3. L’impact de l’anticommunisme du Saint-Siège sur les Juifs et la Shoah

Résumé 0

Current historiography often fails to draw connections between the Vatican’s position on communism and how it impacted Catholic attitudes toward Jews on the ground. The article first provides a short overview of how historical writing has evolved regarding the Holy See’s anti-communism. It then investigates how the myth of Judeo-Bolshevism was propagated during the 1920s. The Churches’ antisecularism and desire to re-Christianize society drove their political involvement and backing of conservative parties’ agendas. Special focus will be given to Hungary, where the interplay of anti-communism, antisemitism, and demands for societal re-Christianization first materialized in full force. The article’s second part examines two areas: 1) documents from the Holy See in the 1930s about communism, and 2) the work of institutions including the Secretariat on atheism. It analyzes these materials for antisemitism and their impact on Jews. This paper argues that analyzing two levels of authority and their related languages is key to understanding the Catholic relationship between anti-communism and antisemitism. The first level, formal statements from the Vatican, generally refrained from explicitly tying communism to Jews. But the second level, senior Catholic leaders, priests, and publications, attacked Jews directly. Last but not least, the article explores the evolution of the Vatican’s anti-communism during the war, paying particular attention to Pope Pius XII’s June 29, 1941 address, which has received little attention until now. The address openly refused calls for immediate justice/intervention for those in suffering; it called instead for silence and resignation for the greater good of defeating Bolshevism.