What does Pope Benedict have to do to prove that he is not a Nazi?

There is currently a big controversy over a recent comment made by actress Susan Sarandon about Pope Benedict, whom she called “this Nazi (pope) we have now.”  During an event at the Hamptons Film Festival, Sarandon said she had sent a copy of the book entitled Dead Man Walking to the late Pope John Paul II in hopes that he would elevate the issue of the death penalty in church teaching. To make clear which Pope she was talking about, Sarandon said she sent the book to “The last one. Not this Nazi one we have now.”

Pope Benedict was too young to join the Nazi political party, but he was forced to join the Hitler Youth. He never attended the Hitler Youth meetings.  He was drafted into the Germany army, but he went AWOL near the end of the war.  As Pope, he has bent over backwards to show his support for the Jews, but it’s never enough.

Pope Benedict enters the Auschwitz main camp

On Sunday, May 28, 2006, Pope Benedict XVI visited the main camp at Auschwitz, which was primarily a camp for political prisoners, and also the Auschwitz II camp, aka Birkenau, where stone tablets in the major languages of the world say that 1.5 million people, mostly Jews, were murdered.

The photo above shows the Pope, wearing a white robe and red shoes, as he walks into the Auschwitz main camp through the infamous “Arbeit Macht Frei” gate, followed by his entourage of Catholic bishops and cardinals.  

Goering testified at Nuremberg that neither he nor Hitler knew anything about the mass murder in the concentration camps

Hermann Goering was the number 2 man in the German Reich up until 1943.  At the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal, Goering told the Allied prosecutors that he knew nothing about the killing of 4 million people in the concentration camps. Amazingly, he maintained that Hitler did not know about the Holocaust either.

Goering denied that Germany had a policy to exterminate the Jews.  He claimed that Germany had a policy of emigration, not liquidation of the Jews.  I have given the highlights of Goering’s testimony below.  The important points are highlighted in bold.