Why the Churches Were Silent

Paper Summary:

The paper explores what the Catholic Church and the Vatican did and specifically did not do during the years of Hitler's Germany and the murder of the Jews. The paper provides a brief history of Judeo- Christian relations in Germany as recent as the Second Reich. The paper shows how the Vatican, Pope Pius XII and the Catholic Church could have saved the lives of millions with their powerful influence. The paper discusses why the Vatican and German Catholic Churches watched silently as so many Jews were cruelly sent to their deaths.

From the Paper:

"The morality of the Catholic Church took a backseat slide between the years of 1933 and 1945. The church still struggles with their rather passive stance during the slaughter of the Jews in the Holocaust. In fact, they still have not recovered from it. Why did these "holy ones" keep so silent during the Holocaust? Was it for peaceful diplomatic means? Was it to try to salvage the papacy? Perhaps the anti-Semitic foundations in Christianity were partly to blame. Whatever the case, the atrocity we know as the Holocaust that took the lives of over six million Jews and little was done by the world, especially by the Vatican, Pope Pius XII and the Catholic Church, who, with their powerful influence could have saved the lives of millions."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Caroll, James. Review of Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII, by John Cornwell, The Atlantic Monthly 10 (1999), 107-112.
• Conway, John S. Christian Churches: General Survey, vol.1 of The Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (New York: MacMillian Publishing Co., 1997).
• Levy, Guetner. The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany, (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1964).
• Litell, Franklin. "Why the Churches Kept Silent," Awake!, August 1995, 8-14.
• Phayer, Michael. The German Catholic Church After the Holocaust, vol. 10 of Holocaust and Genocide Studies (Cambridge: Oxford University Press, 1996).

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