In his book, “A Pope and a President,” Paul Kengor offers an interesting insight on the myth of Pope Pius XII’s silence during the Holocaust and/or his collaboration with Hitler and his minions. The key event that led to the widespread acceptance of these lies was, unquestionably, the release of Rolf Hochhuth’s play, “The Deputy,” in 1963. In that play, Pope Pius XII was portrayed as coldheartedly indifferent to the suffering of the Jews, and perhaps even complicit in the Holocaust against them.
But Kengor (and others) maintain that these lies about Pius XII were actually rooted in the atheistic propaganda that came forth from the post-World War II Soviet Union, through organs like Radio Moscow. Kengor writes, “Moscow was the first to circulate the defamations of the pope. In fact, the Soviets started the smear campaign some two decades before Rolf Hochhuth’s play debuted.”
The atheistic, communist Soviet Union no longer exists. The vicious lies that have been told about Pope Pius XII in recent decades need to be consigned to the same fate.
