By Eric Vandenbroeck and
co-workers
The Pope And Hitler
In early May 1943, a
letter from a Dutch priest to Pope Pius XII reached the Vatican. At the end of
that month, the first of the four new gas chamber-crematoria complexes that
would liquidate about one million people began functioning at
Auschwitz-Birkenau. The letter pleaded for papal action on behalf of the Jews.
After reading the letter, Under-Secretary of State Tardini
reflected that "it's not such an easy thing" to help the Jews.1 Tardini's thoughts signaled a change in the direction of
papal policy regarding the Holocaust even though just a few months earlier the
pope had spoken about the victims of World War II in his Christmas message. In
1943, Pope Pius decided that he needed to try to control events taking place in
Rome rather than those taking place in Poland.
After having
assessed, or reassessed, Pius XII's 1942 Christmas address, we may pose the question
why it was both his first and his last pronouncement on genocide. If, as seems
certain, the pope intended to speak again, why did he fail to do so? World War
II and the Holocaust would persist for two and a half more years. At what point
did Pope Pius make the decision not to raise his voice for a second time? That
determination came in the spring or, at the latest, the summer of 1943, only a
few months after the auspicious Christmas message-auspicious from a western
point of view, at least. The Vatican's published documents provide glimpses
behind the Holy See's closed doors that allow us to make an educated guess
regarding the timing of a turnabout. Moreover, the circumstances of the war-the
momentous developments of the spring and summer-produced a flurry of documents
now available in the U.S. national archives. These also suggest guideposts for
interpreting the Vatican's reappraisal of its position regarding the
predicament of European Jews.
The pope's
denunciation of genocide in his Christmas message was expressed by his dismay
that "hundreds of thousands of persons, who, without any fault on their
part, sometimes only because of their nationality or race, have been consigned
to death or to a slow decline." Six weeks later, in early February 1943,
the pope delivered an allocution to the college of cardinals in which he again
referred to the suffering of people because of their nationality or race. His
words were very similar to those of the Christmas message but with one
remarkable change: in this message he referred to people "destined ... to
forced extermination."2 Extermination! Only a few months prior to this
time the Vatican had said it could not confirm Riegner's
"final oolution" warning. It appears that a
significant shift had taken place at the Vatican.
Confirmation of this
fact came two months later in May. Cardinal Secretary of State Luigi Maglione wrote the following memo to himself:
After months and
months of transports of thousands and thousands of persons about whom nothing
more is known, this can be explained in no other way than death. Special death
camps near Lublin and near Brest Litovsk. It is told that they are locked up
several hundred at a time in chambers where they are finished off with gas.3
We do not know all of
the additional information that came to the Holy See that triggered this
remarkable admission. Certainly the Vatican continued to receive regular
disclosures. In January, President in Exile Raczkiewicz
detailed Nazi horrors in Poland. In March, Bishop Prey sing wrote of the almost
certain death of the Berlin Jews who had just been dispatched to the east (they
were in fact immediately murdered at Auschwitz). In any event, what the Holy
See had long said (and continued to say until late 1942)-that it could not
confirm "rumors" about mass murder-it now no longer doubted. That the
Holy See did not know the exact places of the mass executions matters not at
all. Pius now knew the essence of the Holocaust.
Just five days after Maglione wrote his memo to himself, the Vatican received
the letter from a Dutch priest, Father De Witte, of the Redemptorist Order.
What the priest wanted was nothing less than Pius XII's intervention in the
matter of the killing of the Jews. Extreme circumstances, he said, call for
extreme remedies. The message was certified by Archbishop de Jong, who wrote a
cover letter.4 Clearly, the Dutch Church was proceeding here along the path
that had led it to protest the "transportation" of Jewish citizens in
February 1943. Based on its interpretation of the 1942 papal Christmas message,
the Dutch Church-not unreasonably-expected the Holy See to back up its bold
challenge to the German occupiers.
Their expectations
were not realized. The Vatican's response to the Dutch priest's plea is found
in a memo of Under-Secretary of State Tardini who,
thinking to himself, pondered what to do.5 The Dutch Church was already well
informed about what the Holy See "has done for the Jews," Tardini reasoned, thinking no doubt about the Dutch
Church's reference to the 1942 Christmas message. Tardini
wondered if perhaps the Vatican could work with the Red Cross to help the Dutch
Jews emigrate, but he immediately rejected the idea since Nuncio Orsenigo in Berlin would not be able to get permission from
the Germans for them to emigrate and Spain and Portugal would only provide
temporary transit visas. So, Tardini mused, it would
probably be best to respond that the Vatican would continue to do whatever it
could. Wanting to take some immediate action, Tardini
determined that he would refer the letter from the Netherlands Church to the
rector of the Dutch seminary college in Rome. While proposing to reply in this
way to the Dutch Church, Tardini thought to himself
that helping the Jews "is not such an easy thing."6
What is the significance
of the Tardini memo? Remarkably, a communication from
Holland that came at the height of the Holocaust and carried the weight of
approval of that country's most prominent Catholic leader did not reach the
eyes of Pius XII. Rather than bring the matter to the attention of the pope, Tardini decided, probably after a discussion with Cardinal Maglione, his immediate superior, to refer the matter to
the rector of the Dutch college in Rome who "has on many occasions
interested himself in the question of the Jews of Holland."7 A more
minimal reply to the Dutch cannot be imagined. It is clear from the Tardini memo that he took the initiative in answering de
Witte's letter. He did not consult with the pope.
It might appear from
Monsignor Tardini's words-"it's not easy to help
the Jews"-that he did not care about what happened to them, that he was
callous. This is not the case. Just six months earlier, Tardini
had admitted to diplomats Francis D'Arcy Osborne and Myron Taylor that he had
to agree with them that the pope needed to speak out against the atrocities
being perpetrated on the Jews.8 His memo to himself indicates, rather, a new
resolve at the Vatican based on Holocaust data it no longer doubted. Tardini, very much a Vatican insider and a veteran of the
secretariat who reported to Pope Pius every day, knew the score.9 The Holy See
had come to the conclusion that if the Germans were doing the unthinkable and
the unimaginable-building death camps and gassing facilities in a foreign land
to which the Jews of Europe were to be "transported" and killed-the
Vatican was helpless to do anything to stop the process."It’s
not easy to help the Jews" might be equated with "we cannot stop the
trains."
There is another
indication of the Holy See's about-face regarding the Holocaust. In June 1943,
Pope Pius gave the encyclical Mystici Corporis
Christi (The Mystical Body of Christ) in which he argued that the physical
church-the visible church-constituted the mystical body of Christ.10 In making
his case for the Church, Pius referred to Judaism:
"On the cross
then the Old Law died, soon to be buried and to be a bearer of death." And
to be a bearer of death! Could anyone, knowing what was befalling the Jews at
that very moment in the first half of 1943, write those words in a merely
figurative sense? This seems quite unlikely, but it does not mean that Pius
wished for the Jews to be killed off.11 The encyclical, which went on to
belabor the point about the visible church, may be taken as an indication that
in the spring of 1943 Pope Pius had resolved to remain silent about what he
thought he could do nothing about (the Jews) and to attend to concerns that he
might be able to control, matters that had to do with Rome and Vatican City
within it, the visible church. Presumably aware of the pope's decision,
Monsignor Tardini seems to have thought it
unnecessary to bring the letter of the Dutch Church to the pope's attention.
After finally admitting the fate of the Jews and gaining an accurate insight
into the Nazi killing machine, the Holy See came to the conclusion that helping
the Jews "is not a very easy matter."
By the summer of
1943, Pope Pius had toned down his rhetoric considerably when referring to the
Holocaust. The word "extermination," which he had used in February in
his in-house address, does not appear in his subsequent public addresses.
Instead, in June the pope talked rather obliquely about Poles "who have
been cruelly tried and others like them." "Others like them"
meant Jews, but Pius was careful not to use the word. He referred to people
"sometimes dying because of nationality or descent." The phrase
"sometimes dying" entirely minimized the truth about Jews as Pope
Pius certainly knew it by this date. Taking the position, rightly or wrongly,
that it was better not to say anything that might make the situation worse for
potential victims, Pius said "do not expect from us now that we give you
here the details."12 He knew the details! But the main emphasis of the
pope's June 3rd address did not involve genocide; Pius XII concerned himself
with the killing of hostages, presumably because of the activity of Roman
partisans against the Nazis, and about aerial bombardment, which was getting
closer and closer to Rome. The language the pope used in the summer of 1943 with
reference to the Holocaust may be taken as another clue that in the spring the
Vatican had adopted a new course, a policy of control. Pope Pius wanted to
control the fate of the visible church.
It was the
circumstances of the war that generated the pope's thoughts about control-about
protecting the visible church. By the spring and summer of 1943 the outcome of
World War II looked entirely different to Pius than it had in 1942. Previously
he had not thought the Allies could win the war; rather, he believed that it
would end in a stalemate.13 But just before the time the Vatican had become
convinced that the Holocaust was indeed under way, the Soviet army had won the
battle of Stalingrad, killing or capturing half a million German soldiers.
Another major battle ensued that summer at Kursk, which the Germans again lost.
In the meantime, an enormous Allied amphibious force had landed on the shores
of North Africa. Within one week of the time when Maglione
admitted to himself that Jews were being murdered in gas chambers, Erwin
Rommel's troops had been driven off the African continent, the Germans
suffering in the process losses equal at least to those of Stalingrad. With the
Allies now ruling the Mediterranean, there was no doubt about where the next
theater of war would be-Italy. The dangers this situation would bring to Rome
and to Vatican City could not be overestimated as far as Pius XII was
concerned. He was determined to do what he could to control these dangers to
the visible church.
Furthermore, events in
Italy hugely complicated that theater in general and Rome in particular. The
overthrow of Mussolini and the fascist government of Italy in July was followed
by the overthrow of the successor regime of Marshal Pieto
Badoglio. In September, the Germans reappointed Mussolini, who now ruled as a
puppet of the Nazis. German armed forces overran most of Italy even as Allied
forces successfully invaded the boot of Italy. Since Rome was not only the
capital of the country but also the most important railroad, highway, and
airport nexus linking the northern and southern halves of the peninsula, there
was every likelihood that it would become the focal point of hostilities.
Nothing could be more ominous for Pius XII's visible church.
As if these factors
were not enough, the domestic situation in Rome became vexed by two
developments. Prior to the time of Mussolini's fall, the number of people who
participated in the Italian resistance forces was small. After Mussolini
returned as a puppet of Hitler, Italian nationalists of every stripe, from
Communists to Catholics, became involved in resistance. What, Pius XII
wondered, would come of resistance turmoil? He had witnessed a similar
situation in Munich after World War I which gave rise to his great dread, a
Communist regime. Thus, the Italian underground constituted yet another factor
for Pius to attempt to control. Last in chronological order came the question
of Roman Jews. The Holy See knew what was transpiring in faraway Poland; now
the Holocaust would also come home to Italy since the Germans were determined
to carry out the deportation of Jews there, as they had been doing in other
European countries. For the moment-the spring and summer-this was not yet a
problem, but when and if it became one, Pope Pius would be forced to decide
where his first priorities lay when it came to issues of control.
Holocaust reality
came to the Vatican in the fall. Because the Jews of Rome were seized in
October, "under his very windows," the question of the pope's silence
has become the focus of intense historical debate and analysis. The situation
at the time of the pope's 1942 Christmas address differed vastly from the
situation the Holy See encountered the following summer and fall. After
dissembling or procrastinating for two years, the Vatican at last came around
to the reality of the Holocaust late in 1942, although the full extent of it
was not yet perceived. Mass murder took place far away in Poland. It did not
yet touch Italy or Italians. After the puppet Mussolini government came to
power in the fall of 1943 and Germany overran and occupied most of Italy, the
reality of the Holocaust squarely confronted the Vatican.
Several months after
the 1942 Christmas radio address the Holy See fell back into passivity when
critical situations for Jews came to its attention. In the summer and fall of
1943, Jews in Croatia and southeast France were in danger of being captured by
the Ustasa or Gestapo. The Vatican was asked to
intercede in one instance by the World Jewish Congress and in the other by the
Catholic rescuer Father Benedetto (Marie-Benoit Peteul),
but it did not respond productively to either request. Presented with appeals
to help in very concretely detailed situations, the Holy See replied vaguely
and blandly: "The Holy See has already involved itself in favor of the
Jews mentioned." In fact, its involvement was minimal at best.14
The bearing of the
Holy See did not change as Germans began murdering Italian Jews in northern
Italy in September. The Nazis in some cases made no attempt to conceal their
crimes, openly discarding the corpses of victims in the Lago Maggiore, a resort
area. The Vatican would certainly have learned of these crimes and must have
drawn the conclusion that Jews in the Eternal City would likely become victims
in due time.15 When under-secretaries of state Montini
and Tardini first got wind of possible actions
against Roman Jews in mid-September, their reaction set the Vatican on a course
that would prevail in the following critical month of October. The under-secretaries
decided that the best course of action was to see if Germany's ambassador to
the Holy See, Ernst von Weizsacker, could ward off
danger to people "of whatever race."16 The compatibility of German
and Vatican diplomats during the crisis month of October should not surprise
us. They shared, as Robert Katz has written, the same goals-to "save the
Jews and save the silence" of the pope.17
And to save Pope Pius
himself, it might be added. When Hitler learned of Mussolini's overthrow, he
vowed in a rage to occupy Rome. Asked if this included Vatican City, Hitler
vowed to pull everyone of the mongrels out of their
lair-a reference to the pope and curial cardinals. Hitler's crude remark
delighted the madly anti-Catholic apostate Josef Goebbels, who took note of it
in a July entry in his diary.18 The German diplomatic corps in Rome, who were
mostly sympathetic to the pope, sought to eliminate the threat. Pius himself
took the threat seriously, according to his German housekeeper, Sister Pasqualina Lehnert.19 Vatican personnel also took Hitler at
his word, as did all of the diplomats accredited to the Holy See who notified
Cardinal Maglione of their intention to accompany the
pope should the Germans remove him. Tittmann wrote
that this "gave pleasure to His Holiness at a moment when he was
especially beset with anxieties."20 Thus, Hitler's threat was believed in
Rome and in Vatican City.
In fact, however, the
threat backfired. Greater Germany was predominantly Catholic. If the Nazis were
to manhandle the pope, serious dissent and disruption could not be ruled out at
a time when Germany's war fortunes were ebbing. There were also serious
propaganda disadvantages to consider. Western newspapers, anticipating the
worse, were full of reports of Pius being taken prisoner. Anne O'Hare McCormick
wrote in the New York Times that the pope was now more a prisoner of Rome than
he had ever been (a reference to the pope's status before the 1929 Lateran
Treaty).n Hastily backpedaling, the Nazi minister for foreign affairs, Joachim
von Ribbentrop, assured the pope again and again that the sovereign status of
Vatican City would not be violated. In late September, the Nazi newspaper Volkische Beobachter assured Rome that the Vatican's
territories would be respected by German occupying forces.22 Berlin sought a
public assurance from the Vatican that the occupational forces in Rome had
indeed respected the Holy See's sovereignty in order to put the Fiihrer's blunder to rest.23
The Vatican's
"good conduct" statement was still pending when the events that
preceded the October 16th seizure of Rome's Jews and the razzia took place.
During the first weeks of October, various members of the German military and
diplomatic corps in Rome attempted to prevent Berlin's effort to deport Rome's
Jews. It would be presumptuous to assert that their efforts came about at the
Vatican's request, but it is highly likely that the Holy See was kept abreast
of their actions, and at certain points we can be certain of the secretariat's
knowledge and participation.
Hitler's angry
impropriety and its aftermath had occurred as Nazis murdered Jews in northern
Italy and as they occupied the Eternal City. In view of these circumstances, Montini and Tardini in the
Vatican secretariat felt it would be best if German diplomats, rather than the
Vatican, took the necessary steps to protect Rome's Jews should this prove
necessary. As long as the Vatican did not meddle in Nazi antisemitic violence
in Rome, there would be no danger of Hitler flying into another rage that would
force Minister Ribbentrop to go back on his word that Nazis would not violate
the sovereignty of Vatican City. The Vatican knew about a telegram from Berlin
instructing the SS in Rome to seize the city's Jews, and it worked out an
explicit understanding with German diplomats as to how the crisis was to be
handled. This understanding was reached in a timely manner-that is, several
weeks before the October 16th razzia, perhaps as early as late September. At
some point, the secretariat instructed Bishop Hudal,
rector of the German National Church near the Piazza Navona, to compile a list
of all Vatican properties scattered in and about the city of Rome for the
purpose of preventing Germans from searching them. As concern grew that the
German occupational forces might set upon the Jews, Hudal's
task was taken over by Ambassador Weizsacker
himself.24 Weizsacker sent hundreds of "letters
of protection" to all Vatican properties in Rome guaranteeing them
extraterritorial status. He did this on the widest possible basis and even
provided the German occupational forces with a map designating the location of
these properties. The commandant of Rome, General Stahel,
approved of Weizsacker's plan.25 The map would
prevent German soldiers from making a mistake. Should Nazis, searching for
Jews, show up in one of the marked places, they would be shown a document from
the German ambassador indicating they had no business there. It is
inconceivable that Weizsacker would have done this
without the knowledge of the Holy See, especially since he took over the task
from Bishop Hudal. Weizsacker
and the Holy See's action accomplished a double purpose. First, with no danger
that Berlin would blame the Vatican, Jews could escape by hiding in one of the
extraterritorial properties. Second, because Weizsacker's
letter prevented Germans from violating Vatican property, he could claim that
he was ensuring just what Berlin wanted-a public assurance that the Germans had
behaved well in Rome.
The Weizsacker-Vatican gambit was nothing if not shrewd, but it
had a fatal flaw. To succeed, Roman Jews would have to see their peril and take
advantage of the Vatican properties. It fell to Albrecht von Kassel, Weizsacker's assistant, to spread the word among Rome's
Jews of their chance to find a safe harbor in one of the Vatican's
properties.26 But leaving house and home is never an easy decision, and the
leaders of the Jewish community, Dante Almansi and
Ugo Foa, both respected fascist civic functionaries
before their release from their civic occupations due to Mussolini's
antisemitic laws, saw no cause for alarm. Naturally, Roman Jews took the word
of these two men over that of a German, even though the Chief Rabbi of Rome,
Israel Zolli, prophesied a Nazi slaughter.27
If the Holy Father
himself had warned the Jewish community, would they have believed him and saved
themselves? That cannot be taken for granted. Before Italian unification,
Rome's Jews lived under the rule of the pope and were often subjected to
economic and social discrimination and very unpleasant religious humiliation.28
Just how much residual resentment toward papal rule lingered during the seven
decades before October 1943 is unclear. But Pope Pius gave them no warning.
Historian David Wyman believes that Roosevelt, Churchill, and Pius were at
fault for not repeatedly driving home the message that deportation meant
definite death. Certainly all three could have done so. Auschwitz escapee
Rudolph Vrba asked rhetorically after the Holocaust, "Would anybody [have
been able to] get me on a train alive to Auschwitz if I had this
information?"29 Pope Pius made Vatican properties available to those who
wished to hide but left it to the well-intentioned Germans to spread the alarm.
Had Pius done so himself he would have had to do it clandestinely or go through
Foa and Almansi.30 A public alert would most likely
have led the Nazis to violate the extraterritorial status of Vatican properties
when the moment came to seize the Jews. Thus, the purpose of Weizsacker's strategy would have been thwarted. Unlike
Churchill and Roosevelt, Pope Pius found himself in the immediate proximity of
Holocaust action when the Nazis set upon Rome's Jews. Any warning from the pope
might have been more effective had it taken place much earlier and then been renewed
in early October as the Nazis prepared to capture their victims.
In the end-that is,
in the days before October 16-very few Jews availed themselves of opportunities
to hide. Historian Susan Zuccotti found no evidence that the populations of
convents and monasteries surged before the fateful day. Very likely that held
true for Vatican properties as well. Zuccotti found that not only would the
Vatican not help Father Benedetti, known as the Jewish priest because of his
indefatigable efforts on their behalf, but it discouraged his work.31 Why would
the Holy See engage in an effort to provide shelter for Jews while deterring
Benedetti? The difference in the two situations lay in the fact that the
members of the Holy See prevailed upon the Germans to write the letters of
extraterritoriality and warn the Jews while they themselves stood aside. At the
very least, the Vatican-Weizsacker arrangement shows
that the Holy See took steps to help Roman Jews.32
The police attaché to
the German embassy in Rome, SS Lieutenant Colonel Herbert Kappler,
somehow became aware of the VaticanWeizsacker design
and reported to Berlin that the Holy See was helping Jewish refugees. Kappler wanted Berlin to know that Pope Pius would be
opposed to the idea of deporting Jews.33 Kappler is
notorious for holding the Jews of Rome for ransom, demanding 50 kilograms of
gold from them in return for his assurance that they would not be molested. For
this reason, Kappler has usually been viewed as an
insidiously evil person since he did not keep his word. But he may actually
have meant well. The fact that the gold was duly shipped off to Berlin suggests
that Kappler aimed more to bribe Berlin than to shake
down the Jews. In his cover letter to Reichssicherheitshauptamt
chief Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Kappler mentioned several
credible reasons for not deporting the Jews and said it would be a mistake to
do SO.34 Little did he know that 50 kilograms of gold (about $56,000 in 1943
dollars) would not begin to tempt Berlin, given its voracious wartime appetite
for the precious metal.J5 Whatever his true intentions were, Kappler was found guilty of extortion by an Italian court
after the war.36 The OSS reported on October 6th that in addition to Kappler, General Reiner Stahel,
commandant of Rome, and Field Marshall General Albert Kesselring opposed the
deportation of JewsY
Kappler's demand for the gold of Rome's Jews brought about the
direct involvement of Pius XII in the events culminating in the October 16th
catastrophe. The Jewish community of Rome fell into a panic as word spread of Kappler's threat. He was known to be ruthless, and the Jews
knew he was not bluffing when he threatened their lives if they did not come up
with the gold. In consternation, they turned to the pope, who offered, as
requested, to help them raise the needed amount. The Vatican's promised gold,
tendered as a loan payable whenever and with no interest, appeared generous. In
fact, it was not (for reasons explained in the following chapter). In the end,
the loan proved unnecessary, as Roman Jews managed to collect what was demanded
of them by September 28. So ended the first chapter of the drama of October.
With no word of thanks for the extorted gold, Berlin cabled back crisply on
October 11 th, telling Kappler
to seize the Jews without delay.38
By the first week of
the fateful month of October, the circle of would-be German protectors of
Rome's Jews had widened to include both Weizsacker
and von Kessel at the Vatican post and Eitel
Friedrich Muellhausen, acting ambassador to Italy.39
On the 6th, Kappler told von Ribbentrop at the
foreign ministry in Berlin that officials "in Rome were going to Field
Marshal Kesselring to suggest that the Jews could be better used as laborers in
Italy," and M6llhausen cabled him that General Stahel
opposed the idea of deporting Jews to "liquidate" them.40 He added
boldly that he thought it would be "better business" to use the
manpower productively in Rome and said that he and Kappler
would propose this to Field Marshal Kesselring. M6llhausen signed off with
"Please advise." Without waiting for a reply, M6llhausen sent a
second telegram to Berlin the next day saying that the field marshal had asked Kappler to postpone the roundup of Jews. Through Weizsacker the Vatican was kept informed of these
developments.41 Pius XII knew of the plan to murder Roman Jews.
Muellhausen's brashness cost him his job. On the 9th, von
Ribbentrop answered the diplomat's telegram, telling him to mind his own
business. Furious that M6llhausen had used the word "liquidate" in
his telegram, von Ribbentrop launched an investigation, only to learn that the
diplomat had used the word purposefully because he was upset at the idea of
killing the Jews.42 By then it had become clear to officials in Berlin that
everyone in Rome, both the military, the SS, and diplomats, opposed their plan
to kill the Jews. Knowing they could not be trusted to carry out their dirty
work, Himmler put matters in the capable hands of Adolf Eichmann, who in turn
sent Theodore Dannecker, the SS captain who had
neatly carried out the liquidation of Parisian Jews, to Rome. During the
contest of wills between Berlin and the Germans in Rome that played itself out
in early October, the Vatican stood in the background. That would change.
Lacking enough men
under his command to carry out the roundup of about 8,000 Roman Jews, Dannecker pressed Kappler to
provide him with additional manpower and a list of the addresses of his quarry.
Kappler caved in.43 Dannecker
got the list and the additional troopers from Commandant Stahel,
who, like Kappler, gave way under pressure.44
"Disaster struck," historian Zuccotti wrote, "early in the
morning of the Sabbath, October 16, 1943 ... in the cold rain of a dreary
dawn."45 The Germans surrounded the ghetto and, aided with the addresses
of their victims, went from door to door awakening sleeping Jews. The terrified
Jews were given twenty minutes to put their possessions into a bag or suitcase
and assemble outside in the rain. The Germans nabbed over 1,000 Jews, almost
900 of whom were women and children. Later that morning they were taken to the
Military College, a building several blocks away from the Basilica of St.
Peter. There they awaited an unknown fate.
It was at this point
in the catastrophe that the Holy See became directly involved in events.
Cardinal Maglione requested Ambassador Weizsiicker to come to the secretariat to discuss the
actions the Germans had taken, and a letter threatening a papal protest was
drafted and telegraphed to Berlin. Both events took place on the 16th, the day
of the roundup.
The letter in
question is known as the Hudalletter. Bishop Alois Hudal was the rector of the German National Church of Rome
and of the Santa Maria dell' Anima seminary. Hudal,
as we will see, did not compose the letter, but it went out to Ribbentrop, the
Nazi foreign minister, under his name. It read: I must speak to you of a matter
of great urgency. An authoritative Vatican dignitary, who is close to the Holy
Father, has just told me that this morning a series of arrests of Jews of
Italian nationality has been initiated. In the interests of the good relations
that have existed until now between the Vatican and the High Command of the
German Armed Forces ... I earnestly request that you order the immediate
suspension of these arrests both in Rome and its environs. Otherwise I fear
that the Pope will take a position in public as being against this action, one
which would undoubtedly be used by the anti-German propagandists as a weapon
against us Germans.46
The author or authors
of the message clearly intended to make von Ribbentrop think that his urgent
request for a Vatican statement of good conduct by the Germans was in the
balance. Hence the line "in the in terests of
good relations" and the warning about "anti-German
propagandists."
The Vatican claimed
the initiative for Hudal's letter. It was in its
interest to do so as the letter puts Pius XII on record as opposing the German
assault on the Jews of the Eternal City, his Episcopal See. According to Actes et Documents, the pope's nephew, Carlo Pacelli, had Hudal send the letter to General Rainer Stahel,
commandant of Rome, for him to forward to Berlin.47 Although this may literally
be true, it does not demonstrate that the initiative came from the Vatican. It
is more than a little strange that a nephew of the pope, a prince who had no
official curial office, should be the one to deliver the directive to the
bishop. There was an obvious intent here to avoid the usual channel, the Holy
See's secretariat. After the war, Albrecht von Kessel declared that the Hudalletter did not originate with the bishop.48 And the
letter was not written by Hudal but was merely signed
by him. Weizsacker, von Kessel, Gerhart Gumpel (a
junior diplomat posted to Rome), and, perhaps, General Stahel
himself, to whom the letter was sent en route to
Berlin, wrote it.49 Thus, the letter was a joint undertaking by the Holy See
and the German diplomatic corps.
If the same routine
of the very recent past was followed on October 16th, Montini
and Tardini summoned Weizsacker
and the three of them put their heads together to work out an appropriate
strategy. This would mean finding a suitable person-Bishop Hudal-to
act as a spokesperson for a message of an unnamed person who was "close to
the Holy Father," meaning Prince Carlo Pacelli. Once the Vatican and
German diplomats agreed in principle on the letter's content, they settled on Hudal as its "author." That Pope Pius himself was
involved is not out of the question by any means.
The choice of Bishop Hudal as the purported letter-writer points again to
Vatican involvement in the design to rescue the Jews without risking a papal
statement of denunciation.50 Hudal was a Vatican
outsider whom the Nazis thought was an insider. During the previous decade, Hudal had tried to convince Pius XI that racism was not the
heart and soul of Nazism, and he had succeeded for a while. But the Austrian
bishop's book, The Foundations of National Socialism, which Hitler himself had
read and thrust in the face of the German hierarchy, had infuriated Pius XI.
After the book's publication in 1936, Hudal no longer
had the pope's ear, but his demotion was not public knowledgeY
A schemer, Hudal stayed on in Rome as rector of the
German National Church and looked for the day when he could once again be an
important curial player. In the meantime he became known in Rome as the most
outspoken proNazi clergyman, one who hobnobbed with
top German occupational authorities like Commandant General Stahel.
Hudal, who must have been overjoyed that the Vatican
was once again turning to him with the matter of the letter, was merely being
used by the secretariat because of his reputation in Nazi inner circles.
Ambassador Weizsacker backed up Hudal's
letter with his own telegram to Berlin only a few hours later. This again
suggests the connivance of the secretariat and Weizsacker's
fingerprints on the Hudalletter. Weizsacker
assured von Ribbentrop that Hudal knew whereof he
spoke and he sent the same signal-it would be bad propaganda to deport the Jews
of Rome-to furrow the brow of the foreign minister. But the matter would blow
over, Weizsacker suggested, if the detained Jews were
released to do labor service in Italy.52 The cunning ambassador worded his
message most intriguingly by suggesting that it was the curia who was upset by
the razzia, in effect telling Berlin to be careful lest Pius XII be pushed over
the edge into a denunciation. Weizsacker did this by
comparing the pope to some French bishops who the previous year had clearly
spoken out about "similar incidents" and by comparing him to his
predecessor, Pius XI, "a man of more spontaneous temperament." Years
later one of the early defenders of Pius XII, Robert Graham, S.]., who assisted
in editing Actes et Documents, excoriated Ambassador Weizsacker for originating the picture of a pusillanimous
pope with his telegram.53 In his zeal to prop up Pope Pius, Graham completely
overlooked the historical context and Weizsacker's
objective. The Jews were still at that moment in detention in Rome. Releasing
them, the ambassador said, would "muffle" the Vatican's negative
reaction. Left unsaid, but implied, was the statement that deporting them might
very well push Pius XII over the edge into denunciation of Nazi actions in
Rome.54
The Hudalletter and the Weizsacker
telegram of October 16th reveal that in the crisis of the day, the Vatican and
German diplomats worked together to try to protect Rome's Jews.
As the Jews were
rounded up and confined near the Vatican in temporary detention, Secretary of
State Maglione summoned Weizsacker
to discuss the situation.55 This meeting ranks as one of the most dramatic
scenes of Holocaust historiography. Because of the drama and because
distinguished British historian Owen Chadwick focused on it, the diplomatic
aspect of the seizure of the Jews "under his very windows" has taken
center stage in accounts of the razzia in Rome. I contend that its centrality
has resulted from Holocaust scholarship that has directed attention to the
issue of papal silence about the razzia to the detriment of examination other
concerns of the day.56 The importance of the razzia historically and in
historical literature is not to be denied, but we will see that issues other
than the pope's silence weighed equally heavily-indeed, perhaps more heavily-on
his mind.
Historians are in
unanimous or near-unanimous agreement that Cardinal Maglione
did not protest the seizure of the Roman Jews when he met with the German
ambassador.57 A papal protest, such as the Christmas address of 1942, does not
come into question; Pius XII did not himself address the October 16th roundup. L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, did address
the issue a week later on the 25th, at which time most of the
"transported" Jews had met their end or were about to do so in the
Birkenau gas chambers. The article said that the Holy Father's charity was
universal, extending to all races. The piece was so belated and vague that an
American diarist living in occupied Rome, a nun writing under the name of Jane
Scrivener who picked up on all news that concerned occupied Rome, the Vatican,
and the Jews, failed to mention it at all.58 Romans themselves, however,
assumed that the article was a swipe at the hated occupying Germans.59 They
were angry that the Germans had seized and deported women and children.60 But
what appeared in the Vatican's newspaper in no way compares with a papal
statement from the throne of St. Peter. Newly released documents of the U.S.
national archives also fail to establish that the pope protested. The police attache to the German embassy in Rome, SS officer Herbert Kappler, notified Berlin prior to the roundup on October
16th that Pope Pius would be opposed to the idea of deporting Jews, saying that
the Vatican had been helping Jewish refugees. He did not report that the pope
protested the deportations afterward.61 Likewise, Ambassador Weizsacker asserted the same absence of a protest in a
letter to his mother on October 22nd: "Fortunately so far no one has taken
a public position."62
Historians-as opposed
to writers whose sole objective is to defend Pius XII-are not in agreement with
the editors of Actes et Documents, who maintained
that Maglione succeeded in registering a papal
protest of the roundup of the Jews.63 Putting aside the issue of whether or not
Maglione protested, I argue that protest was not what
he wanted to accomplish when he summoned the German ambassador on the morning
(probably) of the 16th. The record of the meeting, as set down by the cardinal,
reads as follows:
I asked him [Weizsacker] to intervene in favor of those poor people. I
spoke to him as best as I could in the name of humanity and Christian charity.
The Ambassador, who
already knew about the arrests ... replied to me in all sincerity, saying with
some emotion: "I am always waiting for you to ask me: Why do you remain in
this position of yours?"
I exclaimed: No, Mr.
Ambassador, I would never presume to ask you such a question. I simply wish to
say to you, Excellency, you who have a good and tender heart, try to save these
many innocent people. It is painful for the Holy Father, painful beyond words,
that right here in Rome, under the eyes of the Common Father, so many people
are to suffer only because of their particular descent-
The Ambassador, after
some moments of reflection, asked me: "What would the Holy See do if these
things were to continue?"
I replied: The Holy
See would not want to be faced with the need to express its disapproval.
The Ambassador
observed: For more than four years I have followed and admired the attitude of
the Holy See. It has succeeded in steering the boat amid all shapes and sizes
of rocks without running aground and, even though it has greater faith in the
Allies, it has maintained a perfect equi librium. Now, just as the boat is about to reach port, is
it worth it, I ask myself, to put it all at risk. I am thinking of the
consequences that such a step by the Holy See would provoke-
These measures come
from the highest level: "Will your Eminence leave me free not to report this
official conversation?"
I observed that I had
asked him to intervene appealing to his sentiments of humanity. I was leaving
it to his judgment whether or not to mention our conversation, which had been
so friendly.64
If we disregard the
spin of the editors of Actes et Documents-to wit,
that Maglione was registering a protest-it can be
seen that the objective was to induce Weizsacker to
take action to get the Jews released. The cardinal was well aware, of course,
that German diplomats had been working with I, is office to register places
where Jews could hide. Trusting in the experience of the past few weeks, Maglione urged the Germans to continue to handle the
situation. As Robert Katz observed, a detached reading of the cardinal's minute
shows it to be "a desperate plea to save the Jews," not a protest
against the Nazi roundup.65 When Ambassador Weizsacker
interjected that "these matters come from the highest level," he was
intimating that Hitler would retaliate, as earlier he had indeed threatened to
do, if the pope publicly protested. "Is it worth it ... to put all at
risk?" What those words conveyed to Pope Pius, I discuss immediately
below. Further, the cardinal never even alluded to the possibility of a papal
protest until the ambassador prompted him to do so. The cardinal ended the
meeting by returning to his original intent-an appeal on the basis of Weizsacker's "sentiments of humanity" to
intervene. It was not in Weizsacker's power to do so.
The Vatican underestimated Hitler's determination to seize Rome's Jews even if
it meant a papal protest. When German diplomats attempted to thwart the razzia,
Himmler dressed down Ribbentrop, telling him in effect to mind his own
business. The editors of Actes et Documents, writing
after the publication of Hochhuth's famous (or infamous) play The Deputy, spun
the Maglione minute to imply that the Vatican had
protested. There was no protest.
After the Holy See
became convinced in the spring of 1943 that what we now call the Holocaust was
indeed under way, Pope Pius shifted to a policy of control, thinking he was not
able to hinder the Nazi genocide. The October 16th razzia intensely tested the
pope's new policy, but he stuck to it. What exactly did Pius XII want to
control? The issues that most concerned him were as follows:
Protection of Rome,
the Eternal City, from destruction by aerial bombardment. Even before his 1942
Christmas address Pope Pius was worried about possible bombing in Italy. For
this reason, the Peruvian ambassador to the Holy See thought the pontiff would
not mention the atrocities at that time.66 obviously, the ambassador was
thinking in terms of German retaliation, but as the war progressed, it was the
Allies, not the Germans, who worried Pius. Judging from the Vatican's
diplomatic correspondence, no issue weighed on Pius XII's mind as much during
the war as aerial bombardment. The U.S. national archives hold page after page
of entreaties and warnings from the Holy See on this issue.67 No issue occupied
Tittmann's attention more than the Vatican's
communications about the bombing of Rome. Pius warned Taylor in the fall of
1941 that if the British bombed Rome he would not remain silent; he repeated
the warning in writing.68 As early as December 1942, Tittmann
cautioned the State Department that the Vatican might be gearing up for a
"solemn protest" should Rome be bombed.69 Then, as the danger of
aerial bombardment grew, Tittmann warned again that
the pope would be "constrained to protest" if it should become a
reality.70 No such threat of protest was ever made regarding the fate of Jews.
In June 1943, the
Vatican's warnings through Tittmann about bombing of
Italian targets continued steadily, especially as the bombs neared Rome. On
June 24, James Dunn of the U.S. State Department replied to Tittmann,
informing him that the War Department would not dignify the "fantastic
charges" about the bombings with a reply.71 On June 26, the Vatican told
the apostolic delegate to the United States, Amleto Cicognani, to let the president know in no uncertain terms
that Rome must not be bombed. Secretary of State Hull drafted a response to Cicognani for President Roosevelt to review. On the 28th,
FDR told Hull that he would have to let the Holy See know that "war is
war," meaning that since the Germans were using Rome for their military
operations, the city could not be spared.72 The next day, Hull relayed the
president's message to Cicognani, telling him that
for twenty years Italian fascists had been killing Greeks, Ethiopians, and
Albanians, implying that if Italians died because of aerial attacks nothing
could be done about it.73
On July 20, Allied
bombs devastated the area around the Basilica of St. Lawrence, causing
extensive damage to the church structure. Pius wrote President Roosevelt to
entreat him to stop the bombardment.74 "Every district," Pius wrote
Roosevelt, "in some districts every street, has its irreplaceable
monuments of faith and art and Christian culture, [which] cannot be attacked
without inflicting an incomparable loss on the patrimony of Religion and
Civilization. "75 As soon as the Allied Fifth Army occupied Rome in June
1944, the Holy See grew concerned about German bombing. On June 10th, Maglione wrote to the army command to ask that the military
make its headquarters outside the central city or outside the city
altogether.76 What might affect the visible church registered intensely in the
pope's thinking.
Guarding Rome from
becoming a second Stalingrad, an issue that was obviously closely related to
bombing. Pope Pius sought to win open city status for Rome from the
belligerents, both to avoid bombing and so the Holy City would not become the
site of a major artillery battle between the Allies and the Germans. The pope
feared that Rome would be destroyed by ground fighting, as had happened in the
largest city to the south, Naples.?? Also, the fact that the Pacelli family was
Roman did not escape Tittmann's attention. Writing to
Washington about the pope's desire for a declaration that Rome was an open
city, Tittmann made the most unflattering comment
about the Vatican of his entire years of service there: "As the war closes
in on Italy, one is impressed, although hardly surprised, by the increasing
vividness with which the underlying Italianate character of the Holy See is
being revealed."78 Ambassador Weizsacker,
quoting a Catholic colleague in the diplomatic corps, wrote similarly:
"The curia is the most Italian of all institutions and the most Italian
characteristic is fear."79 In April 1943, the Peruvian ambassador to the
Vatican said that Pope Pius was not so much thinking of peace negotiations in
his Christmas address "as to the position of the cities of Italy,
particularly Rome, in view of the constant air attacks and the announcement of
their ceaseless repetition, made continuously from London." Consequently,
he said, the Holy See was continually pursuing open-city status for Rome.80 The
problem was that the Germans were using Rome and its transportation facilities
for their war effort. In June 1943, President Roosevelt explained that Rome
could not be declared an open city until the Germans left.81 Once the Mussolini
government was in disgrace, the Romans looked to Pope Pius to save them
"as if," Ambassador Weizsacker wrote,
"the Germans, the Italians, and the Allies will all obey him."82
After the Allies occupied Rome, Pope Pius asked General Alexander to declare
Rome an open city and remove Allied forces. The "general gave the final
quietus to the Open City obsession by telling the pope that it was a matter
that he could not discuss."83
Avoiding a Communist
uprising in Rome. Even if Pius had succeeded in having Rome accepted as an open
city, he would still have been apprehensive about communism. The pope believed
that in the interlude between the German evacuation and the Allied occupation,
Bolshevik insurgents had a perfect window of opportunity to seize power. This
problem-to some extent imaginary-occupied Pius XII's mind just before and after
the razzia. Communist bands near Rome might attack the city, Pius worried, if
they were not controlled after the Germans evacuated.84 Pius contacted Osborne
to ask if the Germans and the Allies might not be willing to cooperate to shut
out the feared Communists.85 The pope still had this on his mind three days
after the razzia, so he asked the Germans to increase their military presence
in Rome to thwart the Italian partisans he suspected of being Communists (and
some were).86 In the event of a Nazi seizure of Vatican City, Pope Pius did not
intend to defend himself, but he very much intended to do so if it came to
blows with the Communists. To this end, between September and December 1943,
the Vatican increased the Holy See's guard from 400 to 1400 men8? and put in an
order to the Swiss firm that manufactured machine guns for the German army for
twenty automatic rifles and 60,000 cartridges.88 Pope Pius wanted a greater
German police presence in Rome because he feared the partisans could open the
door to a general uprising that the Communists would exploit. Pius found
himself obliged "to identify the security of the [German] occupiers with
that of the Holy See."89 Pius wanted order-German order-in Rome for as
long as the Germans occupied the city. In March 1944, 320 Italian hostages were
murdered by German authorities, Kappler and others,
at the Ardeatine Caves outside the city. The editor of L'Osservatore
Romano wrote a "vibrant protest" against the massacre, but Pope Pius
revised the piece in such a way as to make the partisans the guilty party
instead of the Germans.90 During these months, Pope Pius undoubtedly thought
back to his days as Nuncio Pacelli in Munich when he stared down a gun-toting revolutionary
during the Kurt Eisner Communist uprising at the end of World War I. But the
situation in Italy differed from that of postwar Germany in 1919. Communist
Party secretary Palmiro Togliatti promised in April
1944 to support a government of national unity comprised of all major parties.
Togliatti kept his word, but Pius distrusted him from the beginning. As soon as
the Allies occupied Rome, Pius asked them, as he had asked the Germans, to
provide ample security for Rome. In the critical days of October 1943, Pope
Pius thought and worried a great deal about Communists, perhaps much more so
than about Jews.
Preventing the
Germans from seizing Vatican City and the pope. If the pope had sharply
protested the seizure and deportation of Ro man Jews on October 16th or
immediately thereafter, it is quite possible that an enraged Hitler would have
given orders to invade Vatican City and abduct Pius XII. That is exactly what Weizsacker meant by "Is it worth it ... to put all at
risk?" In the absence of a papal protest, Berlin anxiously awaited the
word of approval from the Vatican regarding the proper conduct of German
soldiers in Rome. On October 18th, Ambassador Weizsacker
went to Cardinal Maglione's office and, finding that
the secretary of state was still fretting about the razzia, wondered whether
the moment was opportune to press for the statement of good German conduct.91 Weizsiicker got what Berlin wanted; the assurance of good
conduct came on October 19th as 1,000 Roman Jews were en
route to Auschwitz.92 Thereafter the Vatican continued to deal warily with the
unpredictable German dictator. But by the end of the fateful month of October,
Pius felt optimistic that the Germans would leave Rome without taking him
prisoner.93
5) Protecting the
remaining Jews in hiding in Rome. Ambassador Weizsacker
had warned the Vatican that a strong protest about the razzia could provoke a
second roundup of the thousands of Jews still in hiding in Rome. A large number
of the remaining Jews, perhaps more than 6,000, found shelter, many in
religious properties such as monasteries and convents. But some, a much smaller
number, took refuge in properties that belonged to the Vatican although they
were not located within Vatican City. Given the number of letters of protection
that Weizsacker issued, it is clear that many of the
letters went to religious institutions that were not owned by the Holy See.
After the razzia, General Stahel and Weizsacker continued to pass out the letters and placards
for display in windows.94 Thus, many Jews who went into hiding after the 16th
would have found safety in a property that did not belong to the Vatican but
had a letter of protection asserting that it did. These properties were not to
be violated (searched) because such an action would endanger the pending good
conduct pronouncement that Berlin sought from the Holy See. Of course, Weizsacker's action also worked to protect any Jews who had
found refuge in Vatican properties. It goes without saying that Pope Pius and
secretariat personnel would have been informed of Weizsacker's
effort. A few months before the end of the war, Tardini
told a member of the U.S. delegation to the Vatican that clergy in Rome had
given asylum to approximately 6,000 Jews during the Nazi occupation, from early
September 1943 to June 5, 1945. Approximately 180 Catholic religious homes and
institutions, including the Lateran and Gregorian universities, offered asylum
to Jews, who were thereby rescued and saved from fascists and Nazis.95 If the
Vatican protested the October 16th razzia, the Jews yet in hiding might be
jeopardized, Weizsacker warned, and the Vatican
policy of control would be jeopardized-indeed, probably quashed irretrievably.
Thus, a papal protest
on or after October 16th might have resulted in double jeopardy: both the Jews
and the Vatican might have been put at risk. In this case, the Vatican's
speculation ran toward Germany, not the Allies. Hitler's rage toward the Holy
See was still a fresh memory inside Vatican City. Given his volatility, a
protest regarding Jews could have set him off, leading to a ruthless attack
both on the pope and the remaining Roman Jews, or so the Holy See might have
reasonably supposed. Weizsacker, after all, warned
that a second roundup was not unlikely in the event of a protest. Actually,
seizing the remaining Jews would not have been practical for the Germans. After
October 16th, the Jews had acquired new identities and new addresses. About
6,700 survivors of the razzia had intermingled with 200,000 anti-fascist
gentiles hiding out in Rome. Ferreting out the Jews posed a virtually
impossible task; the SS no longer had a list of Jewish places of residence.96
Those who see a
protest in Cardinal Maglione's minute of October 16th
and conclude that it stopped the Germans from seizing more Jews are mistaken on
two counts.97 First, circumstances made a mass roundup virtually impossible
after October 16th, and second, German and Italian fascists continued to seize
Jews individually when opportunity arose. At the end of 1943, for example,
fascists raided several Vatican properties, including the Oriental Institute,
where they seized Jews and gentiles of various political stripes.98 This was
not an isolated incident.99 Minister Osborne made this quite clear to the pope.
In a remarkable interview with Pius XII two weeks after the razzia, Osborne
mentioned several of the points of concern that I have singled out:
On Nov. 1, 1943 the
British minister had an audience with Pope XII. The pope was concerned about
food. Wanted the Allies to bring in provisions because the Germans would
probably take all the food with them. The result would
be famine and disorder in the city, the pope believed. Pope Pius XII was
concerned about the period after the Germans left and before the Allies came
in. The minister said that the Germans were not obeying the "open
city" status of Rome .... [They were] arresting Italians and
"applying their usual merciless methods of persecution of the Jews."
I said it was the opinion of a number of people that the [pope] underestimated
his own moral authority and the high respect in which it was held by the Nazis
because of the Catholic population of Germany; I added that I was inclined to
share this opinion and I urged him to bear it in mind if push came to shove
during the transition period. Conversation then turned to Russia and I
mentioned that Stalin was now allowing the orthodox religion. He then
reiterated the usual anxieties in respect of Communism to which I replied that
Communism was derived from economic conditions that were the responsibility of
the governments of individual countries and was not a political infection
disseminated from Moscow.100
During the audience,
Minister Osborne clearly stated that the Germans continued to molest individual
Jews as opportunity arose. Except for the last concern about the Jews on my
list, all of the pope's issues of control related to the physical continuation
of the city of Rome and safety of the Holy See. Had the pope protested the
October 16th razzia, Pius might have lost control over all the five issues he
was concerned about, at least in his mind. So he did not protest. But which of
the five issues was paramount in his thinking? The answer to that question is
unequivocal: saving the city of Rome, not the Jews.
The preservation of a
city seems trivial and petty in the face of the Holocaust. But in the mind of
Pius XII, Rome, the Eternal City, anchored the faith of Catholics around the
world. Pius believed that Rome, in his mind the birthplace of Christianity,
symbolized the visible church for Catholics worldwide. If the heart of
Christendom were to be destroyed (or seized by Communists) the faith of
Catholics would also fall. Pius never said this to any diplomat, nor did anyone
in the secretariat do so. But he confided it in a letter to Bishop Preysing, who wanted the pope to speak out against the
Holocaust.101 Thus, when Pius XII addressed the issue directly about why he
kept silent after the razzia, he pointed to concerns about the safety of the
city, not the safety of the remaining Jews. An American who had an audience
with the pope three days after the razzia reported that Pius worried about the
possible destruction of Rome because of the war and about a possible Communist
insurrection. He did not mention Jews.102 On October 11th, Maglione
had mentioned the same priorities to Osborne.103 Gerhart Riegner
saw in the letter to Bishop Preysing the true reason
for Pius XII's failure to speak out after the 1942 Christmas address. His
perception was squarely on the mark.104
When the Germans
seized Rome's Jews on October 16th, all of the issues of control crowded
together simultaneously in Pius XII's thoughts. It is a mistake to isolate
anyone of the issues, such as the famous Weizsacker-Maglione
meeting or the Hudalletter, from the others.
Certainly, the circumstances surrounding the entire razzia, including its
prelude and aftermath, are devilishly complex and challenging for historians.
The facts, however, point to an interpretation that is consistent with Pius's
policy of control. The pope moved immediately after October 16th to solidify
his control of events that affected, or potentially affected, the city of Rome.
On October 19th, the Vatican publicly acknowledged the good behavior of German
troops in Rome (as requested by Berlin), asked for more German police to
control Communists in Rome, and pressured the United States to give assurances
that Allied troops would not attack the city. An additional week and a half
passed before L'Osservatore Romano printed the
Vatican's reaction, such as it was, to the razzia.
Unraveling the
several interweaving threads that Pius XII held in his hands at the critical
moment of October 16, 1943, is a complex process. Still, it is clear that an
out-and-out protest would have meant loss of control of the issues that were
important to the pope. Ambassador Weizsacker reported
that a few days before the seizure of the Jews, Pius's foremost concern
pertained to the safety of Rome.105 What was uppermost in Pius XII's mind
immediately after the razzia was concern for Rome, not concern for the
remaining Roman Jews. In this regard, no document compares in importance with
the letter Pope Pius wrote to Bishop Prey sing in March 1944. Prey sing's
letter of the previous March had precisely addressed the issue of the Jewish
plight versus physical destruction by aerial bombardment. Terrible as the air
raids were, Preysing wrote, what was happening to
Berlin's Jews was worse. Five months later Pius, XII faced exactly that
situation. Speaking out to protest the October 16th roundup would likely or, at
least possibly, have led to a Roman Stalingrad. Pius XII would not allow the
Eternal City to be destroyed if he could prevent it. No document in the eleven
volumes of Actes et Documents addresses the Holocaust
issue as directly as the March 1944 letter to Preysing;
in no other document does Pope Pius himself address the issue so directly, and
in no other document does the mind of Pius XII reveal itself so clearly and
unambiguously.
When Pius got around
to answering Preysing's letter of March 1943, he
began by saying that Presying's "eight letters
of 1943 and five letters of 1944" were at hand. Preysing
had presumably been urging (perhaps even pressing) the pope about the murder of
the Jews. (My indefiniteness here derives from the fact that the editors of Actes et Documents omitted nearly all of Preysing's letters. Of course, it is possible that the
Vatican purged the letters prior to the editors' work.) Pius told Preysing that he had two reasons for not allowing Rome to
be endangered, a reference to what he felt would happen if he protested the
roundup of Jews. First, "in consideration of Catholics worldwide [it is] a
matter of conscience for Us" to protect the city because of the
"uniqueness of the Holy City in the history of mankind." Rome had
been the center of "Christendom since the beginning of the church of Jesus
Christ," and it was that "distinction and purpose which gave the city
its special character." Second, Pius said that he had to keep Rome out of
the war to preserve his impartiality among Catholics on both sides of the
conflict. In this letter, Pope Pius made clear that preventing bombardment of
Rome was more important to him than protecting the city's Jews.106
If, as I have argued,
the threat of German retaliation was the critical factor governing Pope Pius
during the fall crisis involving the Roman Jews, then he must have felt greatly
relieved when the Allies became Rome's occupational force in June of 1944. Most
important, the turnabout in occupying forces had been accomplished with almost
no destruction within the Eternal City. Myron Taylor found that Pius, once free
of Nazis, was now "eager to co-operate in the endeavor to save Jewish
lives." Pius said that "neither history nor his conscience would
forgive him if he made no effort to save at this psychological juncture further
threatened lives. "107 It is impossible to say what Pius meant by
"this psychological juncture," but the threat of the murder of over
half a million Hungarian Jews in 1944 would become a test of the pope's new
resolve.
The onset of genocide
in Hungary came upon the Jews with terrible swiftness. The Germans occupied the
country in mid-March and by July nearly 300,000 Jews had been transported to
Auschwitz and gassed and cremated there. Several reasons accounted for the
swiftness of the genocide. I have described these along with the conflicting
advice from bishops within Hungary-some favoring supporting the Jews, others
favoring doing nothing to hinder the Germans-in The Catholic Church and the
Holocaust.108 Here I concentrate on Pius XII and his resolve "to ... save
threatened lives." To be successful, Pius needed to overcome the
resistance to act of the primate of Hungary, Justinian Sen?di-a
resistance rooted in obstinacy or indifference or indecision.
From March to July, Seredi heard from Endre Hamvas, the bishop of Csanad, who
told the primate that it was painful to see the Jews herded here from Zenta, Magyarkanizsa and Zombor. About two thousands of them had to leave their
homes hastily with little packs on their backs. The local authorities did not
know where to accommodate them on short notice, thus they have been put up for
the time being in the synagogue, the Jewish school and the pigpens of the
salami factory (the latter have been standing empty for several months).
Sometimes up to 80 persons are crammed into a school room, men women, children
and aged people together.109
Then, in June, Bishop
Hamvas publicly protested the deportation of hundreds
and hundreds of thousands of people, among whom were "innocent children,
defenseless women, helpless old and pitifully sick persons."110 But in
May, a higher-ranking bishop, Archbishop Gyula Czapic of the diocese of Eger, had counseled Seredi "that what is happening to the Jews at the present
time is nothing but appropriate punishment for their misdeeds in the
past." 111 Clearly, opinion about what the Hungarian Church should do
about the predicament of the country's Jews was sharply divided. Which
direction would the primate take? One thing is certain: unlike Archbishop
Johannes de Jong, who on his own authority had challenged the occupying German
administrators about Dutch Jews in 1943, Seredi did
not act independently and decisively.
Voices outside
Hungary also advised Cardinal Seredi. In March, the
War Refugee Board, which Franklin D. Roosevelt had created very belatedly in
January 1944 to coordinate efforts to rescue Jews, urged Pius XII to become
involved in saving Hungarian Jews. The War Refugee Board quickly learned that
the Vatican had already told the representatives of the Holy See in Hungary to
"do everything possible for the relief of the Jews." 112 The
principal representative of the Vatican in Hungary was Nuncio Angelo Rotta, who strongly sided with the Hungarian bishops who
were urging the primate to speak out on behalf of the Jews. In June, Rotta told Cardinal Seredi in the
name of the pope that what was happening to the Jews was "abominable and
dishonorable."113 On the first day of the deportation of Jews, the nuncio
contacted members of Regent· Miklos Horthy's government, telling them that
"the whole world knows what deportation means in practice." Rotta told them that he protested in his official position
as the apostolic nuncio.114 On June 8, Rotta
challenged Cardinal Seredi as intensely as he had the
government, asking the primate why the Hungarian bishops were not confronting
the government. At this, the cardinal became incensed. What is the
"utility of the Apostolic Nuntiature in
Budapest" which "does nothing and nobody knows if it ever did
anything?" he asked.115
Although Pius had
resolved to do what he could to save the Jews, he required a good bit of
prodding before he finally intervened toward the end of June. One source of
pressure came from the Auschwitz Protocol. In April, two Czechs, Rudolph Vrba
and Alfred Wetzler, escaped from Auschwitz and made
their way to Slovakia, where they divulged in great detail the operations of
the death camp. Vrba and Wetzler's information was
corroborated by other escapees. When authorities in Slovakia became convinced
of the truth of what the escapees told them, they drew up what became known as
the Auschwitz Protocol, translated it into German and Hungarian, and circulated
it in Europe. Authorities in Switzerland gave it wider circulation and credence
because of a cover letter by prominent Protestant churchmen, including Karl
Barth and W. A. Visser t'Hooft.116 When a copy of the Auschwitz Protocol
reached the Vatican, the pope sent a messenger to Bratislava to verify its
authenticity, even though he had known for well over a year that Jews were
being gassed en masse. The Auschwitz Protocol
subjected Pope Pius to the same kind of pressure he had felt late in 1942 when
the United Nations decried the murder of the Jews. Undoubtedly, the pope did
not want to find himself trailing behind the denunciations of other voices and
institutions about the events in Hungary. The king of Sweden had, in fact,
already urged Regent Honhy to stop the
persecution.117
In addition, a number
of people appealed directly to Pius. The chief rabbis of Palestine, Isaac
Herzog and Ben-Zion Meir Uziel; the War Refugee
Board; the Archbishop of Westminster at the behest of the British World Jewish
Council; and Archbishop Edward Mooney at the behest of Leon Kubowitzki
of the United States as well as others prodded Pius to do something. He finally
sent Regent Horthy an open (public) telegram on June 25, urging him to "do
everything in his power to save as many unfortunate people [as possible] from
further pain and sorrow."118 The appeal to Honhy,
historian Randolph Braham has written, was weak-a "discreet diplomatic
appeal" that did not mention the Jews by name.1l9 Furthermore, it was not
pain and sorrow but death that faced the Jews. And the pope's message was sent
"three weeks after the liberation of Rome by the Allies, when any threat
of German attack on the Vatican was gone. "120 Even though the pope's
letter was not as strong as it could have been, Horthy was flooded with letters
from around the world, including a very threatening one from President
Roosevelt. These outbursts directly led to a cessation of deportations.
The pope's telegram
moved Cardinal Seredi to do something at last. In
July, when all of the Jews of Hungary were dead except those living in Budapest,
Seredi issued a pastoral letter opposing
deportations. It is significant that Pius intervened directly with Horthy
instead of with the Hungarian bishops through the primate. When Seredi blew up at Nuncio Rotta,
he concluded his rant by saying that "it is deceitful for the Apostolic
See to carryon diplomatic relations with that German government which carries
out the atrocities."121 This statement backed Pope Pius into the corner.
It implied that if Rome pushed too hard, Seredi would
respond, possibly publicly, by asking why the Vatican still recognized the
legitimacy of Nazi Germany. Judging from how the pope dealt with the cardinal
after June, it appears that the primate's outburst made Pius resolve to mollify
him rather than press him.
The cessation of
deportations to Auschwitz proved to be no more than a summer respite. The
fall-October-was again fateful, as it had been in Rome the year before. It was
then that Frenenc Szalasi,
the leader of the fascist Arrow Cross Party, became prime minister and the new
government immediately began to persecute the Jews again. Not surprisingly,
after the murders in the first half of 1944, the United States and the World
Jewish Congress turned again to the Vatican to forestall the killing of the
remaining three to four hundred thousand Jews. On October 10, Taylor learned
from the state department of "another step in the process of mass
extermination" in Hungary. State wanted Taylor to get word to the Holy See
because "it would seem that the most impressive means of achieving the
purpose of our government to bring this message to the attention of the
Hungarian authorities would be through the intercession of the Vatican."
122 Taylor heard the same dire news about extermination of the remaining
Hungarian Jews from the London office of the World Jewish Congress, which also
appealed direct to Pope Pius to intervene. The U.S. State Department and the
British Foreign Office directed Taylor and Osborne to "encourage such a
course."123 Pius knew that the news from the west was accurate because
Nuncio Rotta had cabled Rome with news of "great
cruelty." On October 16, the U.S. State Department again asked that the
Holy See communicate through Rotta the Allied warning
to Hungarian authorities to stop cooperating with the German deportations.124
Two days later, the U.S. asked the Holy See to communicate to the German
ambassador the intention of the Allies to hold those responsible for the
atrocities in Hungary accountable.125 There is nothing in Weizsacker's
papers to indicate that the pope conveyed the message. After his audience with
Pius on the following day, Taylor cabled Roosevelt that the "pope [would]
make a special appeal for the salvation of the Jews in Hungary."126
The Vatican and Rotta kept in steady contact. The nuncio was told of the
appeals from all sides for the pope's intervention and instructed to avail
himself "of the collaboration of the episcopate" to energize
Catholics to practice charity toward the persecuted.127 But here exactly was
the rub. The Hungarian episcopate was badly divided. There were those like
bishops Morton, Apor, and Hamvas
who spoke out distinctly against persecution, but they did not have the ear of
the cardinal.128 Pressure from Rome did succeed, however, in nudging Cardinal Seredi to designate Sunday, October 29th, as a national day
of prayer on which a collection would be taken up for refugees. Of course, the
pope's plea to the episcopate had no effect on Szalasi's
fascist regime. But Nuncio Rotta insisted "in
the name of the Holy See on an improvement of conditions" for Jews and
extracted a statement from Szalasi that the Jews
would neither "be deported nor annihilated." 129
The intensity of
appeals to the Holy See in October may be taken as an accurate barometer of the
danger to the 300,000 to 400,000 Jews remaining in Hungary. Late in the month
the Vatican received still another plea from London and Washington, this time
for a radio broadcast by the Holy Father to Hungary. Prompted by the War
Refugee Board, the State Department told Taylor "urgently to approach the
pope with the suggestion that he deliver a broadcast to the people and clergy
appealing to them to temporarily conceal Jews and oppose the deportation and
extermination of these people to the full extent of their powers." 130 Instead
of a radio broadcast, Pius responded, very weakly, by sending a congratulatory
word to Seredi for his plan to make October 29th a
day of prayer and monetary support for Jews. This was very far indeed from what
was asked of the Holy See-a direct appeal by Pope Pius to the Hungarian
Catholic people. In early November, Gowen, an assistant to Myron Taylor, sent
word that "it was fear of communism that in the fall of that year
dissuaded Pope Pius from making a radio broadcast," at the behest of the U.S.
War Refugee Board and the U.S. State Department, to save 65,000 Jews about to
be deported from Hungary and murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau.l3l Osborne
provided London with a not altogether different but fuller explanation for why
the pope turned down the request to give a radio broadcast. Osborne said that
if he made such an announcement about Jews in Hungary he would have to make a
similar statement regarding "Russian treatment of Poles and Baltic
populations." 132 This was surely a hollow excuse. Pius knew very well
that the Soviets were not engaged in a Nazi-style genocide or anything like it,
and he knew that the Soviet's treatment of Poles could not begin to compare
with the bestiality of the Nazis from 1940 to 1943 in occupied Poland.
There is no doubt
that Pius XII did more to save the Jews in Hungary than in any other country.
In no other instance did he intervene directly with a foreign government. Even
though by that time it was clear that Germany would lose the war and that Rome
was out of Hitler's reach, credit must be given for his intervention. In the
end, although about 450,000 Hungarian Jews perished, some of the credit for
saving the remaining 30 percent of the Jewish population belongs to Pius XII.
(Of course, this leaves unattended the question of his silence before the
deportation of the 450,000.) The fact remains, however, that he could have done
more. As before, the Vatican remained passively active regarding Jewish
concerns. His failure to appeal directly by radio to Hungarian Catholics left some
of them uninhibited in their rapaciousness-forcing starving Jews to pay
usurious prices for bread or taking clothes for bread for in the winter months
when the Arrow Cross Party had begun again with persecution.
The Vatican received
detailed information from a Hungarian priest about the pitiable condition of
the Jews-children and the elderly whipped and dragging "themselves along
starving, frozen, limping" twenty or thirty kilometers a day without food
or a place to sleep at night. (This letter was omitted from Actes
et Documents.)133 During the last months of their torture, Nuncio Rotta worked heroically to save them and alleviate their
suffering (for which he was later named Righteous Gentile among the Nations by
Yad Vashem). Once the Vatican supported his work with a donation of an
unspecified amount, but the initiative for helping the Jews was Rotta's alone; he received no instructions from the Vatican
for his relief work. 134 American Jews continued to appeal to the Vatican for
more intervention by the Holy See late in December 1944. The Vatican replied
that it was no longer possible for the pope to be in contact with Nuncio Rotta. Instead, Monsignor Tardini
instructed the nuncio to Germany to recommend that the Nazis follow principles
of "humanity and justice" regarding the Hungarian Jews. Clearly it
was disingenuous for Pope Pius to have such a message sent to Nazis in Berlin
knowing, as he had for some time, that their murderous agenda left no inch of
room for humanity and justice.135 His success in Hungary notwithstanding, Pius
XII missed a wide-open opportunity to join with Nuncio Rotta
in a determined effort to end the misery of the Jews.
In this and the
previous chapter we have looked closely at the perennial theme of Pius XII and
the Holocaust. Several threads run through the war years that distracted the
pope from attending first and foremost to genocide. Separately the threads
appear as single twisted snarls that kept the pope from attending to what we
generally today, more than a half century later, believe should have been his
principal preoccupation. But together the threads weave a pattern that was the
pope's actual principal preoccupation-preserving the Church. That preserving a
Church that had not had its finest hour in the service of humanity would leave
it indelibly stained was not a thought that came to him.
Preserving the Church
meant protecting it from communism, meant preserving concordats, meant saving
its architectural and artistic treasures in the Eternal City. The pope's mind
dwelled on these concerns. When the Nazis reigned over most of Europe, Pius, as
we will see, considered how Catholics could survive by emigrating to South
America. Then, when Germany's war fortunes flagged, he thought about how Nazis
could emigrate to Argentina and be useful against communism. While genocide was
under way, he gave audiences to various people, some of whom were Nazi
collaborators, to work on these strategies-correspondence about which we do not
read a word in Actes et Documents.
When the war came to
Italy, Pius XII was very proactive in his efforts to save the structures of the
Eternal City while remaining passively active with regard to that city's Jews.
The result was near-total success for the buildings but only very partial
success for the Jewish people. There can be only one reason for the whimpering,
absurd plea in the final months of the Holocaust for the Nazis to treat Jews
"justly and humanely":
Pope Pius did not
want to place the concordat at risk with the end of the Nazi regime so close at
hand. Only when his moral authority was called into question in 1942 did the
pope speak out in his Christmas address. Whether staving off genocide or
staving off challenges to his authority was his first objective we do not yet
know. In short, we must come to the realization that Pius XII had a number of
concerns on his mind other than the destiny of the Jews. Certainly one of them
was communism in Italy, which not only threatened the country's Christian way
of life but also the financial foundation of the Vatican.
By adding English
language sources, underneath we ad to the content of
Pope and Devil (Papst und Teufel) by Herbert Wolf and "Nazis auf der Flucht" by Gerald Steinacher about
the Nazi flight and its Vatican connection. The Vatican’s War P.1.
In Mystici Corporis Christi of 1943, the Vatican indicated
that if Jews did not convert, their destiny layout of the reach of the Church
because they had broken the covenant. Thus when the Archbishop of Belgium was
asked to "pls.say something" in regards to
the more than twenty five thousand Jews that were incarcerated around the corner from his own palace, in order to be gassed in Auschwitz; that this was
"not the Church's business".* The Vatican’s War P.3.
First mentioned in
our From Belgium to Kosovo Research, we also will present the final information regarding
among others, Ante Pavelic and so on. The Ustasa's
gold: The Vatican’s War P.4.
In 1942 Pius XII
counting on a envisioned a postwar Eastern Europe anchored by a bloc of
countries-a constellation like that of the AustroHungarian
Empire, which earlier in the century had embraced Croatia. Hungarians,
Austrians, and Croats had once been the bulwark of Europe that held off the
infidel Muslim. Might not they now form a bulwark against the new infidel-the
atheist Soviets? The Vatican’s War P.5.
During the years
after World War II, Pius XII believed that a military showdown between the
Soviet Union and the west would occur. If that were to happen, it would have
his blessing. The Nazi/Vatican
Connection P.6.
1. Acta Apostolicae Sedis 35 (1943):
165-171. The Italian reads
"destinati talora, anche senza propria colpa, a costrizioni sterminatrici"
(167). This message was given in February; the June
address is discussed below. The February message was not public and was not
picked up by the press.
2. ADSS, 9:274. The
date was May 5, 1943. Maglione, in speaking about the
gassing of the Jews, referred to them vaguely as "persons."
3. ADSS, 9:291.
4. ADSS, 9:287-289.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Owen Chadwick,
Britain and the Vatican during the Second World War (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1986),213.
9. On the central
role of Tardini in shaping the pope's policies, see
Peter Godman, Hitler and the Vatican (New York: Free Press, 2004), 96 and
passim.
10. Paul O'Shea
referred to the encyclical in "Confiteor. Eugenio Pacelli, the Catholic
Church and the Jews. An Examination of the Responsibility of Pope Pius XII and
the Holocaust, 1917-1943" (Ph.D. diss., Macquarie University, January
2004),76.
11. According to
Richard Rubenstein's cognitive dissonance theory, Pope Pius did indeed wish for
the death of the Jews; see Richard L. Rubenstein and John K. Roth, Approaches
to Auschwitz, rev. ed. (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster Press, 2003), 339. For a
theological explanation of Mystici Corporis Christi
that emphasizes the nonracist character of the encyclical, see Robert A. Krieg,
Catholic Theologians in Nazi Germany (New York: Continuum, 2004), 168-170.
12. "Pope Bids
Nations Obey Laws of War," New York Times, June 3, 1943,5.
The Times gave this story greater play than it had done earlier for the pope's
Christmas address. The pope's emphasis in the June address was not on the
murder of Poles "and others" but on the hostage situation. Regarding
the phrase "people sometimes dying," see Zuccotti, "L'Osservatore Romano and the Holocaust, 1930-1945,"
Holocaust and Genocide Studies 17, no. 2 (2003): 265.
13. Harold H. Tittmann to U.S. State Department, paraphrased by Leland
Harrison, Box 23, RG 84, location 350/68/25/02, NARA.
14. Zuccotti, Under
His Very Windows, see chapter 10.
15. Ibid., 150-152.
16. Chadwick, "Weizsaecker, the Vatican, and the Jews of Rome," 186.
During this time, fall 1943, the only conflict between the Vatican and
Ambassador Weizsacker occurred when Under-Secretary
of State Montini came to believe that 6,000 Italians
were to be taken as hostages and killed because six Germans had been executed.
The hostage report turned out to have no basis in fact and, in any event, did
not concern Jews.
17. Robert Katz, The
Battle for Rome: The Germans, the Allies, the Partisans, and the Pope,
September 1943-June 1944 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003), 106.
18. Louis P. Lochner,
ed., The Goebbels Diaries, 1942-1943, translated and introduced by the editor
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1948); see the entry for July 27, 1943.
19. Pasqualina Lehnert, Ich durfte Ihm Dienen (Wiirzburg, 1983), 121.
20. Tittmann, Vatican City, to State Department, October 28,
1943, Decimal File 740.0011, M982, Reel 164, RG 59, NARA.
21. "Abroad:
Italy Has Become Hitler's Last Scapegoat," New York Times, September 11,
1943, 12.
22. Records of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, September 26, 1943, reel 37,
CAHS-USHMM.
23. Leonidas E. Hill,
III, "The Vatican Embassy of Ernst von Weizsacker,
19431945," Journal of Modern History 39, no. 2 (June 1967): 146.
24. Ibid., 147. Hill's
source for this information is the affidavit of K. G. Wollemweber,
book 9, unpublished materials prepared by the defense, Weizsacker's
trial, "U.S. Military Tribunal, IV (IVa), Niirnberg, case no. 11, U.S. vs. Ernst Weizsacker
et al," IMT Documents, Blue Set.
25. Hill, "The
Vatican Embassy of Ernst von Weizsacker," 147.
26. Albrecht von
Kassel, "The Pope and the Jews," in Storm over "The
Deputy," ed. Eric Bentley (New York: Grove Press, 1964), 74.
27. Katz, The Battle
for Rome, 63.
28. David Kertzer,
The Popes against the Jews: The Vatican's Role in the Rise of Modern
Anti-Semitism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001).
29. David S. Wyman,
The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 1941-1945 (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1984),238.
30. Zuccotti thinks
this route would have been effective; see Under His Very Windows, 157.
31. Ibid., 181ff.
32. Zuccotti
disagrees with this analysis and concludes that the Vatican "took no
initiatives" to help. Ibid., 187.
33. Richard Breitman, "New Sources on the Holocaust in
Italy," Holocaust and Genocide Studies 16, no. 3 (2002): 402-414. It is
difficult to explain Kappler's reference to the
Vatican's assistance to Jews. He did not mean Roman Jews because they remained
in their homes, too unconcerned about danger, prior to the razzia. Kappler may have said this (as Breitman
speculates in reference to something else) to dissuade Berlin from going ahead
with the razzia.
34. Katz, The Battle
for Rome, 76.
35. See the
"Fool's Gold" section of the following chapter. U.S. intelligence was
aware of the shipment of the Jews' gold to Kaltenbrunner; see OSS report to
Donovan, October 5, 1943, Entry 210, Box 304, RG 226, location 250/64/27/04,
NARA. Kappler imagined that his 50-kilogram
"gift" would help Germany's balance-of-payments problem; see Entry
122, decoded messages from Rome, decode 7256, RG 226, NARA.
36. Breitman, "New Sources on the Holocaust in
Italy," 404. Breitman notes that the newly
available decodes neither affirm nor deny that Kappler
opposed the roundup of Jews.
37. OSS report, n.d.,
Box 440, RG 84, location 250/64/25/05-06, NARA.
38. Kaltenbrunner to Kappler, October 11, 1943, Entry 122, decoded messages from
Rome, decode 7458, October 11, 1943, RG 226, NARA.
39. Kappler distrusted von Kessel and nearly arrested him on
charges of treason, but this does not seem to have had anything to do with the
Roman Jews; see Albrecht von Kessel, Verborgene Saat. Aufzeichnungen aus dem Widerstand 1933 bis
1945, ed. Peter Steinbach (Berlin: Ullstein, 1992),
274.
40. Breitman, "New Sources on the Holocaust in
Italy," 405.
41. Katz, The Battle
for Rome, 80.
42. Ibid.
43. Kappler did not cooperate with the German diplomats in
their efforts to protect the Jews.
44. Katz, The Battle
for Rome, 83.
45. Zuccotti, Under
His Very Window, 155. The best accounts of the events of October 16 may be
found in Zuccotti, chapter 11, "The Rome Roundup"; and Katz, The
Battle for Rome, chapter 7, "Under His Very Eyes."
46. Quoted in Katz,
The Battle for Rome, 107.
47. ADSS, 9:509-510.
48. See von Kessel,
"The Pope and the Jews," 72. Von Kessel was sympathetic to Pope Pius
and therefore had not reason to lie about the letter.
49. Ibid.
50. In later years,
Bishop Hudal claimed that he wrote the letter, which
is true only in the sense that it was he who put pen to paper.
51. See Peter Godman,
Hitler and the Vatican (New York: Free Press, 2004),
125. I discuss Hudal's machinations more thoroughly in chapter 6.
126. For the text of the
telegram, see Katz, The Battle for Rome, 107.
127. See Zuccotti,
Under His Very Window, 165.
128. Ibid., 162.
129. On many
occasions both before and after October 16, Pope Pius spoke with German
ambassadors von Bergen and Weizsacker but never
brought up the subject of the murder of the Jews, even during the razzia. Pius
declined to see Weizsacker. See Hill, Die Weizsacker Papiere.
56. The most
remarkable aspect of Harold Tittmann's memoir, Inside
the Vatican of Pius XII, is his silence about the events of October 16 and the
days thereafter. The reason for the omission is that when he contacted former Delasem head Settimio Sorani to
provide details of the Vatican's assistance to the Jews of Rome, he learned
from Sorani that such details did not exist. See the next chapter.
57. On this point,
Robert Katz, Leonidas Hill, Owen Chadwick, Susan Zuccotti, Paul O'Shea, John
Morley, and I are all in agreement. Sanchez concedes that the Vatican's
documents put the Holy See in a negative light, but he is unable or does not
wish to come to judgment; see Jose M. Sanchez, Pius XII and the Holocaust:
Understanding the Controversy (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America
Press, 2002), 146. John Morley discussed the Weizacker-Maglione
meeting in detail in Vatican Diplomacy and the Jews during the Holocaust (New
York: Ktav Publishing House, 1980), 180-181, and
gives the entire text of Maglione's minute. He
concluded that the meeting did not constitute a protest.
58. Jane Scrivener,
Inside Rome with the Germans (New York: Macmillan, 1945). A few months later,
when L'Osservatore Romano criticized the seizure Of
additional Jews, Scrivener took special note of it.
59. Zuccotti, "L'Osservatore Romano," 26.
60. Entry 122,
decoded messages from Rome, decode 7672, 17/10/43, RG 226, NARA.
61. Breitman, "New Sources on the Holocaust in
Italy."
62. Hill, Weizacker Papiere, 355. Katz sees
Weizsacker's night letter of October 17 confirming
the Hudalletter as "a direct challenge" of
the Vatican to Berlin. I disagree with this; Weizsacker's
intent was to portray the pope as the best pontiff Berlin could hope for. This
is why Jesuit Robert Graham condemned Weizsacker's
letter, saying that it ruined Pius XII's reputation. I am puzzled by Katz's
interpretation as it does not seem to fit the context of chapter 7, "Under
His Very Eyes" in his The Battle for Rome.
63. ADSS, 9:505.
64. Original in ADSS,
9:505-506. Here I am using Robert Katz's translation; see Katz, The Battle for
Rome, 104-105.
65. Katz, The Battle
for Rome, 105.
66. Diomedes Arias
Schreiber to his government, November 24, 1942, Entry 210, Box 419, RG 226,
location 250/64/29/06, NARA.
67. Most of this
correspondence may be found in Boxes 2433-2435, 2439, 2441, 2448-2449,
2151-2154, 2457-2458, 2461-2463, 2465, 2469, and 24702777, RG 59, NARA.
Additional correspondence would be found in London, although English
intransigence about responding to the pope's entreaties not to bomb Rome led
Pius to work through the Americans.
68. Tittmann, Inside the Vatican of Pius XII, 65-66.
69. Harold H. Tittmann to Secretary of State Cordell Hull, December
31,1942, Entry 1071, Box 29, location 250/48/29/05, NARA.
70. Apostolic
Delegate Cicognani, Washington, D.C., to Myron
Taylor, June 15, 1943, Decimal File 740.0011, M982, Reel 164, RG 59, NARA.
71. James Dunn to
Harold H. Tittmann, June 24, 1943, Entry 1071, Box
29, location 250/48/29/05, NARA.
72. President
Franklin D. Roosevelt to Secretary of State Cordell Hull, June 24, 1943, Entry
1071, Box 29, location 250/48/29/05, NARA.
73. Secretary of
State Cordell Hull, Washington, D.C., to Apostolic Delegate Cicognani,
June 29,1943, Entry 1071, Box 29, location 250/48/29/05, NARA.
74. Pius to F. D.
Roosevelt, September 6,1943, Decimal File 740.0011, M982, Reel 164, RG 59,
NARA.
75. Tittmann, Inside the Vatican of Pius XII, 167.
76. Major General
Harry H. Johnson, U.S. Army, Rome, to Harold H. Tittmann,
June 25, 1944, Entry 1069, Box 28, RG 59, location 250/48/29/05, NARA.
77. Katz, The Battle
for Rome, 147.
78. Harold H. Tittmann to Secretary of State Cordell Hull, December 18,
1942, Entry 1071, Box 29, RG 59, location 250/48/29/05, NARA.
79. Hill, Weizsacker Papiere, 374.
80. Diomedes Arias
Schreiber to his government, December 9, 1942 (copy), Entry 210, Box 419, RG
226, location 250/64/29/06, NARA.
81. Cicognani to Taylor, June 15, 1943.
82. Hill, Weizsacker Papiere, 374.
83. Memo of the
British legation to the Holy See, May 31,1945, Entry 1068, Box 7, RG 59,
location 250/48/29/01, NARA.
84. OSS report of
October 19, 1943, Entry 210, Box 65, RG 226, location 250/64/22/04, NARA.
85. Maglione to British minister Osborne, October 12, 1943,
Decimal File 740.0011, M982, Reel 164, RG 59, NARA.
86. Susan Zuccotti,
The Italians and the Holocaust: Persecution, Rescue, and Survival (New York:
Basic Books, 1987), 133.
87. OSS report of
February 21, 1944, Entry 210, Box 327, RG 226, location 250/64/27/07, NARA.
88. Foreign service
posts of U.S. State Department, post of May 4, 1944, Entry 3220, Box 23, RG 84,
location 350/68/25/03, NARA.
89. Katz, The Battle
for Rome, 136.
90. Ibid.,
chapter 16, especially 258-260.
91. OSS report, no
date, Entry 210, Box 440, RG 84, location 250/64/25/0506,NARA.
92. Ibid.
93. OSS report,
October 29, 1943, Box 65, RG 226, location 250/64/22/04, NARA.
94. Zuccotti, Under
His Very Windows, 195.
95. Myron C. Taylor,
Vatican City, to Secretary of State Edward Stettinius, March 26, 1945, Box 32,
Entry 1073, RG 59, location 250/48/29/05, NARA.
96. See Zuccotti,
Under His Very Windows, chapter 13.
97. Eugene J. Fisher,
director of Catholic-Jewish Relations for the Secretariat for Ecumenical and
Interreligious Affairs of the National Conference of Catholic
Bishops, wrote that Weizsacker (whom Fisher
mistakenly identified as Catholic) communicated Maglione's
protest "gently and encouragingly" to Berlin. Fisher assumed
incorrectly that this put a stop to the roundups; see "Who Was Pius
XII?" in The Holocaust and the Christian World, ed. Carol Rittner, Stephen D. Smith, and Irena Steinfeldt
(London: Kuperard, 2000),130-132.
98. Tittmann telegram of January 4, 1944, Decimal File
740.0011, M982, Reel 164, RG 59, NARA.
99. Hill,
"Vatican Embassy of Ernst von Weizsacker,"
147.
100. Anonymous
Foreign Service Post, Box 4 7 General Records, 1944: 840.4-848 Balkans, RG 84,
NARA.
101. Pius XII,
Vatican City, to Preysing, March 21, 1944, Korrespondenz 19441945, BAB V/16-4, Diocesan Archives,
Berlin.
102. Anonymous
telegram to J. W. Jones, U.S. State Department, October 19, 1943, Decimal File
740.0011, M982, Reel 164, RG 59, NARA.
103. Maglione to
Osborne, October 12, 1943.
104. Gerhart M. Riegner, Niemals
Verzweifeln, trans. Michael von Killisch-Horn (Gerlingen: Psychosozial-Verlag,
2001), 164.
105. Hill, Weizsiicker Papiere;353.
106. Pius XII to Prey
sing, March 21, 1944. Copies of Presying's letters to
Pius are missing from the Berlin diocesan archives except for the one dated
March 1943. 107. Records of the U.S. Foreign Office; see U.S. State Department,
Foreign Relations of the United States 1944 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government
Printing Office, 1966), 1:1123.
107. Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 104-109.
108. Endre Hamvas to Justinian Sert?dy, May 11,1944, RG 52.009.01 "1, CAHSUSHMM.
110. For the
remainder of Hamvas's protest, see Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 107.
111. Moshe Y. Herczl, Christianity and the Holocaust of Hungarian Jewry,
trans. Joel Lerner (New York: New York University Press, 1993),206.
112. Robert Rozett, "International Intervention: The Role of
Diplomats in Attempts to Rescue Jews in Hungary," The Nazis' Last Victims.
The Holocaust in Hungary, ed. Randolph L. Braham (Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State
University Press, 1998),138.
113.
Ibid., 139.
114. Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of European Jews (New York: Holmes
and Meier, 1988),2:838.
115. Randolph L.
Braham, The Politics of Genocide (New York: Columbia University Press,
1981),2:1085.
116. Randolph L.
Braham, Studies on the Holocaust (Boulder: Rosenthal Institute for Holocaust
Studies of the City University of New York and Social Science Monographs of the
University of Colorado, 2000), 33-35.
117. Rozett, "International Intervention," 143.
118. David Kranzler, "The Swiss Press Campaign that Halted
Deportations to Auschwitz and the Role of the Vatican, the Swiss and the
Hungarian Churches," in Remembering for the Future (Oxford: Pergamon,
1988), 1:162.
119. Braham, Studies
on the Holocaust, 57.
120. O'Shea,
"Confiteor," 345.
121. Hilberg, The Destruction of European Jews, 388.
122. U.S.
Representative to the Advisory Council for Italy A. Kirk to Myron C. Taylor,
Rome, October 10, 1944, Entry 1069, Box 4,RG 59, NARA.
123. John. F. Morley,
"Vatican Diplomacy and the Jews of Hungary during the Holocaust: October
15, 1944, to the End," paper presented at the Second International
Holocaust Conference, Berlin, 1994.
124. Myron C. Taylor,
note verbale to the Vatican Secretariat of State, RG 59, Entry 1069, Box 4,
NARA.
125. A. Kirk to Myron
C. Taylor, October 18,1944, RG 84, location 250/64/25/05-06, Entry 1069, Box
59, NARA.
126. Morley,
"Vatican Diplomacy," 5.
127. Ibid., 5-6.
128. Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 106-107.
129. Morley,
"Vatican Diplomacy," 6.
130. War Refugee
Board to Acting Secretary of State Stettinius, October 25, 1944, Box 441, RG
84, location 250/64/25/05, NARA.
131. F. C. Gowen,
Vatican City, to Myron C. Taylor, November 7, 1944, Entry 1069, Box 4, RG 59,
location 250/48/29/05, NARA.
132. Morley,
"Vatican Diplomacy," 10.
133. Ibid., 18.
134. Ibid., 25.
135. Ibid., 20.
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