Hitler Youth past is denied by Pope on trip hit by row over Holocaust

www.timesonline.co.uk...


The wartime past of Pope Benedict XVI threatened to overwhelm his peace mission to the Holy Land as the Vatican issued a denial that the pontiff had served in the Hitler Youth.

“The Pope has said he never, never was a member of the Hitler Youth, which was a movement of fanatical volunteers,” Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman, said — contradicting statements the Pope has himself made about his involvement with the group. The Vatican denial came as Benedict’s trip sank deeper in controversy and recrimination, eclipsing the message of peace and reconciliation he has been pushing during his pilgrimage

Mr Lombardi said the Pope, as Joseph Ratzinger, a 16-year-old seminarian, served in an auxiliary air defence squadron “that had nothing to do with Nazism or Nazi ideology”. Venting frustration with the relentless focus on the Pope’s war years — a highly sensitive subject on a visit to the Jewish state — Mr Lombardi insisted that the Pope “never was in this movement of young people ideologically linked to Nazism”. The spokesman said that he felt compelled to respond “to the lies written by the media here and internationally”.

However, in a series of interviews in the 1996 book Salt of the Earth, the Pope, then still a cardinal, said that he had been drafted into the Hitler Youth, like so many other young Germans.

When the compulsory Hitler Youth was introduced in 1941, my brother was obliged to join. I was still too young but later, as a seminarian, I was registered in the HY. As soon as I was out of the seminary, I never went back,” he said at the time.

The questions hanging over the wartime service of the Catholic leader have soured his visit to Israel, where Holocaust survivors still bear the tattoos and memories of the Nazi death camps and some have expressed unease at having the German Pope visit.

Many Israelis thought that the Pope’s visit to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial commemorating the murder of six million Jews by the Nazis, lacked the necessary remorse expected from a German with his background.
“All that was asked of you was to say a short, authoritative and moving sentence. All you had to do was to express regret. That’s all we wanted to hear,” the daily Yediot Aharonot said. “After all, it is claimed that you appointed to your Church a priest who denies the Holocaust and as a boy, you were a member of the Hitler Youth.”

The controversy has deepened after the Pope reinstated a British-born bishop who denied the extent of the Holocaust, causing outrage in Israel. The Vatican also asked that the pontiff be allowed to sidestep a Yad Vashem exhibit criticising his wartime predecessor, Pius XII, for allegedly ignoring the plight of Europe’s Jews. The Vatican denies that interpretation of history and is working to declare Pius XII a saint.
While the Pope has insisted that his pilgrimage is non-political, he has been increasingly sucked into the conflict that has mired the region for decades. The pontiff walked out of an interfaith meeting in Jerusalem after a Palestinian cleric called on him to help to stop Israeli “crimes”.

But on a visit to the Dome of the Rock, an Islamic shrine standing on the ruins of the destroyed Jewish temple, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Mohammed Hussein, also urged his visitor to work to end Israeli “aggression” against Palestinians.

“We look forward for your holiness’s effective role in putting an end to the ongoing aggression against our people, our land and our holy sites in Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank,” he said.

The Pope is due to visit a Palestinian refugee camp today, heralding yet more controversy.

Why would the Vatican twist truth and lie? surely they wouldn't do those these things

reply to post by orangeman dave

Why would the Vatican twist truth and lie? surely they wouldn't do those these things

Kind of like your signature, it's politics.

Just for your information: I heard there is a movie coming out in the near future about Cromwell. It is meant to be revisionism of history to show him as being evil. Isn't that nice. The RCC likes to make saints out of people who kill opponents to their agenda of world domination.
I live close to a church that is named after a mass-murderer who they call an counter-reformationist.

Originally posted by jmdewey60
reply to post by orangeman dave

 

Why would the Vatican twist truth and lie? surely they wouldn't do those these things

Kind of like your signature, it's politics.

Just for your information: I heard there is a movie coming out in the near future about Cromwell. It is meant to be revisionism of history to show him as being evil. Isn't that nice. The RCC likes to make saints out of people who kill opponents to their agenda of world domination.
I live close to a church that is named after a mass-murderer who they call an counter-reformationist.

But the Vatican has a way of using media and films to distort the truht. Cromwell stood up for Protestants when they were being burned at the stake and having wedges drove into their legs.

Cromwell seen what they do hence my signature it seems to ring true to this day look at the members of congress that are in the Knights of Columbus and Opus Dei and think about it power!!

Ah yes, Oliver Cromwell, the great servant of Bonnie Scotland. He was indeed a man ahead of his time in subjugating Scotland and forcing it into full political union with England. It did involve some degree of persecution and limiting the religious freedom of the Scots as well as commencing a program of eradicating cultural distinctions between the Scottish and their English betters.

Such a shame the protectorate failed and we had to wait another fifty years before the lasting subjection of Scotland to the proper authority of London.

He'd be spinning in his grave now, if he hadn't been dug up and dismembered that is.

I see that you are sitting on the fence at least , in the defence of an institution I have no loyalties to, if you had been over 8 years old and german during 1941-1945 then you would have been in the Hitler youth. And if you had survived until 1945 then you would have had a rifle in you hand to defend the country or you would have had a bullet in you head. So to judge the pope is to judge the surviving German Male population over the age of 80. At the end of the day the main protaganist here is the third reich and Hitler. Dont try to take the high ground when really your main attack is on the church itself and that you are clearly an angry bigot. Judging from your signature you dont seem well read on your history, Cromwell was hardly a saint and in most courts he is considered to be behind the mass genocide of Irish Catholics, so your idol is really 17th Century Hitler, bravo

[edit on 14/5/09 by On the level]

When the compulsory Hitler Youth was introduced in 1941, my brother was obliged to join. I was still too young but later, as a seminarian, I was registered in the HY. As soon as I was out of the seminary, I never went back,” he said at the time.

Membership was compulsory after 1936. Even before that boys were retunly beaten by member of Hitlers youth if they would not join.

A navy 1 class petty officer on the ship i was on in the navy had been in the Hitlers Youth till his family fled Germany in 1940.
He retired from the US navy in 1974 after 30 years.

He said Hitlers youth was a brain washing program run by the German government. "membership signing up was mandatory" but then there were ways to keep from doing much. (he faked asthma attacks and other health problems)