"60 Minutes" and the Vatican Hater

While so many in the media have found it outrageous that Bill Clinton could be accused of having "blood on his hands" over administration inaction on violence in America, for CBS it is perfectly acceptable -- even worthy of nationwide TV promotion -- to charge a Pope had the blood of six million Holocaust victims on his.

On March 19, CBS’s "60 Minutes" promoted the book "Hitler’s Pope," by British journalist John Cornwell. If an author of Cornwell’s disposition were writing about Bill Clinton, CBS would have no trouble dismissing him as a "Clinton hater," as a vicious tool of a "vast right-wing conspiracy."

Cornwell could be portrayed as a professional "Vatican hater," but CBS reporter Ed Bradley promoted him as a "practicing Catholic." The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights begs to differ, arguing that Cornwell said in 1991 he was "increasingly convinced that human beings were morally, psychologically, and materially better off without a belief in God....As I entered middle age nothing short of a miracle could have shaken these firm convictions."

How CBS finds this unshakeable atheism the thinking of a "practicing Catholic" is truly beyond logic. It is, however, firmly in keeping with Cornwell’s blatant anti-Catholicism. In a previous book exploring whether Pope John Paul I was murdered in 1978, Time noted Cornwell portrayed the Vatican as "a palace of gossipy eunuchs" and "a sea of brilliant bitchery."

No matter. "60 Minutes" wanted to smear the Catholic Church and its Pope. Ed Bradley devoted most of his piece to Cornwell's theories, with backing from Jewish activist Gerhard Reigner of the World Jewish Congress. He dutifully interviewed Vatican expert Peter Gumpel, who said the book was "totally worthless." This, the network would have us believe, is "balance." But CBS gave credence to the utterly false charge that Pope Pius XII didn't lift a finger to prevent the killing of Jews during World War II, and that this happened because he was an anti-Semite who felt the Jews deserved everything they received -- a slander of the highest order.

The low point came when Bradley explained: "Cornwell says that the turning point in his research came when he found a letter written by the future pope when he was a papal representative in Germany after the First World War. In it, he poured scorn on the physical characteristics of a group of Jewish socialists, describing their leader as 'pale, dirty, with drugged eyes, vulgar, repulsive, with a face that is both intelligent and sly.'"

Then Cornwell dragged out the smears: "It was the sort of expression that would--one would find in "Mein Kampf" during the same period." Ed Bradley underlined his emphasis: "So you're saying that what Hitler wrote would have been similar to what Pius XII -- the man who would become Pius XII -- wrote?" Cornwell: "Absolutely."

This was hardly the verdict of Newsweek religion specialist Kenneth Woodward, who reviewed "Hitler's Pope" last fall. He not only called Cornwell's charge of Pope Pius's anti-Semitism "bizarre," he called the book "a classic example of what happens when an ill-equipped journalist assumes the airs of sober scholarship...Errors of fact and ignorance of context appear on all most every page. Cornwell questions [Pope Pius's] every motive, but never doubts those who tell a different story. This is bogus scholarship, filled with nonexistent secrets, aimed to shock."

Woodward explained that Cornwell ignored how Allied planes dropped 88,000 copies of the Pope’s first encyclical over Germany hoping to get his guarded anti-Nazi message to the people. He also noted Cornwell acknowledges that Pius XII put himself and the Catholic Church in danger by secretly aiding a 1940 plot to overthrow Hitler. Do these sound to anyone like the record of "Hitler’s Pope"?

Unfortunately for CBS viewers, this is the second time this year that "60 Minutes" has offered free publicity to sloppy, unsubstantiated authors making wild and reckless charges. On February 13, Lesley Stahl interviewed J. H. Hatfield, whose book "Fortunate Son" made the unproven allegation that George W. Bush was convicted of cocaine use in the 1970s. CBS promoted the segment on its Web site, suggesting Hatfield would explain that his inconvenient conviction for ordering a car bombing shouldn’t hurt his credibility as an author. Although Lesley Stahl was tough on Hatfield, CBS aired the segment just in time for the release of a new edition of Hatfield’s book.

Our national media claim to pride themselves on devotion to solid, substantiated journalism no matter where it leads. But outlets like "60 Minutes" show you that today’s reporters are often more interested in inflicting pain and disrepute on institutions like the Catholic Church , even if "60 Minutes" insults 60 million American Catholics in the process.

PIUS XII AND THE HOLOCAUST, Truth vs. Myth

By: Jesus J. Chao
8/2000

One of the greatest yet, undeservedly controversial figures of the XX Century was without a doubt Pius XII-an extraordinary man who had been revered by many but maligned by others. Consequentially some of his achievements have remained relatively unknown.

He played an important role during the most convulsive and bloody period in the history of mankind. We must find out how Pius XII, as the head of the Catholic Church, coped with the persecution and annihilation of whole ethnic and religious groups by the Nazis. We also must find from historical records an answer to a series of allegations that have been obscuring his legacy. As Pius XII’s biographer, Michael O’Carroll said: “Pius XII remains a personality challenging, enigmatic to the point of mystery, who enriches all those who are satisfied with nothing but the truth.”

HISTORICAL FRAME: THE ROLE OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN EUROPE 1920-1945

There are many questions about Pius XII’s Papacy.

Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli was elected Pope Pius XII on March 2, 1939 on the eve of World War II.
Does Pacelli or does the Catholic Church share any responsibility, by action, or by omission, for the Jewish Holocaust? Was Pius XII the “Hitler’s Pope? Was Pope Pius XII or The Catholic Church anti-Semite? Was Pius XII “silent” during War World II while the Nazis were murdering the Jews, along with Catholics, gypsies and Orthodox Christians? Did the Pope do his best in trying to rescue the innocent victims of the Holocaust? What was the role of the Catholic Church, the United States of America, England, France, the Red Cross, the Jewish organizations and any other religious and international organizations in trying to save the Jewish people from total extermination in the Nazi occupied nations?

Eugenio Pacelli was born in Rome on March 2, 1876, to an upper middle-class family of lawyers, which had been linked with the Papacy for over a century. Of frail health in his youth but with a keen and brilliant intellect, Pacelli excelled in his studies becoming fluent in six languages, including the mastery of German and French. Tall, slender and with great charisma, he was a man of great virtue, piety and spirituality. Pius XII did not fear criticisms, opposition, lamentation or accusation and proved to be a man of great personal courage. With a phenomenal capacity for work, his day stretched from 6:30 a.m. until past midnight with a short siesta at noon.

Pacelli was ordained as a priest on April 2, 1899 and in 1901 entered to work in the Roman Curia at the Secretariat of State. He would serve the Holy See under four Popes, Leo XIII, St. Pius X (1903-1914), Benedict XV (1914-1922) and Pius XI (1922-1939), for a period of 50 years, including his own pontificate (1939-1958). Before long, Fr. Pacelli was chosen to collaborate in the monumental task of the codification of church law. Centuries of church legislation were reduced to the Codex Juris Canonici.

While World War I was ravaging Europe, Pacelli, through his position in the Secretariat of State, was in contact with the innermost circles of the world diplomacy. He was involved in Benedict XV’s international policies in search of the peace and humanitarian relief for the victims of the War.

Bavaria in 1917

In 1917 the young Msgr. Pacelli was consecrated as Archbishop and chosen as Nuncio in Munich to the old court of Bavaria in the hopes that he could “help to end at the earliest moment the terrible struggle that appears increasingly a useless carnage.”

The situation in Bavaria was chaotic. A Soviet Republic was set up which lasted for three bloody weeks, from April 7 to May 1, 1919, until the German troops defeated the Communist revolution. During that interlude, a band of armed hooligans took over the Nuncio’s residence and attempted to ransack it. The Archbishop found them waiting for him upon his return. The armed men demanded the Nuncio’s automobile. However, taken aback by the composure and dignity of Msgr. Pacelli, they fled.

The main task of the Nuncio was the negotiation of a Concordat with the Bavarian government. This accord was signed on March 29, 1924 after Archbishop Pacelli had already been transferred to the Nunciature of Berlin in 1920 where he worked in another Concordat. On August 13, 1929, the Prussian Chamber ratified the Concordat - an extraordinary diplomatic triumph for Pacelli to reach a Concordat with the Weimar Republic, the Protestant Prussia. At the time there were over 40 million Catholics living in Bavaria and Prussia.

The Vatican was recognized as a sovereign state in early 1929

At the beginning of 1929, while Pacelli was in Germany, his brother Francesco, achieved on behalf of the Vatican a very important Concordat with the Italian government that settled the “Roman Question”, ending the fifty-nine year conflict between the Italian State and The Church. As a result, the Vatican city-state was recognized as an independent state and Pius XII was going to be the first Pope since 1846 to begin his pontificate as ruler of a sovereign state. This meant that he could declare neutrality, which he did when the war broke out.

Return to Rome, Pacelli is consecrated Cardinal and appointed Secretary of State.

On December 16, 1929, the Nuncio Pacelli was recalled to Rome and elevated to the Sacred College of Cardinals, and, on February 7, 1930, he was named Secretary of State. His departure from Berlin was a remarkable event. Enthusiastic crowds lined the way with torchlights and a warm speech by Cardinal Bertram who in the name of the whole German episcopate affirmed: “Your Excellency has succeeded in capturing popular affection.” In 1932 Cardinal Pacelli concluded the Concordat with Baden, in 1933 with Austria, and in 1935 with Yugoslavia. The new Cardinal was already recognized and respected worldwide.

It did not take long for Pius XI to confront Benito Mussolini’s Fascist regime. The Encyclical “Non Abbiamo Bisogno” was published in 1931 strongly condemning the Italian Fascist doctrines. Secretary of State Pacelli’s contribution was very important to this Encyclical. When the War broke in 1939, The Holy See tried unsuccessfully to keep Italy out of the War. On June 10, 1940 Mussolini entered the war in the side of Germany.

Hitler takes power over Germany

On January 30, 1933, the German President Hindeburg appointed Adolph Hitler as Chancellor. Since the elections in March 1933 the Nazis were the lawful government of the German people. With the help of the Nationalist allies they had a majority, though small, in the Reichstag. The Enabling Act, passed by the Reichstag, made them rulers with extraordinary powers and without a possibility of change for four years. Very soon, the Nazi regime was to become a brutal totalitarian state destroying the parliamentary democracy. It was the beginning of the end for the Weimar Republic.

According to Fr. Peter Gumbel, S.J., a prestigious historian with open access to the Vatican’s archives; even before the Nazis came to power, the German Bishops had already condemned the National Socialist Movement and prohibited Catholics from being associated with it or voting for it. On January 30, and on the March 5, 1933’s elections, virtually all the Catholics voted for the “Zentrum” Christian party, well known for its opposition to Hitler’s party.

England, France and Italy recognized the new German regime immediately and proceeded to sign what was called the “four countries pact”. Later, on July 20, 1933, the Holy See signed a Concordat with Germany.

Cardinal Pacelli visits United States in 1936

In October 1936, Cardinal Pacelli visited the United States where he stayed for one month and was accompanied in an 8,000-mile trip by his friend, Msgr. Spellman, then the Auxiliary Bishop of Cardinal O’Connor, Archbishop of Boston. The future Pope visited twelve of the sixteen ecclesiastical provinces, talked with seventy-nine bishops, visited religious institutions, colleges, hospitals, seminaries, and received honorary degrees from four universities. Before leaving Cardinal Pacelli had lunch at Hyde Park with President Roosevelt. This was the prelude of a long personal relationship and of cooperation between the Holy See and the U.S. One of the earliest fruits of that friendship was an innovation in American diplomacy. In the first year of the war, Myron C. Taylor was named “Special Representative of the President to the Vatican” in spite of strong Protestant opposition. As soon as Pacelli was elected Pope, he appointed Bishop Spellman as Archbishop of New York and later as a Cardinal. Spellman became a most trusted conduit during the years of collaboration between Pius XII and President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The Third Reich gets ready for war- Hitler annexes Austria

In March 1938, Hitler annexed Austria. When Cardinal Innitzer bade the Führer a public welcome and urged the Austrians to vote for the Anschluss, he was summoned to Rome where he was made to sign a retraction. Pius XI and his Secretary of State left no doubt about their understanding of the rising malady that was going to imperil the very existence of a civilized Judeo-Christian Europe. In Germany thousands of Catholic priests and laymen were imprisoned or taken to concentration camps for opposing the Nazi regime. Among them there were the Jesuit Alfred Delp and the famous Protestant theologian Bonhoffer, a real martyr and witness of the anti-Nazi resistance.

During the few months between his election as Pope and the beginning of the World War II, Pius XII worked fervently to avoid the catastrophe, but not in the spirit of appeasement. The Vatican opposed the 1938 Munich agreement in which Britain and France cowardly sacrificed Czechoslovakia to the Nazis. Also, at the end of the War, The Holy See strongly opposed the Western democracies’ betrayal of the Eastern European nations at the Yalta and Postdam’s accords where half of Europe was delivered unto slavery to the Soviets’ rule as mere spoils of war.

With the invasion of Poland by Germany and the Soviet Union, World War II begins.

The Hitler-Stalin’s pact started War World II with the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. Pius XII strongly denounced Poland’s invasion and proposed a peace plan. The attack was aimed to annihilate the most faithful and loyal Roman Catholic nation in the World. Both dictators shared a pathological hatred against Catholics. The Nazis ravaged half of the country and the Soviets the other. There was a systematic extermination of the intelligentsia. Warsaw, the capital, was targeted to be erased from the map. Ten million Poles fell prey to the Soviets. The Baltic Republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were delivered to Stalin as part of the war booty and annexed to the Soviet Union. The Poles courageously tried to resist the craven double attacks of Nazi Germany and the Communist Soviets. Hundreds of thousands of Poles were sent to Soviet concentration camps. At the Pawiak prison in the heart of the city, the Nazis put 130,000 Poles to death. Not too far away were the infamous death camps of Treblinka, Madjanek and Auschwitz.

NAZI GERMANY AND THE VATICAN SIGN A CONCORDAT IN 1933.

Leaving aside his hatred for The Church, Hitler offered to negotiate a Concordat with the Holy See as a kind of détente while he was trying to consolidate his power grasp.

Pius XII explained in 1937 the reasons for reaching a Concordat with the German regime. “The Church”, said the Pope, “was prompted by the desire to secure the freedom of The Church’s beneficent mission and the salvation of the souls in her care, as well as by the sincere wish to render the German people a service essential for its peaceful development and prosperity. Hence, despite many and grave misgivings, we decided not to withhold our consent, for we wished to spare the faithful in Germany, as far as humanly possible, the trials and difficulties they would have had to face given the circumstances, had the negotiations fallen through.” Vice-Chancellor Franz Von Papen, a Catholic and a former member of the “Zentrum” party, acted on behalf of the German government.

Later, Cardinal Pacelli explained in the Osservatore Romano, the Vatican’s official newspaper: “The Church neither nourished excessive hopes nor intended any approval of the doctrines and tendencies of Nazism. Yet, it must be admitted that, in succeeding years, the Concordat brought certain advantages, or at least prevented greater evils. Though often violated, it did give Catholics a legal ground of defense, a platform from which to resist as long as possible the tide of persecution.” Pacelli told the French diplomat François Charles-Roux, that he never regretted signing the Concordat, for without it, The Church would have had no legal basis for protest against the evils of the regime. His final remark was that he was under no illusion whatsoever: “They will scarcely break all the articles at the same time.” (1)

The Holy See’s assessment of Hitler’s intentions was right on target. As early as July1933, and as soon as Hitler felt he had absolute control of Germany, he began not only the persecution of Jews but also of the Christians. The Nazis infiltrated the German Evangelical Federation (the Lutheran Church), removing those leaders who were opposed to Hitler’s agenda. Many of these ministers, such as the famous Deitrich Bonhoffer, died in concentration camps or prisons.

The persecution was even more intense for the Catholic Church. Gestapo agents attended Mass in order to arrest any priest who dared to criticize the regime. The Nazi’s propaganda machine presented the Catholic clergy as unpatriotic, and by 1940 they had closed down all Catholic schools and most Catholics associations.

WAS PIUS XII THE “HITLER’S POPE”?

The facts negate this vile and often-made baseless allegation by those who are blinded by ignorance and/or anti-Catholic bigotry. Unfortunately, many people of good will, lacking reliable information, had fallen victims to this campaign of character assassination against Pius XII and the Catholic Church.

There was never any ambiguity on the Vatican Secretary of State’s feelings about Hitler’s regime, and the Nazis knew it. When Cardinal Pacelli was elected Pope on March 2, 1939, the next day the Berlin Morgenpost (the Nazi party’s newspaper) wrote: “The election of Cardinal Pacelli is not accepted with favor in Germany because he was always opposed to Nazism and practically determined the policies of the Vatican under his predecessor.” (2)

According to Mother Pasqualina Lehner, his close collaborator, Nuncio Pacelli said of Hitler: “This man is completely carried away; everything he says and writes has the mark of his egocentrism; this man is capable of trampling on corpses and eliminating anything that is an obstacle. I cannot understand how there are so many people in Germany who do not understand him, and cannot draw conclusions from what he says or writes. Has any of them even read his horrifying ‘Mein Kampf’?” (3)

During Pacelli’s twelve years as Apostolic Nuncio in Germany (1917-29), he made 44 public speeches and in 40 of these attacked the fundamental tenets of the Communism and National Socialism. Already in April 1933, as Secretary of State of Pope Pius XI, he sent an urgent request to the new Nazi government “not to let it be influenced by anti-Semitic aims.”

On April 28, 1935, at Lourdes, where he went as the Pope Legate, Pacelli said to 250,000 pilgrims: “They (the Nazis) are in reality only miserable plagiarists who dress up old errors with new tinsel. It does not make any difference whether they flock to the banners of social revolution, whether they are guided by a false conception of the world of life, or whether they are possessed by the superstition of a race and blood cult.” (4) Certainly, these were very strong words coming from such a consummated diplomat.

Hitler’s discussions with his closest collaborators, as well as the diaries and decrees by Goebbles, Bormann, Rosenberg and Himmler, denote that from the beginning Hitler and his followers were motivated by a pathological hatred toward the Catholic Church. All those who did not adhere unconditionally to their way of thinking and acting were considered and treated as enemies, who had to be annihilated, said Fr.Gumpel.

As Jewish historian Dr. Joseph L. Litchen wrote in the Anti-Defamation Bulletin for October, in 1958, commenting on Pius XII, “the new Vicar of Christ” said Litchen, “showed no softening after his election toward Hitler’s brutal policies; Pius the Pope was the same as Pacelli the priest.” (5)

WAS PIUS XII OR THE CATHOLIC CHURCH ANTI-SEMITE?

Pius XII had a deep knowledge of Germany where he served for 13 years as Papal Nuncio during Pope Benedictus XV and Pius XI. No other world leader at that time was more aware than him of the evil nature of Nazism and Communism, the two ideologies that were to bring rivers of blood to mankind. A consummated and experienced diplomat, Pacelli was well groomed by Pius XI to be his successor. There was an extraordinary spiritual and ideological communion between these two great Popes; they both were of one mind. Pacelli dedicated his life to the service of God, The Church, and mankind, through five decades of indefatigable struggle for world peace.

In 1928 the Holy Office had already condemned anti-Semitism. On September 6, 1938, Pius XI told a group of Belgian pilgrims: “Through Christ and in Christ, we are spiritual descendants of Abraham.” Incontrovertible facts prove the extraordinary efforts that Pius XI, Pius XII, and the Catholic Church made in saving the Jews during the Holocaust.

As early as 1935, Cardinal Pacelli describes Nazism as diabolical

Before becoming Pope, and as early as 1935, Pius XII had described as “diabolical” the new German
Regime in conversations with the French Ambassador to the Holy See, Charles-Roux, while the rest of the world were willingly accepting Hitler’s power grasp upon the German government. The Duke of Windsor visited Hitler and Lloyd George even went so far as to call him the “greatest living German”! In the U.S. there were also people in high positions who were openly sympathizers of Hitler, such as Henry Ford I, who was also a strong anti-Semitic.

In 1937, Pius XI published the Encyclical “Mit Brennender Sorge,” stating that Catholics must never be anti-Semite.

On March 14, 1937, before it was fashionable to denounce the German Führer as a villain and long before the creation of the concentration camps and the gas chambers, Pius XI, ably seconded by his Secretary of State, wrote the Encyclical “Mit Brennender Sorge” meaning “with burning anxiety”. It dealt with the nazi threat to racial minorities and specifically the Jews addressing the Encyclical directly to the German people. The Encyclical exhorted that Catholics must never be anti-Semitic because “we are all Semites spiritually” and ought to hold the Jewish people in high regard accordingly. The Encyclical exposed to the world the III Reich’s persecution of the Catholic Church as well as the incompatibility between the principles of the National Socialism and those of the Catholic faith. The German government prohibited the entrance of the Encyclical to the country and it became necessary to smuggle it into Germany under the nose of the ruthless Gestapo. On Sunday March 21, The Encyclical was read from 12,000 Catholic pulpits across Germany. As a result, the Nazi’s campaign of innuendoes against The Church as well as the persecution of Catholics worsened.

The German Catholic hierarchy thanked Pope Pius XI for the letter, which strongly condemned both, racism and anti-Semitism. The Pope pointed to Cardinal Pacelli saying that it was he who had been responsible for the Encyclical. It was the Secretary of State, who asked the German Cardinal Faulhaber to submit a draft text, which he amended carefully. Pacelli also bore the burden of its defense when the Encyclical was the subject of strong German diplomatic protests; he did so personally, not by delegation.

The Vatican condemns Communism with the Encyclical “Divini Redemptori” in 1937

Pius XI and his Secretary of State were following the Magisterium of the Church when they published on March 19, 1937, the Encyclical “Divini Redemptori.” It was a most comprehensive and devastating condemnation of Communism as “intrinsically perverse.” Already Pius IX, as early as 1846, pronounced in the Encyclical “Qui pluribus,” a solemn condemnation of Communism “that infamous doctrine which is absolutely contrary to natural law itself, and if once adopted would utterly destroy the rights, the property and possessions of all men, and even society itself.” Pope Leo XIII in his Encyclical “Quod apostolici muneri,” defined communism as “the fatal plague that insinuates itself into the very marrow of human society only to bring about its ruin.” Pius XI and Pius XII were highly active, energetic and zealous opponents of totalitarianism and oppression in every form-for them, National Socialism and Communism were both intrinsically evil.

Pope Pius XII’s first Encyclical, “Summi Pontificatus”, in 1939, attacks Nazism and Communism

Pius XII’s first encyclical on October 27, 1939, “Summi Pontificatus” reiterated the attack on the German regime and the Gestapo was ordered to prevent its distribution. In it, the Pope declared his position “against exacerbated nationalism, the idolatry of the state, totalitarianism, racism, the cult of brutal force, contempt of international agreements”, against all the characteristics of Hitler’s political system; he laid the responsibility for the scourge of the war on these aberrations. The Allies airdropped 88,000 copies of the Encyclical over Germany.

WERE PIUS XII AND THE CHURCH REALLY SILENT DURING THE HOLOCAUST?

The Pope was well aware that any public denunciation against Hitler would make things even worse for the Jews. His polices were aimed at saving the Jews. In fact, that was the same policy followed by the International Red Cross and the World Council of Churches both based in Geneva as well as the one recommended by most of the International Jewish organizations involved in the rescue operations of Jews. Gerhart Riegner, the representative of the World Jewish Congress in Geneva, accepted the validity of this policy –preferring action rather than words, as the common goal.

Historian Fr. W. Saunders has stated that we must remember that any defiance of the Nazi regime meant immediate and severe retaliation. Jean Bernard, Catholic Bishop of Luxembourg, who was detained at Dachau, later wrote: “The detained priests trembled every time news reached us of some protest by a religious authority, but particularly by the Vatican. We all had the impression that our warders made us atone heavily for the fury these protest evoke (on them.)” (6)

Fr. Robert A.Graham, S.J., has said that: “it may surprise the contemporary generation to learn that the local Jewish communities and the world Jewish bodies did not, for the most part, urge the Pope to speak out. Their objective was far more concrete and down-to-earth… Appeals to world opinion, high-sounding though it may appear, would have seemed cheap and trivial gestures to those engaged in rescue work…The need to refrain from provocative public statements at such a delicate moments was fully recognized in Jewish circles.” (7)

When an Italian priest, Fr. Scavizzi, a chaplain on a military train travelling through Poland, told the Pope of the conditions in the camps, especially of the Jews, the Holy Father broke down and wept. Bitterly, Pius XII confided to him: “After many tears and many prayers I have judged that a protest of mine not only would fail to help anyone, but would create even more fury against the Jews, multiplying acts of cruelty. Perhaps my solemn protest would have earned me praise from the civilized world, but it would also have brought more implacable persecution of the Jews… I love the Jews.” (8)

Massive onslaught of Jews and Catholics after Dutch Bishops publicly protested Jewish deportations

The Pope knew first hand of the results of open confrontation with the Nazis. The Catholic clergy of Holland protested more loudly, and frequently against Jewish persecutions than the Catholic hierarchy of any other Nazi-occupied country. The end result was that over 110,000, or 80 percent of all the Jews, were deported to death camps, even more, in comparison, than anywhere else in the West. The reprisal included also thousands of Catholics, including the distinguished Catholic Carmelite philosopher Edith Stein, a converted Jew. In fact, Pius XII had his own even stronger protest ready to be published that very evening in the L’Osservatore Romano. But he had the draft burnt saying: “If the protest of the Catholic Bishops has cost the lives of 40,000 people, my intervention would take at least 200,000 to their deaths.” (9) Without an army to support him, the struggle was fought through diplomatic and humanitarian channels, and through covert actions, that risked the neutral status of the Vatican State.

The Protestant Dutch Reformed Church refrained from protesting openly the Nazi’s persecution of the Jews, as a result, the lives of the Jews converted to the Reformed Church were spared, and none was deported to the concentration camps. In Germany, most of the Protestants not only supported Hitler, but many of them became part of the political German Protestant church, the so-called “German Christians”, under a “Bishop of the Reich” imposed by the Nazis. The German authorities had repeatedly complained to the Papal Nuncio that “the Catholic clergy were unwilling or slow to celebrate their military victories, whereas the Protestant ministers did so.” Nevertheless a small minority of anti-Nazis Protestants existed under the leadership of the great evangelical theologians, Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as well as the hero of the German resistance, the pastor of Dahlem, Rev. Martin Niemoller.

With the existing proven facts, can in all consciousness, truly be said that Pope Pius XII remained silent throughout WWII while millions of Jews and gentiles were exterminated? I do not think so. The Pope was not silent during WWII, he was not even neutral-he was on the Allies’ side.

THE ALLIES WERE SLOW IN RESPONDING TO THE JEW’S PLEAS.

Unfortunately, anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism exist even today. Certainly there was anti-Semitism at that time all around the world, but it was not mainly from Catholics and much less from the Catholic Church. Germany was not alone; there was plenty of anti-Semitism in the highest spheres of the Allied governments.

Jewish historian Richard Breitman has written five books, one on the Holocaust and another on Nazism. He is, up to this day, the only person authorized to study the OSS secret documents of U.S. espionage during WWII. The Italian newspaper “Corriere della Sera.” interviewed him on June 29, 2000. In the article, Breitman not only confirms the role played by Pius XII in defending and safeguarding the persecuted during the Nazi regime but he also found “the Allied silence on the Holocaust surprising. Their first testimonies are from the end of 1942…” He also remarked that the documents denoted how the Nazis considered that the Vatican was in the side of the Allies. (10)

The reaction of the US, French and British governments at that time, and even later, when knowledge of the concentration camps existed, were certainly not in solidarity for the persecuted Jews. In the middle of the genocide, Britain closed the doors of Palestine to the Jews. The U.S. government accepted a total of 10,000-15,000 Jewish refugees throughout the war – a truly scandalous statistic.

Jewish leaders ask Allies to bomb railway lines to concentration camps

The posturing with strong public declarations followed by the empty deeds of the allied leaders did not save any Jewish lives. On June 6, 1944, Dr. Chaim Weizmann, the well known Zionist leader, later president of Israel, proposed to the British Minister, Anthony Eden, that the railway line to Auschwitz should be bombed. The British, after consultation, denied the request alleging the “great technical difficulties involved.” As the Jews died by the thousands daily, why was there not a rescue plan on the Allied side to counter the Nazi machinery of extermination? The Allies had already dropped tens of thousands of bombs on German cities. Why was that simple request which would have saved hundreds of thousands Jews and Christians refused? Later on, J.F. Martin, chief private secretary of Winston Churchill, explained “the great technical difficulties.” In a letter to Dr. Weizmann he wrote that they had discussed the matter with the Soviets and that the Soviets vetoed it.

When the evacuation of over 60,000 Jews from Bulgaria was suggested, Eden replied that the whole problem with the Jews was very difficult. “If we do that (said Eden) then the Jews of the world will be wanting us to make similar offers in Poland and Germany.” (11)

In 1943, there was a memorandum from British embassy sent to the U.S. State Department expressing their fear that the Germans may “change over from a policy of extermination to one of extrusion, and aim, as they did before the war, at embarrassing other countries by flooding them with refugees.” The State Department blocked, with Roosevelt’s connivance, efforts in Congress to help the Jewish refugees on their way to Palestine. (12)

The Jews depended on the success of The Catholic Church’s lone efforts -they had no other friends on the side of the Allies.

Franco offers refuge in Spain to persecuted Jews.

The reaction of the Western democracies was in stark contrast with that of “Fascist” Spain. General Franco’s regime, even though his country was devastated and impoverished after a bloody civil war, recognized all the Sephardic Jews living in the Nazi occupied territories as Spanish citizens. That measure allowed them to return to Spain- the beloved Sepharad, land of their ancestors where they lived a golden age more than five centuries ago. Franco’s government also collaborated with the Holy See and several South American countries in providing false passports for Jews trying to flee the Nazi scourge. More than 50,000 Jews were saved thanks to the Spanish government actions. When the Nazis discovered the covert operation, some of the Latin American countries retracted from accepting the validity of the faked passports. The Vatican, on January 24, 1944, interceded with the Latin American governments asking them to recognize the passports “no matter how illegally obtained”, and the humanitarian operation proceeded. Brazil gave 3,000 enter visas. Paraguay, Chile and others South American countries were also very receptive to the Pope’s pleas in favor of the Jews.

THE FORGOTTEN VICTIMS OF THE HOLOCAUST. The persecution of Catholics.

Without belittling the unspeakable horrors suffered by Jews, we should not ignore the fact that millions of Catholics were also victims of the Holocaust, as were gypsies, homosexuals, and in much less scale, Orthodox and Protestants. Poland had the biggest Jewish population in Europe and was the only country where there was a mandatory death penalty for those hiding Jews. Many, who were caught sheltering Jews, were killed in a gruesome manner, such as being publicly burned as a warning to others.

Although not every Catholic was a victim of the Nazis, it is certain that all the Jews were victims of Hitler’s hatred. Hitler’s “Final Solution” was targeted to the total extermination of the Jewish race-an abhorrent and unforgivable crime against humanity.

We should keep in mind the prevailing situation of complete despair throughout Europe at the beginning of the forties. The Germans already occupied Poland, France, Belgium, Holland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, and Norway; and the invasion of the Soviet Union was going on while England was being bombed daily in preparation for the eventual invasion. The United States stayed out of the war until December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked the American naval base in Pearl Harbor. The neutral nations, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Sweden and the Vatican, were the only temporarily remaining free territories. Without any military force, all the Pope had was his powerful moral pulpit to encounter the all powerful and victorious German troops. Although the Vatican was neutral, The Church and its flock were being brutally attacked and decimated in the Nazi’s occupied countries.

According to historian William J. O’Malley, S.J., “to the genocide of six millions Jews we have to add nine to ten millions Slavic victims (Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Yugoslavs) who were eliminated-not in war, not as saboteurs, not as guerrillas, but sorely because they were Slavic.” The Nazi’s genocide, based on race, should also include half a million gypsies who, just as the Slavs, were executed because they were not member of the superior race, the Aryans. The Nazis in Poland alone murdered more than 3 million Catholics together with over 3 million Jews. (13)

About 2,800 clergymen were interned between 1940 and 1945, at Dachau, the infamous Nazi concentration camp. Among them, 2,579 were Catholic clergymen, 109 Protestants, 30 orthodox and two Moslem clergymen. The Catholics came from 38 nations; 1,780 were Polish, 447 German and Austrian, 109 Czech and Slovaks, 50 Yugoslavs, 156 French, 63 Dutch. The auxiliary Polish Bishop of Wladislava died of typhus while imprisoned at Dachau. At least 1034 died in the camp, some victims of medical experimentation by the infamous Dr. Rascher. In 1940, 800 priests died in Buchenwald, 1,200 in 1942 and 3,000 in 1943. And that was just in Buchenwald.

As O’Malley, pointed out, “That figure, surprising as it might be, does not include the clergy or nuns who were shot, beheaded or tortured to death in squares and alleys and jails all over Europe…In France, in February 1944, the Gestapo had arrested 162 priests, of whom 123 were shot or decapitated before ever reaching any camp. According to the International Tribunal at Nuremburg, 780 priests died of exhaustion at Mauthausen and 300 at Sachsenhausen, and there were hundreds of other camps in the network. Nor does the total figure of 2,771 take into consideration that one-quarter to one-third of those shipped to any camps often arrived dead.” (14)

Polish Cardinal Stephan Wyszynski, in his prison memoirs, notes that he was the only member of his ordination class who escaped the concentration camps; seven died in Dachau; of the six who survived the concentrations camps, several soon died as the result of torture and medical experimentation. It is estimated that the Nazis imprisoned half of the Polish clergy.

The Pope not only had to answer to the pleas from the Jews, but also to those from his own flock. Quite an extraordinary burden to bear. In March 1942 a shattering letter from the Polish Archbishop Sapieha arrived to the Vatican: “Our condition is in truth most tragic, he wrote to the Pope, deprived of almost all human rights, delivered to the cruelty of men lacking for the most part any human sentiment, we live continuously under horrible terror in constant danger of losing everything, either by trying to escape or by deportation, or incarceration in the so-called concentration camps, from which few come out alive. In these camps thousands and thousands of our brothers are held, without any judicial trial, people wholly innocent. Among them there are many priests, secular and religious…to these things the typhus is now added spreading more and more daily.” (15)

Catholic martyrdom was rich in examples of courage.

Catholic martyrdom was rich in examples of courage. When Msgr. Andrew Szeptyckyi was consecrated as Archbishop of Lwow of the Ruthenians, he asked the Pope during the ceremony, an explicit vocation for martyrdom. With that idea he approached Himmler personally on behalf of the Jews; their fate rent his noble spirit. There were many Catholics such as Oskar Schindler and St. Maximilian Kolbe who in brotherly love risked and even offered their own lives in behalf of the Jews.

Hitler, a self-proclaimed pagan, considered the Catholic Church on par with the Jews, as his mortal enemies.

It is documented that Hitler planned for the total obliteration of the Church. For Hitler Jews and Christians were the sources of every evil. “The heaviest blow to humanity” he once said, “was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity’s illegitimate child. Both are inventions of Jews.” In his diabolical mind, the extermination of the Jews would be needed for victory. Hitler designed and implemented a plan at Warthegau, in western Poland, to extirpate the Catholic and the Protestant churches from Europe. There is documentation that Count Von Galen, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Munster, who was an outspoken critic of the racial and eugenic policies of the Nazis, if it were not for the prominence and prestige of his position, would have been annihilated

In 1942, Pius XII told Fr. Paolo Dezza, rector of the Gregorian University, “They want to destroy the Church and crush it as a toad…there will be no place for the Pope in the new Europe, they say that I am going to America, I have no fear and I shall remain here.” (16) Among the many ideological fundaments shared by the Nazis and the Communist was the hatred for religion, specially the Catholic Church. The only form of worship allowed was the cult to the leader of the totalitarian state. Hungarian Cardinal Mindszenty went from a Nazi jail to a Communist jail after the war. There was no respite for Catholics after the War; in fact, the persecution of Catholics increased in the Soviet occupied countries.

In occupied Poland, Arthur Greiser was in charge of the annihilation of the Catholic Church…

Arthur Greiser was in charge of the annihilation of the Catholic Church and the creation of a national German Church loyal to the Führer in Warthegau. The final goal was the complete Germanization of that Polish region, to which end Greiser worked without respite. Bishops were driven out, priests killed or imprisoned. Within a few years one third of the pre-war 2,000 priests were dead and 700 imprisoned; seminaries were closed, the Catholic press and voluntary associations suppressed. The Holy See found itself desperately fighting in two fronts, for the survival of the Jews and for the survival of his own flock. The Church in a beleaguered Poland was being bled to death by the two great scourges of humanity, the Nazis and Communists. In Poland three million Catholics went to their death along with three million Jews at the Nazi’s concentration camps in addition to the millions murdered by the Soviets.

It is documented that, according to Robert M.W. Kempner, former U.S. Deputy Chief of Counsel at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, among the measures scheduled to follow upon Hitler’s victory were the following: “every Catholic State must select its own Pope”…(and) “the Bishop of Muenster will go before the firing squad one day.” Every propaganda move by the Catholic Church against Hitler’s Reich would have been not only “provoking suicide”, but would have hastened the execution of still more Jews and Priests. These and similar threats appeared in the diary of Alfred Rosenberg, the nazi theoretician of racial purity, and in Hitler’s Table Talk.

Millions of Catholics were victims first of the Nazis and later of the Communists.

Most Catholics were anti-Nazi and anti-Communist. We should not forget “the fact that hundreds of thousands of anti-Nazis from communist occupied territories as Poland, the Baltic States and Bessarabia, were sent by Moscow to German concentration camps, while hundreds of thousands of anti-Stalinists refugees living in Nazis territories were sent by Berlin to the Soviet concentration camps” as part of the Stalin / Hitler’s diabolical pact. Shamefully, the Western democracies did the same after WWII; thousands of anti-Communists who fled the Soviet Union during the war were forcedly deported to the Soviet concentration camps, the dreadful gulags. Entire families opted for suicide rather than deportation.

THE RESCUE OF THE JEWS. The Holy See made every possible effort to help the Jews.

Jewish population in Europe as the war begins

When Hitler came to power, about 6 million Jews lived in Central and Western Europe and 3 million inside the Soviet Union. About 600,000 were German, 180,000 Austrian, 270,000 French, 340,000 British, 150,000 Dutch, 360,000 Checks, 500,000 Hungarian, and 3 ½ million Poles. The first attacks against the German Jews started in March 1933 by way of several anti-Semite laws. Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud and many other important scientists were among the 100,000 Jews who were able to escape between 1933 and 1939.

Israel Honors Pius XII

Israeli senior diplomat and now Orthodox Jewish Rabbi, Pinchas Lapide, with access to Yad Vashem’s archives, has stated in his book, “Three Popes and the Jews”, that “The Catholic Church relief and rescue program under the pontificate of Pius XII was instrumental in saving the lives of as many as 860,000 Jews from certain death at Nazi’s hands. That was more than all other Churches, religious institutions and international rescue organizations put together.” (17) The Israelis recognized the lives saved by planting a forest, in commemoration, of as many trees in the Negeb, SE of Jerusalem. This forest was shown to Pope Paul VI during his first state visit to Israel.

At the end of the War, the World Jewish Congress, the American Jewish Committee, Albert Einstein, and many other prominent Jewish leaders expressed their deep gratitude toward Pius XII and the Catholic Church. On the death of Pius XII (1958), Golda Meir, the Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs, gave a heartfelt eulogy for the Pope before the UN Assembly.

In his scholar book, “The Last Three Popes and the Jews”, Lapide said that Pius XII was one of the few world leaders outside the Jewry itself who was quick to recognize the danger of Nazism. Lapide demonstrates convincingly the consistent and active protection provided to the Jews in Europe by the papacy. In Lapide’s words:

“When armed force ruled well-nigh omnipotent, and morality was at its lowest ebb, Pius XI commanded non of the former and could only appeal to the latter, in confronting with bare hands, the full might of evil.
A sounding protest, which might turn out to be self-thwarting-or quiet piecemeal rescue? Loud words- or prudent deeds? The dilemma must have been sheer agony, for whichever course he chose horrible consequences were inevitable. Unable to cure the sickness of an entire civilization, and unwilling to bear the brunt of Hitler’s fury, the Pope, unlike many far mightier than he, alleviated, relieved, appealed, petitioned-and saved as most efficient he could by his own lights.
Who, but a prophet or a martyr could have done much more?
The Talmud teaches us that ‘whoever preserves one life, it is accounted to him by Scripture as if he had preserved a whole world.’
If this is true-and it is as true as that of most Jewish of tenets, the sanctity of human life-then Pius XII deserves that forest in Judean hills, which kindly people of Israel proposed for him in October 1958. A memorial forest with 860,000 trees.” (Emphasis added. “Three Popes and the Jews.” pp.267-269)

Germany

Did not take long for the Nazis to violate the Concordat accords, Catholics schools and associations were closed as soon as The Church vocally opposed the racist and anti-Semite policies of the III Reich. Bishop von Galen of Munich exhorted the faithful to resist the pagan racism of the Nazi regime. Msgr. Walter Adolph, Vicar-General of the diocese of Berlin brought to light unpublished correspondence of Pius XII with Bishop (later Cardinal) von Pressing of Berlin in which the Pope encouraged the German clergy in their protest against every sort of inhumanity. Many German Catholic prelates were murdered as a result of their criticism for the treatment of Jews. Msgr. Bernhard Lichtenberg, dean of St. Hedwig’s Cathedral in Berlin, asked on his congregation to pray “for Jews and inmates in concentration camps” after the pogroms of November 1938. He was arrested in 1942 and died while in route to Dachau, the infamous concentration camp.

The German and Austrian clergy at Dachau (447) were there for realizing that being a good Christian and a good Nazi were as irreconcilable as compassion and sadism. They had run underground presses and underground railways to rescue retarded children from the euthanasia laws (the other abhorrent Nazi crime) and Jews from deportation.

Italy

Dr. Joseph L. Lichten, wrote in 1963 a monograph entitled “A Question of Judgement: Pius XII and the Jews”, while serving as director of the Intercultural Affairs Department for the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. Dr. Lichten revealed how the Holy See and the Jewish organizations worked together to save Jewish lives. He cites that during the German occupation of Italy, The Church, following the Pope’s instructions, hid and fed thousands of Jews in Vatican City and in Castel Gandolfo (the papal Summer residence outside Rome), as well as in various churches and convents. As a result of this, the Jews in Italy had a much higher survival rate than in other of the nazi occupied countries. There were about 50,000 Jews in Italy in 1939. Dr. Litchen recorded that at the end of the war the Nazis took only 8,000 Jews from Italy. Miraculously, during the whole period of the mass hiding of the Jews, the Germans only raided the Church’s refuges twice capturing only a handful of people.

In 1943,The Pope publicly denounced the first mass arrest of Italian Jews in an article in L’Osservatore Roman and protested their internment and the confiscation of their properties.

In August 1943, Pius XII received a plea from the World Jewish Congress to try to persuade the Italian authorities to release 20,000 Jewish refugees from internment in Northern Italy. They wrote, “Our terror-stricken brethren look to Your Holiness as the only hope for saving them from persecution and death”. In September 1943, A.L. Easterman on behalf of the WJC reported to the Apostolic Delegate in London that the efforts of the Holy See on behalf of the Jews had been successful. He wrote, “I feel sure that the effort of your Grace, and of the Holy See have brought about this fortunate result, and I should like to express to the Holy See and yourself the warmest thanks of the World Jewish Congress.”

Around the same time, the German Chief of Police in Rome threatened to send about 200 Jews to the Russian front unless they produced within 36 hours 50 Kg of gold or the equivalent in currency. The Chief Rabbi approached the Holy See, who immediately placed at the Rabbi’s disposal the 15 Kg. of gold they needed to complete the ransom. More than half of the Jews in Rome were sheltered in ecclesiastical buildings opened on the express instructions of Pius XII himself. The Vatican Secretariat of State saved more Jews by faking their baptisms and sending lists of “baptized” Jews to the German Ambassador, Weizsacker, so that they could be evacuated. Many of those saved were helped to escape by the massive issuing of Vatican passports.

Indeed, Adolph Eichman, the Nazi butcher in charge of the deportation of the Jews in Italy, noted in his diary The Church’s role in the rescuing of Jews. The German Ambassador at the Vatican, Ernst von Weizsacker, a humane man who did not approve of the genocide, was receptive to the Holy See’s complaints. According to Eichman, “the objections given and the excessive delay in the steps necessary to complete the implementation of the operation, resulted in a great part of the Italian Jews being able to hide and escape capture.”

The Chief Rabbi in Rome during the German occupation, Israel Zolli, once said, “No hero in history was more militant, more fought against, none more heroic, than Pius XII.” In fact, Zolli was so moved by Pius XII, with whom he worked closely in the saving of Jewish lives, that he converted to Catholicism after the war and took the Pope’s own name, Eugenio, as his baptismal name.

Rome under German occupation

At the beginning of 1944 Rome had already been under German control for four months. More than six months were yet to pass before the German troops would retreat to the North. The churches, seminaries, and convents, even those solemnly bound to the cloister were opened to all categories of refugees, regardless of political leanings, religion or race (the dispensation was granted by the Pope). More than 180 Church’s facilities were used in the rescue effort. They harbored Jews, military officers and members of the resistance. Of the refugees hidden at Castel Gandolfo more than 3,000 were Jews. In the convent of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Sion there was a group of 200 Jewish men and women for several months. In the Roman Seminary of St. John Lateran nearly the entire National Committee of Liberation was hidden-only a few paces from the headquarters of the Gestapo police. In a raid into the extra-territorial Basilica of St. Paul’s Out-side the Walls; the neo-Fascist police found that the monastery was a shelter for the very people they were seeking. During the German occupation of Rome, more than half of the Jewish population found refuge in The Church’s facilities, including the Vatican itself.

The Vatican City was in imminent risk of being occupied by the German troops. Spain and Brazil offered refuge to the Pope, but the Pope adamantly refused any possibility of abandoning Rome. As Cardinal Tisserant said: ”Everyone knew that the Pope was ready to go to a concentration camp.” Speaking to the College of Cardinals on February 9, 1944, when the fate of Rome was in question, Pius XII surely manifested his courage:

“There is no need to declare that we, whatever may happen, will never leave the Apostolic See or our beloved Rome. We shall yield only to violence. We do not have anxiety for our lot, but we do for yours, Venerable Brothers. Therefore we dispense you from your obligation to share our fate. Each of you is free to do as he thinks most efficient for his own safety.” (18)

German troops advance towards St. Peter Square

As German troops advanced towards St Peter Square, the Pope ordered the Papal Swiss Guards to move to the white demarcation line with their arms ready while machine guns posts were placed on high alert in the surrounding Vatican buildings. The German troops retreated.

Romania

The Vatican was thoroughly aware of the Nazi’s ruthlessness and intransigence, especially toward the Jews, and intensified its diplomatic maneuvers in favor of the Jews in Romania, Slovakia and Hungary. The Nuncio in Bucharest, Msgr. Andreas Cassulo, had a close relationship of trust with the Chief Rabbi, Dr. Alexander Shafran and the Jewish community. An exodus operation of orphan Jews under the age of 16 was under way with the Nuncio’s tutelage. Thanks to the Holy See’s intervention the age of those allowed to leave was made to include those until the age of 16 years instead of until the age of 12. In cooperation with Jewish organizations, the aim was to send the children through Turkey to Palestine. On July 11, 1944 the first Rumanian refugee ship arrived in Istanbul carrying 250 children from Costanza.

On May 25, 1945, Nuncio Cassulo transmitted to the Holy See two messages from Rabbi Shafran, in one he referred to Cassulo: “The high moral authority of the Nuncio saved us, he prevailed so that the deportation should not take place. It was he who obtained the repatriation of all the Jews from Transnystria, but for the Jewish orphans in particular he was a loving father. With deep satisfaction he did inform me that they might leave for the Holy Land.” (19)

In his message to the Pope, Rabbi Shafran “expressed his gratitude for what has been done for him and for the Jewish community. Now he has begged me (the Nuncio) to convey to the Holy Father his feelings of thankfulness for the generous aid granted to prisoners in concentration camps on the occasion of the Christmas festivities. At the same time he told me he had written to Jerusalem, to the Chief Rabbi Herzog, and also elsewhere, in America, to point out what the Nunciature has done for them in the time of present difficulties.” (20)

According to the Jewish historian, David Herstig, who in 1967 in Stuttgart’s newspaper Die Rettung, wrote that he calculated that 360,000 Romanian Jews in Israel owed their life to Pope Pius XII.

Hungary

The Pope protested strongly against the deportations of Jews in Slovakia, Hungary and Vichy, France, since these were formerly Catholic countries where Fascists had gained control and they still had a majority of Catholic citizens. In Hungary the Nunciature used thousands of blank and forged forms to help Jews escape. A Red Cross worker even complained that the use of forged documents was against the Geneva Convention! The Apostolic Nuncio in Hungary, Msgr. Angelo Rotta, responded; “my son, you need have no qualms of conscience because rescuing innocent men and women is a virtue. Continue your work for the glory of God.” And the Nuncio continued with the covert operation.

In Hungary, until 1944, in spite of the enactment of severe anti-Semitic laws, the Jews enjoyed relative safety beyond Nazi control. The Hungarian government of the Regent, Admiral Nicholas Horthy, a Protestant with good relations with the Vatican, did not turn over to the Germans any of its Jews, not even the many refugees from Poland and Slovakia. In fact, he had allowed his country to become the haven of refuge for Jews. Unfortunately, on March 23, 1944, German troops marched into Hungary. Budapest and its outskirts remained under the Regent’s control until October, but massive deportations to Auschwitz from outlying parts of the country began in mid-May. The deportations were interrupted, acting upon direct appeal from the Pope, in early June when Admiral Horthy temporarily regained control. However, the Germans arrested Horthy in October, putting control of all Hungary in the hands of the fanatical anti-Semites of the Arrow Cross, and the massacre of Jews resumed. From that moment the Jews were also being deported to labor camps in Austria. Not until December 23, 1944, did the Eichmann Kommando leave Budapest.

Jewish organizations and the Holy See work together in the rescue of Jews.

The efforts of the Vatican, in coordination with Jewish organizations, to save the Hungarian Jews during those tragic months is well documented in the chronicles of the Holy See day by day, week by week. On March 25, 1944 the Apostolic Delegate in Washington, Msgr. Cicognani, informed the Vatican that the Jewish War Refugee Board were urging that measures be taken to aid the nearly 2 million Jews from Hungary (and Romania) and the Polish refugees who were living under terror and persecution and now threatened with extinction.

The Nuncios insisted, many times unsuccessfully, that the baptized Jews had all the rights of the non-Jewish Catholics, and for the other Jews they demanded that they be treated according to the norms of fundamental human rights. Nuncio Msgr. Rotta protested to no avail to the prime minister, Dom Sztojay, and to the foreign minister himself: “The very fact of persecuting men merely on account of their racial origin, is a violation of the natural law.” It is estimated that Msgr. Rotta alone had given over 80,000 false baptism certificates as a safeguard for the Jews, but, as the Hungarian Foreign Minister replied to the Nuncio’s protestations, “the problem is one of race, which is not changed by baptism.”

The atrocities multiplied and the nuncio, as head of the diplomatic corps in Budapest, mobilized the Ambassadors of the four other neutral Nations. On August 21, Rotta and the envoys of Sweden, Spain, Portugal, and Switzerland, presented a very strong protest to the government. The deportations were “unjust in their motive-for it is absolutely inadmissible that men should be persecuted and put to death just because of their racial origin- and brutal in their execution”; (21) said the draft note written by Rotta. The indefatigable Nuncio and the Holy See continued their struggle in favor of the Jews.

On October 29, The Holy Father sent an open telegram to Hungarian Cardinal Seredi asking for a special day of prayers and a collection to help the Jews. Encouraged by the Pope, the Hungarian priests and religious opened their houses to the Jews. In the end, in spite of all the efforts, about 550,000 Hungarian and refugee Jews had died; 150,000 survived in Budapest and 40,000 in the provinces. As Jeno Levai, the foremost scholar of the Holocaust in Hungary, said of Pius XII that it was “a particularly regrettable irony that the one person in all occupied Europe who did more than anyone else to halt the dreadful crime and alleviate its consequences is today made the scapegoat for the failures of others.” (22)

Slovakia

The most heartbreaking and humiliating case for the Holy Father was that in Slovakia the head of State, Tiso, was a Catholic priest and the population mostly Catholic. Slovakia was a protectorate of Germany since 1939, and as such, the racial anti-Semite laws were applied. Dr. Livia Rotkirchen of Yad Vashem, affirms that it may be said that the letters of protest delivered by the Vatican during the years 1941-1944 prove sufficiently that the Vatican objected to the deportation of Jews from Slovakia and later added that they were backed by numerous oral pleas and protests. As everywhere else, the clergy and religious took Jews into hiding.

Unfortunately, there were other cases where the Catholics supported the Nazis. Some Catholics betrayed one of the main tenets of their faith, “to love your neighbor”, and were involved with the Nazi terror. But one cannot blame Pius XII, nor the Church for the actions of those who strayed from the faith-any more than one can not put the blame upon the Jewish leaders for the fact that there were Jewish Kapos and Jewish policemen who helped the Nazis enforce their extermination policies.

There are allegations that The Church helped some Nazis war criminals escape to South America after the end of the war. While it is fully proven and documented that The Church helped over 800,000 Jews to escape from certain death, there is not a single proven case of a Nazi criminal who had been helped to escape by the Vatican. That does not mean that there may exist a case in which a clergy helped a Nazi to escape, but certainly, not with the knowledge, and much less the approval, of the Holy See. We must not forget that the Nazis tortured thousands of Catholic priests and nuns to death.

Belgium

The Belgian Jews were more fortunate. Seventy-five percent of the 90,000 living during the Nazi occupation were saved. Among the reasons, the German Commander in Chief, General von Falkenhausen, was a humane individual who heeded to the pleas of Queen Elizabeth and Cardinal Van Roey. Countless priests organized rescue networks. Refuge was widely available. The Bishop of Liege gave the Rabbi of the city a cassock and introduced him to the Gestapo as his secretary.

France

In France of the 350,000 pre-war Jews, 150,000 were deported; including 22,000 children; of the deported only 3,000 survived. The 200,000 that were saved were due to the help of the laity and the courage of three Church leaders, Archbishop (later Cardinal) Saliege of Toulouse, Cardinal Gerlier of Lyons and Bishop Theas of Montauban (later Lourdes). Theas was imprisoned; Saliege would have had the same fate but for his illness; so would Gerlier but for his rank in the Church.

Saliege referring to the horrible scenes witnessed in his diocese strongly denounced the crimes. He cried, “Jews (who) are our brothers.” Theas described the “scenes of indescribable suffering and horror…all men are brothers, created by one God…the current anti-Semitic measures are a violation of human dignity and the sacred rights of the individual and the family. May God comfort and strengthen those who are persecuted.” Cardinal Gerlier exhorted: “The deportations of Jews now in course cause such painful scenes that we must lift our voices in conscientious protest…who will stop the Church from loudly confirming in this dark hour the irrefutable rights of men, the sanctity of family ties, the inviolability of the right to asylum, and that brotherly charity which Christ has taught us?” In the middle of the tragedy, the French people, individuals, families, clergy, religious communities all worked together to save the Jews. Many French Catholics went to jail rather than betray the Jews. (23)

Yugoslavia

In Yugoslavia, Cardinal Stepinac was at the forefront in the defense of the Jews. When in March 1943, the government ordered all the Jews to report to the police for transfer to camps in Poland, Stepinac sent a strong protest to the dictator, and, from the pulpit he condemned the rule: “No civil power or political system has the right to persecute a person on account of his racial origins. We Catholics protest against such measures, and we will combat them.” Earlier, Stepinac had led a delegation to protest against the persecution of the Jews, and the anti-Jewish program was canceled.

At the end of the War and with the conquest of Yugoslavia by the Communists, the Catholics were to become the victims again of violent oppression and repression. Priests were killed and imprisoned and Cardinal Stepinac was the victim of a mock trial and condemned to sixteen years of hard labor. The world also remained silent while the onslaught of Christians was going on at the hands of the Communist thugs.

Pius XII created agencies to coordinate relief work. American Jews and Cardinal Spellman channeled throughout the Pope generous humanitarian aid for the Jews.

From the first days of the war, Pope Pius XII distributed untold sums to aid the Jews all over Nazi occupied Europe. One of Pius XII’s first steps at the beginning of the War was the creation of two official agencies with pontifical rank to coordinate relief work, the Pontifical Aid Commission and the Office for Information. The first body, in liaison with local organizations, channeled supplies of food, medicine, and clothing, to the needy, to the prisoners of war in particular. It was a task of vast proportions involving 40 countries; financial grants were provided for the repatriation of 630,000 displaced persons; full responsibility was taken for 53,000 victims. Church authorities joined forces with national and international Jewish agencies. American Jews also trusted on the hands of the Pope large sums that were distributed according to the wishes of the donors. Cardinal Spellman also channeled generous humanitarian aid from the U.S. Catholics.

The Vatican Information Office handled over one and a quarter million requests and succeeded in locating over half a million of the displaced persons, mostly Jews, a success ratio of 44 percent, in spite of the non cooperation from the Nazis and little, if at all, cooperation from the Allies. The communication with prisoners of war was another of its important services. Both Agencies were under the direction of Msgr. Giovanni Battista Montini, the future Pope Paul VI.

PIUS XII AND THE RESISTANCE

Pius XII, a man of great personal courage dared to be involved in a high risk venture that could even endanger the very existence of The Church-the support of the internal resistance to the Nazis inside the German Armed Forces. The French and the British governments were deaf to the pleas of the Vatican to assist the German internal resistance to the Nazi government. From the very beginning Pius XII tried to persuade the Allies to support the inside German opposition, but they did not heed the Pope.

A number of anti-Nazi plotters inside the Abwehr, the intelligence branch of the armed forces, made repeated, and ultimately futile attempts through the Holy See to reach and persuade the British to back, or even to talk with the German resistance. They were all killed in the July 20, 1944; plot to assassinate Hitler, the last in a long line of foiled attempts to get rid of the dictator. The leader, a Roman Catholic officer, Count Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg was shot on he spot. Other conspirators, mostly Protestants, were not so lucky; they were hung by using piano strings from butchers’ hooks and filmed on Hitler’s orders so that he could watch it himself later.

According to historian O’Carroll, in 1983 the Italian magazine Gente, published the testimony of General Wolff, the commander of the German forces in Italy during WWII. He revealed that in 1943 Pius XII had invited him to the Vatican and tried to persuade him to end the war in Italy on his own initiative. General Wolff was impressed and gave the matter thought; he finally decided against the Pope’s plea. But he recorded the immense personal impression that Pius XII made on him. We already mentioned how the whole leadership of the Italian resistance found refugee in the Church’s facilities in Rome.

Pius XII also served as a conduit for an offer made by a group of anti-Nazi German generals to topple Hitler from power. They wanted to know if the British would make peace with Germany if they succeeded in arresting Hitler and removing him from power. The proposal was made by Colonel-General Ludwig Beck (four star general), who latter was made chief of the German General Staff, but who resigned in 1938 convinced that Hitler was a criminal. Pius XII had known Beck when he was Nuncio in Berlin and “highly esteemed his honesty and integrity.”

The Pope also allowed the Vatican diplomatic corps, which was protected by diplomatic immunity, to carry messages between the Allied powers. There was a close collaboration between the Vatican and the Allies’ intelligence services. In fact, the Vatican forewarned Holland and Belgium of the upcoming German invasion.

TESTIMONIALS ON PIUS XII FROM WORLD LEADERS.

The fact is, as affirmed Graham, that even before 1944, the world Jewish organizations had recognized in the Vatican a friend who was willing- and often able- to help their people during their tragic ordeal in occupied Europe. The concerns of the Jewish organizations were also those of the Holy See. Sometimes The Church acted on the appeal of a Jewish organization, at other times, they acted on the basis of reports received from its own representatives in the occupied territories where they held a relationship of confidence with the local Jewish leaders. In many instances, the Holy See had already acted upon information received from its own nuncios before the appeals from Jewish organizations arrived at the Vatican.

Pope Paul VI, who was a close collaborator with Pius XII, authorized in 1964 the publications of the documents of the Holy See relating World War II. In Volume X, there is a day-by-day record of the Holy See’s correspondence with the most active international Jewish organizations. Among the more important of these are the ones from the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe, the World Jewish Congress, the American Jewish Congress, Agudas Israel World Organization, Vaad Hahatzala of the Unions of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada, Hijefs (Schweizerischer Hillfsverein fur Judische Fluchling im Ausland), the Jewish Agency for Palestine and the American Jewish Committee.

In November, 1943, Herzog, Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, wrote to Cardinal Roncalli, (the future Pope John XXIII) then Apostolic Delegate to Turkey and Greece, stating: “I take this opportunity to express to your Eminence my sincere thanks as well as my deep appreciation of your kindly attitude to Israel and of the invaluable help given by the Catholic Church to the Jewish people in its affliction. Would you please convey these sentiments which come from Sion, to His Holiness the Pope (Pius XII) along with the assurances that the people of Israel know how to value his assistance and his attitude.” (24) The American Jewish Welfare Board wrote to Pius XII on July 1944 to express their appreciation for the protection given to the Jews during the German occupation of Italy.

In 1944 the War Refugee Board came into existence as the united effort of several American Jewish organizations. During and after the war, the War Refugee Board publicly acknowledged its close relationship with the Holy See. The documentation includes the correspondence from eminent rabbinical leaders who made special appeals to the Holy See; among them are the Grand Rabbi of Jerusalem, Dr. Issac Herzog; the Grand Rabbi of the British Empire, Dr. Joseph Hertz; and Rabbi Abraham Kalmanowitz, leader of the rabbinical school of Mir, in Lithuania.

Fr. William Saunders has quoted Dr. Raphael Cantoni, a leader in Italy’s Jewish Assistance Committee, declaring that “The Church and the Papacy have saved Jews as much and insofar as they could Christians. Six million of my co-religionists have been murdered by the Nazis…but there would have been many more victims had it not been for the efficacious intervention of Pius XII.” (25)

New York Times praises Pius XII’s Christmas Messages in 1941 and 1942

On Christmas Day 1941, the editorial of the New York Times, commenting on Pius XII’s Christmas Message, said: “The voice of Pius XII is a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping Europe this Christmas…as we realize that he is about the only ruler left on the Continent of Europe who dares to raise his voice at all…In calling for a ‘real new order’ based on ‘liberty, justice and love,’ to be attained only by a ‘return to social and international principles capable of creating a barrier against the abuse of liberty and the abuse of power”. “The Pope,” said the NYT, “put himself squarely against Hitlerism, he left no doubt that the Nazi aims are also irreconcilable with his own conception of a Christian peace.”

On Christmas Day 1942, the New York Times editorialized on Pius XII’s Christmas Message and again praised the Pope for his moral leadership. “This Christmas,” said de NYT, “more than ever he (Pius XII) is a lonely voice crying out of the silence of a continent. The Pulpit whence he speaks is more than ever like the rock on which the Church was founded, a tiny island lashed and surrounded by a sea of war… (Pius XII) condemns as heresy the new form of national state which subordinates every thing to itself, he declared that whoever wants peace must protect against ‘arbitrary attacks’ the ‘juridical safety of individuals. The Pope assailed the violent occupation of territory, the exile and persecution of human beings for no other reason than race or political opinion.” The address also contained the first formal enunciation of human rights made by a Pope.

Pope Pius XII, said the NYT, “expresses as passionately as any leader on our side of the war aims of the struggle for freedom when he says that those who aim at building a new world order must fight for free choice of government and religious order. They must refuse that the state should make of individuals a herd of whom the state disposes as if they were a lifeless thing.”

The British Ambassador to the Vatican says that the Pope was the most warmly humane, kindly, sympathetic, and saintly character he had known

D’Arcy Osborne, the Protestant Minister of Britain to the Vatican wrote of Pope Pius XII: as “the most warmly humane, kindly, generous, sympathetic, and incidentally saintly, character who has been my privilege to meet in the course of a long life.” (26)

Charles de Gaulle described the Pope as pious and compassionate

Charles de Gaulle, after an audience with the Pope on June 30, 1944, declared: “The Holy Father receives me. Beneath the kindly welcome and the simplicity of his language, I am gripped by the sharpness and power of his thought. Pius XII judges everything from a viewpoint superior to that of men…the supernatural burden, which is laid on him alone in all the world, weighs, one feels, on his soul, but he carries it without flinching, certain of his goal, sure of his way…Pious, compassionate, political in the highest meaning these words can have, thus this pontiff and sovereign appears to me, through the respect which he inspires in me.” (27)

On October 12, 1945, Leo Kubwitsky, on behalf of the World Jewish Congress made a gift of 2 million lire (the equivalent of over one million dollars at present value) to the Vatican as a token of gratitude. Pius XII decided that the sum should go exclusively to needy people of Jewish origin. Jews who had first hand knowledge, or participated in the extraordinary efforts of Pius XII and the Catholic Church in saving Jewish lives during this most tragic period, were not short in publicly expressing their profound gratitude while this great Pope was still alive. Moshe Sharett, Israel’s first Foreign Minister, (and later the second Prime of Minister), met Pius XII in 1945 and said later: “I told him that my first duty was to thank him, and through him, the Catholic Church, on behalf of the Jewish people, for all they had done in various countries to rescue Jews, to save children and Jews in general.” (28)

The Founders of the State of Israel express their condolences at the death of Pius XII

Among those who mourned the death of Pius XII pronouncing heartfelt tributes were the President of Israel Ben-Zevi, Dr. Nahum Goldmann, president of the World Jewish Congress and the World Zionist Organization, and many Rabbis including Dr. Israel Goldstein of New York. Rabbi Elio Toaff, Chief Rabbi of Rome, said: “More than anyone else, we have had the opportunity to appreciate the great kindness, filled with compassion and magnanimity, that the Pope displayed during the terrible years of persecution and terror, when it seemed that there was no hope left for us.” Rabbi Israel Zolli stated: “What the Vatican did will indelibly and eternally engraved in our hearts…Priests and even high prelates did things that will forever be an honor to Catholicism.” (29)

The Israeli’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mrs.Golda Meir’s cablegram to the Vatican read; “We share in the grief of humanity at the passing away of His Holiness Pope Pius XII. In a generation afflicted by wars and discords, he upheld the highest ideals of peace and compassion. When fearful martyrdom came to our people in the decade of Nazi terror, the voice of the Pope was raised for the victims. The life of our times was enriched by a voice speaking out on the great moral truths above the tumult of daily conflict. We mourn a great servant of peace.” (30)

Unfortunately, today we are witnessing a campaign against this great benefactor of Humanity. His memory is being slandered and dishonored through falsehoods and innuendoes. This matter should be open to honest analysis and discussion. Legitimate discrepancies might exist while studying historical facts, but that should not be of excuse for those people who are moved by the same great evils of ignorance, hatred, and bigotry that made possible the brutal onslaught of innocent people by the Nazis and the Communists.

CONCLUSION

The relationship of trust and collaboration during WW II between the Holy See, the Jewish organizations, the Allies’ intelligence services and their governments, including the anti-Nazi German Generals, is well proven and documented. However, there is not the slightest thread of evidence to substantiate the preposterous and vicious allegations raised against Pius XII and the Catholic Church of collaboration or sympathizing with the Nazis.

Did the Church do enough to save the Jews? As usual those who do the less complain the most and those who do the most always think they could have done even more. When Michael O’Carroll, author of the scholar book “Pius XII: Greatness Dishonoured” related in the Foreword that in 1957 he met Dr. Isaac Herzog, Chief Rabbi of Israel, and he told him with emotion of an audience he had with the Pope and how they discussed the prophet Ezechiel. “My blessing to him” said the saintly old man, and O’Carroll promised to be the bearer of the message of his goodwill. When O’Carroll gave the message to Pius XII he added “I think Jews everywhere are grateful for what you did for them during the war.” “I wish I could have done more” was the Pope’s reply.

On February 28, 1945, the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, Isaac Herzog, sent a letter of gratitude to the
Apostolic Nuncio in Rumania, Msgr. Andrea Cassulo, stating that: “The people of Israel will never forget what His Holiness and his illustrious delegates, inspired by the eternal principles of religion which form the very foundations of civilization, are doing for us unfortunate brothers and sisters in the most tragic hour of our history, which is living prove of divine Providence in this world.” (31)

Rabbi Herzog’s heartfelt words should suffice to forever end the slanderous attacks to the memory of the great protector of the Jews, Pius XII and the Catholic Church.

Those testimonies aforementioned, as powerful as they might be, are just a few samples of the hundreds of messages of gratitude sent to Pius XII by Jews from around the world. There are at least 4 to 5 million descendants of those 860,000 Jews around the world whose lives were saved by Pius XII and the Catholic Church. They should be able to bring to light much more valuable documentation if they were to delve into their family’s historical records, the Israeli’s archives, and so many other serious, unbiased, Jewish scholarly research in this matter.

In Pius XII’s own words in an address given on June 13, 1943, he said: “Our speeches and messages will not be able to be crossed out or run down by anyone, neither in their intentions nor essence. Everyone has been able to hear them as words of truth and peace…The Church is not afraid of the light of truth, neither of the past, the present, nor the future.” (32)

To those seeking the truth, what a better witness than the testimony of Albert Einstein, the great Jewish physicist, who had first hand experience of the horrors of Nazism? In 1944 he said: “Being a lover of freedom, when the Nazi revolution came in Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it, but the universities were immediately silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of newspapers, but they, like the universities were silenced in a few short weeks. Then I looked to individual writers…they too were mute. Only the Church,” Einstein concluded, “stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing the truth…I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel great affection and admiration…and am forced thus to confess that what I once despised, I now praise unreservedly.”(33)

Just as the evils of the Holocaust must never be forgotten, neither should the kindness of those spiritual brothers from another faith who tried to help the Jews, at the risk of their own lives, under the most enormously dangerous travails be forgotten. The truth will prevail and with it, a greater understanding and brotherhood among Jews and Catholics.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

“Pius XII Greatness Dishonoured” Michael O’Carroll, 1980, Laetare Press (a major source for this article).

“Christian Resistance to Anti-Semitism” Memories from 1940-1944, Henri de Lubac, Ignatius Press, 1988

“The Last Three Popes and the Jews”, Pinchas Lapide, London, 1967.

“The Real Story of Pius XII and the Jews”, James Bogle, The Salisbury Review, spring 1996.

“Las Puertas del Infierno” Ricardo de la Cierva, 1995, Editorial Fenix (Spanish historian and a prolific writer who has published numerous books on the History of the Catholic Church.”)

“Pius XII and the Holocaust” The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, 1988. Including:

“Pius XII’s Defense of Jews and Others”: 1944-45 Robert A. Graham, S.J. (1987) (Foremost scholar in Pius XII. Since 1965 he formed part of a group of experts who had been working in the Vatican archives in the monumental task of editing an 11-volumen series containing the private records of the Secretariat of State during World War II.)

“A Question of Judgement: Pius XII and the Jews” Dr. Joseph L. Lichten (1963) (He wrote this work while serving as director of the International Affairs Department for the Anti-Defamation League for B’nai B’rith.)

“The Priest of Dachau” and “Priests of the Holocaust” William J. O’Malley, S.J. (1987)

“International Congress on Martyrs of Hitler’s Regime.” Rome, May 2, 2000 (ZENIT)
http://www.ewtn.com/library/chistory/zchrcnaz.htm

“Did Pius XII Remain Silent?” Fr. William Saunders. http://www.ewtn.com/library/answers/piusjews.htm

“How to Manufacture a Legend: the Controversy Over the Alleged Silence of Pope Pius XII in World War II” Robert A. Graham, S.J. http://www.ewtn.com/library/answers/p12holo.htm

“The Real History of Pius XII and the Jews”, James Bogle The Salisbury Review Spring 1996
http://www.catholicleague.org./Inventory/book5.htm

“New Documents Prove Nazis Distrusted Him for Helping Jews” Rome July 7, 2000 http://www,ewtn.com/library/chistory/zpi12rhb.htm

“Jewish-Catholic Commission to study World War II” Vatican City, November 23, 1999 (ZENIT)
http://www.ewtn.com/library/chistory/zjwctww2.htm

“Historical Truth of Pius XII’s Work” Rome, April 16, 2000 (ZENITH)
http://www.ewtn.com/library/chistory/zpi12his.htm

“Eichmann’s Diary Reveals Church’s Assistance to Jews” Jerusalem, march 1, 2000 (ZENITH)
http://www.ewtn.com/library/chistory/zpi12eic.htm

“Saviour of the Jews” Michael O’Carroll http://www.ewtn.com/libray/answers/pius12jw.htm

“The Myth in the Light of the Archives, the recurring accusations against Pope Pius XII” Pierre Blet, S.J.
http://www.ewtn.com/library/issues/bletp12.htm

“World Press Unmasks Fallacies in Book Defaming Pius XII” Vatican City, October 3, 1999
http://www.ewtn.com/library/issues/zpius12b.htm

Notes:
(1) “Pius XII, Greatness Dishonoured”, Michael O’Carroll, p.39
(2) “A Question of Judgement: Pius XII and the Jews.” Dr. Joseph L. Lichten, p.107
(3) “International Congress on Martyrs of Hitler’s Regime.” p.1
(4) “A Question of Judgement: Pius XII and the Jews.” Dr. Joseph L. Lichten, p. 106
(5) “A Question of Judgement: Pius XII and the Jews.” Dr. Joseph L. Lichten, p. 107
(6) “Did Pius XII Remain Silent?” Fr. William Saunders, p.3
(7) “How to Manufacture a Legend: the Controversy Over the Alleged Silence of Pope
Pius XII in World War II” Robert A. Graham, S.J., p.3
(8) “Pius XII, Greatness Dishonoured”, Michael O’Carroll, p. 84
(9) “The Real History of Pius XII and the Jews”, James Bogle, p. 14
(10) “New Documents Prove Nazis Distrusted Him for Helping Jews” p. 1
(11) “Pius XII, Greatness Dishonoured”, Michael O’Carroll, p.103
(12) “Pius XII, Greatness Dishonoured”, Michael O’Carroll, p. 103
(13) “Priests of the Holocaust” William J. O’Malley, p.153
(14) “Priests of Dachau” William J. O’Malley, p.143
(15) “Pius XII, Greatness Dishonoured”, Michael O’Carroll, p.135
(16) “Pius XII, Greatness Dishonoured”, Michael O’Carroll, p.60
(17) “Pius XII, Greatness Dishonoured”, Michael O’Carroll, p. 11
(18) “Pius XII, Greatness Dishonoured”, Michael O’Carroll, p. 70
(19) “Pius XII, Greatness Dishonoured”, Michael O’Carroll, p.105
(20)“Pius XII’s Defense of Jews and Others”: 1944-45 Robert A. Graham, p.25
(21) “Pius XII’s Defense of Jews and Others”: 1944-45 Robert A. Graham, p. 40
(22) "The Truth about Pope Pius XII” Sister Margherita Marchione, Ph.D., www.catholicleague.org/truth.htm
(23) “Pius XII, Greatness Dishonoured”, Michael O’Carroll, p. 108
(24) “The Real History of Pius XII and the Jews”, James Bogle, p.4
(25) “Did Pius XII Remain Silent?” Fr. William Saunders, p. 4
(26) “Pius XII, Greatness Dishonoured”, Michael O’Carroll, p.70
(27) “Pius XII, Greatness Dishonoured”, Michael O’Carroll, p. 70
(28) “Pius XII, Greatness Dishonoured”, Michael O’Carroll, p.149
(29) “A Question of Judgement: Pius XII and the Jews.” Dr. Joseph L. Lichten, p. 129
(30) “A Question of Judgement: Pius XII and the Jews.” Dr. Joseph L. Lichten, p. 129
(31) “Pius XII’s Defense of Jews and Others”: 1944-45 Robert A. Graham, p. 26
(32) “Historical Truth of Pius XII’s Work” p. 2
(33) “The Truth about Pope Pius XII” Sister Margherita Marchione Ph.D p.3 www.catholicleague.org/truth.htm

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