Wartime Pope Pius XII probably knew about Holocaust early on, letters show | Hacker News Reader

Wartime Pope Pius XII probably knew about Holocaust early on, letters show

cnn.com

43 pointsrntn10 comments

When I first read the title I thought: how useless, even if he did know, the article won't tell me anything about his thinking process, decisions, or whatever went on backstage. Then I saw it was a CNN article, which doubled my certainty of the uselessness of the information. The I read the article to confirm my beliefs and biases...confirmed. No one can draw conclusions from this information.; it only leaves conspiracy theories, confusion, and more questions. Such is the state of the news media.

"But the pope’s involvement with the Resistance went much further than acting as a conduit. Via Müller and a network of German Jesuits, Pius was directly involved in no less than three plots to kill Hitler."

https://historyforatheists.com/2019/05/the-great-myths-7-hit...

I recall a movie/video, I believe Sir John Gielguud was the pope, and in it he said he had a duty as a 'preserver of history', basically saying it's more important that the church doesn't get destroyed by the nazis than saving the jews.

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AH was born a catholic, raised a catholic, died a catholic and has never been excommunicated, btw.

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Here's a joke about the Holocaust:

A jew dies and goes to heaven. He gets to meet and talk to God.

"Is there anything you want to ask?" says God.

"I don't know. Maybe, did you hear the joke about the Holocaust?"

"No, what is it?"

"You wouldn't get it. You had to be there."

if the pope felt it more prudent to preserve the church than save the jews, that says all i need to know about christianity

Don't stop there. There is no supernatural. All religions are people doing people things to other people.

That's deep. Really deep. Certainly deeper than any religious teaching I've ever read.

This isn't unique. Allies intelligence service(and some government officials) have known about the holocaust since it first started with the occupation in Russia.

After that , there was even a guy who escaped auswitch to tell about it.

There was even a plan offered to the US government to let Jews refugees live in Alaska of all places, so they could be protected.

Very little came of all that knowledge and plans. People and government officials were antisemitic back than , and they had other, more important priorities.

So the pope was far from unique in doing nothing.

>So the pope was far from unique in doing nothing.

the role of a religious leader is different than the role of a national spokesman, even if the pope is conflated to be both; so yes -- it's different.

presumably the Vatican doesn't need to consider national wartime strategic assessment in the same fashion as does an industrialized world power that has the facilities for long-term national call-to-arms, so one would have hoped that the person in the position would have used it as a means to foster global communication and renunciation of the act to help gather international efforts against it.

did that happen? no.

in other words : it makes sense to feign ignorance if you're collecting forces and moving towards and end-goal of war dominance once the conflict has formally started; given that the Vatican doesn't generally deal with the world like any other country, I feel as if they were in a unique position to do something else, and they didn't capture that opportunity either due to fear of retaliation or whatever other motivations unbeknownst to others.

It isn't like Pius stayed quiet after allied engagement, either.

> After that, there was even a guy who escaped Auschwitz to tell about it.

15 people even.

“written by Father Lother Koenig, a Jesuit who was in the anti-Nazi resistance in Germany”

Probably might be a stretch, and even if not, a Jesuit rebel would probably have been taken with a large grain of salt. While the Jesuits are the spies of the Vatican, they’re kept at arms length. Not surprising this didn’t see the light of day until the First Jesuit Pope.

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