Letters:Hebrew-Catholic to Mr. Isaacs

From a Catholic newspaper clipping upon his death in 1957.
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   Boston, (NC) - David Goldstein, 87, Catholic newspaper columnist and lecturer popularly known as "the lay apostle to the man in the street," died (June 30) in his apartment here.
   Mr. Goldstein became an outstanding champion of the Catholic Church after his conversion. A pioneer street preacher, he was also a gifted writer who for 10 years promulgated the principles of his Faith in a column in The Pilot, newspaper of the Boston archdiocese.
   Born in London in 1870 of Jewish parents from the Netherlands, Mr. Goldstein came to this country in 1871. He joined the Socialist Party in 1895 and left it in 1903 after campaigning unsuccessfully as the first candidate for mayor of Boston on the Socialist ticket

Joined Church in 1905
   He was baptized in the Catholic Faith in May, 1905, at the Jesuit Church of the Immaculate Conception in Boston, and devoted the rest of his life to a defense of Catholicism. The author of 10 books, he was a vigorous critic of socialism, bolshevism and birth control.
   In April, 1955, he was named a Knight of St. Gregory by Pope Pius XII. A daily communicant, he attended Mass and received Communion on the day of his death.
   In the 1930s Mr. Goldstein toured the country in a specially constructed mission car to "carry the Catholic message to the man in the street." Accompanied by an assistant, Theodore H. Dorsey, he traveled for two years in the car and addressed about 480 open-air meetings.
   In many of his addresses, Mr. Goldstein tried to clear up what he referred to as "misapprehensions" about the Church......

In 1956 Mr. Goldstein's book "My Boston Pilot Column" was published. In a forward to the book, Archbishop Richard J. Cushing of Boston lauded Mr. Goldstein as "a zealous friend of the truth and a frightening foe of sham, pretense and dishonesty."

Pope Pius XII & the Jews During World War II

Now that the dignitaries of the Church living during WWII are dead, or very old, and incapable of defending themselves, the Mass Media today is helping spread the sudden lie that the Catholic Church was partially guilty "by its silence" for the death of Jews during World War II. A lie necessarily starts with one person, or a group, and from there people unknowingly spread it, thinking it is true. But there is nothing further from the truth, and people need to be made aware of this, especially the Mass Media.

Note well, that during the war, there were some 6 million Jews living in the United States of America. It is well known that Jews excel quite well there in prominent positions of business, government, entertainment, news, education, finance, the medical field, etc. With such prominent influence in the Mass Media in the United States during World War II, one must wonder why it is never questioned why they did not use that Media themselves to become vocal about the issue? Why is their silence never questioned?

As for the so-called "silence" of the Church, we only have to look at historical quotes, even from prominent Jews themselves, to realize that the Catholic Church was the most vocal adversary of Hitler at that time:

Albert Einstein noted that to prevent the Holocaust...
"only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing the truth."

Rabbi Herzog, Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem:
"The people of Israel will never forget what His Holiness and his illustrious delegates, inspired by the eternal principles of religion which form the very foundations of true civilization, are doing for us unfortunate brothers and sisters in the most tragic hour of our history, which is living proof of divine Providence in this world."

Rabbi Emilio Zolli, chief rabbi in Rome during German occupation (became Catholic after war):
"no hero in all of history was more militant, more fought against, none more heroic, than Pius XII."

In March of 1998, Myriam Zolli (a psychiatrist who is the daughter Rabbi Israel Zolli) had issued a strong defense of Pope Pius XII. She relates that the Pope was in steady contact with her father, and worked diligently to save Jews from persecution. She recalled her father's prediction that Pope Pius XII would become a scapegoat for the West's silence in the face of the Holocaust. She said that the polemical attacks on the late pontiff were examples of "ignoble and false history," and concluded that in fact "the world's Jewish community owes him a great debt." [From an interview published in a March issue of the Italian, "Il Giornale".

Chaim Weizmann, First president of Israel (1949-52), writing during the war:
"The Holy See is lending its powerful help wherever it can, to mitigate the fate of my persecuted coreligionists."

New York Times, on Christmas eve 1941 & 1942, praised Pope Pius XII as a...
"lonely voice crying out of the silence of a continent."

Moshe Sharett, Israel's 1st foreign minister & 2nd prime minister
Upon meeting Pope Pius XII during the war:
"I told [the Pope] that my first duty was to thank him, and through him, the Catholic Church, on behalf of the Jewish public, for all they had done in various countries to save Jews, to save children, and Jews in general. We are deeply grateful to the Catholic Church."

Jeno Levai, the foremost scholar of the Holocaust in Hungary, said that Pope Pius XII...
"did more than anyone else to halt the dreadful crime and alleviate its consequences."

"From that day on, acting in accordance with the instructions of the Holy See and always in the name of Pius XII, the Nuncio never ceased from intervening against the disposition concerning Jews, and the inhuman character of the anti-Jewish Legislation."

Pope Pius XII, to an official of Hungary:
"We are being beseeched in various quarters to do everything in our power in order that, in this noble and chivalrous nation, the sufferings, already so heavy, endured by a large number of unfortunate people, because of their nationality or race, may not be extended and aggravated. As our Father's heart cannot remain insensitive to these pressing supplications by virtue of our ministry of charity which embraces all men, we address Your Highness personally, appealing to your noble sentiments in full confidence that you will do everything in your power that so many unfortunate people may be spared other afflictions and other sorrows."

Pinchas E. Lapide, Israeli consul in Italy for a number of years:
"The Catholic Church saved more Jewish lives during the war than all the other churches, religious institutions, and rescue organizations put together. Its record stands in startling contrast to the achievements of the International Red Cross and the Western Democracies....The Holy See, the Nuncios and the entire Catholic Church saved some 400,000 Jews from certain death."

[The latter figure has been recognized by the state of Israel with the planting of over 400,000 trees in remembrance of the efforts of the Vatican and the Catholic Church.]

"When an armed force ruled well-nigh omnipotent, and morality was at its lowest ebb, Pius XII commanded none of the former and could only appeal to the latter, in confronting, with bare hands, the full might of evil. A sounding protest, which might turn out to be self-thwarting - or quiet piecemeal rescue? Loud words or prudent deeds? The dilemma must have been sheer agony, for whatever course he chose, horrible consequences were inevitable. Unable to cure the sickness of an entire civilization, and unwilling to bear the brunt of Hitler's fury, the Pope, unlike many far mightier than he, alleviated, relieved, retrieved, appealed, petitioned and saved as best he could by his own lights. Who, but a prophet or a martyr could have done much more?"

Pope Pius XII
"Every word that We addressed to the responsible authorities and every one of Our public declarations had to be seriously weighed and considered in the interest of the persecuted themselves in order to not make their situation unwittingly even more difficult and unbearable."

Mr. & Mrs. Wolfsson of Berlin, a Jewish couple who, after being in prison and concentration camps, took shelter in a German convent of nuns. Pope Pius XII had an audience with them and arranged for them to escape to Spain. Long afterwards the Wolfssons declared:

"None of us wanted the Pope to take an open stand. We were all fugitives, and fugitives do not wish to be pointed at. The Gestapo would have become more excited and would have intensified its inquisitions. If the Pope had protested, Rome would have become the center of attention....We all shared this opinion and this is still our conviction today."