It's time for Deborah Dwork, Clark University's historical revisionist in residence, to apologize

In several past Blog posts I've documented how Deborah Dwork, Director of Clark University's Strassler Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies, has engaged in anti-Catholic historical revisionism, falsely accusing Pope Pius XII of happy memory as having "failed Europe's Jews miserably, unconscionably."  See here for example.

Now, Zenit is reporting that:

After six years of untiring research that has uncovered 76,000 pages of original material, plus multiple eyewitness accounts and testimonies from prominent international scholars, Gary Krupp is confident the besmirching of Pope Pius XII's reputation is coming to an end.


"We're definitely winning, absolutely no question," Krupp tells me on a visit to Rome this week. "Every time we do more research, we find a diamond. It's incredible, but there's nothing on the other side because there's no documented foundation for any of their accusations."

Krupp, the founder of the Pave The Way Foundation, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to bridging the gap between world religions, is well known for being one of the most passionate defenders of Pius XII's reputation for heroism in his relations with the Jewish people.

As a Jew from New York who grew up, like many others of his generation, with an indoctrinated hatred of the wartime Pope for his alleged anti-Semitism and unwillingness to help Jews during the Holocaust, his anger at realizing this was all a lie, and his willingness to reveal the truth, is both heartfelt and compelling.

Now he and his team of researchers have uncovered more documented evidence that Pave the Way believes should act as incontrovertible proof to any serious historian that Pius XII did all he could to protect and defend Jews before, during and after the Second World War. All the documentation can be viewed on the organization's Web site: www.ptwf.org

Some of these documents show that Pius XII favored the creation of a Jewish state as far back as 1917. In further recent discoveries, Pave the Way has come across a letter written by Cardinal Pacelli in 1939 in which he attempted to obtain visas for 200,000 Jews who remained in Germany after Kristallnacht.

"He wasn't able to obtain the visas, but he tried," says Krupp. "The point is, he didn't do it from the safety of Washington DC or London. He did it while surrounded by hostile forces, and infiltrated by spies, and yet he still managed to save more Jews than all the other world leaders combined."

Further letters reveal how, through his nephew Carlo Pacelli, Pius XII helped prevent the arrest of Roman Jews in 1943, giving an estimated 12,000 of them the chance to seek refuge in Church monasteries, convents, and the homes of Italian Catholics. "All these archival records show how he personally helped save Jewish people," says Krupp, adding emphatically in his broad New York accent: "Anti-Semites don't do that!"

Other ground-breaking discoveries show how the Pope was not just a target for assassination by Hitler (Pave the Way has a copy of a letter Pius wrote to cardinals expecting to be killed and giving them instructions to form a government in exile), but that he and his secretary were also named in a German report as co-conspirators in the Valkyre assassination attempt on the Fuhrer in July 1944.

Pave the Way has combed through copies of the New York Times and Palestine Post from 1939 to 1958 to find any evidence of animosity toward the Jews. "There's not one negative article. Not one," Krupp says, adding that a French friend of theirs also went through French Communist and Socialist papers from that time, and similarly came up with nothing negative.

Krupp points out a "fantastic letter" from the American ambassador to Germany, reporting on 3rd March 1939 on the new Pope's election on 2nd March. The ambassador recalls in the letter meeting Cardinal Pacelli in 1937, and wanting to visit the Sistine Chapel, but he wasn't able to as the Cardinal had kept him in his office for three solid hours, talking about National Socialism and Hitler. "In the letter it says: "While his views against Hitler were well known to me, I had no idea of the extremity of his views,'" Krupp recounts.

Like many, Krupp is convinced the smearing of Pius's reputation was due to an elaborate misinformation campaign by the Soviets and, in particular, the film "The Deputy," which was widely performed after the Pontiff's death. The play, which spread what's become known as the "Black Legend" of Pius XII, is still being performed today, currently in Munich and even in an American university – something that greatly irritates Krupp given the dean of the university is allowing it on grounds of "academic freedom."

What makes him so unstinting in his desire to uncover the truth is his firm belief that history must be accurate. "People die with history," Krupp says, "so it's absolutely essential people realize that history is a sacred thing – you must get it right because people kill one another on perceived history." He says anti-Pius historians are "historical revisionists," and makes no apology for calling them "liars" instead of scholars.

He is particularly indignant with Rome's Jewish community and those who persistently propagate the Black Legend in the face of the contrary evidence. "All of Rome's Jewish community despises Pius XII, when a few short few years ago they erected a monument in his honor because he saved all of their lives," says Krupp (the monument, erected in 1946, is no longer there). "You have air in your lungs today because he saved your lives," he says in pointed words directed at them, "and yet you despise him? This is a sin. This is a Jewish sin." Krupp frequently stresses that one of the worst character flaws a Jew can have is ingratitude, and notes that the Hebrew word for Jew is actually based on the word gratitude.

He believes if any of the community were willing to look at the documents, they would change their minds. "Anyone who refuses to look at documents and the proof is a fool," he says. "This is especially obnoxious to me, as this community is alive because of his actions, very provably alive – everyone from the era said so," Krupps argues.

He also says he has come to discover the enemies of Pope Pius XII tend to be "ultra-left wing Jews and Catholics" with an agenda to destroy the Pope's reputation because he "typified the conservative, traditional Church."

But what about the regular accusations one hears made against Pius? Krupp bats away each of them away with ease.

On why Pius didn't lay down his life as a martyr: "Why didn't General Patten do the same thing? Why didn't Roosevelt do the same thing? Don't forget the Vatican is two entities, head of the Catholic Church and also a government. It would be the worst thing one can do, especially when he could do the good that he did alive. Being dead would be no good at all."

On the claim no Nazis were excommunicated: "They were -- I love this one. The German bishops said anyone who joined the 'Hitler Party,' who wore the uniform or flew the flag were excommunicated and a priest couldn't attend their funeral if any of them died."

On the accusation that Pius XII helped Nazi war criminals flee to South America after the war: "No, it was exactly the opposite according to Bishop Hudal himself [Hudal was a Nazi collaborator in Rome]; just read his [Hudal's] autobiography."

On the claim that Pius authorized forced baptisms of Jewish infants: "Nonsense. In fact he forbade it. There were some … You had some overzealous nuns and others who did this, but he forbade it. He forbade it because he had a great love and respect for Judaism, starting from his childhood. His closest friend was a Jewish orthodox boy, Guido Mendes."

Krupp recognizes "Nostra Aetate," the Second Vatican Council declaration considered by many to have transformed Jewish-Catholic relations, as "one of the most important events in Jewish-Christian relations." It's arguable whether his invaluable efforts to clear Pius XII's name would have taken place had it not been for that document, but Krupp began working on the Pius issue after receiving a papal knighthood, seeing it would "open things up to do wonderful things between Jews and Catholics."

I'm interested to know if he himself ever considered becoming a Catholic? "No, never," he says. "If someone gave me a million dollars, I wouldn't. This is the way I am supposed to be. I'm doing what I'm supposed to do as a Jew not as a Catholic."

He says he has a "huge love and respect for the Church" because he "looks at the bottom line" and sees there's "no greater provider in the world for health care, education or charity." Indeed, he was delighted and honored to be invited this year to receive an honorary doctorate and deliver the commencement address at St. Thomas Aquinas College, Orangeburg, New York.

"I feel my brothers and sisters are in the Church, but I would never consider converting," he says. "I'm very proud to be Jewish, and I think this is the path God meant for me to take."


The time has come for Deborah Dwork to issue an apology for her anti-Catholic historical revisionism.  Her failure to do so will reflect poorly on an institution which is already suspect because of its Christianophobia and commitment to radical homosexual agitprop.  See here and here.

More bad news for Clark University's historical revisionist Deborah Dwork (and others like her)

Recently released documents from the so-called "closed period" of the Vatican Archives are once again revealing the heroism of Pope Pius XII and his care for Jewish people who were persecuted during the Second World War.  The Telegraph's Nick Squires writes, "The document to cast Pius in the most flattering light is a letter from October 1944, after Italy signed an armistice with the Allies and switched sides, in which former inmates expressed their gratitude for his support during their imprisonment. 'While in nearly all the countries of Europe we were persecuted, imprisoned and threatened with death because we belong to the Jewish people and profess the Jewish faith, Your Holiness not only sent notable and generous gifts to our camp through the apostolic nuncio...but also showed your fatherly interest in our physical and spiritual well-being,' they wrote in German.

'(You) intrepidly raised your universally venerated voice against our enemies – still so powerful at that time – to openly support our rights to human dignity. When in 1942 we were under the threat of deportation to Poland, Your Holiness extended your fatherly hand to protect us and prevented the deportation of the Jews imprisoned in Italy, thereby saving us from almost certain death.'

This is more bad news for historical revisionists such as Deborah Dwork, Director of Clark University's Strassler Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies.  In a previous post I refuted her asinine assertion that that Pope Pius XII "failed Europe's Jews miserably, unconscionably."  And I explained here why her accusation is so damnable.

I would ask Ms. Dwork to apologize for her slander of Pius XII.  But what would be the point?  Some people are prisoners of their own deeply-held bias.  And no amount of historical proof will ever penetrate her wall of conviction.  But honest people will be moved at Pius XII's efforts on behalf of the Jewish People.

Deborah Dwork, Pope Pius XII and the "Voyage of the Damned."

While historical revisionists like Deborah Dwork of Clark University's Strassler Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies like to slander Pope Pius XII, whose heroic efforts saved somewhere between 850,000 and 1.5 million Jewish lives, they often have little if anything to say about others who were in a position to save Jewish lives but decided not to.  One example is President Roosevelt's response to the plight of the St. Louis, a German transatlantic liner which sailed from Hamburg, Germany on May 13, 1939 carrying 938 passengers, most of whom were Jews fleeing from the Third Reich.

As this article from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum relates,  "..sailing so close to Florida that they could see the lights of Miami, some passengers on the St. Louis cabled President Franklin D. Roosevelt asking for refuge. Roosevelt never responded. The State Department and the White House had decided not to take extraordinary measures to permit the refugees to enter the United States. A State Department telegram sent to a passenger stated that the passengers must "await their turns on the waiting list and qualify for and obtain immigration visas before they may be admissible into the United States...


Quotas established in the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act of 1924 strictly limited the number of immigrants who could be admitted to the United States each year. In 1939, the annual combined German-Austrian immigration quota was 27,370 and was quickly filled. In fact, there was a waiting list of at least several years. U.S. officials could only have granted visas to the St. Louis passengers by denying them to the thousands of German Jews placed further up on the waiting list. Public opinion in the United States, although ostensibly sympathetic to the plight of refugees and critical of Hitler's policies, continued to favor immigration restrictions. The Great Depression had left millions of people in the United States unemployed and fearful of competition for the scarce few jobs available. It also fueled antisemitism, xenophobia, nativism, and isolationism. A Fortune Magazine poll at the time indicated that 83 percent of Americans opposed relaxing restrictions on immigration. President Roosevelt could have issued an executive order to admit the St. Louis refugees, but this general hostility to immigrants, the gains of isolationist Republicans in the Congressional elections of 1938, and Roosevelt's consideration of running for an unprecedented third term as president were among the political considerations that militated against taking this extraordinary step in an unpopular cause.

Roosevelt was not alone in his reluctance to challenge the mood of the nation on the immigration issue. Three months before the St. Louis sailed, Congressional leaders in both U.S. houses allowed to die in committee a bill sponsored by Senator Robert Wagner (D-N.Y.) and Representative Edith Rogers (R-Mass.). This bill would have admitted 20,000 Jewish children from Germany above the existing quota. ...

Following the U.S. government's refusal to permit the passengers to disembark, the St. Louis sailed back to Europe on June 6, 1939. The passengers did not return to Germany, however. Jewish organizations (particularly the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee) negotiated with four European governments to secure entry visas for the passengers: Great Britain took 288 passengers; the Netherlands admitted 181 passengers, Belgium took in 214 passengers; and 224 passengers found at least temporary refuge in France. Of the 288 passengers admitted by Great Britain, all survived World War II save one, who was killed during an air raid in 1940. Of the 620 passengers who returned to continent, 87 (14%) managed to emigrate before the German invasion of Western Europe in May 1940. 532 St. Louis passengers were trapped when Germany conquered Western Europe. Just over half, 278 survived the Holocaust. 254 died: 84 who had been in Belgium; 84 who had found refuge in Holland, and 86 who had been admitted to France."

But while President Roosevelt and Congressional leaders in both U.S. houses were refusing to allow Jewish refugees into the United States (think of the 20,000 Jewish children denied entry to the United States because a Bill was allowed to die), and while other countries such as Great Britain were doing the same, the Vatican was issuing tens of thousands of false documents to allow Jews to pass secretly as Christians so they could escape the Nazis. In addition, the financial aid Pope Pius XII helped provide the Jews was very real. Lichten, Lapide, and other Jewish chroniclers record those funds as being in the millions of dollars -dollars even more valuable then than they are now.

As this article makes clear, "The papacy rescued Jews by channeling money to those in need, issuing countless baptismal certificates for their protection, negotiating with Latin American countries to grant them visas, and keeping in touch with their relatives through the Vatican Information Office. News of Pius XII's acts of charity spread. Nuncios, apostolic delegates, bishops, pastors, and priests offered their assistance and comfort to prisoners, to internees, to families.."

So here we are.  Pope Pius XII saved, even by the most conservative accounts, 860,000 Jews.  Some argue that the figure is closer to 1.5 million.  And this at a time when President Roosevelt and Congressional leaders in the United States were refusing refuge to Jews from Europe thereby ensuring the death of many - including children.

But for professor Dwork, it is Pius XII who "failed Europe's Jews miserably, unconscionably."

The voyage of the St. Louis has been, in my opinion, inappropriately described as the "voyage of the damned."  Many of those poor people may have gone to their deaths.  But if anything about that tragic voyage was damnable, it was the refusal of the Roosevelt administration to do the right thing by allowing those refugees entry into the United States. 

While the U.S. turned its back on innocent men, women and children, Pope Pius XII did not.  The Catholic Church did not.  And anyone who refuses to acknowledge this is not a real student of history.  Such a person is not interested in historical facts.  Only in anti-Catholic propaganda.

Clark University's Deborah Dwork: Why her slander of Pius XII is so damnable...

In a previous post, this Blog examined how Deborah Dwork, Director of Clark University's Strassler Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies, has engaged in historical revisionism, insisting that Pope Pius XII "failed Europe's Jews miserably, unconscionably."  This asinine accusation was thoroughly refuted.  What makes this slander all the more damnable is that Hitler and the Third Reich desired "to trample the Catholic Church as one does a frog." It was on September 9, 1943 that Hitler said, "I'll go into the Vatican when I like. Do you think the Vatican worries me? We'll grab it. Yes, the whole diplomatic bunch is in there. I couldn't care less. That bunch in there, we'll drag them out, the whole swinish pack of them. What does it matter? We can apologize afterwards, that's nothing to worry about."

Contrary to what some may believe, the Nazis and the Italian Fascists knew that the Catholic Church and Popes Pius XI and Pius XII were their enemies. For example, Benito Mussolini told his foreign minister Count Ciano (on August 8, 1938): "I do not underestimate [Pius XI's] strength, but he must not underestimate mine either....A sign from me would be enough to unleash all the anti-clericalism of the Italian people who already find it hard enough to swallow a Jewish God." And Roberto Farinacci, the editor of Italy's official Fascist newspaper, Regime Fascista, wrote the following in October of 1942: "The Church's obstruction of the practical solution of the Jewish problem constitutes a crime against the New Europe."

Reflect carefully on those words and what they mean: "The Church's obstruction of the practical solution of the Jewish problem."  We all know what the Reich meant when it referred to "The Final Solution" of the "Jewish problem."  And it was the Catholic Church which, as Farinacci acknowledged, opposed this "practical solution."

In 1998, Cornell University released documents from the Nuremberg Trials which revealed that Hitler planned to end Christianity at the end of World War II.  See here. Furthermore, General William Donovan, a senior member of the U.S. prosecution team at Nuremberg, as part of his work documenting Nazi war crimes, compiled copious amounts of documentation which show that the Nazis planned to systematically destroy Christianity.  See here.

As this EWTN article notes:

"In a March 6, 1939 editorial, "Leadership for Peace," the Palestine Post in Jerusalem said: "Pius XII has clearly shown that he intends to carry on the late Pope's [Pius XI] work for freedom and peace... we remember that he must have had a large part to play in the recent Papal opposition to pernicious race theories and certain aspects of totalitarianism..."


In praising Cardinal Pacelli's election, the Jewish Chronicle in London on March 10, quoted an anti-Nazi speech he delivered in Lourdes in April 1935 and the hostile statements expressed about him in the Nazi press. "It is interesting to recall... on January 22 [1939], the Voelkischer Beobachter published pictures of Cardinal Pacelli and other Church dignitaries beneath a collective heading of 'Agitators in the Vatican against Fascism and National Socialism,"' the Jewish Chronicle noted.

Also on March 10, the Canadian Jewish Chronicle commended the College of Cardinals for resisting Nazi attempts to influence the election and prevent Cardinal Pacelli from becoming Pope. "The plot to pilfer the Ring of Fisherman has gone up in white smoke," the editorial quipped.

Many Jewish organizations also expressed their enthusiasm for the new Pope. According to the Jewish Chronicle in London (March 10), the Vatican received congratulatory messages from "the Anglo-Jewish Community, the Synagogue Council of America, the Canadian Jewish Congress, and the Polish Rabbinical Council."

Pius XII's decision to appoint Luigi Cardinal Maglione as the Vatican's new Secretary of State also brought favorable reactions. The March 16, 1939 Zionist Review in London said that the Cardinal's appointment "confirms the view that the new Pope means to conduct an anti-Nazi and anti-Fascist policy."

Certainly, such statements made by Jewish newspapers and organizations show they considered the newly elected Pope Pius XII a friend of democracy and peace, and an enemy of racism and totalitarianism. Cardinal Pacelli's role in negotiating the concordat with the Nazis did not cause any concern. Instead, many Jews cited his anti-Nazi speeches, and his role as Vatican Secretary of State, which helped produce the 1937 anti-Nazi encyclical, Mit brennender Sorge, and numerous protests against the persecution of the Catholic Church in Germany.

Less than two months after World War II broke out, on October 27, Pius XII issued his first encyclical, Summi Pontificatus. On the same day, the New York-based Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the equivalent of the Associated Press, reported that, "the unqualified condemnation which Pope Pius XII heaped on totalitarian, racist and materialistic theories of government in his encyclical Summi Pontificatus caused a profound stir... Although it had been expected that the Pope would attack ideologies hostile to the Catholic Church, few observers had expected so outspoken a document..."


...On January 26, 1940, the Jewish Advocate in Boston reported, "The Vatican radio this week broadcast an outspoken denunciation of German atrocities in Nazi [occupied] Poland, declaring they affronted the moral conscience of mankind." Exiled Polish Cardinal August Hlond of Gnezo and Poznan had given the Vatican detailed reports about the Nazi persecution of the Church in Poland. On the Pope's orders, Vatican Radio broadcast the cardinal's reports. The front-page story quoted one Vatican Radio broadcast as saying, "Jews and Poles are being herded into separate ghettos, hermetically sealed and pitifully inadequate for the economic subsistence of the millions designed to live there." This broadcast was also important because it gave independent confirmation of media reports about Nazi atrocities, which were previously dismissed as Allied propaganda..."

Read the entire article at EWTN.  It is overwhelmingly clear, to anyone not crippled by hatred against the Catholic Church in general and Pope Pius XII in particular, that the Church stood squarely against Nazism and that Pope Pius XII of happy memory was a courageous Shepherd who conducted an anti-Nazi and anti-Fascist policy.

Deborah Dwork has slandered a truly great Pontiff.  Her attack on Christ's Vicar is an attack on the entire Catholic Church and on the Lord Jesus.  It is utterly vile and morally reprehensible.

Pray for Clark University, an institution which is constrained by secular humanist ideology, radical homosexual agitprop, and a bitter Christianophobia.

Clark University not only promotes radical homosexual agitprop but seems to embrace historical revisionism

During the Second World War, the Nazis had a special hatred for Pope Pius XII.  The Reich Central Security Office had no doubts about where this great Pontiff stood with regard to the Jewish People. They considered him "the mouthpiece of the Jewish war criminals."


Following Pope Pius XII's sermon at Christmas, 1942, the Reich Central Security Office prepared a detailed analysis of the Pope's address for Reinhard Heydrich which was submitted on January 22, 1943:

"In a manner never known before, the Pope has repudiated the National Socialist New European Order. His radio allocution was a masterpiece of clerical falsification of the National Socialist Weltanschauung. It is true, the Pope does not refer to the National Socialists in Germany by name, but his speech is one long attack on everything we stand for....God, he says, regards all peoples and races as worthy of the same consideration. Here he is clearly speaking on behalf of the Jews...That this speech is directed exclusively against the New Order in Europe as seen in National Socialism is clear in the Papal statement that mankind owes a debt to 'all who during the war have lost their Fatherland and who, although personally blameless have, simply on account of their nationality and origin, been killed or reduced to utter destitution.' Here he is virtually accusing the German people of injustice towards the Jews, and makes himself the mouthpiece of the Jewish war criminals."

But Deborah Dwork, Director of Clark University's Strassler Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies, doesn't see it that way.  Speaking of the fact that Pope Benedict XVI named Pope Pius XII as Venerable, Ms. Dwork replied, "Who the Church elevates is its business, but history is MY business, and Pius XII failed Europe's Jews miserably, unconscionably."  See page 21 of this pdf file.

I think Ms. Dwork needs to find another line of business.


The Israeli consul, Pinchas E. Lapide, in his book, Three Popes and the Jews (New York: Hawthorn Books, Inc., 1967) critically examines Pope Pius XII. According to his research, the Catholic Church under Pius XII was instrumental in saving 860,000 Jews from Nazi death camps (p. 214). Could Pius have saved more lives by speaking out more forcefully? According to Lapide, the concentration camp prisoners did not want Pius to speak out openly (p. 247). As one jurist from the Nuremberg Trials said on WNBC in New York (Feb. 28, 1964), "Any words of Pius XII, directed against a madman like Hitler, would have brought on an even worse catastrophe... [and] accelerated the massacre of Jews and priests." (Ibid.)

Yet Pius was not totally silent either. Lapide notes a book by the Jewish historian, Jenoe Levai, entitled, The Church Did Not Keep Silent (p. 256). He admits that everyone, including himself, could have done more. If we condemn Pius, then justice would demand condemning everyone else. He concludes by quoting from the Talmud that "whosoever preserves one life, it is accounted to him by Scripture as if he had preserved a whole world." With this he claims that Pius XII deserves a memorial forest of 860,000 trees in the Judean hills (pp. 268-9). It should be noted that six million Jews and three million Catholics were killed in the Holocaust.


We must remember that the Holocaust was also anti-Christian. After Hitler revealed his true intentions, the Catholic Church opposed him. Even the famous Albert Einstein testified to that. According to the December 23, 1940 issue of Time magazine on page 38, Einstein said:

Being a lover of freedom, when the revolution came in Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but, no, the universities immediately were silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom; but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks...Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly.

I invite readers of this Blog to visit the website of The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights to read the extensive documentation on Pope Pius XII which shows clearly that this saintly Pontiff was nothing less than heroic.  My father had an audience with Pope Pius XII in April of 1958, just six months before the Holy Father died.  It was an experience he would always cherish. 

All too often, the record of history is clouded with the prejudices and presumptions of those who are commenting and reporting on it.  Often history is twisted and reinterpreted for ideological purposes.  We have seen that Clark University has embraced the radical homosexual agenda. It would appear that the university also embraces historical revisionism.  Is this an attempt to discredit the Catholic Church because of its moral opposition toward homosexuality and same-sex "marriage"?