Europe
After the war, Pius rejected the concept of “collective guilt”. Pointing to the enormous crimes committed, he demanded punishment of the guilty and stiff penalties for persons guilty of war crimes or crimes against humanity. He supported the Nuremberg trials with documentation, and was repeatedly quoted in the proceedings against Nazi war criminals. One year after the German capitulation, in June 1946 he challenged the Allies to finally close the Nazi concentration camps, which they had kept running to accommodate POWs and DPs. Pius did not protest the expulsion of millions of Germans from their homes by Poland, Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union due to the diplomatic deadlock with those (then) Soviet-bloc nations. His material assistance from the Commissione Di Assistenza reached many. He did not support changes of borders. Throughout his pontificate, he refused to engage in border issues, such as the Polish-German border disputes.
Read more about this topic: Pope Pius XII Foreign Relations After World War II
Famous quotes containing the word europe:
“What helps it now, that Byron bore,
With haughty scorn which mock’d the smart,
Through Europe to the Aetolian shore
The pageant of his bleeding heart?
That thousands counted every groan,
And Europe made his woe her own?”
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)
“I’ve come to think of Europe as a hardcover book, America as the paperback version.”
—Don Delillo (b. 1926)
“The city is recruited from the country. In the year 1805, it is said, every legitimate monarch in Europe was imbecile. The city would have died out, rotted, and exploded, long ago, but that it was reinforced from the fields. It is only country which came to town day before yesterday, that is city and court today.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)