Israel’s Holocaust museum, Yad Vashem, is housed within an angular concrete corridor that leads visitors through appalling stories of persecution, suffering and death and out eventually to a calming view over the Jerusalem forests.
Halfway down the corridor in a room on the left are two black and white photographs of the wartime pope, Pius XII, with a few lines of text in English and Hebrew. It is one of hundreds of displays in the museum and easily overlooked, but it runs to the heart of Israel’s often troubled relationship with the Vatican.
Pope Benedict XVI is making an official visit to the Holy Land this week and attended Yad Vashem yesterday to lay a wreath, but he did not visit the museum or see the caption. The wording set off a diplomatic spat two years ago when the papal envoy to Jerusalem threatened to skip Israel’s Holocaust day service and it remains contentious, symbolic of the troubled history between the Catholic Church and the Jewish people.
For some, Pius XII was little more than “Hitler’s pope” and the caption at Yad Vashem is accusatory. It claims Pius “shelved” a letter against racism and anti-Semitism prepared by his predecessor and says that when the Vatican received news of the murder of Jews “the pope did not protest either verbally or in writing.”
In December 1942 he “abstained” from signing an allied declaration against the extermination of Jews, and when Jews were deported from Rome to Auschwitz “he did not intervene.”
“His silence and the absence of guidelines obliged churchmen throughout Europe to decide on their own how to react,” it says.
Israeli academics, including researchers at Yad Vashem itself, have pressed the Vatican to open its wartime archives and shed light on documents that might explain in more detail how the Catholic Church acted. Workshops and discussions on the Holocaust have been held between Yad Vashem staff and Catholic clergy.
Vatican officials have tried to smooth over the differences, although Pius remains on track for canonization. Monsignor Antonio Franco, the papal envoy who threatened to stay away from the Holocaust service two years ago, said this week that the Vatican was making a “huge effort” to accelerate the opening of the archives. Perhaps within four or five years they might be revealed, he said.
“It really demands a lot of work, a lot of investigation and things must be done in a very professional way,” he said.
Pope Benedict was not coming to Israel to quarrel, Franco said, but at 82 he was an elderly man with a busy schedule and a visit to the museum had “never been on the agenda.”
This despite the fact that in 2000 his more charismatic predecessor, John Paul II, spent several hours at Yad Vashem listening to Holocaust survivors.
Vatican officials have also been at pains to describe the papal tour as a pilgrimage, not a political visit. But in reality it holds much more significance. It will be only the third visit of a pope to the Holy Land and comes at a time when hope of a genuine peace between Israel and the Palestinians is ever more illusory.
More and more Christians are leaving the area, particularly the Palestinian territories, for several reasons, among them perceived persecution by Muslims and the suffocating and deadly effect of Israel’s four-decade occupation.
Only in 1993 did the Vatican sign an accord recognizing the state of Israel, but the “fundamental agreement” between the two sides, with its 15 articles about property rights and hugely valuable tax exemptions, has still not been implemented. Negotiations continue.
There are other issues of dispute, some theological, others practical. Many Israelis were angered by the pope’s decision in January to revoke the excommunication of the British bishop Richard Williamson, who denied the existence of the Nazi gas chambers. Senior Jewish leaders said that decision threatened the reconciliation between the Catholic Church and the Jewish people. In February, an Israeli TV show was forced to apologize after airing a sketch that ridiculed Jesus and Mary.
Some opinion polls have suggested these differences run deep. A poll of Jewish Israelis by the Jerusalem Centre for Jewish-Christian Relations last year found that 41 percent regarded Christianity as an idolatrous religion, and 46 percent did not believe Jerusalem was a central city for the Christian world. Some 40 percent believed the Catholic Church had a very or largely negative attitude towards Judaism and Jews.
Hardliners have played on this and on Benedict’s own background growing up in wartime Germany. Michael Ben Ari, a far-right Israeli member of parliament, said on Tuesday that the pope’s visit would be an insult to the memory of Holocaust victims.
“A state welcome for the pope would be turning our backs on the millions of Jews who were killed in the shadow of the Christian religion of grace and mercy,” he told a session of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. “This pope was a member of the Hitler Youth.”
Among Palestinians, political expectations are high. They hope Benedict will speak out in support of Palestinian independence. After he says mass in Bethlehem tomorrow he will visit Aida, a Palestinian refugee camp, where a stone stage has been built for him next to Israel’s vast concrete West Bank barrier. Fouad Twal, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, said the camp itself symbolized the “right of return” for Palestinian refugees who were forced out or fled from what is now Israel in the 1948 war.
However, it is far from clear whether Benedict will speak out on these political issues, and it now seems doubtful that he will even reach the stage in Aida camp.
Elsewhere there are more careful voices. Father William Shomali, rector of the Latin seminary in Beit Jala, next to Bethlehem, said there was little point hoping that the pope’s visit might alter the reality of the conflict.
“After hundreds of meetings between committees and subcommittees we are still negotiating how and with whom to negotiate,” he said. “I don’t want it to be a political visit or it will continue the frustration.”
Instead, he hoped the pope would emphasize prayer, acknowledgement of the suffering of others, reconciliation and religious dialogue.
“If everyone recognizes his own guilt, reconciliation becomes easier,” he said.
As for Pius XII and his wartime conduct, although it is true the Vatican has been slow to study the issue in detail, it also appears that Yad Vashem’s verdict is not the last word.
Some historians, among them Martin Gilbert, Churchill’s biographer, have come out in support of Pius as in fact an unsung hero of the war. He points out that the pope’s 1942 Christmas message infuriated the Nazis because it defended the Jews, and notes that the pope organized rescues of Jews in Hungary and intervened to stop deportations in Slovakia. In 1943, Pius tried to disrupt implementation of the Final Solution throughout occupied Italy.
Nearly 5,000 Jews, Gilbert says, were sheltered in Catholic institutions across Rome with the result that a larger proportion of Jews were saved there than in any other city under German occupation.
By Rory McCarthy
A return to power for former US president Donald Trump would pose grave risks to Taiwan’s security, autonomy and the broader stability of the Indo-Pacific region. The stakes have never been higher as China aggressively escalates its pressure on Taiwan, deploying economic, military and psychological tactics aimed at subjugating the nation under Beijing’s control. The US has long acted as Taiwan’s foremost security partner, a bulwark against Chinese expansionism in the region. However, a second Trump presidency could upend decades of US commitments, introducing unpredictability that could embolden Beijing and severely compromise Taiwan’s position. While president, Trump’s foreign policy reflected a transactional
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) has prioritized modernizing the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to rival the US military, with many experts believing he would not act on Taiwan until the PLA is fully prepared to confront US forces. At the Chinese Communist Party’s 20th Party Congress in 2022, Xi emphasized accelerating this modernization, setting 2027 — the PLA’s centennial — as the new target, replacing the previous 2035 goal. US intelligence agencies said that Xi has directed the PLA to be ready for a potential invasion of Taiwan by 2027, although no decision on launching an attack had been made. Whether
A chip made by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) was found on a Huawei Technologies Co artificial intelligence (AI) processor, indicating a possible breach of US export restrictions that have been in place since 2019 on sensitive tech to the Chinese firm and others. The incident has triggered significant concern in the IT industry, as it appears that proxy buyers are acting on behalf of restricted Chinese companies to bypass the US rules, which are intended to protect its national security. Canada-based research firm TechInsights conducted a die analysis of the Huawei Ascend 910B AI Trainer, releasing its findings on Oct.
In honor of President Jimmy Carter’s 100th birthday, my longtime friend and colleague John Tkacik wrote an excellent op-ed reassessing Carter’s derecognition of Taipei. But I would like to add my own thoughts on this often-misunderstood president. During Carter’s single term as president of the United States from 1977 to 1981, despite numerous foreign policy and domestic challenges, he is widely recognized for brokering the historic 1978 Camp David Accords that ended the state of war between Egypt and Israel after more than three decades of hostilities. It is considered one of the most significant diplomatic achievements of the 20th century.
RSS