The weight of archival evidence from the Third Reich, Zionist organizations, and American documents does not sustain the defense that Pius XII was unaware of the details of Hitler's war against the Jews. Hochhuth (318ff) and Friedlander cite numerous reports given by Jewish organizations and by one Col. Kurt Gerstein, who had joined the SS with a view toward sabotage, of gassings of Jews (126-7). Gerstein is a principal character in The Deputy. As early as 1941, public reports surfaced of the Nazis' involuntary euthanasia of the mentally and physically handicapped, as well as of executions of some 700 priests at concentration camps in Germany and Poland (Friedlander 66-69). Hitler's halting of the euthanasia program came about because of public protests of German bishops (Hochhuth 301), notably Bishop Galen of Munster. Galen's protest was articulated in August 1941, six months after the massacre of the Polish priests (Friedlander 71). Galen himself remained untouched, says Hochhuth, because if he had been he "would have become a martyr whose fate might have inspired millions to uncompromising commitment against the totalitarian regime" (304).Baer, Yitzhak. A History of Jews in Christian Spain, from the Fourteenth Century to the Expulsion. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1966. Vol. 2. Morley, John F. Vatican Diplomacy and the Jews During the Holocaust, 1939-1943. New York: Ktav, 1980. "Pius XII." Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia. 1975 ed. Falconi (256) cites "the borderline between an admissible and possible unavoidable silence about responsibility for the war as such, and an inadmissible silence about gratuitous crimes committed in the name of erroneous ideologies such as racialism." Pius XII broke his silence in the former case but not in the latter. There exist, for example, Pius XII's statements deploring Nazi aggression against the neutral Low Countries (Belgium is predominantly Catholic) and against religion in general and Christia |
