FailedMessiah.com

Pope To Open Vatican WW2 Archives, Insists Wartime Pope Did Not Ignore Plight Of Jews

"I don't want to say that Pius XII did not make any mistakes - I myself make many - but he has to be seen in the context of that era. For example, was it better for him not to speak out so that more Jews were not killed, or that he speak out?" Francis reportedly said, adding that the wartime pope’s critics "have dumped all kinds of things on poor Pius XII.”

VATICAN LIES: Pope Was "Never, Never, Never" In Hitler Youth

But the Pope's autobiography says he was a Hitler Youth member.

Chabad Rabbi: Church Helped Nazis Kill Jews, Do Not Welcome, Honor or Meet With Pope

Rabbi Sholom DovBer Wolpe, leader of Chabad's messianist faction in Israel, condemns Church and Pope.

Israel's Chief Rabbis Attack Pope

But the attack is ridden with errors and shows a clear disregard for truth.

What I Learned From the Pope

Rabbi writes that the Pope made him a better Jew.

POPE: I Screwed Up

Pope admits he mishandled Holocaust-denying bishop.

Pope To Visit Israel, Refuses To Enter Yad Vashem

The Pope will pray at the Holocaust memorial at Yad Vashem, but refuses to enter Yad Vashem's Holocaust museum.

"Hitler's Pope" Saved Jews, Newly Found Document Allegedly Proves

"The Holy Father wants to save his children, including the Jews, and orders that hospitality be shown to these persecuted people in the convents."

Bishop Seeks Advice From Holocaust Denier

Williamson goes to David Irving for advice.

Relations With Vatican Cut Both Ways

President Reagan's Jewish liaison, currently a professor at Catholic University, dissects Catholic-Jewish relations after the Wiliamson affair.

Vatican Irked By "Blasphemous" Israeli TV Show

The Pope de-excommunicates a Holocaust denier bishop and an entire antisemitic Catholic order and this is what the Vatican is worried about?

BREAKING! Pope Lifted Ban On Entire Antisemitic Catholic Group

It wasn't just one Holocaust-denying Bishop – it's the entire group:

Pope Dithering Before A Denier

Details:

Haredi 'Spokesman' Defends Pope: Leftist Catholics "Using Jews" To Attack Pontiff

Details:

Pope To Meet Jewish Leaders

Details:

Pope Embarrasses Germans

Details:

IMPLAUSIBLE DENIAL: Vatican Claims Pope Did Not Know Williamson Was Holocaust Denier

And, on top of that highly implausible claim, and Italian priest told Italian media that…

Rabbis To Pope: Gei Caacken Aafen Yam

Israel's Chief Rabbinate cuts ties with the Vatican, as…

Too Little, Too Late: Vatican 'Clarifies' Pope's Actions

The Vatican now says…

Kinky Friedman Sings A Song For The Pope

That's right, Benny. They ain't makin'…

VIDEO: Holocaust Denier Bishop In His Own Words

Video:

STOP THE POPE – PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION NOW!

Please act now by…

THE NAZI POPE: POPE BENEDICT RESCINDS EXCOMMUNICATION OF HOLOCAUST DENIER BISHOP

The Pope should not be allowed to set foot in Israel, and Jews should across the board refuse to deal with Catholic clergy in any way.

Put succinctly…

The End Of Catholic-Jewish Relations?

If the Pope does this, I say the answer is yes:

Kasztner's Train, Part 2

PBS aired a documentary tonight called Escape From Auschwitz as part of its Secrets of the Dead series.

It presents another view of Rudolph Kasztner, one far more charitable than…

She Saved 2,500 Jewish Children

A Polish woman saves 2,500 Jewish children in Warsaw during the Holocaust. She smuggles them out of the ghetto one by one, taking care to write their Jewish names and family information in code so they can be reunited with their parents after the war. She and about 20 helpers risk death every day. Eventually, she is captured and tortured, refuses to give the Nazis any information, is slated for death and then resuced by the Polish underground, which bribes a Nazi officer to list her as deceased. She gets out of Nazi custody and does what? Retire? Flee to a safer location?

No. She continues to save Jewish children, risking her life every day.

Irena Sendler is now 97 years old. She lives in a nursing home in Warsaw. There is a move – backed by many of the children whom she saved, along with the Polish Government and others – to nominate her for the Nobel Prize.

Irena Sendler was a socialist. And, like most of those she worked with to save these Jewish children, she was also a Roman Catholic.

Yad VaShem named her one of the Righteous Among The Nations in 1965. She could not travel to get her award because the then-Soviet-controlled communist government of Poland would not allow it.

Yesterday, she was honored by Poland's parliament.

What type of person is Irena Sendler? Here she is in a 2003 interview:

You risked your life to save the children.

I was taught by my father that when someone is drowning, you don't ask if they can swim, you just jump in and help. During the war, everyone was drowning, but mostly the Jewish children.

How did you convince parents to give up their children?

I had to answer honestly that I didn't even know if we would get past the guards.…

Did you tell your own two children what you did?

I never told them. Only when my daughter went to Israel did she learn all about me. I thought it was so normal that I was helping, so there was nothing to boast about. And it was a very painful subject. It was always on my mind that I couldn't do more.

Note this quote well:

What was the most frightening moment?

When I saw a priest in charge of an orphanage for Jewish children in the ghetto walk with them out to be killed. The children were in their best Sunday suits. The priest was killed with them.…

There are those who attack the Church for its alleged "role" in facilitating the Holocaust. These people base their opinions on evidence, to be sure, but that evidence is one-sided and often pre-filtered. That is why others including historians Sir Martin Gilbert and Rabbi David Dalin find much evidence to support the idea that the Church – including the Pope – did a lot to help Jews survive during the Holocaust.

Irena Sendler risked death. She did so every day for years. She is part of the evidence that supports the Church. She is an exceptional human being, a Raul Wallenberg, who deserves a Nobel Prize.

We cannot give her that. We do not control the Nobel committee. But we should give her something. If money were no object I would suggest a gathering of those she saved and their families, to be held in Warsaw. Or, perhaps, a sefer torah written in her name and placed somewhere special to all of us, like the Kotel (Western Wall).

So, I ask for your suggestions. What could we give Irena Sendler? What can we do for this saint? Readers?

Baruch Dayan HaEmet (Hitler's Pope? cont.)

The New York Times reports:

Alexander Safran, the former chief rabbi of Romania who tried to prevent the deportation of Jews by his country’s pro-Nazi regime during World War II, died on Thursday at his home here. He was 95.…

After leaving Romania for Switzerland, Rabbi Safran became the chief rabbi of Geneva in 1948. He was also professor of philosophy at the university there and published a number of literary works.

Rabbi Safran was elected chief rabbi of Romania in 1940, when he was only 30. From April to August 1940, as a member of the Romanian Senate, he tried to persuade the military government of Ion Antonescu to moderate its anti-Jewish legislation.

After the authorities ordered the dissolution of all Jewish organizations in December 1941, Rabbi Safran helped set up the Jewish Council, an underground organization that included all sectors of the Jewish population. His home became the group’s meeting place.

The council used its links with Romanian church officials, the Vatican and the royal family in an effort to prevent the mass deportation of Romania’s Jews to the Nazi extermination camps.

About half of the 800,000 Jews who lived in Romania before World War II were killed during the war. But the fact that many were saved was widely attributed to Rabbi Safran’s efforts.…

Rabbi David Dalin notes on page 14 of his book, The Myth of Hitler's Pope, that Pope Pius XII was praised by Rabbi Safran for his efforts to save Jews during the Holocaust – efforts, one can see, Rabbi Safran had personal knowledge of.

Just another bit of information that helps prove that DovBear is mistaken on this issue.

Sir Martin Gilbert Responds

Sir Martin Gilbert was kind enough to respond to challenges posed by FailedMessiah.com readers, including DovBear. With his permission, his response:

One of your readers writes to you (entirely erroneously in my view):

"Churchill knew about the dangers the Jewish people
faced, and even gave speeches about it, well before
WWII officially started. However, once the war
started, rescuing Jews was not a priority of his, and he did hardly or nothing to help. His five volume history of the war barely mentions
the Holocaust and does not record any effort by England
to help the Jews.

Your correspondent adds:

"Which is sad, not only for those who may have been
saved and were not, but because Churchill otherwise
has an overwhelmingly favorable WWII resume. Also
note that Churchill was saved from financial
ruin before the war by a Jewish financier who
realized
that Churchill was needed."

Your correspondent ends:

"It is impossible that Churchill did not know what
was going on...."

All the above points are dealt with in detail in my
forthcoming book, Churchill and the Jews, which will, hopefully, be
published during the Fall or Winter of 2007: by Holt
in the USA, and by Simon and Schuster in the Britain, as well as by
McLelland and Stewart in Canada.

Incidentally, Sir Henry Strakosch, Churchill's
financier in 1938 was not Jewish!
…

I feel that my American Spectator review answers the
other questions posed about Pope Pius XII, in so
far as those questions are dealt with in my review - as
most of them are.

You can read Sir Martin Gilbert's review of Rabbi David Dalin's book by puchasing the American Spectator at your local newsstand or by reading it in your local public library.

The Pope and the Holocaust: A (Partial) Response To Dovbear [UPDATED 7-28-06]

DovBear asks why I carry a brief for Pope Pius XII and the Church. I do not. I simply seek the truth, and the truth in this case supports the Church. I made scans of (part of)  Sir Martin Gilbert's endorsement of Rabbi David Dalin's book defending Pius. Page 1 appears immediately below; page 6 is posted after the jump. Please click on the images to enlarge:

Hitler's Pope – No Way, Says Sir Martin Gilbert

Sir Martin Gilbert has a review [not online as of yet] of Rabbi David Dalin's The Myth of Hitler's Pope in the June/July American Spectator. Gilbert strongly endorses the book and, in several pages of terse prose brings case after case after case documenting Pius XII efforts to save Jews. He also confirms much of what I wrote previously regarding Pius. (Please see below.)

Gilbert is perhaps the world's leading historian on both WW2 and the Holocaust.

What will Church-haters like Beyond BT's Steve Brizel and, of course, DovBear, do with this shining endorsement of Pius? My guess? (And this is only that – a guess.) Continue to hate at all costs. After all, that is what bigots do.

[Earlier coverage of the issue: 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.]

UPDATE: I have uploaded scans of Sir Martin Gilbert's review here.

Hitler's Pope? No Way, Says Jewish Reporting Of That Time

Dimitri Cavalli. a scholar working on a book about Pope Pius Xll, quotes a number of contemporaneous reports from Jewish media praising Pius Xll:

In March 1939, many Jewish newspapers in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and Jerusalem welcomed Pope Pius's election and described him as a friend of democracy. In an editorial (March 6, 1939), The Palestine Post, the predecessor of The Jerusalem Post, observed, "Pius XII has clearly shown that he intends to carry on [Pius XI's] work for freedom and peace...we remember that he must have had a large part to play in the recent opposition to pernicious race theories and certain aspects of totalitarianism..."

On October 27, 1939, the pope's first encyclical, "Summi Pontificatus," was made public. The American Israelite in Cincinnati (November 9, 1939) asserted that the encyclical "contains a ringing denunciation of all forces which put the state above the will of the people, a condemnation of dictators and disseminators of racism who have plunged the world into chaos."

On January 26, 1940, the Jewish Advocate in Boston reported, "The Vatican radio this week broadcast an outspoken denunciation of German atrocities and persecution in Nazi [occupied] Poland, declaring they affronted the moral conscience of mankind."

This broadcast graphically described atrocities against Jews and Catholics and gave independent confirmation to reports about Nazi atrocities, which the Reich previously dismissed as Allied propaganda.

On March 14, 1940, London's Jewish Chronicle commented on Pius's five conditions for a "just and honorable peace," which he articulated in his 1939 Christmas message. The Jewish Chronicle described the pope's conditions, especially the protection of all racial minorities, as a "welcome feature," and praised him for fighting "for the rights of the common man."

In the same month, Italy's anti-Semitic laws went into effect, and many Jews were dismissed from the government, universities, and other professions. Pius XII responded by appointing several displaced Jewish scholars to posts in the Vatican library. In an editorial, the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle (March 29, 1940), concluded that the pope's actions showed "his disapproval of the dastardly anti-Semitic decrees."

ON AUGUST 28, 1942, the California Jewish Voice hailed Pius XII as a "spiritual ally" of Jews after noting that the Vatican, through its diplomatic representatives, protested the deportations of Jews from France and Slovakia.

On April 16, 1943, the Australian Jewish News published a brief article about Pierre Cardinal Gerlier of Lyon, France who protested the deportations of French Jews. The newspaper quoted the cardinal as saying that he was obeying Pius XII's orders by opposing the Vichy regime's anti-Semitic measures.

On October 17, 1943, the Nazis began to arrest Jews in Rome. On October 29, 1943, the Jewish Chronicle wrote, "The Vatican has made strong representations to the German Government and the German High Command in Italy against the persecutions of the Jews in Nazi-occupied Italy..."

Along with the Vatican's protests, thousands of Jews found refuge in Rome's convents, monasteries, and the Vatican itself.

In June 1944, the Allies liberated Rome, and Pius XII protested the deportations of Hungarian Jews. "With Rome liberated, it has been determined, indeed, that 7,000 of Italy's 40,000 Jews owe their lives to the Vatican," the American Israelite (July 27, 1944) editorialized. "Placing these golden deeds alongside the intercession of Pope Pius XII with the Regent of Hungary in behalf in behalf of the Hungarian Jews, we feel an immense degree of gratitude toward our Catholic brethren."

What, one must ask, will anti-Church advocates like DovBear and Steve Brizel (of BeyondBT) do with this? Not to mention the noted YU rabbinic scholar who spit out in a telephone conversation with me, "the Pope, yemach shemo," a reference to the recently deceased Pope John Paul ll, a man who did much to end antisemitism, and a man who truly cared for Jews. History is far too often an inconvenient thing, which is why it is so often ignored …

The Church And The Holocaust

Ha'aretz reports:

Government sources have called statements made by a senior Vatican official condemning the silence of the Holy See during the Holocaust "unprecedented." 

Sources in Jerusalem said it is still too early to tell whether the statements made Tuesday by Father Pierbattista Pizzaballa, Custos of the Holy Land, reflect a change in Vatican policy about the silence of Pope Pius XII during the Holocaust.

Speaking in Hebrew at a conference at Tel Aviv University on the actions of the Church during the Holocaust, Pizzaballa criticized "church leaders, including those of the highest level, who did not adopt a courageous stand in the evangelical spirit in the face of the Nazi regime."

Pizzaballa said that after the Holocaust, the Church struggled with "the question of how it failed at the task of molding the conscience of the faithful so they would refuse to cooperate with the Nazi machine of destruction. How so many of the faithful cooperated and even more stood and did nothing." Pizzaballa added that the 1965 Vatican declaration absolving the Jews from killing Jesus was a "response to the deep crisis created after World War II."

He said the Church subsequently had made a number of far-reaching changes, among them emphasizing the Jewish identity of Jesus and recognition of the Hebrew Scriptures as an inseparable part of Christian tradition, and that "preachers and the greatest of teachers" had presented Jews in a distorted way, which laid the groundwork for modern anti-Semitism.

"I cannot avoid the horrific thought that if Jesus were alive in the Holocaust, he would have been condemned to the same fate as the Jewish people, as would his mother, his family and his disciples." Pizzaballa said.

Rabbi David Rosen, a member of the Permanent Bilateral Commission of the State of Israel and the Holy See and brother of Rabbi Jeremy Rosen, does not believe this indicates a change in Vatican policy. Rabbi Rosen argues that Father Pizzaballa is simply more attuned to Jews because of living in Israel and his familiarity with Jewish and Israeli culture. That accounts for what appears to be a more wide-reaching statement.

Will Pious XII be beatified? Should we as Jews care? And does it matter that 85% of Italy's Jews survived the Holocaust, many of them under the protection of the Church?

Technorati Tags: antisemitism, Catholic, Holocaust, jewish

Saved By A Priest

Joe Schick writes:

Later, in 1943, the surviving members of my mother's family were forced to flee France for Italy. By then, my mother's mother was pregnant with her first child, and a Catholic priest arranged for refuge for the family in villages around Cuneo, Italy. The men were with the partisans fighting the Nazis and fascists, with the women and children hidden elsewhere.

So the matriarch of one of the most important families in the American Orthodox world was saved by a Catholic priest. Yet, see this post, where I noted:

Two years ago, I was speaking with a Yeshiva University rosh yeshiva about a halakhic matter. Suddenly, while commenting on the Catholic Church's view of an issue, the rosh yeshiva blurted out, "The Pope, yemach shemo, …." ["The Pope, may his name be blotted out," a traditional curse reserved for the greatest enemies of the Jewish people, like Hitler and Haman, now directed at Pope John Paul 2, the Pope who had done the most to restore relations with the Jewish people.] Can one imagine Rabbi Joseph Ber Soleveitchik speaking about the Pope this way?

I wonder how many anti-Nazi gentiles the Va'ad Hatzalah saved? How many retarded? How many Gypsies? Actually, I know the answer: zero. You would think the Va'ad along with Lubavitch and the other Orthodox groups would have saved a few of the non-Jews who were also targeted by Hitler. But they did not. Why?

Readers?

For more background on the issue of the Church and the Holocaust, read David Dalin's book, The Myth of Hitler's Pope.

A Question For Yom HaShoah

Does anyone know what attempts, if any, were made to save mentally ill, disabled and retarded Jews during the Holocaust? We know of rescues of a few important people, rabbis and community leaders. Were any disabled or retarded people rescued? Are their stories in print? Does anyone know? Please cite sources. Thank you.

Hate The Catholic Church? Think Again

UPDATES 1 & 2: (See bottom of post.)

Hate the Catholic Church? David Klinghoffer writes regarding Rabbi David Dalin's new book, The Myth Of Hitler's Pope:

[I]t seems fairly certain that [Pope Pius 12th] was, overall, a strenuous defender of Jews who saved tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands. While 80 percent of European Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, 85 percent of Italian Jews survived, thanks in large part to the Vatican’s efforts.

At Castel Gandolfo, the pope’s summer residence, 3,000 Jews found refuge — a fact never mentioned in Cornwell’s anti-Pius writings or in those of Susan Zuccotti. Kosher food was served there, and Jewish babies were born in the pope’s private apartment, which had been transformed into an infirmary. At Seminario Romano, another Vatican property, 55 Jews remained in hiding from the Nazis, and, notes Dalin, “observance of the Jewish dietary laws was not only permitted but encouraged.”

[Rabbi David] Dalin includes references to numerous papers from the Vatican, along with memoirs of Holocaust survivors and non-Jewish rescuers, showing that Pius directly ordered church representatives across Europe to hide Jews and provide other forms of material sustenance, including cash. In Hungary alone, 170,000 Jews evaded Auschwitz because of Pius’ personal intervention.

Another Righteous Gentile of the era, Angelo Roncalli, who saved thousands of Slovakian Jews by signing their visas for immigration to Palestine (he later became Pope John XXIII), explained that “in all those painful matters, I referred to the Holy See and afterward I simply carried out the pope’s orders.”

Two years ago, I was speaking with a Yeshiva University rosh yeshiva about a halakhic matter. Suddenly, while commenting on the Catholic Church's view of an issue, the rosh yeshiva blurted out, "The Pope, yemach shemo, …." ["The Pope, may his name be blotted out," a traditional curse reserved for the greatest enemies of the Jewish people, like Hitler and Haman, now directed at Pope John Paul 2, the Pope who had done the most to restore relations with the Jewish people.] Can one imagine Rabbi Joseph Ber Soleveitchik speaking about the Pope this way?

I wonder how many anti-Nazi gentiles the Va'ad Hatzalah saved? How many retarded? How many Gypsies? Actually, I know the answer: zero. You would think the Va'ad along with Lubavitch and the other Orthodox groups would have saved a few of the non-Jews who were also targeted by Hitler. But they did not. Why?

UPDATE 1: It seems the new issue of First Things has an article written by a cardinal explaining the Catholic theology underlying the Vatican's reapprochment with the Jewish people. The upshot of the article is apparently this: The Catholic Church does not advocate the conversion of Jews, but – and here lies the nub of the issue – it believes that in the End of Days, Jews will accept Jesus as their messiah. This riles some Jews (for example, see comments to that post), and, for some of those, it is enough to justify continued hatred of the Church.

This is foolish (and hypocritical) on many grounds, not the least of which is, in the End of Days, we expect Catholics and other non-Jews to accept the Jewish God (although not become Jewish) and reject their current theological beliefs.

But let us look at Judaism's theology – as expressed by Jewish law – regarding non-Jews. Compared to the Church, we're raving antisemites.

Update 2: The author of the above-mentioned First Things article, Cardinal Dulles, is on the conservative side of the debate within the Catholic Church regarding eventual conversion of Jews. As Matthew Wagner reported in the October 27, 2005 Jerusalem Post:

The Catholic Church should categorically reject any attempts to convert Jews, the American Jewish Committee's Rabbi David Rosen said Thursday.

"Even though the Nostra Aetate says that no attempts should be made to convert Jews, many Catholics continue to express a hope for conversion," he told The Jerusalem Post from Rome during the Vatican's 40th anniversary celebration of the Nostra Aetate document, which revolutionized the Catholic Church's relations with Jews.

Rosen, the AJC's international director of interreligious affairs, has been involved in Vatican-Israeli negotiations for more than a decade.

He and Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, a retired Paris Archbishop and Jewish convert, were to be the keynote speakers Thursday evening.

Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Holy See's Commission for Religious Relations with Jewry, is hosting the event.

The Nostra Aetate was one of the key documents to emerge from the 1962-65 Second Vatican Council meeting of Catholics and clergy that modernized the Catholic Church.

In it, the Vatican deplored anti-Semitism in every form and repudiated the deicide charge that blamed the Jews for Christ's death.

Rosen, commenting on the issue of Catholic proselytizing, said many
prominent Church theologians such as Kasper consider any attempts to convert Jews, even unobtrusive invitations, inappropriate and unnecessary.

"But some theologians, like Cardinal [Avery] Dulles interpret the Nostra Aetate differently," he said. "Although they eschew proselytizing, they hold that an open invitation to convert is permitted."

Rosen said differences of opinion on conversion of Jews might stem from varying theological positions on redemption for Jews.

Catholic theologians who hope for the conversion of Jews believe that although Jews are not condemned by God, they are not in His favor.
Therefore, it is legitimate to hope for Jews conversion to Catholicism.

Those who reject conversion as inappropriate and unnecessary would be more likely to accept the idea that Jews are eligible for spiritual redemption in the world to come, he said.

Notwithstanding his criticism on the issue of conversions, Rosen called the Nostra Aetate a "mind-boggling revolution in the Catholic Church's theology."

"This might sound like a hyperbole, but there is nothing quite comparable in the history of humankind," he said. "Imagine a billion followers who had been taught contempt for the Jews and Judaism, who had been inculcated with the idea that the Jew was in league with the devil, suddenly being taught that the Jews are the people of the covenant. Or as Pope John Paul II put it, the Jews are 'our dearly beloved older brother.'"

Rosen said the Nostra Aetate also opened the way for diplomatic relations between the State of Israel and the Vatican by recognizing the land of Israel as the ancestral home of the Jewish people.…

The Vatican, The Temple Menorah, & Anti-Catholic Bias

A letter in the new Biblical Archaeology Review from Professor Shaye J.D. Cohen, Ph.D. of Harvard throws light on an old Jewish urban myth – the "location" in the vaults of the Vatican of relics sacked from the Second Temple, including the menorah shown on the Arch of Titus in Rome. As Professor Cohen notes:

…Byzantine and medieval testimonies … show that the Temple vessels were taken from Rome in the depradation of the fifth century  and ultimately reached Constantinople via Carthage. Some vessels were taken from Constantinople back to Jerusalem in the sixth century in order to be deposited in a church being built there by the Emperor Justinian. These vessels were probably plundered by the Parthians in 614 or disappeared in an earthquake of the late seventh century. The menorah, however, was not transferred to Jerusalem; it remained in Constantinople and was still there in the tenth century … At this point the trail grows cold.… [T]he menorah  [may] have been plundered by the Venitians in 1204 (in a war known as the Fourth Crusade).

In sum: There is no reason whatever to believe that the Temple Menorah is in the Vatican. Perhaps in is somewhere in Venice, perhaps it is somewhere in Constantinople (Istanbul), or, what is most likely, perhaps it no longer exists, having been melted down long since.…

For an excellent treatment of years of anti-Catholic myths – but not this one – see Rabbi David Dalin's excellent new exposé, "The Myth of Hitler's Pope."

I am reminded of a conversation I had with a leading right-wing Modern Orthodox rabbi with academic training. The subject of the Vatican's position on an issue came up. "The Pope, yemakh shemo," the rabbi said with venom. ("The Pope, may his name be blotted out.") This is a curse traditionally reserved for villians like Haman and Hitler, yemakh shemam. I let the remark pass unanswered and steered our conversation back to its point.

If Dalin's book had then been published, I would have responded. As it was, I looked back on years of hearing the "menorah held captive in the Vatican basement" story at farbrengens (hasidic gatherings) and of Pope Pious XII's (falsely) alledged conspiracy with Hitler, yemakh shemo, and I remained silent. Perhaps this post will belatedly change his mind.