

Modern Polish Martyrs: Family To Be Beatified
A married Polish couple, who were killed with their children by the Nazis for hiding a Jewish family, will be declared worthy of veneration by the Catholic Church this year.
A married Polish couple, who were killed with their children by the Nazis for hiding a Jewish family, will be declared worthy of veneration by the Catholic Church this year.
The German refusal is not surprising to the Poles. Yet, the Polish deputy foreign minister criticised the fact that the German response came without leaving room for discussion or negotiation.
The pope signed the decree on their martyrdom on his 86th birthday. It will allow the couple to be beatified, which is the last formal step before potential sainthood.
As a work of serial military fabulism, Ezquerra’s book is an interesting cultural artifact. I laughed more than once at the author’s sheer gall, but Ezquerra himself is an unpleasant figure. A literary liar is bad enough; a Nazi literary liar seems even more obscene.
Pope Pius XII was perfectly aware of the reality of the Shoah, so much so that he created an office within the Secretariat of State specifically dedicated to these issues. Pius XII tried—in vain—to alert the American authorities to what was happening in Europe, but the Americans did not believe it.
We are all Germans now. What started out as the uniqueness of German guilt has mushroomed into an all-encompassing Western guilt, now tied to the legacy of imperialism and the transatlantic slave trade. And apparently, we can never finish atoning for our ‘sins.’