The official Vatican spokesman has said that German-born Pope Benedict was never a member of the Hitler Youth, contradicting quotes from the pontiff that have been aired again during his visit to Israel. Reverend Federico Lombardi said the Pope, whose speech at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial on Monday (local time) was criticised in Israel as too abstract, was a member of anti-aircraft units that many youths were drafted into in the last two years of World War II.
But noting that many media reports during the Pope's Middle East tour had mentioned membership in the Nazi Party's youth wing, Rev. Lombardi told reporters in Jerusalem: "The Pope was never in the Hitler Youth, never, never, never."
In Salt Of The Earth, a 1996 book of autobiographical and religious reflections based on interviews with German journalist Peter Seewald, the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said, however, that he was automatically enrolled into the Hitler Youth.
Asked if he had been a member, he said: "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 also said he served on anti-aircraft batteries and was conscripted into the German infantry late in the war.
Rev. Lombardi did not say why the Vatican had not issued a denial about membership in the Hitler Youth in the past.
Media reports highlighted this issue even before Benedict was elected in 2005, and it regularly appears in articles about him.
The speaker of Israel's parliament, in criticism of the Pope's Yad Vashem speech, described him as a "German who joined the Hitler Youth and ... a person who joined Hitler's army".
The Vatican spokesman made a distinction between convinced Hitler Youth activists and members of the anti-aircraft units, omitting the category of involuntary Hitler Youth members to which Benedict has been quoted as saying he belonged.
"The Hitler Youth was a corps of volunteers, fanatically, ideologically for the Nazis," Rev. Lombardi said.
The anti-aircraft auxiliary corps the Pope was enrolled in towards the end of the war "had absolutely nothing to do with the Hitler Youth and the Nazis and Nazi ideology", he added.
"It is important to say what is true and not to say false things about a very sensitive thing like this," Rev. Lombardi said.
Histories of the air-aircraft auxiliary corps, known as the Flakhelfer, and of the Hitler Youth, describe the auxiliaries as being organised as a unit of the Hitler Youth.
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Source (ABC)
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