Rabbi Isaac Halevy Herzog and the Holy Father, Pius XII

Dr. Joel Fishman is a Fellow of a research center in Jerusalem.

Joel Fishman
Makor Rishon
21 November 2008

Rabbi Isaac Halevy Herzog and the Holy Father, Pius XII

The November 16, 2008 issue of Makor Rishon contains Ya'akov Bar-On's interview with former Chief Rabbi Israel Meir Lau who recently became Chairman of the Board of Yad Vashem. In this informative interview, Rabbi Lau spoke about the meeting in March 1946 between Chief Rabbi Isaac Halevy Herzog and Pope Pius XII.At this audience, Rabbi Herzog entreated the Pope to make a public declaration to churches, monasteries and Catholic families which had rescued Jewish children to return them to their people. "To this day," Rabbi Lau stated, "no such declaration has been made."

It is clear that the conversation went badly and that for Rabbi Herzog the encounter must have been distasteful. Lau related that, at the conclusion of his audience, the Chief Rabbi asked to be taken directly to the mikve teharah, the ritual immersion bath. A member of his entourage told that "he felt a need to immerse himself in purifying water." Meeting a clergyman of another faith is definitely not a reason for ritual immersion, so Herzog's request was original and extraordinary.Through this silent and symbolic deed, the Chief Rabbi revealed his feelings after being in the presence of Pope Pius XII.

Separately, we have an additional piece of fragmentary information indicating that Rabbi Herzog was profoundly shaken by this failure. During a lecture at the Darkhei No'am yeshiva in Jerusalem, Rabbi Beryl Wein, recounted that, shortly after his visit to Rome, Rabbi Isaac Halevy Herzog came to Chicago. There, Rabbi Herzog publicly wept because he had failed to recover the Jewish children in Catholic institutions.

Rabbi Herzog's efforts have not been generally known. One of the challenges for historians of this generation will be to discover more pieces of the larger story and asses their significance. Hopefully, new information will come to light so that we may learn more about the fateful struggle to recover the Jewish war orphans in Europe after the Holocaust. This was a contest which seems to have been lost.

_________________

Note: Rabbi Lau drew his information from the pamphlet, Mas'a ha-Hazalah(Journey of Rescue), published in Jerusalem in 1947. Yaakov Herzog, the Chief Rabbi's learned son, is believed to be its author. (Prof. Michael Marrus attributed Yitzhak Goldshlag as its editor.) The state of the art contribution on the subject is:Michael R. Marrus, "The Vatican and the Custody of Jewish Child Survivors after the Holocaust," Holocaust and Genocide Studies 21, no. 3 (Winter 2007): 378–403.

Technorati Tag: Rabbi Isaac Halevy Herzog and Pius XII.