Pope Pius XII: Hitler’s Pope?
The Holocaust was a devastating time, which caused an unbelievable number of deaths, so much pain, agony, and turmoil to so many innocent victims. Is it possible that one voice could have made such an impact that they could have saved millions? Could Pope Pius XII have really made that much of a difference? Should he have stepped in? What are the facts? Even though the Vatican’s policy is to remain neutral in world matters to prevent further conflict, the Pope should have done more to help the Jews, and the many others being unfairly prosecuted; had he stepped up and spoke out the Holocaust could have been limited to the extreme that it escalated to. Yes Pope Pius XII apologized, but sorry isn't always enough.
Who was Pius XII
We have all heard the horror stories of the mass murders taking place in Europe by the power hungry Hitler and the Nazi regime. We have been informed of the facts, debunked fiction, and of course many people have all formed our own opinions on all the facts we have been given. However, have you really considered everything? Have you ever considered that just one voice could possibly have such a large effect on an entire population, that this all could be prevented? At this time the church was the most powerful institution still standing that was not under German control at the time (Goldhagen 12). The Pope at this time was Pius XII and he had influence on over 400 million Catholics (Pope Pius XII & the Holocaust). Although Pius XII was not the Pope at the very beginning of the Holocaust he was elected Pope March 2, 1939 (Gutman 1135). Once elected Pope Pius XII was the moral voice of the national churches across the continent of Europe including in Germany and was looked to ...
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Not even the most powerful Germans could keep up with the deaths of so many people, and to this day there is no single wartime document that contains the numbers of all the deaths during the Holocaust. Although people always look at the numbers of people that were directly killed throughout the Holocaust, there were so many more that were affected because of lost family. Assuming that 11 million people died in the Holocaust, and half of those people had a family of 3, 16.5 million people were affected by the Holocaust. Throughout the books and documentaries that we have watched, these key factors of hate and intolerance are overcome. The cause of the Holocaust was hate and intolerance, and many people fighting against it overcame this hate
The Holocaust is a topic that is still not forgotten and is used by many people, as a motivation, to try not to repeat history. Many lessons can be taught from learning about the Holocaust, but to Eve Bunting and Fred Gross there is one lesson that could have changed the result of this horrible event. The Terrible Things, by Eve Bunting, and The Child of the Holocaust, by Fred Gross, both portray the same moral meaning in their presentations but use different evidence and word choice to create an overall
The events which have become to be known as The Holocaust have caused much debate and dispute among historians. Central to this varied dispute is the intentions and motives of the perpetrators, with a wide range of theories as to why such horrific events took place. The publication of Jonah Goldhagen’s controversial but bestselling book “Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust” in many ways saw the reigniting of the debate and a flurry of scholarly and public interest. Central to Goldhagen’s disputed argument is the presentation of the perpetrators of the Holocaust as ordinary Germans who largely, willingly took part in the atrocities because of deeply held and violently strong anti-Semitic beliefs. This in many ways challenged earlier works like Christopher Browning’s “Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland” which arguably gives a more complex explanation for the motives of the perpetrators placing the emphasis on circumstance and pressure to conform. These differing opinions on why the perpetrators did what they did during the Holocaust have led to them being presented in very different ways by each historian. To contrast this I have chosen to focus on the portrayal of one event both books focus on in detail; the mass shooting of around 1,500 Jews that took place in Jozefow, Poland on July 13th 1942 (Browning:2001:225). This example clearly highlights the way each historian presents the perpetrators in different ways through; the use of language, imagery, stylistic devices and quotations, as a way of backing up their own argument. To do this I will focus on how various aspects of the massacre are portrayed and the way in which this affects the presentation of the per...
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Religious people from many religions all over the world need a response to the Holocaust to understand what to believe, why it happened, and what can be done to prevent it from happening again. Some religious people need a response to the Holocaust to justify their belief in God after such destruction has taken place, even though God is supposed to be benevolent, all loving. Jews specifically need a response to the Holocaust a great amount of those who died in the Holocaust were Jewish and since then many theologians have tried to decipher the message of the Holocaust. Fackenheim has a unique response to the Holocaust and his theory of a new commandment, and his answers of how to prevail after such evil was committed are unusual and controversial. The 'Commandment' is explicit and detailed, and although Fackenheim's theories do not explain why the Holocaust happened, or how to prevent it, he explains how to live after the Holocaust. Sacks continued to believe in God after the Holocaust and does not think that the Holocaust was unique, and recognises the previous persecutions of the Jewish people. Although this constant destruction against the Jewish people is not positive, the idea that the Jewish people can always survive and recover from such events is encouraging and hopeful.
In order to properly understand some of the more prevalent ideas that the Holocaust was allowed to happen, it is important to look at the different churches and the historical anti-semitic feelings among these churches. In Germany, around the time of the Holocaust, there were two dominant churches; the German Evangelical Church, and the Catholic Church. The German Evangelical Church always prided itself as...
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During the Holocaust the mass murder of jews was a worldwide tragedy and when a tragedy happens usually your first question is why? The two groups of devoted researchers for the Holocaust are split into the Intentionalist group and the Functionalist group. As said by Mimi-Cecilia Pascoe in Intentionalism and Functionalism: Explaining the Holocaust “The intentionalist position suffers greatly from a lack of adequate evidence, and consequently cannot prove Hitler’s intentions beyond reasonable doubt. On the other hand, the functionalist position is better able to compensate for the lack of evidence, and thus provides a more solid historical explanation for the Holocaust (Pascoe 1).” The on going argument of whether the Holocaust was intentional or a choice in the moment is the Intentionalist vs. Functionalist case and either side has many different ways of portraying their evidence on the topic; the arguments are both have convincing arguments but in
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