A RABBI AND A POPE

A Rabbi from Cheshire in Connecticut in the United States by the name of Eric A. Silver tells us how he changed opinion regarding the alleged silence of Pope Pius XII thanks to the "Pave the Way Foundation:
“My opinion was that Pope Pius was terribly guilty of the sin of silence at the very best and perhaps even of some complicity at the very worst”.


Q. What did you base this idea on?
“This is the sort of common knowledge that goes through the Jewish Community. I had read ‘The Deputy’ when it first came out, by Rolf Hochhuth, and Cornwell’s ‘Hitler’s Pope’ and I was not impressed”. “Then my Wife and I went to Rome to participate in a symposium, several gruelling days of pouring over documents, of eye-witness testimony of hearing eye-witness interviews, of meeting eye-witnesses, and at the end of the time I said there is nobody on this planet who did more to rescue the Jews of Europe, than Poe Pius XII”.


Q: So you trashed your previous reading then?
“First the Deputy; Rolf Hochhuth the author was an East German communist, who was under the guidance and the employment of the KGB. Cornwell’s book, ‘Hitler’s Pope’ is a total fabrication. There is no-one more worthy than Pius XII to stand at the right hand of God…I truly believe that this man was one of the giant’s of the twentieth century, one of my hero’s.


Q: So now when you dialogue with fellow Jews, what do you tell them?
“I try to tell them the truth. I tell them to look at the evidence. I tell them about the origins of ‘The Deputy’, I tell them about the obvious flaws in Cornwell’s book, starting with the digitally doctored photograph on the cover and then I point out that Cornwell has since repudiated almost everything that he wrote in there. And then we come to the very question of ‘Well why was Pius silent?’ and I say, was he really silent? Do you mean , he did not make a public denunciation of Hitler in the way that Roosevelt did. He denounced Hitler in the most unequivocal terms, but then again Roosevelt was in Washington, hundreds of miles away from the nearest German soldier, it was pretty safe for him to say anything he liked. Pius was a scant few metres from the nearest German soldiers, who had weapons aimed into his chambers. Then there are those who would say, ‘So he was afraid for his life’ – not in the slightest. I am absolutely convinced that Pius had not the slightest fear for his own life. He was afraid however that if he made any statement that would infuriate Hitler, it would cause significant loss of life among innocent people. Jews would be rounded up. And we saw what happened when the bishop of Utrecht in Holland spoke out against the round up of the Jews, the persecution accelerated the numbers of people that were rounded up increased. And I think they learned a lesson from this that you didn’t shame Hitler you simply infuriated him and he would respond by saying, okay, we will give you more of this’.


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