Yesterday I went back to Yad Vashem with another friend, and again was intrigued by this museum focus on the roots of anti-semitism and how deep-seeded it was in European culture. Many museum's choose to focus on the sheer horror that was life (and death) in the camps. And Yad Vashem includes some of this ... but it is fitting that the Holocaust museum in Israel focuses not on the camps or the ghettos ... but the face of anti-semitism. What ALLOWED this human tragedy to take place?
Anti-semitism is still alive and well today. It lives on in the concept of the "Jewish conspiracy" when people say that organizations such as AIPAC run the US government. It lives on when Christians state that Nazism was NOT religious it was racial and that that 2000 years of Church teachings played no role.
Many of my Catholic acquaintances are upset by the fact that Pope Pius XII is not given a shining gold star by the Jewish people and Yad Vashem. But why should he be? You can debate the motivations behind his silence until you are blue in the face ... but it doesn't change the FACT that his silence meant that Christians around Europe had to decide for themselves whether or not to shelter the Jews. Many decided of their accord to help ... but most did not and 6,000,000 Jews were slaughtered. Perhaps Pius does not deserve the encomium that has been heaped on him over the past decades, but he CERTAINLY does not deserve to become a Saint. If he had stood in FRONT of the Jews, sheltering them from the Nazi's in St. Peter's Square we would be having a different conversation. But he didn't. He stood behind them, arms opened as if on the cross. Was he judging the Nazi's or the Jews? It depends entirely on whether you're the one being dragged to your death or not.
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