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The Myth of Hitler's Pope. By Rabbi David G. Dalin. (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing Co. 2005. Pp. ix, 209. $27.95.)
This book had its genesis in an article by Rabbi Dalin in the Weekly Standard of February 26, 2001, entitled "Pius XII and the Jews." There Dalin showed that as Nuncio in Germany in the 1920's, as Papal Secretary of State from 1930, and as Pope from 1939, Eugenio Pacelli was a consistent and outspoken opponent of the Nazis."People at the time," Dalin wrote,"Nazis and Jews alike, understood the pope to be the world's most prominent opponent of the Nazi ideology." Hitler's propaganda machine branded him "the Jew-loving cardinal." During World War II Pius XII inspired and directed rescue efforts which saved hundreds of thousands of Jews from destruction. For this he received many expressions of thanks from the survivors, both during the war and thereafter.
With few exceptions, Dalin charged, those who today criticize Pius XII for silence and inaction in the face of the Holocaust are angry or lapsed Catholics seeking to discredit papal authority. Their polemic would have shocked Jews of an earlier generation. By overlooking contemporary Jewish tributes to the pontiff, his present-day critics are hijacking the Holocaust in the interest of an innerCatholic debate. Jews, whatever their view of the Catholic Church, have a duty to condemn those who disparage the testimony of Holocaust survivors, especially when it transfers to others...