The Judeo-Christian ethic and morals guided many people during WWII and The Holocaust to the the right thing and many helped save Jews and others. "While never ignoring the presence of anti-Semitism in Europe in the years leading up to and during World War II, Gilbert nevertheless praises the stand Christian Churches in general took against Hitler. It is particularly in The Righteous that he deals with the role of European Christian Churches and finds they "took a very powerful stand against the Nazis and their collaborators." He concludes: "Even the German Churches struggled to maintain their independence, and must be credited with acts of resistance and rescue." The Righteous has to be of particular interest to anyone concerned with the unending defamation of Pius XII. In commenting on his own book, Gilbert says the charge that Pius was "silent about Nazi murder is a serious error of historical fact." He carefully enumerates crucial occasions on which Pius spoke out, and how the Nazis viciously accused him of being "the mouthpiece of the Jewish war criminals." (The Righteous, pp. 357- 357) He argues that, given the extreme vulnerability of Catholics under Nazi rule — especially in Poland — it would have been "highly irresponsible for the Pope" to have spoken out "in a provocative or foolhardy way." catholicexchange/sir-martin-gilbert-a-rare-kind-of-historian/
Posted on: Sat, 24 Aug 2013 17:11:11 +0000
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