The Myth of Hitler's Pope
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The Myth of Hitler's Pope: How Pope Pius XII Rescued Jews from the Nazis is a book written by Rabbi David G. Dalin and published in 2005.
Rabbi Dalin first documents how popes through history have defended the Jews, and refuted attacks like the blood libel.
Then he gets to the main part of the book: defending the reputation of the late Pope Pius XII by presenting extensive documentation culled from Church and State archives throughout Europe. Rabbi Dalin suggests that Yad Vashem should honor Pope Pius XII as a "Righteous Gentile", and documents that Pius was praised by all the leading Jews of his day for his role in saving more Jews than Schindler. Pius's admirers included Chief Rabbi Isaac Herzog of Israel, Israeli Prime Ministers Golda Meir and Moshe Sharett, and Israel's first president Chaim Weizmann. Conversely, the Nazis detested the pope.
Dalin writes:
- "anti-papal polemics of ex-seminarians like Garry Wills and John Cornwell (author of Hitler's Pope), of ex-priests like James Carroll, and or other lapsed or angry liberal Catholics exploit the tragedy of the Jewish people during the Holocaust to foster their own political agenda of forcing changes on the Catholic Church today."
Finally, Dalin argues that there really was a "Hitler's cleric", Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who spent the war with Hitler and was a friend of Adolf Eichmann, and later became the mentor of Yasser Arafat.
