When Memory Comes

by Saul Friedlander

  Another warning followed that I haven’t yet mentioned. To prepare the conference on Soviet Jewry, I worked from Paris, where we stayed for several weeks and from where I left on my various visits. And it is there that a duodenal ulcer of which I was unaware bled for the first time. Two years or so later, I left for my trip to Geneva. I had barely reached my destination when the ulcer bled again. This time I was hospitalized, received blood transfusions, but was not operated on, as the physicians thought that given my age, the right diet would suffice. Many years later, Hagith told me that, at a loss regarding all my ailments and the bleak future they heralded, she had considered divorce.

  * * *

  * I recently mentioned this anecdote to my colleague and friend Carlo Ginzburg, who told me that this was first said about Rossini’s music during the composer’s life in Paris from the 1830s on.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Turmoil

  The last weeks of 1964 were one of the happiest periods of our stay in Geneva. Our son David was born at the end of November, I had a regular position at the institute, and, mainly, I started feeling much better.

  One of the “magic moments” of those same days was a program that French television (I think there was only one channel at the time) offered for the holidays; it had been conceived and directed by Claude Santelli and included two miniseries that I still remember fifty years later: David Copperfield and Jules Verne’s Les Indes noires (Black Indies). This was television at its best, or so I thought.

  And, from the spring of 1964 on, there had been some excitement of a very different kind.

  1

  Over the years, my “Catholic past” hadn’t particularly been on my mind, except possibly during analysis, and of course as far as guilt feelings were concerned. Yet its very background presence made me aware of matters that, otherwise, I may not have noticed at all.

  Be that as it may, while working on my dissertation in the Bonn archives, I came upon a misplaced document in a file on the United States. It was a cable sent to Berlin in December 1941 from the German embassy at the Vatican. According to the message, a Vatican official had addressed a letter to the Intendant (director) of the Berlin State Opera about to visit Rome, asking to have excerpts of Wagner’s Parsifal played for the pope in his apartments. At the time of the request, Nazi exterminations on Soviet territory were widely known and reported. Under such circumstances, the pope’s demand for this private concert by a German orchestra amazed me; it later appeared that the concert did not take place.

  Questions surfaced that had never occurred to me previously: What had been the pope’s attitude to Nazi Germany? How did he react to the extermination of the Jews? Were bishops all over occupied Europe told to help the Jews? Would I have been hidden if my parents had not accepted my baptism? (My father had to write to the head nun of the seminary that he permitted the baptism, and promised to have me educated as a Catholic after the war.)

  I decided then and there that once the dissertation was completed, I would return to Bonn and examine the files dealing with diplomatic relations between Germany and the Vatican from March 1939 (Pius XII’s election) to the end of the war. And so it was: during the teaching break between the two semesters of 1964, I returned to Bonn.

  The files regarding the Vatican were organized in chronological order (as all the others), and I systematically went through the first five volumes of documents covering the immediate prewar and war years until September 1943. Most of the material had never been published and even if the German diplomats at the Vatican did embellish some reports, the documents gave a fascinating and complex picture of relations that, far from always remaining smooth, were nonetheless never antagonistic on either side.

  In early July 1943, the former highest-ranking official of the Wilhelmstrasse, State Secretary Ernst von Weizsäcker, replaced long-serving ambassador to the Vatican Diego von Bergen. The new envoy arrived at a critical juncture, as Mussolini was about to be ousted by his own Fascist Grand Council and arrested on order of the king. Marshall Pietro Badoglio would be appointed head of government. In the meantime, on the Eastern Front, the Soviet army had definitively seized the initiative and was rapidly pushing ahead following its victories in Stalingrad, Orel, and Kursk.

  After his initial audience with the pope, Weizsäcker conveyed Pius’s fear of Communism to Ribbentrop and pointed to the tacit convergence of attitudes it created regarding the Red menace. The summer went by and, in September 1943, the Anglo-American forces, after occupying Sicily, landed in southern Italy: Badoglio surrendered. Within hours, the Germans, who had troops at the ready, occupied Italy down to the line held by the Allies. About a month later, the rounding up and deportation of the Jews of Rome and of all German-occupied Italy started.

  I asked for file number 6 covering the crucial period from September 1943 to February 1944, that of the deportations and thus of the German reports about the reactions of the Vatican. The file had disappeared; it was never found. The file that followed (number 7), which covered the period between February and June 1944, when the Allies occupied Rome, was in its place. By then most Jews who could be caught had been caught. Two essential German documents dating from the deportations period that had been used in the Nuremberg trials were known: Weizsäcker’s cable about the possibility of a papal protest against the deportation of the Jews of Rome, followed by the ambassador’s message informing Berlin that no such protest would take place. Some additional bits and pieces from that period surfaced here and there; basically, that was it. The overall German documentation for these decisive months was gone.

  2

  Back in Geneva, I wrote short comments about the documents I had gathered. The starting point of my arguments, based on the German archival materials, but also on published American and British documents, as well as on those of the World Jewish Congress and other Jewish sources to be found in Jerusalem, in the Central Zionist Archives, was simple and, as far as I could see, incontrovertible: From the beginning of the campaign against the Soviet Union and on, the Vatican was well-informed about the German extermination of civilians and particularly that of the Jews, from Catholic and other religious sources and from its own missions in the Eastern territories. Soon such information reached the press, and could not be kept under wraps in any case. Later, information about the systematic extermination of the Jews regularly reached the pope. Yet Pius XII abstained from any reaction, even when the Jews of Rome were deported, “under his own windows.”

  The question debated ever since has been: What explains that silence? Pacelli’s personal liking for the German people (from his days as nuncio in Munich and Berlin) may have been a factor, but a marginal one; his fear of bringing Nazi retribution against the church in Germany certainly became an important consideration. Traditional Christian anti-Semitism also played a role. The pope’s main reason, however — one that haunted the Vatican since the end of the First World War and Pacelli personally since his confrontation with the Munich Communists while he was nuncio in Bavaria, in 1919, and that had turned into quasi-panic after Stalingrad — appeared to be a fear that Bolshevism would spread into Central Europe. The Wehrmacht had become the last bulwark against the Red menace, and weakening that bulwark by an open denunciation of German policies had, in my view, ceased to be an option for Pius XII, if it ever was one.

  I took excerpts of the documents to Paris, to a well-known publisher to whom I had been recommended: Jerôme Lindon, owner and hands-on director of the Éditions de Minuit. He had published Samuel Beckett and other prestigious names of recent literature, as well as hard-hitting left-oriented political books such as the hugely successful La question (The Question) that the (Jewish) Communist Henri Alleg had written about French interrogation methods during the Algerian war.

  Lindon was enthusiastic. He promised to turn the book into a best seller, offered to work with me on the final version, and couldn’t wait to have the full manuscript in hand. It was only after leaving his office that I understood my mist
ake: the work of a Jewish author critical of the pope, brought out by a notorious Jewish leftist publisher, would look ideologically motivated and thus be easily dismissed.

  I wrote a letter full of regrets to Lindon and received a stinging answer, ending with the words, “Je suis content de vous avoir connu jeune. Vous irez loin” (I am glad to have met you young. You will go far). But here I was, in need of a non-Jewish, nonleftist publisher and without anybody in sight. By chance, Elie Wiesel, who had published Night and more to great acclaim, was in Paris; I decided to consult him. As I mentioned, I knew him from his days as Paris correspondent of the Israeli evening paper Yediot Ahronot. I had met him again in New York during my work with Goldmann and we’d kept in touch. He generously introduced me to his publisher, Paul Flamand, the owner and director of Éditions du Seuil. There could not have been a better choice.

  Éditions du Seuil was a left-oriented, nonconformist, Catholic publishing house. Among hundreds of titles, Flamand had published the writings of the Jesuit theologian and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, against the explicit opposition of the church. Many years later, he told me the details of that story. When it became known that he would publish Teilhard’s complete works, an important Paris Jesuit came to his office and beseeched him to relent. Notwithstanding the pressure, Flamand, a practicing Catholic, didn’t budge, although he was being threatened with excommunication. The openly angry and disappointed Jesuit took his leave. A few seconds later, the door of Flamand’s office opened, the Jesuit’s head appeared, and he blurted out, “Forget all I told you” and was gone.

  Flamand didn’t waste any time. After seeing the documents I brought, he left for Rome to meet with the highly influential Msgr Agostino Casaroli. I had one side of the story, he pointed out: the German documents. In order to restore the balance, I needed access to the Vatican archives on those same issues. As Flamand wrote to me from Rome, he didn’t receive a straightforward refusal. The Vatican officials wanted to see and study the material I had; they would then prepare a detailed response and discuss it with me. The net result of this strategy would have been to delay indefinitely the publication of my book, to eventually publish bits and pieces of my documentation, in short to undermine the whole enterprise. Flamand also perceived it that way. We decided to forge ahead on our own.

  We chose an extremely careful tripartite editing of the comments: I had written the basic text; Flamand, together with a journalist from Le Monde and a friend, Jacques Nobécourt — who had just published a general study on the Vatican during the war, Le Vicaire et l’histoire (The Deputy and History) — went over my comments and suggested, here and there, some “softening” of style by introducing a few “perhapses” or “possiblys,” instead of straightforward affirmations. This outside perspective was extremely helpful and never turned into censorship. Finally — and this looked to us like the ultimate protection against any potential accusation of willful partisanship — a moderate and conciliatory afterword was added, written by Alfred Grosser, a converted Jew, specialist of recent German history and professor at Sciences Po; mainly, he contributed a regular and influential column to the Catholic daily La Croix. Thus protected on all sides, my Pie XII et le IIIe Reich: Une documentation was published in November 1964.

  The topic was already being fiercely debated for a year, as German author Rolf Hochhuth’s play The Deputy had been staged the world over since early 1963 and had provoked a firestorm of controversy by examining Pius XII’s silence in the face of the extermination of European Jewry. I had had no contact with Hochhuth and had actually paid little attention to the play (which I read only later), but from the very outset the ongoing debate spilled over to the reactions that greeted my own book.

  Looking back at the publication of Pius XII, could I still be sure that no resentment rooted in my Catholic years was underlying the writing of that book? I didn’t feel it then and I don’t feel it now. I was taken aback by Pius XII’s silence, although I understood — at least I think I understood — what may have been its main motivations. I wasn’t too astonished by the church’s lack of opposition to Nazi Germany and its satellites, and was upset only when facing blunt denials and egregious lies. In that sense, the work on the Vatican, and mainly the debates that followed, did erode something of my emotional distance from the Holocaust, but the work was also facilitated because that erosion was already slowly beginning.

  3

  (Very) favorable and (very) hostile reactions surged on all sides, particularly in France, where the book sold between 50,000 and 60,000 copies within a few weeks. For me, barely starting my academic career, this was both flattering and dangerous. The flattering aspect does not require much explanation: from one day to the next I became well-known and much in demand (as the book was being translated into some fifteen or sixteen languages and made the covers of L’Express in France, Der Spiegel in Germany, and Look in the United States, the last two in 1964 and 1966). The danger was no less obvious: addiction to publicity and easy success.

  On the hostile side, the attacks concentrated on several claims: (a) Pius’s attitude and that of the Vatican toward the Third Reich were entirely different from the slanted version that I (and the German documents) offered; (b) I was deeply ungrateful, as I had been saved by the church; and (c) I was a sensationalist, not a serious scholar.

  The American Jesuit Robert Graham and the group of Jesuits that would later publish the eleven volumes of Vatican documents pertaining to the Second World War (a valuable but highly selective collection) were my fiercest critics in a series of articles published in America, Osservatore Romano, and La Civiltà Cattolica, as were all possible conservative journalists, Catholic fundamentalists, and even an Israeli writer, Pinchas Lapide. Some Catholic scholars joined the fray, and so did, two years later, the British maverick historian A. J. P. Taylor, who in a sarcastic review in the New Statesman wondered why I didn’t realize that the Catholic Church was a political institution that, like all political institutions, acted only in line with its interests and nothing else.

  Taylor’s disparaging article was rather unexpected, and throughout used an intentionally derisive term against me personally, referring to me as “Associate Professor Friedländer” (he got my rank from the brief “About the Author” on the back of the book). I didn’t plan to answer, but out of the blue, a spirited defense by Hubert Butler appeared in a major article in the Irish Times, in October 1966. Furthermore, Butler sent a sharp reader’s letter to the editor of the New Statesman. It ended with a flourish: “If thrones and crowns (both single and triple) are one day to be abolished, could we not make a start with professorial chairs? They so often confer upon their occupants a small and snooty arrogance which is more hurtful than the domineering ways of the old-fashioned dynasts.”

  By sheer coincidence, a namesake of my Irish defender, G. P. Butler of University College London, had his own letter about Taylor’s article published in the New Statesman at the same time. “Obviously,” Butler’s letter concluded, “Mr. Taylor doesn’t like Pius XII and the Third Reich, but his reasons are drowned by the noise of grinding teeth — and axes.”

  Apart from liberal and left-wing supporters, I also had firm allies on the Catholic side: the Dominican professor of philosophy at the Swiss Catholic Fribourg University, Jozef M. Bochenski; the professor of philosophy at Warsaw University, Leszek Kolakowski; and especially the dean of the College of Cardinals, the French Cardinal Eugène Tisserant, who wrote to me: “It is important that the truth be known.” Upon my request, he allowed me to publish his letter.

  One of the letters that pleased me most came from my former girlfriend Maryvonne. She congratulated me about the book and had many kind things to say about our past together. I saw her again in 1966 when she met me after a television program and then, the next day, saw me off at the airport with her son, in uniform by then. She was working as a medical secretary. She had had breast cancer but told me that she was cured. I didn’t hear from her anymore thereafter
.

  The most memorable public debate about Pius XII did not take place during any major television program (although these included Lectures pour tous with Pierre Desgraupes in France and a not entirely friendly interview with David Frost — who must have just then started his career — in the UK). It occurred in Geneva at the Cercle de l’Athénée. Hundreds of people packed the hall, sitting on the floor, on windowsills and even on the stage. I was to present my arguments and a local Jesuit (they were not officially allowed in Geneva but were present nonetheless) was to comment; an open debate would follow.

  The initial presentations took place without any fireworks, but scarcely had the Jesuit finished commenting on my arguments than Jeanne Hersch, a professor of philosophy at the University of Geneva, a free spirit and a powerful speaker, took hold of the microphone and, hammering every word, declared that my arguments were “crystal clear” and that the pope’s silence was outrageous. At that moment all hell broke loose, everybody was shouting and, of course, in Calvinist Geneva, anti-Catholic emotions ran high. I even saw a member of the local Protestant aristocracy, a de Muralt, I think, ominously brandishing an umbrella … O tempora, o mores.

  The two years that followed the publication of Pius XII were very intense. We moved to a large apartment on rue de Moillebeau with a magnificent view of the city, the lake — and Mont Blanc. Hagith gave piano lessons but mainly kept busy with the two boys, Eli and David, although an au pair from Israel had been living with us for some time already. I had my seminar, my courses, and my lectures about Pius with all the commotion that surrounded the topic and the constant traveling it demanded.

  It is only then that I managed to thoroughly read Raul Hilberg’s monumental history of the Holocaust (The Destruction of the European Jews, published in 1961), which I had skimmed through two or three years beforehand. I also met the most significant historian of anti-Semitism and of the Shoah there was in France at that time: Léon Poliakov. One can hardly imagine two personalities more different than Hilberg and Poliakov (whereas I knew Poliakov from 1964 on, I met Hilberg only in 1968, in Israel; later, I frequently encountered both, over the decades).