On Rosh Hashana, Remembering Pope Pius the 12th Saving the Jews in WWI

The tragedy of the Armenian Massacre could also have become a Jewish Massacre had it not been for Pius’s quick intervention during World War One. However, many Jews today do not know about Pius’s rescue actions of 1917 or that he was staunchly Pro-Palestine in the days when that meant creating a Jewish State in Palestine.

If the expression “antisemitism is in the mother’s milk” pertains to infants growing up in parts of Catholic Europe, then a counter sentiment might be aptly applied to Jewish infants growing up in parts of the post-war Jewish world. Many of us were nourished on “anti-Piusism.” At my family’s dinner table, just mentioning the possibility that “Pius XII” may have done some good things in his life was tantamount to treason. My parents did not want to hear about their daughter scouring through the Papal Archives to find out whether the Pope was more than a do-nothing, know-nothing leader of the Catholic Church. Like so many, they were fixated on the notion that Pius as G d’s highest representative here on earth–the head of an extremely powerful moral and ethical religious institution–could have, and should have, done so much more to stop the perpetrators of the Holocaust. At the very least, the Pope could have tried to stop the Catholic perpetrators which included Austrians, Poles and Lithuanians as massive Nazi collaborators.

Instead, the “silent Pope” eventually evolved over the post-war years into “Hitler’s Pope.” For many Jews and Jesuits, his legacy largely remains that today. Even some so-called objective scholars like Daniel Goldhagen and David Kertzer, who were first in line when the Vatican Archives opened, may not have utilized documents when they didn’t support their argument.

Now after 80 years, the Vatican Secret Archives has been opened for four years, and more scholars, like me, are able to access the correspondence, notes and personal letters of Pius the 12th. So, finally, we can tap the richest source of the Pope’s actions during the war. What is the case for and against Pius XII? Furthermore, what was the historical landscape? What capability and resources did the Pope have under his command to rescue Jews?  As Joseph Stalin remarked, “Where are the Pope’s military divisions?” Given that both Roosevelt and Churchill had enormous military capacity and did almost nothing, what then, could we have expected from the Pope?

Examining the former secret apostolic archives renders scholars access to ample documentation on both sides of the case: both the prosecution and defense.  According to Suzanne Brown Fleming, director of International Academic Programs at the US Holocaust Museum in Washington DC, “This is our moment to be equally honest about both the failings and triumphs we are already finding, from top to bottom.”

For now, at least regarding setting up background framework in the case “for” a good Pius, “a triumph” is recently discovered documents that reveal Eugenio Pacelli’s rescue of Jews prior to World War 2. Largely through Pacelli’s intervention, 40,000 Jews living in Palestine in 1917 were saved from annihilation at the hands of the “Young Turk” regime.

By May 1917, Armenians had already been driven from Palestine to the deserts of Syria. By November, according to Cemal Pasha, chief executioner, “Jews would share the fate of the Armenians.” Pasha insinuated that the Palestinian Jews were accused of collaborating with the British enemy and ordered their “resettlement” to the same Syrian concentration camp Deir ez Zor, where hundreds of thousands of Armenians were murdered earlier. The Turkish army had already begun their assault on Palestinian Jews by “resettling” about 8,000 Jews of Jaffa. Men, women and children were forced on would be a death march. Without adequate food or clothing, many died in sand drifts along the way.

Turkish attacks on Jews continued in the Fall. The next in line were Jews of Jerusalem. When news of this got out, Nahum Sokolow, President of the World Zionist Organization, on November 15, 1917, made a desperate appeal to Pope Benedict XV to intervene. The Pope favored Sokolow’s request and believed that the German government, as allies of the Turks might be able to pressure the Turkish military to stand down. Pope Benedict turned to Nuncio Eugene Pacelli who was the only papal diplomat on German soil at the time and thus the best shot for achieving a German diplomatic measure that might stop the impending massacre against the Jews of Palestine. Incredibly the measure that began with Sokolow was furthered by the Pope and Nuncio Pacelli and was acted upon by the German Foreign Minister who pressured the Turkish Government to stand down and instructed the German Commander Erich von Falkenhayn to agree to the sanction and convince the murderous Syrian butcher, Cemal Pasha, to cease and desist his projected plan to evacuate Jews.

Miraculously, all these moving parts had to fall into place for the Jews to be saved. Pacelli demonstrated that trying to circumvent a disaster can begin by taking a small step. By doing something, even if it seems small and unlikely to work, may have surprising results. Each participant in the chain of correspondence mentioned above played a unique and diversified role in saving the Jews of Palestine in 1917.  Perhaps if that had more often been the case during the Holocaust, Hannah Arendt’s book could have been about the huge impact of the “Diversification of Good” rather than evil.

Nine years later, in 1926, Pacelli urged German Catholics to join the newly established German Pro-Palestine Committee to Promote the Jewish Settlement of Palestine.  Pacelli continued his support for Zionism until the foundation of the State of Israel. All of this should be noted and acknowledged with gratitude. For our study of Pacelli, a proven track record does not ensure future behavior but it certainly lays groundwork. As Jews everywhere embark on this holy period of reflection, gratitude and returning to one’s essence, the story of the actions of Pius 12 in the First World War is fitting to recall.