The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler

by David I. Kertzer

An embarrassing example of this repackaging of history is offered by the Vatican’s official 1998 statement on the church and the Holocaust, “We Remember.” Released by the Vatican’s Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, headed by Cardinal Edward Cassidy, it set out its subject clearly enough: “The fact that the Shoah took place in Europe, that is, in countries of long-standing Christian civilization, raises the question of the relation between the Nazi persecution and the attitudes down the centuries of Christians towards the Jews.” While acknowledging a long history of “anti-Judaism, of which, unfortunately, Christians also have been guilty,” the Vatican statement argues that this demonization of Jews had nothing to do with what made the Holocaust possible. Rather, it attributed the latter to “anti-Semitism, based on theories contrary to the constant teaching of the Church.” The Vatican statement completely ignores the heavy use the Fascists and Nazis made of the popes’ long history of warnings about the evil influence of Jews and the repressive measures they took against Jews. It ignores as well the church’s vigorous defense of the anti-Jewish laws introduced in much of Europe in the decade preceding the Final Solution, a defense found in Vatican-supervised publications as well. “We Remember” based its thesis on a distinction between anti-Judaism and antisemitism that had no basis in the actual history of the wave of antisemitism that swept much of Europe in t...