teaching the holocaust 2004 summer workshop - Southern Institute ...

wish what God wishes.” Pius XII wrote Galen personally to congratulate him and in June
1943 Pius himself issued a pastoral letter, “Mystici Corporis Christi” ("The Mystical Body of
Christ"), that criticized the Nazi euthanasia policies. He wrote, “We would not think we had
done our duty if we had kept silent about such deeds.” In response to this protest, the Nazis,
curiously sensitive to public opinion, halted their euthanasia operations, if only temporarily.
The Polish diplomat Kazimierz Papee was ambassador to the Vatican during the Second
World War and besieged Pius XII with evidence of the atrocities taking place in Poland.
When asked after the war if it was possible that Pius didn’t read the updates, Papee replied
unambiguously: “It is not possible. The Holy Father saw all communications; it would not
have been possible to withhold them from him.”
Under pressure from diplomats and others to speak out against the Nazi crimes, Pius XII
reluctantly agreed. During his Christmas 1942 radio broadcast, he referred to humanity’s
obligation to “hundreds of thousands of persons who without any fault on their part,
sometimes only because of their nationality or race, have been consigned to death or to a slow
decline.” This statement came a half-hour into the talk. It was on page 24 of a 26-page
speech. The Jews were not mentioned as victims, nor the Nazis as killers. The horrors
perpetrated on the Polish Catholics received little attention.
Less than two weeks after the Christmas message, the Polish President Wladislaw Raczkiewicz
wrote to Pius and criticized the Pope’s vagueness on the matter of German guilt:
“At this tragic moment, my people are fighting not merely for their lives but for
everything that has been sacred in their eyes. They want justice, not vengeance. They
do not ask so much for material or diplomatic help, because they know that the
possibilities of their receiving such help are slim, but they implore that a voice be raised
to show clearly and plainly where the evil lies and to condemn those in the service of
evil.”
On July 5, 1943, Ernst von Weizsäcker, the new German ambassador to the Vatican,
presented his credentials to the Pope: "The conversation lasted about a half an hour and was
conducted by the Pope without visible passion, but with an undertone of spiritual fervor,
which was transformed into a recognition of common interests only when the discussion
turned to the leadership in the fight against Bolshevism."
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