Page "Dirk Verhofstadt" Paragraph 5

On September 26, 2008 he released his new book Pius XII and the extermination of the Jews in the Dutch language.

In this book he purports to examine the position of Pacelli, the later Pius XII, towards Adolf Hitler ’ s seizure of power, the downfall of the Catholic Zentrum Party, the Reichskonkordat between Nazi-Germany and the Vatican, the encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge (‘ With Burning Concern ’), paganism, the national-socialist education programs, the ‘ T4-program ’ ( the murder of physically and mentally handicapped persons ), the invasion of Poland, Operation Barbarossa, the Jews in the Netherlands, priest-president Jozef Tiso of Slovakia, the Ustasha in Independent State of Croatia, the deportation of Jews from Rome, the Hungarian Holocaust, the help offered to war criminals, the resistance against Nazism, the alleged refusal of the Church to " give back Jewish " children who had been in hiding, the failures of the Allies, alleged antisemitism after the Holocaust, and the moral question of alleged guilt of the Church and the pope.

According to Tertio, a Belgian Roman Catholic magazine, Verhofstadt's primary motivation to write this book on Pius XII was his support for the elimination of " one dominant religion's power " in Europe ; the journalist of the magazine also point to the fact, that Verhofstadt is not an academic historian, but a journalist and politician.