Noble Blood - Pope Pius the Silent

Episode Date: April 4, 2023

For centuries, historians have debated the legacy of Pope Pius XII. Did he prudently avoid angering fascists, or did he stand by silently while atrocities against the Jewish people were occurring all over Europe, and right outside his window? Support Noble Blood: — Bonus episodes, stickers, and scripts on Patreon — Merch! — Order Dana's book, 'Anatomy: A Love Story' and its sequel 'Immortality: A Love Story' See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. What's up, everyone? I'm Ago Vodam. My next guest, it's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. He goes, just give it a shot.

But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, The cat, just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of IHeart Radio and grim and mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion advised. Hi, this is Dana Schwartz, host of the podcast. Just a little bit of housekeeping. If you want to support the show, you can do that on our Patreon. there's a link in the episode description. We also have merch, and that link is in the episode description. Oh, and I wrote, I have two books, Anatomy, a Love Story, and its sequel, Immortality, a Love Story. And if you like history or the characters that I've covered in this podcast, not characters, historical figures, then I think you would really like those books.

Check them out. And that's about it. Thank you so much for listening. Oh, one more quick note before we begin. This episode centers around the Holocaust, and so it contains some very dark and disturbing themes and details. October 16, 1943 was a cold, damp morning in Rome. It was a Saturday, the Sabbath, the holiest day of the Jewish week,

but the 12,000 Jewish families in the city hadn't gone to Rome's great day. synagogue, the Tempio Major, in a long time. They had been living under Nazi occupation since September of that year. They had been subject to Italy's own racial laws for five years prior. Many Jews were living in the Jewish ghetto. Perhaps a few brave souls had lit Sabbath candles at sundown the previous night, furtively hiding the small flicker of the flames from any passers by. Perhaps the wax of those candles still hung dried from the candlesticks. Suddenly there was a loud banging on the door, the curled hard fists of the Nazi occupiers. Some Jewish mothers hushed their babies, collected themselves, and opened their doors. Some

coward or hid and saw their doors forced down. A number of Jewish men had already gone into hiding, suspecting that they might be targeted. So it was mostly women and children whom the Nazis rounded up that October day. The Roman Jews were marched through the streets, curled by German-speaking soldiers who didn't know Italian. 1,259 Jewish Italians wound up in a military compound, one that just happened to be located very near to the seat of the Catholic Church, the Vatican City. Pope Pius XIus XIth found out within hours. He was the leading moral figure of the Catholic world and the Jewish people in his

Italy were being rounded up, essentially outside his window. He made a decision. He deputized his officials to help rescue 250 people slated for a near certain brutal death at the concentration camp Auschwitz. He was a hero, a moral champion, and a defender of Jews during the Holocaust. Or was he? Certainly, the heroic morality of Pope Pius XIus the 12th during the Holocaust is the story that the Catholic Church and its defenders have told over the decades. It is the story that justifies,

calls for his canonization as a saint. But it isn't the whole story, because the subset of people that the Pope helped to save that October were carefully selected. Those rescued were those who were married to Christians or who had been baptized, who were, in the church's eyes, not Jewish at all, but Catholic.

1,07 souls were not spared because they had the temerity to remain Jewish. Those 107 knew their home city well. They knew they were being taken. detained so near the Vatican, they must have hoped that the Pope would intercede to save them. They too were people of Rome. Instead, they were deported to Auschwitz. Of those 1,0007 Jews, only 16 survived. Pope Pius XIus 12th never said a word condemning the roundup. As 6 million Jewish people were murdered in Europe over the course of the Holocaust,

Pope Pius XIth never said a word explicitly defending them. He never said a word explicitly condemning Hitler or Nazism or anti-Semitism. He gave one vague Christmas address that didn't specify any particular victims in its general call to the moral duties. of mankind. He was the moral center of Catholicism, the man who should have upheld precious, God-given life with the utmost clarity. So why didn't he? It's a question that has haunted historians, Catholics, Jews, and students of humanity for 80 years. It is a charged question in a passionate debate. debate whose answer has changed over time, especially with the opening of previously sealed Vatican

documents in 2020. Was the Pope during the Holocaust a hero, if a quiet one, working tirelessly behind the scenes to bring peace and protect human life? Did he do all he could to protect imprisoned Catholic priests, to allow his wide network of Catholic clergy and laypeople to help rescues? To help rescues. their Jewish neighbors to ensure the ultimate survival of the Catholic Church? Or was Pope Pius XIth a passive observer who chose not to use his power, his voice, or his moral authority to stop the advance of Nazism, the imprisonment of Catholic popes, or the slaughter of six million Jews, 63% of the Jewish population of Europe? Is he rightly, rightly, known to some by the nickname he's been given, Hitler's Pope.

I'm Dana Schwartz, and this is Noble Blood. The story of the relationship between Jews and the Papacy begins long before Hitler's occupying forces came to Rome. 400 years prior to the events of 1943, Pope Paul IV decreed that the Jews of Rome were to be locked inside their ghetto, every night. In fact, the word ghetto is Italian. It refers to the area in Venice in which Venetian Jews' life was restricted. Over the centuries, the Vatican and Catholic clergy

played a role in contributing to anti-Semitic sentiment by describing Jews as dangerous to Christianity and Christendom. By 1933, the Jewish population of Italy numbered between the Jewish population of Italy numbered between 40 and 50,000, and Pope Pius I.11th, the guy before our guy, was Pope. As Italy passed its racial laws in 1938, stripping Italian Jews of civil rights, Pope Pius XIus 11th clearly stated his opposition to anti-Semitic racism. He did so to visitors, in his Christmas address to the public, even to Italy's fascist prime minister Benito Mussolini. When Hitler visited Rome in 1938,

Pius X. 11th left the Vatican so Hitler couldn't visit. Up until his dying day, his dying moment, Pius XI.11th was working to publish a document known as the Lafarge encyclical, which denounced anti-Semitism in forthright terms. To the day of his death, he was writing a speech he planned to deliver against fascism. In fiction, a foil is a character whose circumstances are similar to our protagonists, but who behaves differently. The purpose of a literary foil is to show that there are other options for how our main character might act.

history could not have given us a better foil for Pope Pius X-12th than his predecessor. Pius X. 11th proved that a Pope of Rome could have chosen to speak out clearly against Nazis. There is a question. Would Pius X.12 speaking out have made things worse for both Jews and Catholics? two groups who were persecuted under the Nazi regime, although obviously not with equal vigor. If Pius X. 11th had continued speaking out, would he have created a rift with Mussolini or with Hitler that would have led to even worse mistreatment for the Jews and a target on the heads of Catholics? That's certainly what the next Pope's defenders would have us believe. Pius X. 11th died in February 1939, before he could deliver his speech against fascism.

Incidentally, the Pope's doctor was the father of Mussolini's mistress Clara, who was so devoted to Mussolini that she would later be executed at his side and hanged upside down from a gas station beside his corpse. Though it probably wasn't anything the doctor did, the Pope's death could not have been more conveniently timed for Mussolini. The man who succeeded the Pope was Eugenio Pachele, who became Pope Pius I on March 2, 1939, the day of his 63rd birthday. He was a thin man with round glasses, known to have a canary fluttering often at his fingertips.

But the papal affinity for small-winged things did not mean a lightness of spirit. One of his first decisions as Pope was to ensure the destruction of the evidence of his predecessor's anti-fascist speech. It was a telling choice, foreshadowing his choices throughout the war not to upset Mussolini or Hitler. With help from the recently unsealed voicemail, Vatican archives, historian David Kurtzer catalogs the deeds that seem inexplicable for the Holy See, or inexcusable. The Pope congratulated Hitler on surviving an assassination attempt. He used funds from the American United Jewish appeal to only help Jews that had taken baptism

as Catholics. He said nothing against the Italian racial laws. He even failed to speak to speak out on behalf of Catholics. He didn't condemn Nazi action in Poland, where more than half of the priests in the West wound up in concentration camps. Many parties, Catholic and Jewish alike, asked the Pope to speak out. They believed his words would be a powerful blow against anti-Jewish Nazism. And the Pope knew what Nazism looked like in practice. It's sickening to recall what he didn't condemn. In November 1941, Italian Catholic father Skavisi met with the Pope and described what he had seen in Ukraine, including, quote, the massacre of hundreds of Jews, forced first to dig a ditch, then machine gunned and thrown inside. In December

1942, the British envoy gave the Pope a report that said, quote, we are witnessing the deliberate massacre of a nation. The envoy described, quote, the unspeakable cruelty involved in Hitler's war of annihilation against the Jews of Europe. Entire communities in Poland were massacred to a man to make the arrangements for wholesale extermination. end quote. In September 1942, the American envoy told the Pope that, quote, all Jews, irrespective of age or sex, are being removed from the Warsaw ghetto in groups and shot. Their corpses are utilized for making fats and their bones for the manufacture of fertilizer,

end quote. This was no small sin. By the early 1940s, the Pope was well-informed. Nations around the world had begun denouncing the persecution of the Jewish people. And still, the Pope did not explicitly speak out. Finally, it was Christmas 1942. Cold wind blew through the Italian air outside. The war in Europe was raging on.

The camp's puffed smoke of burning body. bodies into the air, and Pope Pius XIth had the ear of the world. He was to give a wartime radio address. He had the chance, he knew, to accept the mantle that he was being asked to take on by so many, to take a stand, to speak on behalf of God in favor of the souls of Catholics and non-Catholics alike. He also risked provoking the aims. of the fascists if he chose too explicit attack. It could mean retaliation, an even greater bloodbath against the most vulnerable,

a target on the backs of Catholics in Germany and elsewhere, and even more brutality against the Jewish people. And so the Pope chose his words carefully. He included one line that might have alluded to the extermination of the Jews. of the Jews. At the time, his words were analyzed by governments and editors and intelligence officers on all sides, heard by the hopeful and the hateful alike. In the six decades since, his words have been analyzed by historians, the faithful, and the lapsed. Listener, see what

you think here. Did the Pope say enough? Pious was speaking of the vow to restore civil society. What he said, translated into English, was, quote, mankind owes that vow to the hundreds of thousands of persons who, without any fault on their part, sometimes only because of their nationality or race, have been consigned to death or to a slow decline. A second translation option, Humanity owes this vow, the vow to restore civil society, to hundreds of thousands of people who, through no fault of their own, sometimes only by reason of their nationality or race, are marked down for death or gradual extinction.

I'll be honest, given the extremity and specific threat of the situation, that line sounds vague to me. Which persons, which nationality and race did he mean? So many people were dying as World War II raged, it seems a bit of a stretch to assume that these generic terms specifically referred to Jewish victims of the Holocaust. But I'm not living in the context of the veiled language of war, and though that's the only line from the 26-page speech that might make reference to the Nazi's final solution.

Excerpting the line all by itself actually strips away its rhetorical character. In the speech, the Pope used repetition in a linguistically moving way to lead up to that statement. The speech has the rhetorical tenor of a sermon. It used poetic words, unusual usages, lyrical turns of phrase. It's stirring. It's uplifting. Was it enough? Well, the Nazi Reich Central Security Office viewed the line as a clear rebuke. They determined that the Pope had clearly spoken for the Jews, who were obviously the, quote, persons consigned to death as a result of their race. The New York Times essentially agreed, though with a more positive spin than the Nazi.

referring to the speech as, quote, a lonely voice crying out of the silence of a continent. The Pope himself seemed to believe that he had plainly condemned the Germans. But Mussolini thought the speech was pure platitude. The Polish ambassador thought its abstraction went right over the average Catholic's head. Whatever our interpretation,

what certain is, is that pious did not name the Nazis as the oppressors, nor the Jews as the oppressed. He never would. This speech, these generalities, were the most that the Holy See of Catholicism offered to the listening world that Christmas, as Catholics marked the birth of the Savior, and the gas chambers churned on. 10 months later, the round-up of 1,259 of Rome's Jews commenced on the cold, damp morning of October 16, 1943. Upon hearing the news that day, I imagine the Pope's heart must have sank.

By this time, Mussolini had been deposed. A new Italian government had surrendered to the Allies and was occupied by Usses. Germany, and Mussolini had a competing government in the north. The Pope felt a real and imminent threat from all sides. His solemn duty was to protect the Catholic Church. So he did what he felt he could. As Jews and Catholics alike begged him to save the detained, the Vatican instructed the German ambassador to find and free only the 250 among the captured who had been baptized Catholic were married to Christians. Of course, the selection did not correctly identify everyone. A few baptized Catholics were caught in the crosshairs, gassed and then burned at Auschwitz.

Even then, the most that came from the Vatican was a brief and, once more, completely non-specific statement in the Vatican newspaper, that the Pope cared for all people, regardless of religion and race. But what's most damning to me is not the lack of public condemnation from the Pope. It is the private conversations he had with the British and American ambassadors that very day, October 16th and 17th.

He met with the ambassadors knowing that 1,000 people sat nearby, waiting their deaths for the crime of nothing. more than being Jewish. He knew that he would not intervene to halt their deportation to the gas chambers. And the Pope turned to the ambassadors and said that when it came to the Germans in his city, he, quote, had no grounds for a complaint. World War II ended in 1945. 9.5 million Jews had lived in Europe before the war.

3.5 million survived. Pope Pius served for another 13 years. After the war, he spoke vocally about his concerns about the spread of Soviet communism. He died on October 9, 1958, at the age of 82. In the years since his death, historians have furiously debated whether or not he performed virtuously

during the Holocaust. His defenders point out that although he did not direct Catholic priests or lay people to save their Jewish neighbors, he allowed them to do so, and plenty did. He permitted the use of church properties for this purpose. Before the German occupation, Italian Jews were largely not deported. His steadfast view that baptized Jews, were indeed Catholics, was a rebuke to the Nazi racial laws that viewed Jewishness as fundamentally racial and ethnic. When he died, Goldemeyer, future Prime Minister of Israel, said that he was a, quote, voice raised for the victims, speaking out on the great moral truths, end quote. But he's also been referred to as Hitler's Pope.

Nothing is simple. I can imagine pious as a man of God genuinely anguished by reports of unfathomable suffering, genuinely sickened about what to do. I can imagine a pope willing to speak softly in the face of immense moral wrong in order to ensure the survival of something greater than himself, the Catholic Church. Perhaps he was a pope who genuinely believed, that speaking out would only antagonize Hitler and caused the Jewish people even more suffering. We can see that Pope clearly. We can even maybe imagine the gleam of pain in his eyes

when he privately told Father Skavizi that he thought of, quote, hurling excommunications at Nazism, of denouncing the bestiality of the extermination of the Jews to the civilized world. After many tears and prayers, I came to the conclusion that a protest from me would arouse the most ferocious anger against the Jews and multiply acts of cruelty because they are undefended. Perhaps my solemn protest would win me some praise from the civilized world, but would bring down on the poor Jews an even more implacable persecution. and quote. I can absolutely have empathy for a man genuinely trying to reduce suffering in a world gone mad.

Trying not to speak what is popular, nor what is even right, but rather what would provoke the fewest and save the most. And in some ways I can understand, anyone who's ever tiptoed around the edges of the room, so as not to provoke a bully can understand. Perhaps you've even tiptoed toward the victim when you want to help. But maybe Hitler Mussolini and the anti-Jewish fascists were more like a black bear. And when a black bear attacks, what you do is get bigger than them.

You show strength. We cannot know what would have happened if the pope had spoken. Maybe he really would have provoked Hitler to even harsher atrocities. But surely many henchmen of Nazism viewed themselves as obedient Catholics. After all, they weren't doing anything that the Pope had unequivocally denounced. It's possible they would have thought twice if their actions were an obvious opposition to papal doctrine. if the Pope had told his Catholics explicitly that it was against their religion, against God, to perform Hitler's work, that a murderer of Jews could not be a good Catholic.

In the end, I agree with historian Kevin Madigan, who says that Pius was, quote, a quintessential politician or perhaps diplomat, at a time. when the world, and especially the Jews of Europe, needed a prophet." In 1998, the Church under Pope John Paul II published, We Remember, a reflection on the Shoah, which did not address Pious the 12th's silence. In 2019, Pope Francis famously said that the Church is not afraid of history. He opened Pius X-12th's archive the following year. The work of historians in combing through the trove is ongoing,

and the question of Pius X-12th's elevation to sainthood still remains. That's the story of Pope Pius X-12th during the Holocaust, but keep listening after a brief sponsor break to hear from wiser perspectives than my own. What's up, everyone? I'm Ego Vodom. My next guest, you know from Step Brothers Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network. It's Will Ferrell.

Woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. I went and had lunch with them one day, and I was like, and Dad, I think I want to really give this a shot. I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings. I'm working my way up through, and I know it's a place that come look for up-and-coming talent. He said, if it was based solely on, talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.

Yeah. He goes, but there's so much luck involved. And he's like, just give it a shot. He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there.

Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot in luck. Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. What's up, everyone? I'm Ego Wodom. My next guest, you know from Step Brothers Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network. It's Will Ferrell.

Woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. I went and had lunch with them one day, and I was like, and Dad, I think I want to really give this a shot. I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings. I'm working my way up through, and I know it's a place that come look for up and coming talent. He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet. Yeah. He goes, but there's so much luck involved.

And he's like, just give it a shot. He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar. of, you know, the cat just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be... Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck.

Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. When it comes to silence and the Holocaust, there is no one who spoke with more lucidity than Elie Wiesel. He was the author of the book Knight, perhaps the world's most famous book about the Holocaust after the diary of Anne Frank, and certainly the most famous account of the camps themselves. In his noble Peace Prize speech in 1986, he had some thoughts on silence. Quote, the world did know and remained silent.

Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. End quote. Highest the 12th, surely, would not, have thought of himself as encouraging the tormentor. It was clearly not his goal. He thought of himself as a man of God. But there is a Jewish prayer which begins with the lines, Eternal God, Open My Lips. The Pope never opened his lips to speak plainly enough. Noble Blood is a production of I-Heart Radio, and Grim and Mild from Aaron. Manke. Noble Blood is created and hosted by me, Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and researching

by Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zwick, Mira Hayward, Courtney Sender, and Lori Goodman. The show is edited and produced by Noamie Griffin and Rima Il-Ka Ali, with supervising producer Josh Thane and executive producers Aaron Manke, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from IHeartner, Heart Radio, visit the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Everyone, I'm Ago Vodam. My next guest, it's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. He goes, just give it a shot. But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.

It would not be on a calendar. of, you know, the cat, just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast, guaranteed human.