Holy crap the pope was a memeber of Hitler Youth!

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DeathBatCountry

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Vatican plays down pope's Hitler Youth past
Tue May 12, 2009 10:26pm IST

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The Vatican played down Pope Benedict's teenage membership of the Hitler Youth Tuesday after it was highlighted by Jewish critics of remarks he made about the Holocaust during his continuing visit to Israel.

An official spokesman withdrew an initial statement that the German-born pope had "never, never, never" been in the Hitler Youth after reporters pointed out that Benedict himself had said he was -- in a 1996 book on the then cardinal, Joseph Ratzinger.

Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, revised his statement to say that the pope had been signed up against his will and did not take an active part in the Nazi Youth movement.

"He was enrolled involuntarily into the Hitler Youth but he had no active participation," Lombardi said. "The Hitler Youth is not a significant experience in his life because he was not an active participant. It was just something that was done."

The speaker of Israel's parliament, in some of the strongest criticism of the pope's speech Monday at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, described him as a "German who joined the Hitler Youth and ... a person who joined Hitler's army."

Many Israelis felt the pope, who spoke of never forgetting the "horrific tragedy of the Shoah," could have displayed more personal emotion over his nation's genocide against the Jews.

In "Salt of the Earth," a 1996 book of reflections based on interviews with German journalist Peter Seewald, the pope, now 82, was asked if he had been in the Hitler Youth. He replied:

"At first we weren't, but when the compulsory Hitler Youth was introduced in 1941, my brother was obliged to join. I was still too young, but later, as a seminarian, I was registered in the HY. As soon as I was out of the seminary I never went back."

He said he also served on anti-aircraft batteries and was conscripted into the infantry late in the war. Histories of the time say teenagers conscripted as anti-aircraft auxiliaries, or "Flakhelfer," from 1943 were formally part of the Hitler Youth.
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Why are you so shocked? It was compulsory and had over 8 million members at one point
 
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And his "remarks about the holocaust" didn't happen because he didn't talk about the holocaust. It was when he was asked why didn't he talk about the holocaust, that he got himself in trouble. He said that he couldn't talk about everything all the time. To be honest, I don't know much about Germany since world war two but I am under the impression that the majority of Germans don't talk about it.
 
this all came out before he was pope. they made him pope anyways. the other guys that applied for the position must've really sucked... to many alter boys...
 
I'm less worried about him being with the Hitler youth than I am of him looking like Emperor Palpatine post dark side ascension.
 
The Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial center in Jerusalem doesn't see a need for further investigation of Ratzinger's Hitler Youth membership, said spokeswoman Estee Yaari.

Ephraim Zuroff, the director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Israel, said there two ways of dealing with the issue.

''One way is delving into the subject and emphasizing it. The other is by doing positive things to improve Jewish-Christian relations and German-Jewish relations without necessarily emphasizing his own personal experiences or his past,'' Zuroff said. ''My impression is that he's chosen the latter path.''
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http://bc.edu/research/cjl/meta-elements/texts/cjrelations/topics/new_pope_defied_nazis.htm
 
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What I was going to post prior to this thread getting locked was that I hated having to hear this last time, because people assumed he must have been a nazi when most people don't realize Catholics were very persecuted during the Holocaust as well. Just not to the extent the Jews were.
 
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