughout Europe, thus enabling a considerable number of secret rescue activities to take place at different levels of the Church. Moreover, they point to cases in which the Pontiff offered encouragement to activities in which Jews were rescued. Until all relevant material is available to scholars, this topic will remain open to further inquiry.
Since I can find no other picture of the new caption, I do not know whether the poem found above it on the panel in the first picture has been retained. If it has not been removed, they might as well not have modified the caption at all - You can clearly read what it says even on the photo, but for the record, here it is:
While the ovens were fed by day and by night,
The most Holy Father who dwells in Rome
Did not leave his palace, with crucifix high,
To witness one day of pogrom.
Just to stand there, one day,
Where the child-lamb is standing, each day anew -
The anonymous Child of a Jew.
I do not understand why, say, the CNS correspondent in Jerusalem, or any other writer for Catholic media who happens to be in Jerusalem, has not gone to the Museum to check this out personally.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 09/07/2012 18:15]