Newsgroup: it.politica.pds
Titolo: Papal hopeful is a former Hitler Youth

 
          Papal hopeful is a former Hitler Youth
Justin Sparks, Munich, John Follain and Christopher Morgan, Rome
 
 
 
THE wartime past of a leading German contender to succeed John Paul II may
return to haunt him as cardinals begin voting in the Sistine Chapel tomorrow
to choose a new leader for 1 billion Catholics.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, whose strong defence of Catholic orthodoxy has
earned him a variety of sobriquets — including “the enforcer”, “the panzer
cardinal” and “God’s rottweiler” — is expected to poll around 40 votes in
the first ballot as conservatives rally behind him.
 
 
Although far short of the requisite two-thirds majority of the 115 votes,
this would almost certainly give Ratzinger, 78 yesterday, an early lead in
the voting. Liberals have yet to settle on a rival candidate who could come
close to his tally.
Unknown to many members of the church, however, Ratzinger’s past includes
brief membership of the Hitler Youth movement and wartime service with a
German army anti- aircraft unit.
Although there is no suggestion that he was involved in any atrocities, his
service may be contrasted by opponents with the attitude of John Paul II,
who took part in anti-Nazi theatre performances in his native Poland and in
1986 became the first pope to visit Rome’s synagogue.
“John Paul was hugely appreciated for what he did for and with the Jewish
people,” said Lord Janner, head of the Holocaust Education Trust, who is due
to attend ceremonies today to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of
the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
“If they were to appoint someone who was on the other side in the war, he
would start at a disadvantage, although it wouldn’t mean in the long run he
wouldn’t be equally understanding of the concerns of the Jewish world.”
The son of a rural Bavarian police officer, Ratzinger was six when Hitler
came to power in 1933. His father, also called Joseph, was an anti-Nazi
whose attempts to rein in Hitler’s Brown Shirts forced the family to move
home several times.
In 1937 Ratzinger’s father retired and the family moved to Traunstein, a
staunchly Catholic town in Bavaria close to the Führer’s mountain retreat in
Berchtesgaden. He joined the Hitler Youth aged 14, shortly after membership
was made compulsory in 1941.
He quickly won a dispensation on account of his training at a seminary.
“Ratzinger was only briefly a member of the Hitler Youth and not an
enthusiastic one,” concluded John Allen, his biographer.
Two years later Ratzinger was enrolled in an anti-aircraft unit that
protected a BMW factory making aircraft engines. The workforce included
slaves from Dachau concentration camp.
Ratzinger has insisted he never took part in combat or fired a shot — adding
that his gun was not even loaded — because of a badly infected finger. He
was sent to Hungary, where he set up tank traps and saw Jews being herded to
death camps. He deserted in April 1944 and spent a few weeks in a prisoner
of war camp.
He has since said that although he was opposed to the Nazi regime, any open
resistance would have been futile — comments echoed this weekend by his
elder brother Georg, a retired priest ordained along with the cardinal in
1951.
“Resistance was truly impossible,” Georg Ratzinger said. “Before we were
conscripted, one of our teachers said we should fight and become heroic
Nazis and another told us not to worry as only one soldier in a thousand was
killed. But neither of us ever used a rifle against the enemy.”
Some locals in Traunstein, like Elizabeth Lohner, 84, whose brother-in-law
was sent to Dachau as a conscientious objector, dismiss such suggestions.
“It was possible to resist, and those people set an example for others,” she
said. “The Ratzingers were young and had made a different choice.”
 
 
 
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1572667,00.html
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