ANTI-JUDAISM VERSUS ANTI-SEMITISM?

by Peter Gorenflos (Berlin)

 

BILINGUE: ENGLISH - DEUTSCH

Pius XI. and Pius XII, between opportunism and collaboration with Hitler and Mussolini

Part 1

 

Before the Second World War, the Jewish population in Italy was about one per thousand, in Germany one percent and in Catholic Poland about ten percent. In Polish cities they were often the majority, and Warsaw alone had around 350,000 Jewish residents. Father Jósef Kruszyński, a prominent Catholic priest, said in 1923: "If the world is to be rid of the Jewish plague, it is necessary to eradicate it to the last link". That was the opinion of many of his fellow priests who were convinced of the existence of a Jewish world conspiracy. Two years later he became President of the Catholic University of Lublin. Towards the end of World War I, the Archbishop of Warsaw asked Pope Benedict XV to send an emissary to Poland to investigate the country's religious, social and political situation. His choice fell on Achille Ratti, who then in 1922 succeeded the pontificate as Pius XI. Ratti spoke extremely disparagingly about the Jews to his client in Rome, and when there were numerous pogroms, he said in his report: "One of the worst and strongest forces that one encounters here, perhaps the strongest and worst of all, are the Jews and on January 15, 1919 he wrote of the situation in Warsaw: ‘The Jews there are immensely numerous and could not be more despised, but they are not molested and much less persecuted’. The mission's final report, written by his esteemed secretary, Monsignor Pellegrinetti, was rife with anti-Semitic clichés, ranging from alleged racial characteristics (big nose, protruding ears, etc.) to other prejudices, declaring the Jews both capitalists, which unfortunately held a large part of Polish prosperity, as well as the main forces of Bolshevism. When Ratti was proclaimed pope by the conclave in February 1922, Pope Pius XI, he rewarded his then secretary with a nunciature in Serbia and an archdiocese.

FEAR AS A TOOL TO GAIN POWER, by Roberto Savio

This op-ed by Roberto Savio, IPS founder and President Emeritus, is adapted from a statement he made as a panelist on ‘Migration and Human Solidarity, a Challenge and an Opportunity for Europe and the MENA region’, held on 14 December at the Geneva Centre for Human Rights Advancement and Global Dialogue.

© El Roto

At the outset my thanks to Dr. Hanif Hassan Ali Al Qassim and ambassador Idriss Jazairy, who lead the Centre for Human Rights Advancement and Global Dialogue, for organizing this panel discussion at a critical moment in history. The Centre is one of the few actors for peace and cooperation between the Arab world and Europe. As a representative of global civil society, I think it will be more meaningful if I speak without the constraints of diplomacy and I make frank and unfettered reflections.

The misuse of religion, populism and xenophobia is a sad reality, which is not clearly addressed any longer, but met with hypocrisy and not outright denunciation. Only now the British are realizing that they voted for Brexit on the basis of a campaign of lies. But nobody has taken on publicly Johnson or Farage, the leaders of Brexit, after Great Britain accepted to pay, as one of the many costs of divorce, at least 45 billion euros, instead of saving 20 billion euros, as claimed by the ‘brexiters’. And there are only a few analysis on why political behaviour is more and more a sheer calculation, without any concern for truth or the good of the country.

President Trump could be a good case study on the relations between politics and populism. Just a few days ago the United States has declared that it is withdrawing from the UN Global Compact on Migration. This has nothing to do with the interest or the identity of the United States, which has built itself as a country of immigrants. It has to do with the fact that this decision is popular with a part of American population which is voting for President Trump, like the Evangelicals. I have here to show the message they are circulating, after the declaration of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. This is what is said in the Bible. If we recreate the world described in the Bible, Jesus will make his second coming to earth, and only the righteous will be rewarded. And therefore they think that Trump brings the world closer to the return of Christ, and therefore he acts for the good of their beliefs. Evangelicals are close to thirty millions, and they strongly believe that, when the second coming of Jesus happens, He will recognize only them as the believers who are on the right path. Trump is not an Evangelical, and he has shown little interest in religion. But, as each of his actions, he is coherent with his views during the campaign, which brought together all the dissatisfied people, catapulting him into the White House. Everything he does is not in the interest of the world or of the United States. He is just focused on keeping the support of his electors – those who do not come from big towns, academia, media and the Silicon Valley. They come mainly from impoverished and uninformed white electors, who feel left out from the benefits of globalisation. They believe those benefits went to the elite, the big towns and the few winners, and believe there is an international plot to humiliate the United States. So, climate change for them and Trump is a Chinese hoax! During the first year, Trump can well have a shocking approval rating of 32%, the lowest in history for a President of the United States. But 92% of his voters would re-elect him. And as only 50% of Americans vote, he can conveniently ignore general public opinion.

It is not the place here to go deeper into American political trends. But Trump is a perfect example to see why a large number of Europeans – or even countries as Poland, Hungary and Czech Republic – are ignoring the decisions of the European Union on migrants, and why populism, xenophobia and nationalism are on the rise everywhere.

Fear has become the tool to get to power. Historians agree that two main engines of change in history are greed and fear.

Well, we have been trained, since the collapse of communism, to look to greed as a positive value. Market (not men or ideas) was the new paradigm. States were an obstacle to a free market. Globalisation – it was famously said – would lift all boats and benefit everybody. In fact, market without rules was self-destructive, and not all boats were lifted, but only yachts, the bigger the better. The rich became richer, and the poor poorer. The process is so speedy, that ten years ago the richest 528 people had the same wealth of 2.3 billion people. This year they have become 8, and this number is likely to shrink soon. All statistics are clear, and globalisation based on free market is losing some of its shine.

But meanwhile we have lost many codes of communication. In the political debate there is no more reference to social justice, solidarity, participation, equity, the values in the modern constitutions on which we built international relations. Now the codes are competition, success, profit and individual achievement. During my lectures at school, I am dismayed to see a materialistic generation who does not care to vote, to change the world. And the distance between citizens and political institutions is increasing every day. The only voices reminding us of justice and solidarity are voices from religious leaders: Pope Bergoglio, the Dalai Lama, Bishop Tutu, and the Grand Mufti Muhammad Hussein – just to name the most prominent. And with media who are now also based on market as the only criteria, those voices are becoming weaker.

After a generation of greed, we are now in a generation of fear. We should notice that, before the great economic crisis of 2009 (provoked by greed: banks have paid until now 280 billion dollars of penalties and fines), xenophobe and populist parties were always minorities (with exception of Le Pen in France). The crisis created fear and uncertainties, and then immigration started to rise, especially after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and that of Libya in 2011. We are now in the seventh year of the Syrian drama, which displaced 45% of the population. Merkel is now paying a price for her acceptance of Syrian refugees, and it is interesting to note that two thirds of the votes to Alternative für Deutschland, the populist and xenophobe party, come from former East Germany, that has few refugees, but an income which is nearly 25% lower. Fear, again, has been the engine for change of German history.

Europe was direct responsible for these migrations. A famous cartoonist, El Roto from El País, has made a cartoon showing bombs flying in the air, and migrants’ boats coming from the sea: “We send them bombs, and they send us migrants”. But there is no recognition of this. Those who escape from hunger and war are now depicted as invaders. Countries who until few years ago – like the Nordic ones – were considered synonymous with civic virtues, and spent a considerable budget for international cooperation, are now erecting walls and barbed wire. Greed and fear have been so successfully exploited by the new nationalist, populist and xenophobe parties that now keep growing at every election, from Austria to the Netherlands, from Czech Republic to Great Britain (where they created Brexit), and then Germany, and in a few months Italy. The three horses of apocalypse, which in the 1930s were the basis for the Second World War: nationalism, populism and xenophobia are back with growing popular support, and politicians openly riding them.

YESHAYAHU A. JELINEK (1933–2016) – IN MEMORIAM, by Alexander Korb

We are pleased to publish this obituary sent to us by Alexander Korb (Associate Professor in Modern European History, University of Leicester) and which will be published in the journal Yad Vashem Studies.

To the memory of Yeshayahu Andrej “Andy” Jelinek is dedicated the latest book published by Massari editore, Vaticano, Olocausto e fascismi (edited by Daniele Barbieri and Peter Gorenflos), mentioned by Korb at the end of this article. [Red Utopia]

On December 21, 2016, Yeshayahu Andrej “Andy” Jelinek passed away. He was one of the finest scholars of Central Eastern Europe, with a focus on autochthonous fascism, anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, the Catholic Church, inter-ethnic relations and the tensions and overlaps between nationalism and communism. He has published several books and articles in five languages (if not more), always eager to engage with the most recent scholarship in his field and to apply comparative methods.

The last time I visited Andy Jelinek at his home in Beer-Sheva was in May 2016. For the trip, I was supposed to borrow the car of a Holocaust survivor who had promised to stop driving that year. Shortly before my planned departure, I got a call that the car insurance had expired. Instead, I took the train from Jerusalem to Beer-Sheva. It was Friday, so I was well aware that I had only a limited amount of time in order to catch the last train back before Shabbat would start. Yet, I got the math wrong. When I got to Beer-Sheva, I had less than two hours to see Andy. I had brought my bicycle on the train, so I rushed to Andy’s house, right at the edge of the desert, in a street called Iris of the Negev. He was frail but sharp as ever, and it characterizes his fresh mind how admirably and humorously he dealt with the young scholar storming his house on a Friday afternoon. I spoke to him my native language, Czech, and our Czechoslovak mixture of languages would always cheer him up.

Weeks before, I had mailed him a book on the historiography of the Holocaust in Yugoslavia (I had checked it out from the Yad Vashem Library and I now urgently needed to bring it back). It was not easy to get the book back from him; in fact, he hid it from me. He still was not finished with some sections, and he was curious to learn everything about the recent scholarship. The episode reveals another aspect, too. The book praises Jelinek’s academic contributions, so the book embodied recognition for his scholarship more generally. We all are eager to receive such recognition, but in his case he seemed to find that recognition rather internationally than in his own country.

Jelinek was born on July 16, 1933 in a Slovak small town, Prievidza. During the years of the independent Hlinka State, a Nazi ally since 1939, the family survived the first rounds of deportations to Auschwitz. Slovakia was the first independent state to deport their Jewish citizens to death camps, but stopped deporting towards the end of 1942. During the Slovak national uprising in August 1944, Prievidza was free for more than a month. Once the uprising collapsed, Andy, together with his older brother Erik and his mother Regina, fled to the forest where they survived the German onslaught. His father Vojtěch fought with the Slovak partisans and survived as well, whereas Andy’s grandparents were amongst to last Slovakian Jews to be deported to Auschwitz and murdered after the Germans resumed the deportations in 1944. After liberation, the family reunited in Prievidza. In 1949, Andy and Erik embarked for the kibbutz Ma’anit with Hashomer Hatzair. They served their country as kibbutzniks and soldiers for more than four years. In 1977, Jelinek married his wife Mirjam and settled in Beer-Sheva, where Andy taught at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. They got three children – their son Ori tragically drowned in the Ganges in 2002 during a journey to India. Andy made many donations in the memory of Ori Jelinek.

JOZEF TISO: PRESIDENT, PRIEST AND NAZI COLLABORATOR, by Peter Gorenflos

HITLER’S CATHOLIC MARIONETTE IN SLOVAKIA, THE SIX-WEEK SUSPENSION OF THE DEPORTATIONS OR PACELLI’S LAME EXCUSE

IN CINQUE LINGUE (Inglese, Italiano, Tedesco, Ceco, Russo)
IN FIVE LANGUAGES (English, Italian, German, Czech, Russian)

Introduction

In his thesis on the Slovakian holocaust, the Israeli historian Yeshayahu Andrej Jelinek describes how there had already been regular pogroms in the piece of land that was to become Slovakia before the beginning of Slovakian nationalism in the 19th century. But these were not the usual kinds of pogrom. It was not only the Jews who were plundered in order to obtain riches: it was also the nobility, the clergy and the slowly developing bourgeoisie. The word “pogrom” had not even existed in the Slovakian language at that time. These raids, called “rabovačka”, had more of an anarchistic character and were characterised by social bitterness and the desire for fair distribution of means rather than religious hatred. Since the 19th century, the Slovakian social elite was predominantly Lutheran; only towards the end of the century did the Catholic Slovakian People’s Party [“Ľudáks”] form, based on the Hungarian model, which had been named after its leader, a Papal chamberlain, since the 1920s – the Hlinka Party. Its policies were predominantly anti-Czech but parts of it also increasingly took on anti-Semitic traits, especially after Hitler has seized power. The slogan issued by the new government of the federal Slovakian partial republic in 1938, “Enrich yourselves!”, was then also taken up by the people, who primarily took advantage of the property of defenceless Jews.

Background

Eugenio Pacelli was elected Pope on 2 March 1939 as Pius XII and enthroned ten days later. He was more Nazi-friendly than his predecessor Pius XI, who regularly became enraged: not because of any rule of terror or warmongering on the part of Hitler, but because of violations of the concordat, violations of Catholic interests. Hitler was simply the lesser of two evils with whose aid the greater evil, the seizure of power by the German Communist Party according to the Soviet model, was to be prevented. Apart from that, National Socialism – for all the common elements that were constantly being emphasised by both sides – was above all an ideological competitor: Heart-of-Jesus cult versus blood-and-soil cult. Himmler’s paper, “Das Schwarze Korps” [“The Black Corps”], had in any case no longer attacked the Catholic church since Pacelli had become Pope.