In a recent speech whilst visiting the Auschwitz concentration camp, Pope Benedict XVI, the German born Joseph Ratzinger, described the National Socialist Party under Hitler as a ‘gang of criminals’.He went on to assert that “the German people were delivered into the hands of this criminal gang and abused by them”. His comments attracted widespread criticism.
French newspaper editors said that he gave the distinct impression that he wanted to acquit his countrymen of every responsibility.
Pope’s miltary Past
The Pope prayed for historical and heavenly forgiveness for the mass of Germans but also sharply attacked some of his former enemies in the anti Hitler coalition. The Pope was a one time member of occupation forces under the Nazi regime and has criticised the international agreements of the Potsdam Accord.
Criminal gang
The Pope described himself as “a son of the German people. . . a child of the German people over which a diffuse, criminal gang won power”, adding that “this gang made our people into an instrument”. He went on to admonish his listeners to refrain from judgment over the past; “whoever makes himself to be a judge over history is misdirecting himself”, he added.
At Auschwitz, the Pope gave especially honourable mention to Roman Catholic Christians who died in the Nazi concentration camps which led leading French newspaper Le Monde to accuse him of ‘trying to annex the Holocaust’, adding that ‘Ratzinger’s concepts of German mass crimes risked causing estrangement between Christians and Jews’.
‘Outrageous’
Referring to the actions of the Russian soldiers who helped to defeat Germany, the Pope said: “While the Russian soldiers freed the peoples from one dictatorship, these same soldiers at the same time subjected the same peoples to a new dictatorship”. A group of dissident German journalists described these remarks as: “A far reaching and outrageous attempt at equating the two sides”.
Expellees
In the first year of his pontificate, the Pope endorsed the central demands of the German “Expellees” association, referring ominously to ‘the right to homeland’ and called the post war resettlement of Germans ‘illegal’: “nobody should have been taken away by force ... ideologies that approved expulsions were an attack on human dignity”. The Pope has supported a new campaign: “Outlaw Expulsion Worldwide”, which among other things calls for the right of German expellees to return to their homelands.
Chief Rabbi of Rome
Though the Pope’s speech was praised by Polish Jews, ENI reports that the Chief Rabbi of Rome, Riccardo Di Segni, described the Pope’s address “problematic”. Its reference to a “ring of criminals” suggested that the German people “were themselves victims and did not stand alongside the persecutors”, he told the Italian ANSA news agency.
About 950,000 Jews from all over Europe died at the camp.
