Vatican to put wartime archive online
The Vatican plans to make some of its World War II archives available on the Internet soon to calm down the controversy over Pope Pius XII's actions during the Holocaust, the Associated Press reports.
The Vatican's newspaper said the plan would "render service to the historic truth," and officials told AP writer Victor Simpson Tuesday that the material would be accessible soon.
The move comes amid Jewish anger at the recent decision of Pope Benedict XVI to move Pius closer to sainthood. The church says the wartime pope helped to save Jews and others during the Holocaust, but some Jews and others say he should have done more.
The Vatican's daily newspaper L'Osservatore Romano said Gary Krup, an American who heads the Pave the Way Foundation, which seeks to strengthen Catholic-Jewish relations, was behind the online initiative. It quoted him as saying that the Pius XII papacy "has become a source of friction."
During a visit to Rome's main synagogue last month, the AP reports, Benedict said the Vatican "itself provided assistance, often in a hidden and discreet way" to Jews during the war. Benedict said Catholics acted courageously to save Jews during World War II.
Comments
"discreet ways"
That's nearly Orwellian.
I used to have a link to a paper on the research work done by Herman Wouk in preparation for writing "Winds of War" and "War and Remembrance"... while looking I came across this background background on the topic with links to deeper commentary:
http://www.artsjournal.com/herman/2006/01/following_the_rat_lines.html
Posted by: MrRational | February 17, 2010 10:40 AM
The Pave the Way Foundation will be scanning and posting online some documents from the Vatican Secret Archives covering the WWII period. The Vatican had published these documents decades ago in the hope of making public the work purportedly done by Pope Pius XII on behalf of the Jews during the Holocaust. The Vatican commissioned six scholars, three Catholic and three Jewish, to evaluate the documentation and publish the results. The commission went through the documents, which raised more questions than provided answers, and produced a list of further questions for the Vatican including a request for further documents from the Vatican Secret Archives. The Vatican did not produce either and the commission eventually disbanded.
The Pave the Way Foundation provided a mischaracterization of what happened with the joint Jewish-Christian commission. In an article (http://www.zenit.org/article-28333?l=english) they correctly stated that the commission prepared a series of further questions as they found that the documents they had access to were not conclusive. They also stated that the commission was unable to understand the documents, as they couldn’t read them in the original languages. This is not correct. They did not have any problem in reading the documents for lack of understanding of the various languages. The Church refused to provide more information or further access to the Archives and eventually the commission disbanded, as it was unable to perform the duties that were asked of them.
It’s commendable that the Pave the Way Foundation wants to make these documents widely available, but nothing short of opening the Secret Archives covering the war years to scholarly scrutiny will once and for all make clear what the Church and the Pope did—or did not do—to save Jews during the Holocaust.
Gabriel Wilensky
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Posted by: Gabriel Wilensky | February 18, 2010 4:09 PM
Regarding the comment by Gabriel Wilensky, I remember that commission. The story I received was quite different. The Jewish side of that commission stonewalled and put up barrier after barrier until, in frustration, the commission was dis-banded.
Posted by: Tom Jaemson | February 22, 2010 9:34 AM