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DEFENDING  THE  BRIDE

 

 

 

Catholic Response to Nazi Oppression and the Concordat

 

Chronological Time Line

Prior to Concordat

Timing: Hitler’s consolidation of Power was Before Concordat

Conditions and Persecution Under which the Concordat was Signed

Catholic Church’s Response

What is a Concordat ?

Pope Pius XII – A Holy Man

Did the Pope have a Direct Role in Saving the Jews in Rome ?

Vatican Archives

 

Chronological Time Line

1.     1923 - January 1933. Cardinal Pacelli works tirelessly to prevent the ideas and the party of the Nazi’s from gaining power.  E.g.Letter Shows Future Pius XII Opposed Hitler in 1923 (Zenit).- A letter written in 1923 by the future Pope Pius XII shows his early opposition to Nazi anti-Semitism. ... The letter dated Nov. 14, 1923.

2.    1930.  Vatican Publishes the order of excommunication by the German Bishops to all Catholics who join the Nazi Party.

3.     1933, on January 30:  The Nazi’s gain power in elections and Adolf Hitler was officially appointed chancellor and he acted quickly to consolidate power into an absolute dictatorship.

4.     1933, in February : Hermann Göring banned all Catholic newspapers in Cologne on the claim that Catholics were illegally engaging in politics.

5.     1933, on March 23:  Hitler’s Nazi government was given dictatorial powers through an Enabling Act which was passed unanimously by all parties except for those who were already imprisoned.  Basic human rights were set aside for  “four years.”

6.     1933, on 20 July : Concordat signed.  Cardinal Pacelli as a Nuncio is commissioned to do the bidding of the Pope Pius XI.  Pope Pius XI was eager to obtain Concordats with several countries so as to minimize the control and oppression that those governments wished to place on the Catholic Church.  Unfortunately, as the excommunication decree mentioned above failed in preventing Hitler from gaining absolute dictatorial power in Germany the Catholic Church agreed to lift the decree in exchange for some concessions from the Nazi's.  At this time many people in Germany were atheists and amongst Christians Catholics were are a minority due to the influence of Martin Luther.  Under the severe persecution of all those opposing Hitler and the threat of having all the Catholic churches and schools completely shut down the Catholic Church agreed to lift the excommunication decree and to refrain from political issues in return for the Nazi’s agreement to allow the Catholic churches and schools to remain open and unhindered in religious affairs.  The previous excommunication decree had had minimal effect in the overall German population and this way the Church would still have a free voice in encouraging people to repent of the sins of racism and oppression, at least according to the agreement of the Concordat.

7.     1937.   Cardinal Pacelli and later as Pope Pius XII continues to opposes the Nazi’s and their racist eugenics.  E.g.  See  1937 Cartoons Lampooning Pacelli – one of many. 1937, in March :  The Holy See issued the Mit brennender Sorge encyclical to Germany, condemning racism, idolatry of the state, neo-paganism, and repeated Nazi violations of the Concordat, while defending the Old Testament sourced in Jewish history.

8.     1939 Cardinal Pacelli is elevated to the Papacy.

9.     ? 1940’s It was not immediately obvious to world just how bad the Jews were being treated.  About 6 million were put to death. From early 1942 until late 1944, transport trains delivered 1.3 million people to the Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz, around 90 percent of them Jewish.

10.  1940  Seven years after the Concordat – Jewish physicist Albert Einstein praises the Church as being the only one who stood in the way of Hitler and the oppression of freedom.
 

11.  1943 – 1944  Pope Pius XII works directly to help save the Jews in Rome.  See physical documentation from 1943 below.

 
 

Prior to Concordat

Much ink has spilt on the claim that the Catholic Church enabled Hitler to rise in power by signing the Concordat in 1933.  These antagonists against the Church fail to recognize the timing of the Concordat in relation to when Hitler assumed dictatorial control, the conditions under which it was signed, and what a concordat is.

Prior to signing the Concordat the Catholic Church went to enormous lengths to prevent Hitler from coming into power.

Cardinal Pacelli  (later Pope Pius XII)  was such an outspoken opponent to the Nazi’s that they Lampooned Cardinal Pacelli repeatedly as an Anti-Nazi.  See one example here

www.defendingthebride.com/sn/pius.html#cartoon

Letter Shows Future Pius XII Opposed Hitler in 1923
(Zenit).- A letter written in 1923 by the future Pope Pius XII shows his early opposition to Nazi anti-Semitism. ...

The Catholic Bishops in Germany had even gone so far as to excommunicate Catholics who joined Hitler’s party in 1930, three years before he came into power.  This was republished in the Vatican Newspaper of that year.

http://www.defendingthebride.com/sn/1930pwf4.jpg

 

Timing: Hitler’s consolidation of Power was Before Concordat

The Concordat that the Catholic Church signed with the German government was on July 20 of 1933.  However, Adolf Hitler had assumed dictatorial control by March of 1933.

 

Conditions and Persecution Under which the Concordat was Signed

 

From Catholic dot Com article

On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was officially appointed chancellor by the aged President Paul von Hindenburg. A mere month later, on February 27, the infamous Reichstag Fire (a plot concocted by the Nazis) gave Hitler the pretext to establish a dictatorship through the so-called Enabling Act that was passed in March 1933. The act bestowed sweeping powers on the government, including setting aside key elements of basic rights, for four years. …

In February 1933, Hermann Göring banned all Catholic newspapers in Cologne on the claim that Catholics were illegally engaging in politics. …

As the parties were disbanded, the Gestapo began rounding up all who might oppose the social revolution. Hundreds of priests were arrested for speaking out against the anti-democratic changes and the persecution of Jews. …

http://www.catholic.com/magazine/articles/catholic-martyrs-of-the-holocaust

“The truth is many thousands of Catholic men, women, and children died in concentration camps, SS and Gestapo torture chambers, or in fields and villages across Europe for the ‘crime’ of proclaiming the truth to one of the most evil regimes in human history. The historical reality of this oppression does not in any way reduce the culpability of some Catholics in the Holocaust, nor does it suggest that the unprecedented genocide of the Jewish people should be forgotten or considered reduced in significance. …

“By the late 1920s, the Catholic Church in Germany claimed some 20 million members. They were outnumbered by the 40 million Lutherans …

“At first, many average Catholics, like other Germans, were not fully aware of the dangers of National Socialism. Some saw the Nazis as a potential ally against the spread of Communism. Bishop Christian Schreiber of Berlin, for example, granted permission for Catholics to join the party. Most German bishops and priests, however, were alarmed by the Nazis and their anti-Semitic speeches, radical nationalistic tone, and clear willingness to use violence and intimidation. In early 1931, the bishops’ conference of the Cologne region condemned National Socialism …”

 

From Wikipedia sources

On 20 July 1933, the Vatican signed an agreement with Germany, the Reichskonkordat, partly in an effort to stop Nazi persecution of Catholic institutions  … With this background, Catholic officials wanted a concordat strongly guaranteeing the church's freedoms. Once Hitler came to power, and started enacting laws restricting movement of funds (making it impossible for German Catholics to send money to missionaries, for instance), restricting religious institutions and education, and mandating attendance at Hitler Youth functions (held on Sunday mornings to interfere with Church attendance), the need for a concordat seemed even more urgent to church officials. ...

On 30 January 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor. On 23 March 1933, his government was given dictatorial powers through an Enabling Act passed by all parties in the Reichstag except the Social Democrats and Communists (whose deputies had already been arrested).


 

Catholic Church’s Response

from Wikipedia sources

In March 1937 the Holy See issued the Mit brennender Sorge encyclical to Germany, condemning racism, idolatry of the state, neo-paganism, and repeated Nazi violations of the Concordat, while defending the Old Testament sourced in Jewish history.

Eugenio Pacelli, the former Nuncio to Germany (1920–1930), became Pope Pius XII in 1939. His legacy is contested. As Vatican Secretary of State through the 1930s, he assisted in drafting the Concordat and Mit brennender Sorge. … Pius used diplomacy to aid war victims and lobby for peace. At times, risking neutrality, he shared intelligence with the Allies, used Vatican Radio and press to speak out against atrocities like race murders. Under Pius XII, the Church rescued many thousands of Jews, by issuing false documents, lobbying Axis officials, and hiding them in monasteries, convents, schools and elsewhere including the Vatican and Castel Gandolfo.

In the Nazi Empire, responses to Nazism varied. Priests were watched closely, frequently denounced, or imprisoned. The Nazis established a dedicated clergy barracks at Dachau, where 2,579 Catholic priests were imprisoned; mostly, Polish, among them, 411 Germans.

Mit brennender Sorge (German: "With burning concern") On the Church and the German Reich is a Catholic Church encyclical of Pope Pius XI, published on 10 March 1937 (but bearing a date of Passion Sunday, 14 March). Written in German, not the usual Latin, it was smuggled into Germany for fear of censorship and was read from the pulpits of all German Catholic churches on one of the Church's busiest Sundays, Palm Sunday (March 21 that year). It condemned breaches of the Reichskonkordat agreement signed between the German Reich and the Holy See  in 1933, criticised Nazism and its elevation of one race above others.

End Quotes.

Read about a Catholic Nun, Sister Maria Restituta, who was arrested and killed for the crime of hanging Crucifixes in the rooms of the hospital where she worked. Read more.


 

What is a Concordat ?

A Concordat is not an agreement amongst friends.  One does not have to have a friend put in writing that he will recognize your rights, rather it is more like a temporary truce between opposing enmities.


 

Pope Pius XII – A Holy Man

What Power Does the Pope Have?

Some imagine that if the Pope said more than he did – which was already substantial even before Hitler came to power - then Hitler would not have persecuted the Jews, as if everyone just jumped at his command.  However, that was not true then nor is it true now. E.g. How many Catholics practice artificial birth control despite the repeated condemnation of this practice?  God did work a miracle through him though. Consider the number of Jews that he was able to save. (see below)

And yet, some antagonists will retort, “Cardinal Pacelli (later Pope Pius XII)  did not have a gun to his head.  He was not forced into signing the Concordat. He should not have done so.”

Unfortunately, these antagonists seem to fail to understand just how beautiful of a person Pope Pius XII really is (and who is now probably in heaven.)   Regardless of whether or not a gun was pointed to his head he would not have signed this compromised agreement unless he believed that it was for a greater good and this was the best under the circumstances that could be achieved.  The risk to his life was not an issue to him.

The Pope’s advisors had recommended that he leave Rome for his own safety.  We now even have documentation that Hitler had indeed ordered the Pope’s capture or even execution if necessary. And yet, the Pope was willing to risk his life, and stay in Rome in order to serve his people.

In fact, this Concordat is exactly what helped Pope Pius XII save so many Jews. There is a Jewish organization called Pave the Way (PTW) by Gary Krupp that is publishing documents from the Vatican Archives.  It includes the following

Vatican Archives

80-Letter from Card. Pacelli trying to secure 200,000 visas for "Converted Italians" in 1938 3 weeks after Kristallnacht. The following pages list over 65 nuncios asked for assistance. "Non-Aryan Catholics" was a code word for persecuted Jews. Since the 1933 concordat permitted the Church to care for converted Jews they used this phrase in their correspondence. There is also no reasonable way one can believe that there were 200,000 converted Jews in Germany in 1938. The following documents are of the list of nuncios that received the requests. There is one response in English from Scotland speaking about caring for the Jews. There is the front page of the Irish News stating that the Pope is trying to help the Jews of Germany. Courtesy of Michael Hesemann

Prior to WWII the number of Jewish converts to Catholicism is relatively small.  The reference to the hundreds of thousands of Jews who were then considered “Christians” must have been inflated by artificial conversions in name only.  By being recognized as “Christians” they were under the protective care of Catholic buildings and convents in Rome.  They were given fake baptismal certificates to protect their lives.

While it is undisputable that the Catholic Church saved about 750,000 to 800,000 Jews in Rome, some have contended that this was NOT done under the direction of Pope Pius XII, but done in spite of him.

 

Did the Pope have a Direct Role in Saving the Jews in Rome ?

We know that many things had to be done in secret.

For example:

Vatican Archives

98-Many lifesaving documents had to be encrypted or destroyed. This letter, dated May 20, 1944, is from British Ambassador D’Arcy Osborne to  Harold Titman the assistant to Myron Taylor President Roosevelt's representative to the Holy See. It clearly states the concerns of documents falling into enemy hands and the necessity to destroy it. courtesy of Ron Rychlak

 

Now consider these cloistered nuns are nuns who are so separated from society to serve God exclusively in prayer that they are forbidden any contact with outsiders and certainly not with any men.  Therefore, it is inescapable to the rational person to conclude that the nuns would have never taken in the Jews unless the Pope had allowed an exception to most venerable rules and asked them to do so. Still, other than verbal testimonies there was no known direct physical link between the Pope and the rescue of the Jews.  That is, until recently.

Thanks to Gary Krupp, a Jew, and his PTW foundation we have access to more documents from the Vatican archives proving that Pope Pius XII had directly expressed his wishes that the priests and cloistered nuns Rome risk their lives by taking in these desperate Jews so that their lives might be spared.

Vatican Archives

52-A telling 1943 diary entry of Augustinian nuns where they state they were ordered by Pius XII to take in the Jews in 1943. She names many of the Jewish "guests". The nun reports how they made alterations to make their guest as comfortable as possible. The nun states the Holy Father is personally feeling the suffering of the Jews. Courtesy of Fr Peter Gumpel

52a-English translation of the Nun's diary above

Four unpublished articles from the Augustinian nuns who were ordered by Pope Pius XII to sheltered the Jews in Rome and testimony from the survivors

The fact that Pope Pius XII heroically risked his life, and asked so many priests and cloistered nuns to risk their lives to save so many Jews is precisely why I believe that he will be canonized a Saint.


 

Vatican Archives Documents:

80-Letter from Card. Pacelli trying to secure 200,000 visas for "Converted Italians" in 1938 3 weeks after Kristallnacht. The following pages list over 65 nuncios asked for assistance. "Non-Aryan Catholics" was a code word for persecuted Jews. Since the 1933 concordat permitted the Church to care for converted Jews they used this phrase in their correspondence. There is also no reasonable way one can believe that there were 200,000 converted Jews in Germany in 1938. The following documents are of the list of nuncios that received the requests. There is one response in English from Scotland speaking about caring for the Jews. There is the front page of the Irish News stating that the Pope is trying to help the Jews of Germany. Courtesy of Michael Hesemann


52-A telling 1943 diary entry of Augustinian nuns where they state they were ordered by Pius XII to take in the Jews in 1943. She names many of the Jewish "guests". The nun reports how they made alterations to make their guest as comfortable as possible. The nun states the Holy Father is personally feeling the suffering of the Jews. Courtesy of Fr Peter Gumpel

52a-English translation of the Nun's diary above

Four unpublished articles from the Augustinian nuns who were ordered by Pope Pius XII to sheltered the Jews in Rome and testimony from the survivors

98-Many lifesaving documents had to be encrypted or destroyed. This letter, dated May 20, 1944, is from British Ambassador D’Arcy Osborne to Harold Titman the assistant to Myron Taylor President Roosevelt's representative to the Holy See. It clearly states the concerns of documents falling into enemy hands and the necessity to destroy it. courtesy of Ron Rychlak

 

See More on: 

Hitler's Plan to Kidnap Pope Pius XII

 Pope Pius XII

 

 

 




More Vatican Archives.

Vatican Archives at Jewish organization - Pave The Way Foundation

The complete collection of over 76,000 pages of documents, newspaper articles, video testimonies, and important articles, relative to the papacy of Pope Pius XII, is on our restricted page, which requires registration at no charge.   

             

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52-A telling 1943 diary entry of Augustinian nuns where they state they were ordered by Pius XII to take in the Jews in 1943. She names many of the Jewish "guests". The nun reports how they made alterations to make their guest as comfortable as possible. The nun states the Holy Father is personally feeling the suffering of the Jews. Courtesy of Fr Peter Gumpel

52a-English translation of the Nun's diary above

80-Letter from Card. Pacelli trying to secure 200,000 visas for "Converted Italians" in 1938 3 weeks after Kristallnacht. The following pages list over 65 nuncios asked for assistance. "Non-Aryan Catholics" was a code word for persecuted Jews. Since the 1933 concordat permitted the Church to care for converted Jews they used this phrase in their correspondence. There is also no reasonable way one can believe that there were 200,000 converted Jews in Germany in 1938. The following documents are of the list of nuncios that received the requests. There is one response in English from Scotland speaking about caring for the Jews. There is the front page of the Irish News stating that the Pope is trying to help the Jews of Germany. Courtesy of Michael Hesemann

Four unpublished articles from the Augustinian nuns who were ordered by Pope Pius XII to sheltered the Jews in Rome and testimony from the survivors

98-Many lifesaving documents had to be encrypted or destroyed. This letter, dated May 20, 1944, is from British Ambassador DArcy Osborne to  Harold Titman the assistant to Myron Taylor President Roosevelt's representative to the Holy See. It clearly states the concerns of documents falling into enemy hands and the necessity to destroy it. courtesy of Ron Rychlak

Jew be Proud 104  World Jewish Congress Magazine dated July 14, 1944 acknowledging that the fact that the 7000 Roman Jews owe their lives to the Vatican. It also recalls the 1941 meeting of a young Jewish boy who Pius XII stated "be proud to be a Jew."

 

 

15-Video- Interview with Msgr Giovanni Ferrofino - 96 year old retired priest who personally carried out directives of Pope Pius XII to save Jews from 1939 -1945. Pope Pius XII secretly shuttled Jews out of Portugal and Spain to the Dominican Republic

 


97- Testimony of Luciana Zevi who states that when she joined her family in a private audience with Pope Pius XII in 1948, her uncle recognized the pope as the monk who was dressed in Franciscan robes who personally lead him out of the Ghetto into the Vatican. Msgr Montini upon hearing this silenced him telling him never to repeat this story.

 

59-Universal Jewish and Israeli gratitude to Pope Pius XII prior to the fictitious play The Deputy  

 

 6- From Berlin to the Nazi headquarters in Rome where they are instructed to arrest the 8000 Roman Jews to be sent to Mauthausen concentration camp (a labor camp). These victims are to be used as hostages. When Pius XII intervened and stopped the arrests over 1000, who were in Nazi hands, were then sent to Auschwitz by persons unknown.

 

19-Video- interview of  Max Ciampoli friend of Sir Winston Churchill who personally met with Pope Pius XII, who gave him  thousands of  false baptismal certificates to save Polish children who would have been sent to the extermination camps .

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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