Would excommunications and lightening bolts from the Chair of St. Peter have been more effective in saving their lives?
Issuing such thunderbolts would have done nothing to end the Final Solution and would have severely limited, if not ended altogether, the Church s capacity to save Jewish lives. Pinchas Lipade, Israeli consul in Italy after the war, estimated that the tactics adopted by Pius XII in the face of the Nazis saved over 800,000 Jewish lives during World War II. If that were an exaggeration by half, it would still record more Jewish lives saved by any other entity at the time. It is hard to argue against the effectiveness of the Pope s strategy.
