Reflecting on the Hostage Release –Is Speaking Up a Moral Duty?
With heavy but hopeful hearts, two dozen or so weekly walkers trekked along the two-and-a-half-mile Long Beach Boardwalk this past Sunday, just as they have done dozens of times. For as long as it takes for all of the hostages to be released, Jews from all the synagogues of this relatively obscure seaside town will “pray with their feet” and recite Psalms for their safe return.
As we marched on, passers-by waved or tipped their Mets or Yankees caps to show support. Amid the cold damp sea gusts of wind, I suddenly felt a slight warmth on my neck. At that moment, I realized the historical significance of my place and time. As a Holocaust scholar, my thoughts are never far from the images of Jews being hooted and taunted as each step took them closer to the ghettoes of starvation and disease, and finally onto the railways of annihilation.
As a teacher of American history, my thoughts turned also to the U.S. legal system and how it has dealt with problematic people through isolation and removal; how Alabama police brutally beat African Americans whose only crime was skin color as they stepped across the wooden planks of the Edmund Pettus Bridge. After suffering alone that day in 1965—Bloody Sunday, as it’s referred to—people of all skin colors marched across that bridge arm-in-arm with African Americans and other victims of terror. Rabbis, priests, and ministers led the way in “praying with their feet.”
So, where do Jews and particularly Israeli Jews stand today in the wake of front page headlines about the hostage release? Will public opinion lump the hostages together with other victims of war, tragic as they are, or will they be recognized as a result of a policy bent on extermination of a targeted group—the Jews?
I will be looking at the leadership and influence of today’s Holy See, Pope Francis. During World War II, Pope Pius XII expressed generalities referring to “persecuted peoples.” No mention of the Jews or the Final Solution was ever given.
In contrast, the Dutch bishops in July 11, 1942 sent a letter to Nazi General Friedrich Christiansen protesting against the treatment of specifically the Jews. The Catholic Archbishop of Utrecht Jan de Jong had the bishops read this pastoral letter from all the pulpits in his diocese on July 26. “We have learned with deep pain of the new dispositions which impose upon innocent Jewish men women and children… the deportation into foreign lands… Beloved faithful let us pray to G d that he lends his strength to the people of Israel so sorely tried in anguish and persecutions.”
The consequences of this courageous protest of Nazi actions against the Jews were devastating. Following the reading of the letters, Reich Commissioner for the Netherlands Arthur SeyB-Inquart ordered 40,000 Jews including 694 converts deported to Auschwitz. Anyone with even the slightest trace of “Jewish blood” was now a target for persecution and destruction. Hence, the protest had enormous backlash. Years after the war, Bishop De Jong still tormented himself with the belief that if he had remained silent many of those persons might still be alive. Of course, he particularly lamented Christian Jews.
This tragic event is also given as a reason for the Pope’s public silence and lack of protest to the Nazis. This sentiment was expressed by the Red Cross: “In many places the Red Cross does not protest to the governments. They might do a very bad service to those whom we would like to help.”
The question of silence in the face of moral responsibility was the issue posed to me by the Chabad Rabbi of Long Beach on our walk. He believes that it is an imperative that a person who commands moral leadership speak out above all else. This position is one that I am currently grappling with as I work in the recently released Vatican Archives. It is a question that “puts words above acts.” The question of whether condemnations of the Nazis are merely words of grandiose bravado or whether they are absolutely necessary to one’s moral duty is one of extreme relevance to today’s vilification of the Pope and one that I will be grappling with in the months ahead.
Even after my first month in the former Vatican Secret Archives one thing becomes crystal clear. Money to Jews and Jewish rescue operations changed hands from Pius himself, his Secretary of State, and especially from his Papal diplomats, four of whom we honored as Righteous by Yad Vashem. These Nuncios did not act on their own. They were directly under the auspices of the Holy See. Their acts to give protective papers and money for transporting and hiding Jews were not token or random. Nor were their actions (not words) sporadic or incidental.
The Pope clearly recognized that in a continent writhing in suffering, Jews were highest on the totem pole of those imperiled. Like Oskar Schindler, who we all know said very little but did lots to save Jews, was one who used his business and personal funds to add Jews to the “living list,” so too, the Pope wore a great external strait jacket. The boundaries of who could be saved and who couldn’t were clearly drawn. Like Schindler, Pius prudently put his money where his mouth wasn’t in order to do what he could. Unlike Schindler, he is not regarded well by many in today’s world. Perhaps now is the time to look deeper into what the Pope did and assess whether they constitute worthy but “unspeakable acts of rescue.”