Vatican newspaper: U.S. sat on vital Holocaust info
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The United States and British governments suppressed information about the extent of the Holocaust, the Vatican’s official newspaper charged last week.
The newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, also slammed Allied governments in World War II for deliberately failing to act to stop the systematic killing of Europe’s Jews despite having detailed information about the Nazi plans to exterminate European Jewry, according to a lengthy article published Aug. 13.
The article quoted a 1948 essay published in the Italian Jewish journal Rassegna Mensile d’Israel that was based on the diary of Henry Morgenthau Jr., the U.S. treasury secretary during the war.
Morgenthau was quoted as writing that “we in Washington” knew that the Nazis “had planned to exterminate all the Jews of Europe” since August 1942, but added, “for about 18 months from receiving the first reports of this horrible Nazi plan, the State Department did practically nothing.” Instead, Morgenthau wrote, its officials “dodged their grim responsibility, procrastinated when concrete rescue schemes were placed before them, and even suppressed information about atrocities.”
The article appears to be part of a Vatican campaign trying to bolster the reputation of the wartime Pope Pius XII, countering criticism that he turned a blind eye to the Holocaust. Instead, the article said, the pope worked behind the scenes and hid Jews in a number of church-run institutions, “the only plausible and practical form of defense of the Jews and other persecuted people.”
The American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants called the article a “distortion of history” and said it was part of a “shameless campaign” to justify sainthood for Pius.
The newspaper “has engaged in intellectual dishonesty. Its reporting on the failures of the Allies during the Holocaust is neither new nor does it mitigate the disgraceful silence of Pope Pius XII in the face of Nazi barbarism during the Holocaust,” said the group’s president, Sam Bloch. “Allied governments have long acknowledged their historic failures during this tragic period while — as this article demonstrates — the efforts to whitewash Pius’ record continues.” — jta
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08/21/2009 at 12:28 PM
This article is based on old and outdated information. Allied governments years ago acknowledged failures in responding to the Holocaust and there have been excellent in depth histories written about this chapter of pre, WWII, post-WWII.
Yes, FDR and the state department had the infamous 1939 St. Louis affair (before most Holocaust activities).
Here is an good research book on this subject which is not REVISIONIST HISTORY: “Saving the Jews: FDR & the Holocaust”
Comment: “This book is both an enormously engrossing read and a well-argued and researched correction of history. The correction is necessary because of “revisionist” historians who have claimed that FDR was not only anti-Semitic, but failed to take actions that could easily have saved countless Jewish lives during the Holocaust. Rosen combines a careful look at the facts, including previously unexamined original documents, with incisive analysis and common sense, to to conclude that the truth is just the contrary. FDR’s efforts to protect Jewish lives and rights were genuine, often proactive, and almost always as much or more as could reasonably be expected within daunting military and political constraints. Rosen’s attitude toward FDR is not worshipful, but by giving us a richer understanding of the historical context, he heightens appreciation of Roosevelt’s character and of what Roosevelt did accomplish. The book may also serve a more general purpose: It is an antidote to the paranoia caused by both historians and pundits who apply perfectionist standards to events viewed in hindsight. Equally important, it is a great story very well told.”
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