Most significantly, the Rabbi of Rome, Zoli, converted to Catholicism, taking the baptismal name of “Eugenio,” to honor the Pope whose tireless efforts to save the Jews of Rome and Italy from deportation left an indelible impression upon him.
The foundation also documented that, in 1937, it was the future Pius XII himself, who wrote Mit Brennender Sorge, the official Catholic condemnation of the Nazis.
One may academically discuss the choice of means adopted by the Pope, as is done concerning conflicting methods of the Jewish Councils and Partisans, but not the Pope’s intention to save the Jews.
For Catholics, the urgent and compelling question is not that of Pius XII, but of our own moral ability and determination to oppose the Second Holocaust, now in its early stages in the United States, and advancing in Europe. The daily news confronts us with 1929-style anti-Semitism of the day, from the despicable Mel Gibson, to Obama’s Security Advisor telling Jewish jokes; to Oliver Stone calling for the rehabilitation of Hitler; to Helen “Resettle the Jews” Thomas; to a Brooklyn candidate decrying his opponent’s “Jewish money”; to the Left’s dreams of an exterminated Israel.
Catholics must find what many of our European predecessors had lost by the time they failed the historic test of heroic love of neighbor. The children of Goebbels are hard at work and most leaders are not honest advocates for the Jews slandered by revisionism, but are actually their increasingly unabashed enemies.
It is to be hoped, for his own consolation, that Rabbi Hier would know that the Church was not universally apathetic to the sufferings of his people. A more careful study of the available documents might bring him to share the sentiments of Albert Einstein:
“Only the Catholic Church protested against the Hitlerian onslaught on liberty. Up till then I had not been interested in the Church, but today I feel a great admiration for the Church, which alone has had the courage to struggle for spiritual truth and moral liberty.”
