Pius XII and the holocaust

Israeli ambassador Gideon Meir (The Sunday Times, May 17) states that for the Israelis "the Catholic Church did not play a major role in saving the Jews from the Holocaust". Could he tell us who was actively engaged in saving Jews from Nazi clutches?

It has been historically ascertained that the Allies, the Red Cross and the major Jewish organisations all knew what was happening to Jews in Europe, having been informed of this by escaped resistance fighters, especially from Poland. Yet, none acted and the Allies, who could have done the most, made it clear that their major preoccupation was the downfall of Hitler and all efforts were harnessed towards this goal.

Secret archives belonging to the Stasi, the former East German secret service, reveal just how hard Pius XII strove to help Jews and others from Nazi repression and how much German diplomats were worried about this. It seems that there was even a plan to kidnap the Pope and take him to Germany.

Pius XII was a diplomat and his efforts to help Jews were carried out unobtrusively, typical of people trained in the diplomatic field. It was actions that mattered at the time rather than loud words which could have been counter-productive (after Dutch bishops publicly attacked Hitler's policy towards the Jews, around 40,000 Catholic Jews were rounded up).

The Pope ordered convents and monasteries, even buildings in the Vatican itself, to open their doors to shelter Jews, escaped Allied soldiers and political dissidents. This is, in fact, what happened and thousands of lives were saved. Unlike opinions, facts, especially incontrovertible ones like the former, cannot be denied and these exonerate Pius XII from the unjust accusations against him.

When the war ended, Jewish survivors of the Holocaust considered the Pope a 'righteous gentile' and the leaders of major Jewish organisations went to Rome, even from the United States, to personally thank him for his efforts to save Jews. The New York Times in December 1941, and Albert Einstein himself the following year in the same newspaper, praised the Pope as the only voice raised in Europe against Nazism.

The Rabbi of Rome, Israel Zolli, who later converted to Catholicism, took the Pope's name, Eugenio, at his baptism, in gratitude.

When the Pope died in 1958, Golda Meir, Israeli politician and later Prime Minister, eulogised him for his defence of the Jews. Can it be that today we are more aware of what actually happened than those who really lived those tragic years?

Pius XII was a great and holy man but besides being fervently anti-Nazi he was also uncompromisingly anti-Communist. It is becoming clear the more time passes that beneath the calumny of the Pope's supposed inactivity during the war years lie the Soviet secret services which felt that Pius' anti-Communism was a threat to the dictatorial regimes of Eastern Europe, especially those with large Catholic populations and, therefore, it suited them to blemish his reputation.

Winston Churchill's official biographer and one of Britain's leading historians, Sir Martin Gilbert, who is Jewish, is a staunch defender of the Church's wartime record.

He wrote a book called The Righteous in which he sought, in his own words, to restore "on the foundation of historical fact, the true and wonderful achievements of Catholics in helping Jews during the war".

His writings should go a long way, at least for those who are interested in the truth, to dispel the black legend of Pius XII's and the Church's supposed passivity when confronted with the evil of Nazism.