The Vatican has announced that a joint commission of Jewish
and Catholic scholars will examine its secret archives to
study the activities of the Catholic Church and the Pope
during the Holocaust.
The Vatican hopes that the commission will vindicate its
behavior during the Holocaust. Such a result would end
decades of Jewish charges that Pope Pius XII, who headed the
church during World War II, and other church leaders, did not
act vigorously enough to save Jews from German genocide.
Discussions about setting up the commission began about 18
months ago, following a largely negative Jewish response to a
Vatican document on the Holocaust. Many in the Jewish
community assailed the document for failing to address the
Vatican's official silence during the Holocaust and for its
defense of Pius XII.
Jewish critics also compared the document unfavorably to
statements issued earlier by French bishops, who apologized
more directly for their silence during the deportation of
Jews. German bishops also said that the Church did not do
enough to fight Nazism.
The agreement to set up the commission of six scholars came
during a meeting between Seymour Reich, the new chairman of
the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious
Consultations, and Cardinal Edward Cassidy, head of the
Pontifical Commission on Religious Relations with the
Jews.
The joint commission is to include three Catholic and three
Jewish "scholars." The scholars are to convene for the first
time in December in New York. They will set their own
guidelines and timetables for completing the work.
However, one of the proposed Jewish scholars, Professor
Robert Wistrich of the Hebrew University, said that even
before the commission meets, he has serious questions about
whether it will really be able to examine all of the relevant
documents.
Wistrich said the commission would examine only the 11-volume
work already published by the Vatican on the subject and not
othermaterial in the Vatican archives.
The 11 volumes, The Holy See and World War II, were
the product of a Vatican study carried out in the 1980s by
four Jesuit priests.
Wistrich also questioned how far the Jewish sponsors of the
project are willing to go in backing the project.
When he was first approached, Wistrich said, he had
stipulated that to take part in a venture of this magnitude,
he would at the very least have to hire a full-time research
assistant to help examine the documents. So far, he said, he
has received no confirmation that he will be given the funds
to do so.
In another development, a newly discovered document in the
United States National Archive indicates that Pius XII told
the United States in 1942 that he thought reports of German
atrocities against Jews were exaggerated. He also said that
he could not denounce the Germans without criticizing the
Soviet Union.
The document is a secret report by the American envoy to the
Vatican on a 40-minute meeting he had with the Pope on
December 30, 1942. It also quoted Pius as saying that he
would publicly condemn the Allies if they carried out a
threat to bomb Rome.
Pius, during his meeting with the envoy, Harold Tittmann, was
surprised that many did not accept that he had condemned the
Germans in his message of 1942 in which he declared that
people were being killed because of their "race and
nationality."
