To Jews, Church’s Apology Leaves Much Unsaid

The question has been bubbling for more than 50 years: Could--should--the Roman Catholic Church have taken a stronger stand against anti-Semitism as Hitler’s Nazis first rose to power in Germany, then marched across most of Europe?

And does the church owe an apology for all that ensued?

Irv Gelman thinks so.

“Oh, yeah, a lot of apologies,” said Gelman, of Irvine, a Poland-born Jew who escaped the Nazi death camps when a Christian farm family hid him. “I lived in Poland and I know how the church used to instigate people, make us the culprit, the scapegoat of everything.

“Every Sunday when they used to come home from church, we used to hide behind doors because you never knew what they were instilled with.”

Last week, a special Vatican committee issued a long-awaited statement on the Nazi era, condemning anti-Semitism in general and the Holocaust in particular.

While for many people the document represents little more than the latest turn in a historical debate, many of those who lived through the Holocaust--or lost family and friends to its killers--see it as yet another instance of Catholic leaders skirting the critical issue of their predecessors’ behavior while Europe burned.

Jewish leaders around the world largely dismissed the statement as insufficient, primarily because of the light attention it paid to the actions of Pope Pius XII, widely viewed to have maintained relative silence as persecution raged.

Yet Vatican officials have long argued that Pius XII has been viewed in a harsh false light, and this week dismissed the condemnations of what they see as a watershed statement as being based on errors of historical perspective.

Vatican officials said they hope to discuss the statement with Jewish leaders during meetings of the International Jewish Commission on Inter-Religious Consultation, which begins Monday in Rome.

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It’s unclear how all this will play out at the parish and synagogue level.

Officials for the Diocese of Orange and the Archdiocese of Los Angeles said the statement was intended as a teaching tool within the church’s schools and discussion groups, and that it probably wouldn’t be the topic of sermons this weekend.

Rabbis also said they probably wouldn’t discuss the issue this weekend, primarily because they have more pressing issues to deal with than dissecting the past actions of a different religion’s leaders.

“It’s not that relevant in [worshipers’] lives in this moment in time,” said Rabbi Joel Landau of Congregation Beth Jacob in Irvine, who said he has not studied the statement. “I try to deal with stuff that is current, relevant in some concrete way. I don’t feel a need to address it right now. I can address it three weeks from now.”

He’s uncertain, though, what he ultimately will tell his congregation.

“If this is the type of responsibility that people take for such a horrific thing, then. . . . I’m not sure what I’m saying after that,” Landau said.

The statement, promised by Pope John Paul II 11 years ago, touches on the roots of anti-Semitism in Europe, then distances the church from the atrocities--referring to Nazi Germany as a “modern neo-pagan regime.”

While lauding some acts by Pius XII, the statement sidesteps the broader question of whether the pope, and by extension the church, did enough.

The statement also points out that many non-Jews were killed trying to protect their Jewish neighbors, which dissuaded others who might have been moved to act. And while it calls on those “sons and daughters” of the church to repent for their lack of action, the statement leaves unmentioned priests who helped fan the flames of anti-Semitism in their homilies, and lay Catholics who participated in the atrocities or acquiesced to acts of religious persecution.

To some, the statement reflects an institution that continues to have trouble confronting itself on one of the most pervasive moral issues of the century.

“My sense is that the church as an institution is as broken as the rest of us,” said Rabbi Bernard King of Congregation Shir Ha-Ma’alot in Irvine, who followed reports of the statement but has not read it. “I think it was a step toward some type of healing, but it certainly didn’t go anywhere near far enough.”

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If the church does owe an apology, it would be to people such as Bernd Simon of Ventura.

Simon was born in Germany and was swept up in one of the early roundups of Jews. He spent three months in the Dachau concentration camp before slipping out via a forged letter attesting that an exit visa had been issued for him at a foreign embassy.

“I was aware that the pope did not prevent the mass incarceration and extermination of the German Jews at first, and later, of the Jews of all of Europe,” Simon, 77, said. “He did not take a stand.”

Simon recalled a relatively harmonious life with non-Jews before Hitler’s rise.

“It was all friendly and neighborly and all of a sudden Goebbels’ propaganda machine started to preach against the Jews, and the population became certainly passive,” he said. “They did not prevent the incarcerations, including my own.”

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Irene Gut Opdyke was one of those who was moved to resist.

A Poland-born Catholic, Opdyke was sent at age 18 to work in a forced-labor munitions factory after the German Army occupied Poland. She was later made a housekeeper at the officers’ quarters near the factory, where she befriended a number of Jews while working in a laundry room.

When she was taken to be a housekeeper at a German major’s nearby villa, she was able to sneak a dozen of her Jewish friends along with her, housing them in a makeshift room beneath a gazebo.

It was a brutal time, she said.

“I did see people killed, whole families, because they were trying to save Jewish families,” said Opdyke, who lives in Yorba Linda and in 1982 was awarded the Israeli Medal of Righteousness.

Opdyke was caught several times and vilified and threatened for her actions. She was forced to become the major’s mistress to buy his silence after he discovered what she was doing.

“I was separated from my family and was responsible for my own life,” explained Opdyke, 72, who still speaks with a soft Polish accent. “I don’t know if I would do the things I did if I was with my younger sisters and my family. I was responsible for my own life and I did it because that was not right, the killing and the murdering.”

There remains plenty of blame to go around, said Opdyke, who uses her Holocaust Rescuers Foundation to speak out against Holocaust revisionism.

“I think not only the church but [President Franklin D.] Roosevelt, also, and the leaders of the other nations, they owe” apologies, Opdyke said, citing historical reports that the Allied governments knew of the death camps but did not make intervening a priority.

“It’s not only the Catholic Church or the Polish people,” she said. “I blame people that knew here, when the news came through different channels and they knew what was happening and they did not do anything.”

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Even some who criticized the church’s statement, though, said they consider the document a positive step.

It might not have been what Gelman, founder of the Tarbut V’Torah Community Day School, was hoping for, but at least it was something, he said.

“I was even surprised that the statement came out at all,” he said. “I never expected that much. I was pleasantly surprised. It takes a lot of conscience-searching.”

Gelman said he’s not sure he expects any further statements from the church.

“It depends on how much conscience they have left.”