One of the perpetual questions raised about the German Nazi genocide of Europe’s Jews is how most of the rest of the world’s peoples and governments could allow it to happen.
And one of the most important reasons is that the majority of the rest of the world’s peoples and governments simply considered other things to be more important to them than Jewish lives.
Historian Michael Phayer, formerly of Marquette University, has written a book, “Pius XII, the Holocaust and the Cold War” (Indiana University Press), that describes an egregious example of that powerful social force.
In a recent telephone interview, Phayer talked about how Pope Pius XII (who served from 1939 until his death in 1958) and other Vatican officials, the spiritual leaders of the world’s Roman Catholic Church, found communism to be a greater threat to them than Nazism.
Therefore, they were willing to look away from the Nazi genocide of the Jews and even help many of the perpetrators escape justice.
How could they justify doing this? For several reasons, Phayer said.
First, communism’s most significant creators and leaders tended to be atheistic and anti-religion; and the communist regime that took power in Russia in 1918 openly set itself against religion.
Second, the triumph of Russian communism preceded creation of fascist movements in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, most of which were avowedly anti-communism; and “the Vatican got along with all the fascist countries,” like Portugal, Spain and Italy, Phayer said.
Even though German Nazism was anti-Catholicism, “the Vatican expected that when Adolf Hitler died, the German fascists would be like the others, friendly to Catholics,” said Phayer.
Third, “there was a common perception that Jews were closely associated with communism,” Phayer said. Many people had this perception based on the existence of Jewish communist thinkers and leaders like Karl Marx (a descendant of rabbis whose parents converted and raised him Lutheran), Leon Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg, Bela Kun and many others — who nevertheless constituted a tiny minority of European Jewry that generally repudiated Judaism and the Jewish community.
Finally, the Vatican at that time taught as part of Catholicism’s fundamental beliefs the doctrine of “supersessionism” — that Catholic Christians replaced the Jews as “God’s Chosen People.”
Therefore, “it made no sense” to Pius XII “to risk the Catholic Church for the Jews. That would be putting the cart before the horse,” said Phayer.
Creating ‘ratlines’
As a result of this worldview, Pius XII “almost never said a word” about the slaughter of Europe’s Jews, as Phayer wrote in his previous book, “The Catholic Church and the Holocaust” (2000).
But beyond that, in 1943, when it began to look like the Allies would win the war, the Vatican reached an agreement with the dictator of Argentina, Juan Peron, and with high-ranking German Nazis.
The Vatican would assist Nazi war criminals to escape to Argentina, where they could “help Peron fight communism,” Phayer said.
The resulting “ratlines” relocated many German and collaborationist war criminals to Argentina. Phayer said these “ratlines” began in 1944 and operated “while the war crimes trials were going on,” until about 1950.
Phayer, who is himself Catholic, said that as he learned about this, he found it “infuriating, most of all because all this was done behind the backs of everybody.”
He said the Vatican asked the U.S. Catholic Church to contribute money “for the emigration of displaced persons,” but did not tell U.S. Catholic leaders that Nazi war criminals were among these persons.
Phayer said his interest in this topic “was a natural outgrowth of the previous book.” But his work was furthered by recent developments.
Phayer retired from Marquette in 2002 after teaching there for 32 years. He and his wife moved to Columbia, Md., both to be near their daughter’s family and so he could carry on research at the National Archives, the Library of Congress and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, all located in nearby Washington, D.C.
Phayer said that President Bill Clinton in 1997 issued an executive order releasing federal government documents for scholarly research.
These documents totaled some 12 million pages and came from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, the State, Treasury and Justice Departments and Army and Navy Intelligence, he said.
“Hundreds” of these documents were related to the activities of the Vatican during the war, Phayer said. It took him some six years of research there and in European archives to produce the new book, he said.
However, these archives did not include those of the Vatican, which continues to keep its records from the era closed, Phayer said.
Since publication, Phayer’s book has garnered one review in the Jewish press. Abe Novick in the Baltimore Jewish Times (Feb. 1) called it “fair and in-depth,” and the headline called the book “a must read.”
However, Phayer said he wrote it as a scholarly book, and the scholarly journals have not yet carried reviews. He is now working to call attention to the book, preparing articles for such publications as Commonweal.
Phayer said that with this book “I consider my research finished on this topic” — unless the Vatican will open its archives during his lifetime, a possibility that he sees as remote.
For more information about “Pius XII, the Holocaust and the Cold War,” visit the Indiana University Press Web site, www.iupress.indiana.edu.
Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Memorial Day) is Friday, May 2. The Milwaukee Jewish community’s “Yom HaShoah Commemoration: A Memorial to the Six Million, Remembrance of the Warsaw Ghetto and All Resistance” is scheduled for Sunday, May 4, 2 p.m., at the Harry & Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center.
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