Several Catholic countries and populations
fell under Nazi domination during the period
of the Second World War (1939–1945), and
ordinary Catholics fought on both sides of
the conflict.
Despite efforts to protect its rights within
Germany under a 1933 Reichskonkordat treaty,
the Church in Germany had faced persecution
in the years since Adolf Hitler had seized
power, and Pope Pius XI accused the Nazi government
of sowing 'fundamental hostility to Christ
and his Church'.
Pius XII became Pope on the eve of war and
lobbied world leaders to prevent the outbreak
of conflict.
His first encyclical, Summi Pontificatus,
called the invasion of Poland an "hour of
darkness".
He affirmed the policy of Vatican neutrality,
but maintained links to the German Resistance.
Despite being the only world leader to publicly
and specifically denounce Nazi crimes against
Jews in his 1942 Christmas Address, controversy
surrounding his apparent reluctance to speak
frequently and in even more explicit terms
about Nazi crimes continues.
He used diplomacy to aid war victims, lobbied
for peace, shared intelligence with the Allies,
and employed Vatican Radio and other media
to speak out against atrocities like race
murders.
In Mystici corporis Christi (1943) he denounced
the murder of the handicapped.
A denunciation from German bishops of the
murder of the "innocent and defenceless",
including "people of a foreign race or descent",
followed.Hitler's invasion of Catholic Poland
sparked the War.
Nazi policy towards the Church was at its
most severe in the areas it annexed to the
Reich, such as the Czech and Slovene lands,
Austria and Poland.
In Polish territories it annexed to Greater
Germany, the Nazis set about systematically
dismantling the Church—arresting its leaders,
exiling its clergymen, closing its churches,
monasteries and convents.
Many clergymen were murdered.
Over 1800 Catholic Polish clergy died in concentration
camps; most notably, Saint Maximilian Kolbe.
Nazi security chief Reinhard Heydrich soon
orchestrated an intensification of restrictions
on church activities in Germany.
Hitler and his ideologues Goebbels, Himmler,
Rosenberg and Bormann hoped to de-Christianize
Germany in the long term.
With the expansion of the war in the East,
expropriation of monasteries, convents and
church properties surged from 1941.
Clergy were persecuted and sent to concentration
camps, religious Orders had their properties
seized, some youth were sterilized.
The first priest to die was Aloysius Zuzek.
Bishop August von Galen's ensuing 1941 denunciation
of Nazi euthanasia and defence of human rights
roused rare popular dissent.
The German bishops denounced Nazi policy towards
the church in pastoral letters, calling it
"unjust oppression".From 1940, the Nazis gathered
priest-dissidents in dedicated clergy barracks
at Dachau, where (95%) of its 2,720 inmates
were Catholic (mostly Poles, and 411 Germans),
1,034 died there.
Mary Fulbrook wrote that when politics encroached
on the church, German Catholics were prepared
to resist, but the record was otherwise patchy
and uneven with notable exceptions, "it seems
that, for many Germans, adherence to the Christian
faith proved compatible with at least passive
acquiescence in, if not active support for,
the Nazi dictatorship".
Influential members of the German Resistance
included Jesuits of the Kreisau Circle and
laymen such as July plotters Klaus von Stauffenberg,
Jakob Kaiser and Bernhard Letterhaus, whose
faith inspired resistance.
Elsewhere, vigorous resistance from bishops
such as Johannes de Jong and Jules-Géraud
Saliège, papal diplomats such as Angelo Rotta,
and nuns such as Margit Slachta, can be contrasted
with the apathy of others and the outright
collaboration of Catholic politicians such
as Slovakia's Msgr Jozef Tiso and fanatical
Croat nationalists.
From within the Vatican, Msgr Hugh O'Flaherty
coordinated the rescue of thousands of Allied
POWs, and civilians, including Jews.
While Nazi antisemitism embraced modern pseudo-scientific
racial principles rejected by the Catholic
Church, ancient antipathies between Christianity
and Judaism contributed to European antisemitism;
during the Second World War the Catholic Church
rescued many thousands of Jews by issuing
false documents, lobbying Axis officials,
hiding them in monasteries, convents, schools
and elsewhere; including the Vatican and Castel
Gandolfo.
== Holocaust ==
By 1941, most Christians in Europe were living
under Nazi rule.
Generally, the life of their churches could
continue, provided they did not attempt to
participate in politics.
When the Nazi regime undertook the industrialized
mass-extermination of the Jews, the Nazis
found a great many willing participants.
Scholars have undertaken critical examinations
of the origins of Nazi antisemitism and while
the feelings of European Catholics toward
Jews varied considerably, antisemitism was
"prevalent throughout Europe".
As Geoffrey Blainey wrote, "Christianity could
not escape some indirect blame for Holocaust.
The Jews and Christians were rivals, sometimes
enemies, for a long period of history.
Furthermore, it was traditional for Christians
to blame Jewish leaders for the crucifixion
of Christ...
At the same time, Christians showed devotion
and respect.
They were conscious of their debt to the Jews.
Jesus and all the disciples and all the authors
of the gospels were of the Jewish race.
Christians viewed the Old Testament, the holy
book of the synagogues, as equally a holy
book for them...".
Others too have come under scrutiny, wrote
Blainey: "even Jews living in the United States,
might have indirectly and directly given more
help, or publicity, to the Jews during their
plight in Hitler's Europe".Hamerow writes
that sympathy for the Jews was common among
Catholic churchmen in the Resistance, who
saw both Catholics and Jews as religious minorities
exposed to bigotry on the part of the majority.
This sympathy led some lay and clergy resistors
to speak publicly against the persecution
of the Jews, as with the priest who wrote
in a periodical in 1934 that it was a sacred
task of the church to oppose "sinful racial
pride and blind hatred of the Jews".
The leadership of the Catholic Church in Germany,
whoever, was generally hesitant to speak out
specifically on behalf of the Jews.
While racists were rare among the Catholic
hierarchy in Germany, the bishops feared protests
against the anti-Jewish policies of the regime
would invite retaliation against Catholics.
The considerable energies expended by the
German church in opposing government interference
in the churches was not matched in public
by protests against the anti-Jewish policies
of regime.
Such protests as were made tended to be private
letters to government ministers.
=== German Catholics and the Holocaust ===
Nazi persecution of the Jews grew steadily
worse throughout era of the Third Reich.
Hamerow wrote that during the prelude to the
Holocaust between Kristallnacht in November
1938 and the 1941 invasion of Soviet Russia,
the position of the Jews "deteriorated steadily
from disenfranchisement to segregation, ghettoization
and sporadic mass murder".
The Vatican responded to the Kristallnacht
by seeking to find places of refuge for Jews.
Pius XII instructed local bishops to help
all those in need at the outbreak of the war.
According to Kershaw, the "detestation of
Nazism was overwhelming within the Catholic
Church", yet traditional Christian anti-Judaism
offered "no bulwark" against Nazi biological
antisemitism, and there was no shortage of
antisemitic rhetoric from the clergy: Bishop
Buchberger of Regensburg called Nazi racism
directed at Jews "justified self-defense"
in the face of "overly powerful Jewish capital";
Bishop Hilfrich of Limburg said the true Christian
religion "made its way not from the Jews but
in spite of them."
Still, while clergymen like Cardinal Adolf
Bertram favoured a policy of concessions to
the Nazi regime, other, like Bishop Preysing
of Berlin, called for more concerted opposition.
When deportations for the Final Solution commenced,
at his Cathedral in Berlin, Fr.
Bernhard Lichtenberg offered public prayer
and sermonised against the deportations of
Jews to the East.
He was denounced, and later died en route
to Dachau.
Nazi ideology saw Jewishness as a "racial
question".
Among the deported "Jews" of Germany were
practicing Catholics.
Martin Gilbert notes that at Christmas 1941,
with deportations underway, the Polish Łódź
Ghetto for "Jews", held Christian services,
with the Catholic service conducted by Sister
Maria Regina Fuhrmann, a theologian from Vienna.
Two newly arrived Catholic priests of "Jewish
origin" were among the deportees in attendance.
Saint Edith Stein is among the most famous
German Jewish-Catholics sent to the death
camps by the Nazis.
Faulhaber 6969Cardinal Faulhaber gained an
early reputation as an opponent of the regime
denouncing the Nazi extremists who were calling
for the Bible to be purged of the "Jewish"
Old Testament, because, wrote Hamerow, in
seeking to adhere to the central anti-Semitic
tenets of Nazism, these "anti-Semitic zealots"
were also undermining "the basis of Catholicism."
Faulhaber delivered three important Advent
sermons in 1933.
Entitled Judaism, Christianity, and Germany,
the sermons affirmed the Jewish origins of
the Christian religion, the continuity of
the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, and
the importance of the Christian tradition
to Germany.
The pre-Christian "people of Israel were the
bearers of the revelation" and their books
were "building stones for God's kingdom".
Unlike the Nazis, Faulhaber believed Judaism
was a religious not a racial concept.
In his private correspondence, his sympathy
for the Jews of his own time is clear, but
Faulhaber feared that going public with these
thoughts would make the struggle against the
Jews also a "struggle against the Catholics".
Faulhaber's sermons appeared to undermine
the central racist tenet of Nazism, but were,
in essence, a defence of the church.
Similarly, when in 1933, the Nazi school superintendent
of Munster issued a decree: religious instruction
be combined with discussion of the "demoralising
power" of the "people of Israel", Bishop von
Galen refused, writing such interference in
curriculum was a breach of the Concordat.
He feared children would be confused as to
their "obligation to act with charity to all
men" and the historical mission of the people
of Israel.
The language of Galen's later 1941 sermons
on the "right to life, and inviolability"
of all people, did not mention the Jews by
name, but had far reaching resonance.
He declared himself speaking to protect the
"rights of the human personality", not the
narrow denominational interests of the Catholic
Church.
Kristallnacht 1938On 11 November 1938, following
Kristallnacht, Pius XI joined Western leaders
in condemning the pogrom.
In response, the Nazis organised mass demonstrations
against Catholics and Jews, in Munich.
The Bavarian Gauleiter Adolf Wagner declared
before 5,000 protesters: "Every utterance
the Pope makes in Rome is an incitement of
the Jews throughout the world to agitate against
Germany".
Cardinal Faulhaber supplied a truck to the
rabbi of the Ohel Yaakov synagogue, to rescue
sacred objects before the building was torn
down on Kristallacht.
A Nazi mob attacked his palace, and smashed
its windows.
On 21 November, in an address to the world's
Catholics, the Pope rejected the Nazi claim
of racial superiority.
He insisted there was only a single human
race.
Robert Ley, the Nazi Minister of Labour declared
the following day in Vienna: "No compassion
will be tolerated for the Jews.
We deny the Pope's statement there is but
one human race.
The Jews are parasites."
Catholic leaders including Cardinal Schuster
of Milan, Cardinal van Roey in Belgium and
Cardinal Verdier in Paris backed the Pope's
strong condemnation of Kristallnacht.
Fulda Bishops ConferencesDuring the war, the
Fulda Conference of Bishops met annually in
Fulda.
The issue of whether the bishops should speak
out against the persecution of the Jews was
debated at a 1942 meeting.
The consensus was to "give up heroic action
in favor of small successes".
A draft letter proposed by Margarete Sommer
was rejected, because it was viewed as a violation
of the Reichskonkordat to speak out on issues
not directly related to the church.
Bishops von Preysing and Frings were the most
public in their statements against genocide.
Phayer asserts the German episcopate, as opposed
to other bishops, could have done more to
save Jews.
Professor Robert Krieg argues the Church's
model of itself "as a hierarchical institution
intent on preserving itself so God's grace
would be immediately available to its members"
prevailed over other models, such as the model
of mystical communion, or moral advocate.
According to Phayer, "had the German bishops
confronted the Holocaust publicly and nationally,
the possibilities of undermining Hitler's
death apparatus might have existed.
Admittedly, it is speculative to assert this,
but it is certain that many more German Catholics
would have sought to save Jews by hiding them
if their church leaders had spoken out".
In this regard, Phayer places the responsibility
with the Vatican, asserting that "a strong
papal assertion would have enabled the bishops
to overcome their disinclinations" and that
"Bishop Preysing's only hope to spur his colleagues
into action lay in Pius XII".
Yet, Some German bishops are praised for their
wartime actions; according to Phayer, "several
bishops did speak out".
PreysingIn 1935, Pius XI appointed Konrad
von Preysing as Bishop of Berlin.
Preysing assisted in drafting the anti-Nazi
encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge.
Together with Cologne's Archbishop, Josef
Frings, sought to have the German Bishops
conference speak out against the Nazi death
camps.
Preysing even infrequently attended meetings
of the Kreisau Circle German resistance movement.
Von Preysing was a noted critic of Nazism,
but was protected from Nazi retaliation by
his position.
His cathedral administrator and confidant
Bernhard Lichtenberg, was not.
Lichtenberg was under the watch of the Gestapo
by 1933, for his courageous support of prisoners
and Jews.
He ran Preysing's aid unit (the Hilfswerke
beim Bischöflichen Ordinariat Berlin) which
secretly assisted those who were being persecuted
by the regime.
From 1938, Lichtenberg conducted prayers for
the Jews and other inmates of the concentration
camps, including "my fellow priests there".
For preaching against Nazi propaganda and
writing a letter of protest concerning Nazi
euthanasia, he was arrested in 1941, sentenced
to two years' penal servitude, and died en
route to Dachau concentration camp in 1943.
He was subsequently honoured by Yad Vashem
as Righteous Among the Nations.
FringsJosef Frings became Archbishop of Cologne
in 1942.
In his sermons, he repeatedly spoke in support
of persecuted peoples and against state repression.
In March 1944, Frings attacked arbitrary arrests,
racial persecution and forced divorces.
That autumn, he protested to the Gestapo against
the deportations of Jews from Cologne and
surrounds.
Following war's end, Frings succeeded Bertram
as chairman of the Fulda Bishops' Conference
in July 1945.
In 1946, he was appointed a cardinal by Pius
XII.
In 1943, the German bishops debated whether
to directly confront Hitler collectively over
what they knew of the murdering of Jews.
Frings wrote a pastoral letter cautioning
his diocese not to violate the inherent rights
of others to life, even those "not of our
blood"; during the war, he preached in a sermon,
"no one may take the property or life of an
innocent person just because he is a member
of a foreign race".
KallerIn East Prussia, the Bishop of Ermland,
Maximilian Kaller denounced Nazi eugenics
and racism, pursued a policy of ethnic equality
for his German, Polish and Lithuanian flock,
and protected his Polish clergy and laypeople.
Threatened by the Nazis, he applied for a
transfer to be chaplain to a concentration
camp.
His request was denied by Cesare Orsenigo,
a Papal Nuncio with some Fascist sympathies.
LaityAmong the laity, Gertrud Luckner was
among the first to sense the genocidal inclinations
of the Hitler regime and to take national
action.
From 1938 she worked at the head office of
"Caritas".
She organized aid circles for Jews, assisted
many to escape.
She personally investigated the fate of the
Jews being transported to the East and managed
to obtain information on prisoners in concentration
camps.
In 1935, Margarete Sommer took up a position
at the Episcopal Diocesan Authority in Berlin,
counseling victims of racial persecution for
Caritas Emergency Relief.
In 1941 she became director of the Welfare
Office of the Berlin Diocesan Authority, under
Bernhard Lichtenberg.
Following Lichtenberg's arrest, Sommer reported
to Bishop von Preysing.
While working for the Welfare Office, Sommer
coordinated Catholic aid for victims of racial
persecution—giving spiritual comfort, food,
clothing, and money.
She gathered intelligence on the deportations
of the Jews, and living conditions in concentration
camps, as well as on SS firing squads, writing
several reports on these topics from 1942;
including an August 1942 report which reached
Rome under the title "Report on the Exodus
of the Jews".
Knowledge of the HolocaustUnlike the Nazi
euthanasia murder of invalids, which the churches
led protests against, the Final Solution liquidation
of the Jews did not primarily take place on
German soil, but rather in Polish territory.
Awareness of the murderous campaign was therefore
less widespread.
Susan Zuccotti has written that the Vatican
was aware of the creation of the Nazi extermination
camps.
She believed an "open condemnation of racism
and the persecutions (of Jews)" by the Church,
"other results could have been achieved."
With regard to work done by the Vatican, "much
more was requested by many".
Indeed, "much more was hoped for by the Jews.",
wrote Zuccotti.
According to historians David Bankier and
Hans Mommsen a thorough knowledge of the Holocaust
was well within the reach of the German bishops.
According to historian Michael Phayer, "a
number of bishops did want to know, and they
succeeded very early on in discovering what
their government was doing to the Jews in
occupied Poland".
Wilhelm Berning, for example, knew about the
systematic nature of the Holocaust as early
as February 1942, only one month after the
Wannsee Conference.
Most German Church historians believe that
the church leaders knew of the Holocaust by
the end of 1942, knowing more than any other
church leaders outside the Vatican.US Envoy
Myron C. Taylor passed a US Government memorandum
to Pius XII on 26 September 1942, outlining
intelligence received from the Jewish Agency
for Palestine which said that Jews from across
the Nazi Empire were being systematically
"butchered".
Taylor asked if the Vatican might have any
information which might tend to "confirm the
reports", and if so, what the Pope might be
able to do to influence public opinion against
the "barbarities".
Cardinal Maglione handed Harold Tittman a
response to a letter from Taylor regarding
the mistreatment of Jews on 10 October.
The note thanked Washington for passing on
the intelligence, and confirmed that reports
of severe measures against the Jews had reached
the Vatican from other sources, though it
had not been possible to "verify their accuracy".
Nevertheless, "every opportunity is being
taken by the Holy See, however, to mitigate
the suffering of these unfortunate people".
The Pope raised race murders in his 1942 Christmas
Radio Address.
However, after the war, some bishops, including
Adolf Bertram and Conrad Gröber claimed that
they had not been aware of the extent and
details of the Holocaust, and were unsure
of the veracity of the information that was
brought to their attention.
== Catholic Church in the Nazi Empire ==
=== 
Central Europe ===
Austria
The Anschluss saw the annexation of mainly
Catholic Austria by Nazi Germany in early
1938.
Hitler initially attempted to appeal to Christians
in a speech on April 9 in Vienna, when he
told the Austrian public that it was "God's
will" he lead his homeland into the Reich
and the Lord had "smitten" his opponents.
At the direction of Cardinal Innitzer, the
churches of Vienna pealed their bells and
flew swastikas for Hitler's arrival in the
city on 14 March.
However, wrote Mark Mazower, such gestures
of accommodation were "not enough to assuage
the Austrian Nazi radicals, foremost among
them the young Gauleiter Globočnik".Globocnik
launched a crusade against the Church, and
the Nazis confiscated property, closed Catholic
organisations and sent many priests to Dachau,
including Jakob Gapp and Otto Neururer.
Neururer was tortured and hanged at Buchenwald
and Gapp was guillotined in Berlin; both were
beatified in 1996.
Anger at the treatment of the Church in Austria
grew quickly and October 1938, wrote Mazower,
saw the "very first act of overt mass resistance
to the new regime", when a rally of thousands
left Mass in Vienna chanting "Christ is our
Fuehrer", before being dispersed by police.
A Nazi mob ransacked Cardinal Innitzer's residence,
after he had denounced Nazi persecution of
the Church.
L'Osservatore Romano reported on 15 October
that Hitler Youth and the SA had gathered
at Innitzer's Cathedral during a service for
Catholic Youth and started "counter-shouts
and whistlings: 'Down with Innitzer!
Our faith is Germany'".
The following day, a mob stoned the Cardinal's
residence, broke in and ransacked it—bashing
a secretary unconscious, and storming another
house of the cathedral curia and throwing
its curate out the window.
The American National Catholic Welfare Conference
wrote that Pope Pius, "again protested against
the violence of the Nazis, in language recalling
Nero and Judas the Betrayer, comparing Hitler
with Julian the Apostate."
In a Table Talk of July 1942 discussing his
problems with the Church, Hitler singles out
Innitzer's early gestures of cordiality as
evidence of the extreme caution with which
Church diplomats must be treated: "there appeared
a man who addressed me with such self-assurance
and beaming countenance, just as if, throughout
the whole of the Austrian Republic he had
never even touched a hair of the head of any
National Socialist!"
Czech lands
Czechoslovakia was created after World War
I and the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire.
Shortly before World War II, Czechoslovakia
ceased to exist, swallowed by Nazi expansion.
Its territory was divided into the mainly
Czech Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia,
and the newly declared Slovak Republic, while
a considerable part of Czechoslovakia was
directly joined to the Third Reich (Hungary
and Poland also annexed areas).
Catholicism had had a strong institutional
presence in the region under the Habsburg
Dynasty, but Bohemian Czechs in particular
had a troubled relationship with the Church
of their rulers.
Despite this, According to Schnitker, "the
Church managed to gain a deep-seated appreciation
for the role it played in resisting the common
Nazi enemy."Some 487 Czechoslovak priests
were arrested and jailed during the occupation.
122 Czechoslovak Catholic priests were sent
to Dachau concentration camp.
Seventy-six did not survive the ordeal.
Following its October 1938 annexation, Nazi
policy in the Sudetenland saw ethnic Czech
priests expelled, or deprived of income and
forced to do labour, while their properties
were seized.
Religious orders were suppressed, private
schools closed and religious instruction forbidden
in schools.When the Germans advanced on Prague
in March 1939, churches came under gestapo
surveillance and hundreds of priests were
denounced.
Monasteries and convents were requisitioned
and Corpus Christi processions curtailed.
As elsewhere, the Catholic press was muzzled.
Following the outbreak of war, 487 priests
were rounded up from occupied Czechoslovakia—among
them the Canon of Vysehrad, Msgr.
Bohumil Stašek.
On 13 August 1939, Stašek had given a patriotic
address to a 100,000 strong crowd of Czechoslovaks,
criticising the Nazis: "I believed that truth
would triumph over falsehood, law over lawlessness,
love and compassion over violence".
For his resistance efforts, Bohumil spent
the remainder of the war in prison and the
concentration camps.
Msgr.
Tenora, Dean of the Brno Cathedral was also
among those arrested, while six directors
of Catholic charities were also seized including
Mgr Otto Lev Stanovsky.
Karel Kašpar, the Archbishop of Prague and
Primate of Bohemia was arrested soon after
the occupation of his city, after he refused
to obey an order to direct priests to discontinue
pilgrimages.
Kaspar was repeatedly arrested by the Nazi
authorities and died in 1941.
In announcing the Archbishop's death on radio,
Josef Beran, the director of the Prague diocese
main seminary, called on Czechs to remain
true to their religion and to their country.
Konstantin von Neurath served as Reich Protector
(Governor) from March 1939 until he was replaced
by Reich Security Central Office chief Reinhard
Heydrich.
Heydrich was a fanatical Nazi anti-Semite
and anti-Catholic.
One of the main architects of the Nazi Holocaust,
he believed that Catholicism was a threat
to the state.
He was assassinated by Czech commandos in
Prague in 1942.
Hitler was angered by the co-operation between
the church and the assassins who killed Heydrich.
Following the assassination of Heydrich, Josef
Beran was among the thousands arrested, for
his patriotic stance.
Beran was sent to Dachau, where he remained
until Liberation, whereafter he was appointed
Archbishop of Prague—which had remained
vacant since the death of Kašpar.
SlovakiaSlovakia was a rump state formed by
Hitler when Germany annexed the western half
of Czechoslovakia.
Hitler was able to exploit Czechoslovakia's
ethnic rivalries—particularly presence of
the German-speaking Sudetenlanders, and the
independent minded Slovaks.
The Slovak People's Party (SPP) had been founded
in 1913 by a Catholic priest, Andrej Hlinka,
and wanted Slovak autonomy.
The extreme-nationalist lawyer Vojtech Tuka
headed the party's radical wing, which moved
steadily closer to National Socialism, complete
with Hlinka Guard paramilitary.
In March 1939, Prague arrested Hlinka's successor,
Fr.
Jozef Tiso, the Prime Minister of the Slovakian
region, for advocating independence.
Hitler invited Tiso to Berlin, and offered
assistance for Slovak nationhood.
Tiso declared independence, and with German
warships pointing their guns at the Slovakian
Government offices, the Assembly agreed to
ask Germany for "protection".
The small and predominantly Catholic and agricultural
region became the Fascist Slovak Republic,
a nominally independent Nazi puppet state,
with Tiso as president and Tuka as Minister-President.
Tiso's role was largely ceremonial, while
Tuka was the instrument of Nazi policy in
the state.On 28 July 1940, Hitler instructed
Tiso and Tuka to impose antisemitic laws.
SS Officer Dieter Wisliceny was dispatched
to act as an adviser on Jewish issues.
According to Phayer, "Hitler demanded a price
for Slovak independence, its 90,000 Jews.
Pius XII wanted to save them, or at least
the 20,000 who had converted to Christianity".
Giuseppe Burzio, the Apostolic Delegate to
Bratislava, protested the antisemitism and
totalitarianism of the regime.
Pius XII extended an apostolic blessing to
Tiso.
The Vatican was pleased to see a new Catholic
state, but disapproved of the Codex Judaicum
of September 1941 (based on the Nuremberg
Laws) by which the legal rights of Jews were
ended.
The Holy See reacted with a letter of protest.
The Slovakian bishops told Tiso that, through
persecution of people on the basis of their
race, he acted against the principles of religion
and the Vatican demoted Tiso.
According to Phayer, the Vatican's main concern
was for the rights of Jewish converts.
Slovakia, under Tiso and Tuka (who described
himself as a daily communicant), had power
over 90,000 Jews.
Like the Nazis other main allies, Petain,
Mussolini, and Horthy—Tiso did not share
the racist hardline on Jews held by Hitler
and radicals within his own government, but
held a more traditional, conservative antisemitism.
His regime was nonetheless highly antisemitic.Phayer
wrote that antisemitism existed well before
the Nazi time and during the interwar period
"antisemitism characterised the Catholicism
of the Slovak people".
The People's Party, founded and dominated
by clergymen, used antisemitism as part of
its political presentation.
Antisemitic terror was practised by the Hlinka
Guard.
Tiso promulgated the first antisemitic legislation
in 1939 and 1940.
In February 1942, Tiso agreed to begin deportations
of Jews and Slovakia became the first Nazi
ally to agree to deportations under the framework
of the Final Solution.
The Nazis had asked for 20,000 young able-bodied
Jews.
Tiso hoped that compliance would aid in the
return of 120,000 Slovak workers from Germany.
Burzio protested to Prime Minister Vojtech
Tuka.
Later in 1942, amid Vatican protests as news
of the fate of the deportees filtered back,
and the German advance into Russia was halted,
Slovakia became the first of Hitler's puppet
states to shut down the deportations.The Vatican
began to receive reports from Slovak army
chaplains in October 1941 of mass shootings
of Jews on the Eastern Front, but did not
take action.
When, in early 1942, papal diplomats in Bratislava,
Hungary and Switzerland predicted impending
deportations and exterminations, the Vatican
protested.
Burzio advised Rome of deportations to Poland
"equivalent to condemning a great part of
them to death" and the Vatican protested to
the Slovakian legate.
According to Phayer, the protests, not made
in public, were ineffectual and 'resettlements'
continued in the summer and autumn of 1942—57,752
by the end of 1942.
Burzio reported to Rome that some of the Slovakian
bishops were indifferent to the plight of
the Jews.
Others, such as Bishop Pavol Jantausch and
Bishop Pavol Gojdič were active in protecting
Jews.
The Vicar of Bratislava Augustin Pozdech and
Jozef Čársky, Bishop of Prešov, emphatically
denounced the deportations.
Knowledge of the conditions at Auschwitz began
to spread.
Mazower wrote: "When the Vatican protested,
the government responded with defiance: 'There
is no foreign intervention which would stop
us on the road to the liberation of Slovakia
from Jewry', insisted President Tiso".
Distressing scenes at railway yards of deportees
being beaten by Hlinka guards had spurred
community protest, including from leading
churchmen such as Bishop Pavol Jantausch.The
Vatican called in the Slovak ambassador twice
to enquire what was happening.
These interventions, wrote Evans, "caused
Tiso, who after all was still a priest in
holy orders, to have second thoughts about
the programme".
Burzio and others reported to Tiso that the
Germans were murdering the deported Jews.
Tiso hesitated and then refused to deport
Slovakia's 24,000 remaining Jews.
According to Mazower "Church pressure and
public anger resulted in perhaps 20,000 Jews
being granted exemptions, effectively bringing
the deportations there to an end".
According to Phayer, Raul Hilberg wrote that
"Catholic Slovakia, wanting to serve its two
masters, Berlin and Rome, gave up its Mosaic
Jews—a journey by train to Auschwitz required
one hour—to please Hitler, while holding
back its 20,000 Christian Jews to please the
Holy See".
When in 1943 rumours of further deportations
emerged, the Papal Nuncio in Istanbul, Msgr.
Angelo Roncalli (later Pope John XXIII) and
Burzio helped galvanize the Holy See into
intervening in vigorous terms.
On April 7, 1943, Burzio challenged Tuka,
over the extermination of Slovak Jews.
The Vatican condemned the renewal of the deportations
on 5 May and the Slovakian episcopate issued
a pastoral letter condemning totalitarianism
and antisemitism on 8 May 1943.
"Tuka", wrote Evans, was "forced to backtrack
by public protests, especially from the Church,
which by this time had been convinced of the
fate that awaited the deportees.
Pressure from the Germans, including a direct
confrontation between Hitler and Tiso on 22
April 1943, remained without effect."
In August 1944, the Slovak National Uprising
rose against the People's Party regime.
German troops were sent to quell the rebellion
and with them came security police charged
with rounding up Slovakia's remaining Jews.
Burzio begged Tiso directly to at least spare
Catholic Jews from transportation and delivered
an admonition from the Pope: "the injustice
wrought by his government is harmful to the
prestige of his country and enemies will exploit
it to discredit clergy and the Church the
world over."
Tiso ordered the deportation of the nation's
remaining Jews, who were sent to the concentration
camps—most to Auschwitz.
=== Eastern Europe ===
Poland
Kerhsaw wrote that Hitler's scheme for the
Germanization of Eastern Europe, "There would,
he made clear, be no place in this utopia
for the Christian Churches".
The invasion of predominantly Catholic Poland
by Nazi Germany in 1939 ignited the Second
World War.
The Nazi plan for Poland entailed the destruction
of the Polish nation, which necessarily required
attacking the Polish Church, particularly,
in those areas annexed to Germany.In Nazi
ideological terms, Poland was inhabited by
a mixture of Slavs and Jews, both of which
were classed as Untermenschen, or subhumans
occupying German Lebensraum, living space.
The Nazis instigated a policy of genocide
against Poland's Jewish minority and murdering
or suppressing the ethnic Polish elites.
Historically, the church was a leading force
in Polish nationalism against foreign domination,
thus the Nazis targeted clergy, monks and
nuns in their terror campaigns—both for
their resistance activity and their cultural
importance.
According to the Encyclopædia Britannica,
1811 Polish priests died in Nazi concentration
camps.
Special death squads of SS and police accompanied
the invasion and arrested or executed those
considered capable of resisting the occupation:
including professionals, clergymen and government
officials.
The following summer, the A-B Aktion round
up of several thousand Polish intelligentsia
by the SS saw many priests shot in the General
Government sector.
In September 1939 Security Police Chief Heydrich
and General Eduard Wagner agreed upon a "cleanup
once and for all of Jews, intelligentsia,
clergy, nobility".
Of the brief period of military control from
1 September 1939 to 25 October 1939, Davies
wrote: "according to one source, 714 mass
executions were carried out, and 6,376 people,
mainly Catholics, were shot.
Others put the death toll in one town alone
at 20,000.
It was a taste of things to come."Poland was
divided into two parts by the Nazis: the Reich
directly annexed Polish territories along
Germany's eastern border, while and second
part came under the administration of the
so-called Generalgouvernement (General Government)—a
"police run mini-state" under SS control and
the rule of Nazi lawyer Hans Frank, which,
wrote Davies, "became the lawless laboratory
of Nazi racial ideology" and in due course
the base for the main Nazi concentration camps.
Yet here, Nazi policy toward the Church was
less severe than in the annexed regions.
The annexed areas were all to be "Germanized",
and the Polish Church within them was to be
thoroughly eradicated—though German Catholics
could remain or settle there.
In the annexed regions, the Nazis set about
systematically dismantling the Church—arresting
its leaders, exiling its clergymen, closing
its churches, monasteries and convents.
Many clergymen were murdered.
Eighty per cent of the Catholic clergy and
five bishops of Warthegau were sent to concentration
camps in 1939; 108 of them are regarded as
blessed martyrs.
In a report to Pius XII regarding the dire
situation, the Primate of Poland, Cardinal
Hlond wrote that "Hitlerism aims at the systematic
and total destruction of the Catholic Church
in the ... territories of Poland which have
been incorporated into the Reich ...":
Following the surrender of Warsaw and Hel
Fortified Area, the Polish Underground and
the Armia Krajowa (Home Army) resisted the
Nazi occupation.
The Home Army was conscious of the link between
morale and religious practice and the Catholic
religion was integral to much Polish resistance,
particularly during the Warsaw Uprising of
1944.
Adam Sapieha, Archbishop of Kraków became
the de facto head of the Polish church following
the invasion and openly criticised Nazi terror.
A principal figure of the Polish Resistance,
Sapieha opened a clandestine seminary in an
act of cultural resistance.
Among the seminarians was Karol Wojtyla, the
future Pope John Paul II.
Among the most revered Polish martyrs was
the Franciscan, Saint Maximilian Kolbe, who
died at Auschwitz-Birkenau, having offered
his own life to save a fellow prisoner who
had been condemned to death.
During the War he provided shelter to refugees,
including 2,000 Jews whom he hid in his friary
in Niepokalanów.
Poland had its own tradition of antisemitism.
Poland had a large Jewish population, and
according to Davies, more Jews were both killed
and rescued in Poland, than in any other nation:
the rescue figure put at between 100,000 and
150,000—the work of the Catholic affiliated
Council to Aid Jews was instrumental in much
rescue work.
Thousands of Poles have been honoured as Righteous
Among the Gentiles—constituting the largest
national contingent—and hundreds of clergymen
and nuns were involved in aiding Jews during
the war, though precise numbers are difficult
to confirm.When AK Home Army Intelligence
discovered the true fate of transports leaving
the Jewish Ghetto, the Council to Aid Jews—Rada
Pomocy Żydom (codename Żegota) was established
in late 1942, in co-operation with church
groups.
Instigated by the writer Zofia Kossak-Szczucka
and Catholic democrat activists, the organisation
saved thousands.
Emphasis was placed on protecting children,
as it was near impossible to intervene directly
against the heavily guarded transports.
False papers were prepared, and children were
distributed among safe houses and church networks.
Jewish children were often placed in church
orphanages and convents.Karol Niemira, the
Bishop of Pinsk, co-operated with the Underground
maintaining ties with the Jewish ghetto and
sheltered Jews in the Archbishop's residence.
Matylda Getter, mother superior of the Franciscan
Sisters of the Family of Mary, hid many children
in her Pludy convent and took in many orphans
and dispersed them among Family of Mary homes,
rescuing more than 750 Jews.
Oskar Schindler, a German Catholic businessman
came to Poland, initially to profit from the
German invasion.
He went on to save many Jews, as dramatised
in the film Schindler's List.
Under the Papacy of the Polish-born Pope John
Paul II, the Polish Church asked for forgiveness
for failings during the war, saying that,
while noble efforts had been made to save
Jews during World War II, there had also been
indifference or enmity among Polish Catholics.
According to Norman Davies, the Nazi terror
was "much fiercer and more protracted in Poland
than anywhere in Europe."
Phayer wrote of two phases of Nazi policy
in Poland—before Stalingrad, when Poles
were suppressed, and after the battles of
Stalingrad and Kursk, when Germany sought
to use the church to bring the Polish people
into the war effort against Russia.
When Cardinal Hlond was captured in 1943 the
Germans promised to free him if he would seek
to inspire the Polish people against the common
enemy, Bolshevist Russia.
Hlond refused to negotiate with his captors.
He was the only member of the Sacred College
of Cardinals to be arrested by the Nazis,
and was held by the Gestapo, first at their
headquarters in Paris and then confined at
a convent at Bar-le-Duc, until the Allied
advance forced the Germans to shift him to
Wiedenbrtick, in Westphalia, where he remained
for seven months, until released by American
troops in 1945.
In response to the Nazi/Soviet invasion, Pope
Pius XII's first encyclical Summi Pontificatus
wrote of an "hour of darkness" and the deaths
of "countless human beings, even noncombatants".
"Dear Poland", he said, deserved "the generous
and brotherly sympathy of the whole world,
while it awaits ... the hour of a resurrection
in harmony with the principles of justice
and true peace".
In April 1940, the Holy See advised the US
government that all its efforts to deliver
humanitarian aid had been blocked by the Germans,
and that it was therefore seeking to channel
assistance through indirect routes like the
American "Commission for Polish Relief".
In 1942, the American National Catholic Welfare
Conference reported that "as Cardinal Hlond's
reports poured into the Vatican, Pope Pius
XII protested against the enormities they
recounted with unrelenting vigor".
The Conference noted the Pope's 28 October
Encyclical and reported that Pius addressed
Polish clergy on 30 September 1939 and spoke
of "a vision of mad horror and gloomy despair"
and said that he hoped that despite the work
of the enemies of God, Catholic life would
survive in Poland.
In a Christmas Eve address to the College
of Cardinals, Pius condemned the atrocities
"even against non-combatants, refugees, old
persons, women and children, and the disregard
of human dignity, liberty and human life"
that had taken place in the Polish war as
"acts that cry for the vengeance of God".
According to Phayer, from 1939 to 1941 there
was a determined appeal for papal intercession
in Poland, but the Holy See argued that intervention
would only worsen the situation, though this
was not a popular position.
When the French urged Pius to condemn Germany's
aggression he declined "out of consideration
for repercussions on Roman Catholics of the
Reich."
August Hlond and the General of the Jesuits
Wlodimir Ledóchowski met with Pius on September
30, 1940 and left disappointed when he did
not condemn Russia and Germany for destroying
Poland.
The Vatican used its press and radio to tell
the world in January 1940 of terrorization
of the Polish people, a reference to the Warthegau
area Poles and the Poles of the Polish Corridor
who had been dispossessed and driven into
the General Government region.
A further broadcast in November lacked the
detail of January communications and "Thereafter",
wrote Phayer, "Vatican radio fell silent regarding
Poland and the decimation of its populace."
On 16 and 17 November 1940, Vatican Radio
said that religious life for Catholics in
Poland continued to be brutally restricted
and that at least 400 clergy had been deported
to Germany in the preceding four months:
The Catholic Associations in the General Government
also have been dissolved, the Catholic educational
institutions have been closed down, and Catholic
professors and teachers have been reduced
to a state of extreme need or have been sent
to concentration camps.
The Catholic press has been rendered impotent.
In the part incorporated into the Reich, and
especially in Posnania, the representatives
of the Catholic priests and orders have been
shut up in concentration camps.
In other dioceses the priests have been put
in prison.
Entire areas of the country have been deprived
of all spiritual ministrations and the church
seminaries have been dispersed.
In November 1941 Bishop Sapieha requested
explicitly that Pius speak out against Nazi
atrocities.
According to Lucas, the pope's "silence" led
some Polish Catholics to conclude that the
Vatican was unconcerned and there was even
talk of cutting off allegiance to Rome.
Pius alluded vaguely to atrocities at Easter
1941 and Cardinal Secretry of State Luigi
Maglione explained to the Polish ambassador
to the Holy See that Pius spoke in veiled
words, but had Poland in mind.
The policy was intended to spare Poles from
greater atrocities.
Word came later from Poland objecting to this,
but it would be used again, during the Holocaust
itself.
Catholic religious fervour was a feature of
the 1944 Warsaw Uprising.
General Antoni Chruściel issued instructions
on how front-line troops could continue to
continue religious observance.
Clergy were involved on many levels—as chaplains
to military units, or tending to the ever-increasing
wounded and dying.
"Nuns of various orders", wrote Davies, "acted
as universal sisters of mercy and won widespread
praise.
Mortality among them higher than among most
categories of civilians.
When captured by the SS, they aroused a special
fury, which frequently ended in rape or butchery".
According to Davies, the Catholic religion
was an integral component of the struggle.
Hungary
Hungary joined the Axis Powers in 1940.
Its leader, Admiral Miklós Horthy later wavered
in support for the Nazi alliance.
The Nazis occupied Hungary in March 1944,
soon after Horthy, under significant pressure
from the church and diplomatic community,
had halted the deportations of Hungarian Jews.
In October, they installed a pro-Nazi Arrow
Cross Dictatorship.
After Germany's 1935 Nuremberg Laws were promulgated,
copycat legislation had followed in much of
Europe.
Catholic priests and bishops in western Europe
were not active in parliaments that established
antisemitic legislation, but in eastern Europe
they were.
The Arrow Cross, Hungary's far-right antisemitic
political organisation, was supported by individual
priests, and bishops, such as József Grősz,
who was promoted in 1943 by Pius XII to the
bishopric of Kalocsa.
Cardinal Jusztinián György Serédi and Bishop
Gyula Glattfelder who served in Hungary's
Upper Chamber of Parliament, voted in favour
of antisemitic legislation first passed in
1938.
Serédi later spoke out against the Nazi persecution
of Hungary's Jews.
The antisemitic laws placed economic and social
restrictions on Jews; during World War II
they evolved into initiatives to expel Jews
from Hungary.
Margit Slachta, a nun and Hungary's first
woman Member of Parliament, spoke against
the antisemitic laws.
Following the October 1944 Arrow Cross takeover,
Bishop Vilmos Apor (who had been an active
protester against the mistreatment of the
Jews), together with other senior clergy including
József Mindszenty, drafted a memorandum of
protest against the Arrow Cross government.
Margit Slachta sheltered the persecuted, protested
forced labour and antisemitism and went to
Rome in 1943 to encourage papal action against
the Jewish persecutions.
Angelo Rotta, Papal Nuncio from 1930, actively
protested Hungary's mistreatment of the Jews,
and helped persuade Pope Pius XII to lobby
the Hungarian leader Admiral Horthy to stop
their deportation.
Rotta became a leader of diplomatic actions
to protect Hungarian Jews.
With the help of the Hungarian Holy Cross
Association, he issued protective passports
for Jews and 15,000 safe conduct passes—the
nunciature sheltered some 3000 Jews in safe
houses.
An "International Ghetto" was established,
including more than 40 safe houses marked
by the Vatican and other national emblems.
25,000 Jews found refuge in these safe houses.
Elsewhere in the city, Catholic institutions
hid several thousand more Jewish people.
Other leading church figures involved in the
1944 rescue of Hungarian Jews included Bishops
Vilmos Apor, Endre Hamvas and Áron Márton.
Primate József Mindszenty issued public and
private protests and was arrested on 27 October
1944.By late summer 1944 Pius XII was asked
to speak directly to the Hungarian people,
ideally through Vatican Radio, now that the
diplomatic avenues were exhausted.
A direct public appeal it was felt, especially
in American circles, might have some effect.
This Pius XII would not do however, arguing
that a public radio appeal and condemnation
of Nazi actions, would necessitate a papal
criticism of Soviet behaviour as well.
And there was apparently some skepticism still
in Vatican circles about the seriousness of
the situation.
In September 1944 Amleto Cicognani, papal
representative in Washington, told Aryeh Leon
Kubowitzki (later Aryeh Leon Kubovy) of the
World Jewish Congress that, "the situation
in Hungary is much less acute, since the persons
responsible for the previous persecution have
been removed from power".
"Contradictory information", it was claimed,
was arriving about the Hungarian situation.
Ultimately, when called upon to condemn publicly
Nazi policies against Jews Pius XII chose
to exercise restraint, in the name of avoiding
a greater evil.
RomaniaAngelo Roncalli (later Pope John XXIII)
advised Pope Pius XII of the plight of Jews
being kept in concentration camps in Romanian-occupied
Transnistria.
The Pope interceded with the Romanian government,
and authorized for money to be sent to the
camps.
Andrea Cassulo, the papal nuncio to Bucharest
has been honoured as Righteous among the Nations
by Yad Vashem.
In 1944, the Chief Rabbi of Bucharest praised
the work of Cassulo on behalf of Romania's
Jews: "the generous assistance of the Holy
See ... was decisive and salutary.
It is not easy for us to find the right words
to express the warmth and consolation we experienced
because of the concern of the supreme Pontiff,
who offered a large sum to relieve the sufferings
of deported Jews—sufferings which had been
pointed out to him by you after your visit
to Transnistria.
The Jews of Romania will never forget these
facts of historic importance."
=== 
Southern Europe ===
CroatiaAfter World War I, the desire of Croatian
nationalists for independence was not realised.
The region found itself in a Serb dominated
dictatorship of Yugoslavia.
Repression of the Croat minority spurred extremism,
and the Ustaša ("Insurgence") was formed
in 1929 by Ante Pavelić, with the support
of Fascist Italy.
Germany, Italy, Bulgaria and Hungary dismembered
Yugoslavia in April 1941.
In regions controlled by Italy, the Italian
authorities protected Jews from Nazi roundups,
as occurred throughout Italian territory.
Martin Gilbert wrote that when negotiations
began for the deportation of Jews from the
Italian zone, General Roatta flatly refused,
leading Hitler's envoy, Siegfried Kasche,
to report some of Mussolini's subordinates
"apparently been influenced" by opposition
in the Vatican to German anti-Semitism.
Most of Croatia fell to the new Independent
State of Croatia, where Pavelic's Ustase were
installed in power.
Unlike Hitler, Pavelic was pro-Catholic, but
their ideologies overlapped sufficiently for
easy co-operation.
Phayer wrote, Pavelic wanted Vatican recognition
for his fascist state and Croatian church
leaders favoured an alliance with the Ustase
because it seemed to hold out the promise
of an anti-Communist, Catholic state.
According to Hebblethwaite, Pavelic was anxious
to get diplomatic relations and a Vatican
blessing for the new 'Catholic state' but
"Neither was forthcoming": Giovanni Montini
(future Pope Paul VI) advised Pavelic the
Holy See could not recognise frontiers changed
by force.
The Yugoslav royal legation remained at the
Vatican.
When the Italian King advised that Duke of
Spoleto was to be "King of Croatia", Montini
advised the Pope could not hold a private
audience with the Duke once any such coronation
occurred.
Pius subsequently relented, allowing a half
hour audience with Pavelic.
The Archbishop of Zagreb, Aloysius Stepinac,
wanted Croatia's independence from the Serb
dominated Yugoslav state (the jail of the
Croatian nation).
Stepinac arranged the audience with Pius XII
for Pavelic.
Montini's minutes of the meeting noted no
recognition of the new state could come before
a peace treaty.
"The Holy See must be impartial; it must think
of all; there are Catholics on all sides to
whom the [Holy See] must be respectful."
Phayer wrote that Montini kept Pius informed
of matters in Croatia and Domenico Tardini
interviewed Pavelic's representative to Pius;
he let the Croat know the Vatican would be
indulgent—"Croatia is a young state—Youngsters
often err because of their age.
It is, therefore, not surprising Croatia has
also erred."
The Vatican refused formal recognition but
Pius sent a Benedictine abbot, Giuseppe Ramiro
Marcone, as his apostolic visitor.
Phayer wrote that this suited Pavelic well
enough.
Stepinac felt the Vatican de facto recognised
the new state.
Gilbert wrote, "In the Croatian capital of
Zagreb, as a result of intervention by [Marcone]
on behalf of Jewish partners in mixed marriages,
a thousand Croat Jews survived the war".
While "Stepinac, who in 1941 welcomed Croat
independence, subsequently condemned Croat
atrocities against both Serbs and Jews, and
saved a group of Jews in an old age home".
In April–May 1941, hundred of thousands
of Serbs were murdered and Nazi copycat laws
eliminated Jewish citizenship and compelled
the wearing of the Star of David.
The German army pulled out of Croatia in June
1941.
As the terror continued Archbishop Stepinac
had begun, May 1941, to distance himself from
the Ustase.
Hebblethwaite wrote, "The Vatican's policy
was to strengthen the hand of [Spepinac] in
his rejection of forcible conversions and
brutalities".
Pavelic told Nazi Foreign Minister Ribbentrop
while the lower clergy supported the Ustase,
the bishops, and particularly Stepinac, were
opposed to the movement because of "Vatican
international policy".
In July, Stepniac wrote to Pavelic objecting
to the condition of deportation of Jews and
Serbs.
Then, realizing that conversion could save
Serbs, he instructed clergy to baptise people
upon demand without the usual waiting and
instruction.
Summer and autumn of 1941 Ustasha murders
increased, but Stepinac was not yet prepared
to break with the Ustase regime entirely.
Some bishops and priests collaborated openly
with Pavelic; even served in Pavelic's body
guard.
Ivan Guberina, the leader of Catholic Action,
among them.
Notorious examples of collaboration included
Archbishop Ivan Šarić and the Franciscan
Miroslav Filipović-Majstorovic, 'the devil
of the Jasenovac'.
For three months, Filipović-Majstorovic headed
the notorious Jasenovac concentration camp.
He was suspended as an army chaplain in 1942,
expelled from the Franciscan Order in 1943,
and executed as a war criminal after the war.
He was not, evidently, excommunicated.Phayer
wrote that Archbishop Stepinac himself came
to be known as jeudenfreundlich (Jew friendly)
to the Nazis and Croat regime.
And, suspended a number of priest collaboratos
in his diocese.
In the Spring of 1942, Stepinac, following
a meeting with Pius XII in Rome, declared
publicly it was "forbidden to exterminate
Gypsies and Jews because they are said to
belong to an inferior race".
When Himmler visited Zagreb a year later,
indicating the impending roundup of remaining
Jews, Stepinac wrote to Pavelic that if this
occurred, he would protest for "the Catholic
Church is not afraid of any secular power,
whatever it may be, when it has to protect
basic human values".
When deportatation began, Stepinac and Marcone
protested to Andrija Artuković.
The Vatican ordered Stepinac to save as many
Jews as possible during the upcoming roundup.
In July and October 1943, Stepinac condemned
race murders in the most explicit terms.
And, his condemnation was read from pulpits
across Croatia.
The Germans took this to be a denunciation
of the murder of both Serbs and Jews, and
arrested 31 priests.
Phayer wrote that despite knowing he would
be a target of Communists if the Croat regime
fell, "no leader of a national church ever
spoke as pointedly about genocide as did Stepinac".
Though Stepinac personally saved many potential
victims, his protests had little effect on
Pavelic.
The Apostolic delegate to Turkey, Angelo Roncalli,
saved a number of Croatian Jews—as well
as Bulgarian and Hungarian Jews— assisting
their migration to Palestine.
Roncalli succeeded Pius XII as Pope, always
said he was acting on the orders of Pius XII
in his actions to rescue Jews.
In 1943 after the German military became active
once again in Croatia, six to seven thousand
Jews were deported to Auschwitz, others murdered
in gas vans in Croatia.
Rather than jeopardize the Ustase government
by diplomatic wrangling, the Vatican chose
to help Jews privately.
But, the chaos of the country meant this was
little.
Historian John Morley called the Vatican record
particularly shameful in Croatia because it
was a state which proudly proclaimed its Catholic
tradition.
Whose leaders depicted themselves as loyal
to the Church and the Pope.
Diplomatic pressure was preferred to public
challenges on the immorality of genocide.
Pavelic's diplomatic emissaries to the Holy
See were merely scolded by Tardini and Montini.
At the war's end, leaders of the Ustasha,
including its clericals supporters such as,
Saric, fled taking gold looted from massacred
Jews and Serbs with them.
SloveniaThe Nazi persecution of the Church
in annexed Slovenia was akin to that which
occurred in Poland.
Within six weeks of the Nazi occupation, only
100 of the 831 priests in the Diocese of Maribor
and part of the Diocese of Ljubljana remained
free.
Clergy were persecuted and sent to concentration
camps, religious Orders had their properties
seized, some youth were sterilized.
The first priest to die was Aloysius Zuzek.Following
the German invasion of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia
in April 1941, Slovenia was partitioned, between
Italy, Hungary and Germany, which annexed
the north.
In the Carinthian and Styrian regions, the
mainly Austrian rulers commenced a brutal
campaign to destroy the Slovene nation.
The Jesuit John Le Farge reported in the Catholic
press in the America that the situation an
official report sent to the Vatican following
the invasion "may be briefly described as
hell for Catholics and Catholicism in Slovenia,
a 98% Catholic country, a hell deliberately
planned by Adolf Hitler out of his diabolical
hatred of Christ and His Church".
As in other occupied territories, the German
army confiscated church property, dissolved
religious houses and arrested and exiled priests.
=== Western Europe ===
Low CountriesThe Nazi Occupation of the Netherlands
was particularly protracted.
While the Dutch civil service collaborated
extensively with the occupying administration,
the Dutch Church, and leaders like the Archbishop
of Utrecht Johannes de Jong, firmly opposed
National Socialist movement, which Dutch Catholics
were forbidden to join.
As in other parts of the Nazi Empire, the
Catholic press was suppressed.
Clergy were arrested and forced out of educational
positions.
On 2 September 1940, the Nazi Governor of
the Netherlands, Arthur Seyss-Inquart ordered
a purge of clergy who refused to advocate
National Socialism.
In November, the office of the Bishop of Roermond
and the Hague headquarters of the Jesuits
were raided.
On 26 January 1941, the Dutch Bishops issued
a critical Pastoral Letter.
The Nazi press responded with threats.
The Nazi press also reported that Archbishop
de Jong was fined for refusing to preach the
Nazi invasion of Russia was a "religious crusade"
against Bolshevism.
When Seyss-Inquart installed a Dutch Nazi
at the head of the Catholic Workers' Union,
De Jong told Catholics to quit the Union.
The occupation of the Netherlands also saw
a particularly efficient cruelty towards the
Jews, and harsh punishment for their protectors.
When Jewish deportations began, many were
hidden in Catholic areas.
Parish priests created networks hiding Jews.
Close knit country parishes were able to hide
Jews without being informed upon by neighbours,
as occurred in the cities.
On July 11, 1942, the Dutch bishops, joined
all Christian denominations in sending a letter
to the Nazi General Friedrich Christiansen
in protest against the treatment of Jews.
The letter was read in all Catholic churches
against German opposition.
It brought attention to mistreatment of Jews
and asked all Christians to pray for them:
Ours is a time of great tribulations of which
two are foremost: the sad destiny of the Jews
and the plight of those deported for forced
labor.
... All of us must be aware of the terrible
sufferings which both of them have to undergo,
due to no guilt of their own.
We have learned with deep pain of the new
dispositions which impose upon innocent Jewish
men, women and children the deportation into
foreign lands.
... The incredible suffering which these measures
cause to more than 10,000 people is in absolute
opposition to the divine precepts of justice
and charity.
... Let us pray to God and for the intercession
of Mary ... that he may lend his strength
to the people of Israel, so severely tried
in anguish and persecution
The Nazis responded by revoking the exception
of Jews who were baptized, and a round up
was ordered.
The Gestapo made a special effort to round
up every monk, nun and priest who had a drop
of Jewish blood.
Some 300 victims were deported to Auschwitz
and immediately sent to the gas chambers,
among them Saint Edith Stein who was killed
at Auschwitz.
According to John Vidmar writes, "The brutality
of the retaliation made an enormous impression
on Pius XII."
Henceforth, he avoided open, confrontational
denunciations of the Nazis.
"It is clear from Maglione's intervention
Papa Pacelli cared about and sought to avert
the deportation of the Roman Jews but he did
not denounce: a denunciation, the Pope believed,
would do nothing to help the Jews.
It would only extend Nazi persecution to yet
more Catholics.
It was the Church as well as the Jews in Germany,
Poland and the rest of occupied Europe who
would pay the price for any papal gesture.
Another Dutch victim was Catholic dissident
Carmelite priest and philosopher, Titus Brandsma.
A journalist and a founder of the Netherlands'
Catholic University in Nijmegen, Brandsma
publicly campaigned against Nazism from the
mid-1930s.
Chosen by the Dutch Bishops as spokesmen in
the defence of freedom of the press, he was
arrested by the authorities in January 1942.
He was later transferred to Dachau, where
he was the subject of Nazi medical experiments
and was issued with a lethal injection on
26 July 1942.The Church played an important
role in the defence of Jews in Belgium.
The Comité de Défense des Juifs (CDJ) was
formed to work for the defence of Jews in
the summer of 1942.
Of its eight founding members, Emile Hambresin
was Catholic.
Some of their rescue operations were overseen
by the priests Joseph André and Dom Bruno.
Among other institutions, the CDJ enlisted
the help of monasteries and religious schools
and hospitals.
Yvonne Nèvejean of the Oeuvre Nationale de
l'Enfance greatly assisted with the hiding
of Jewish children.
The Queen Mother Elizabeth and Léon Platteau
of the Interior Ministry also made a stance
to protect Jews.
The Belgian Superior General of the Jesuits,
Jean-Baptiste Janssens was also honoured as
a Righteous Gentile by Yad Vashem.
Following the Nazi occupation of Belgium,
the Primate of Belgium Jozef-Ernst Cardinal
van Roey wrote a refutation of Nazi racial
doctrines and of the incompatibility of Catholicism
and Nazism.
In a dialogue, Van Roey wrote that Catholics
could never adapt to governments which "oppress
the rights of conscience and persecute the
Catholic Church"; asserted the right to freedom
of the press; and said Catholics ought not
resign themselves to defeat and collaboration
with the Nazis, because "we are certain that
our country will be restored and rise again".
France
Following the capitulation of France, the
nation was divided between a military occupation
of the north and the nominally independent
"Vichy regime" in the south.
Valerio Valeri remained nuncio to the divided
nation.
Marshal Philippe Pétain, the leader of the
Vichy government had no religious convictions,
but courted Catholic support.
His great rival, and leader of the Free French,
General Charles de Gaulle was a devout Catholic.
De Gaulle's Free French chose the Catholic
symbolism of Saint Joan of Arc's standard,
the Cross of Lorraine, as their emblem.As
elsewhere under Nazi occupation, French clergy
faced intimidation and interference.
In July 1940, the residence of Cardinal Suhard,
Archbishop of Paris, along with those of Cardinal
Baudrillart and Cardinal Liénart and other
church offices were searched by the Gestapo
for "evidence of collusion between the late
Cardinal Verdier and the Jews".
Verdier had described World War II as "a crusade
... We are struggling to preserve the freedom
of people throughout the world, whether they
be great or small peoples, and to preserve
their possessions and their very lives.
No other war has had aims that are more spiritual,
moral, and, in sum, more Christian".
On September 9, the Bishop of Quimper was
arrested for opposing Nazi plans for Brittany.
The Bishop of Strasbourg was prevented from
returning from Vichy France to his dioceses
and his Cathedral was closed to the public.
The Bishop of Metz was expelled from his diocese—which
was itself later dissolved for "political
reasons".
In October, the Archbishop of Besançon and
Vicar General Galen were jailed—the Archbishop
for gathering food for French PoWs, and "turning
people against Germans".
Vatican Radio denounced the treatment of the
Church in predominantly Catholic Alsace-Lorraine.
In March 1941, it announced in Alsace, Catholics
were facing "cruel persecution".
On April 4, Vatican Radio stated that:
Former Catholic teachers must now give instruction
in accordance with National Socialist programs;
that membership in Hitler Youth organizations
is obligatory for boys and girls over 10;
that religious seminaries are being closed,
all Catholic organizations are being dissolved,
and that Catholic newspapers are being suppressed
in Alsace-Lorraine; and that to the end of
December of the preceding year, 20,000 persons
had been expelled from Alsace, including 60
priests.
The Catholic newspaper Esprit criticized Petain
for his anti-semitic laws, and the paper was
suppressed.
The French bishops were initially cautious
in speaking out against mistreatment of Jews.
In 1997, the French church issued a Declaration
of Repentance for this approach.
Soon after Pacelli became pope, Vichy France
put forward antisemitic decrees.
Vichy's ambassador to the Vatican, Léon Bérard,
reported to his government that having spoken
to competent authorities the Holy See had
no insurmountable difficulties with this and
did not intend to become involved.
During the War, Cardinal Tisserant, called
on the Vatican to forcefully condemn Nazism
by name.
Following the Velodrom d'Hiver roundup of
Jews of July 15, 1942, the Northern assembly
of cardinals and archbishops sent a protest
letter to Petain, and following round ups
of Jews in Vichy France in 1942, several Bishops—Archboshop
Saliège of Toulouse, Bishop Théas of Montauban,
Jean Delay (Archbishop), Cardinal Gerlier
(Archbishop of Lyon), Monseigneur Edmund Vansteenberghe
from Bayonne and Monseigneur Moussaron of
Albi—denounced the roundups from the pulpit
and parish distributions, in defiance of the
Vichy regime.
Thousands of priests, nuns and lay people
acted to assist French Jews, protecting large
numbers in convents, boarding schools, presbyteries
and families.
According to The New York Times, "The defiant
attitude of those churchmen after 1942 contributed
to the fact that that three quarters of France's
Jewish population survived, many of them protected
by French Catholics".
French Catholic religious among the Righteous
Among the Nations include: the Capuchin friar
Père Marie-Benoît, Cardinal Gerlier, the
Archbishop of Toulouse Jules-Géraud Saliège
and Bishop of Montauban Pierre-Marie Théas.
Following the 4 June 1944 Liberation of Rome
by the Allies, Cardinal Tisserant delivered
a letter from De Gaulle to Pius XII, assuring
the Pontiff of the filial respect and attachment
of the French people; noting, their long wartime
suffering was attenuated by the Pope's "testimonies
of paternal affection".
Pius thanked De Gaulle for his recognition
of the charity works of the papacy for the
victims of the war, and offered an Apostolic
blessing upon De Gaulle and his nation.
De Gaulle came to met the Pope on 30 June;
following which, the French leader wrote of
great admiration for Pius, and assessed him
to be a pious, compassionate and thoughtful
figure.
Upon whom, the problems of world situation
weighed heavily.
De Gaulle's visit was reported by the Vatican
Press in the manner of a head of state, though
the Vichy Regime had not yet been toppled.
Following the fall of the Vichy government,
De Gaulle told the Vatican the Papal Nuncio
Valerio Valeri had become persona non grata
to the French people, having worked with the
Vichy regime.
Valeri was replaced by Angelo Roncalli, the
future John XXIII—however, prior to departing,
Valeri was presented with the Legion d'honneur
medal by De Gaulle.
== See also ==
Raphael's Verein
