Was Pius XII Hitler's Pope? -- Serious Poll

[Tinoire]

Poll question: Was Pius XII Hitler's Pope? -- Serious Poll

Please vote after you've read or at least skimmed these quotes and facts. I did not post all the links but you can easily verify them.

Thank you for your attention...


"Being a lover of freedom, when the Nazi revolution came in Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it, but the universities were immediately silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers, but they, like the universities were silenced in a few short weeks. Then I looked to individual writers . . . . they too were mute. Only the Church, stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing the truth. . . . I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel great affection and admiration . . . . and am forced thus to confess that what I once despised, I now praise unreservedly."

Albert Einstein, who himself barely escaped annihilation at Nazi hands, 1944

-----------------
‘We share in the grief of humanity at the passing away of His Holiness Pope Pius XII. In a generation afflicted by wars and discords, he upheld the highest ideals of peace and compassion. When fearful martyrdom came to our people in the decade of Nazi terror, the voice of the Pope was raised for the victims. The life of our times was enriched by a voice speaking out on the great moral truths above the tumult of daily conflict. We mourn a great servant of peace.’

Golda Meir, Israeli delegate to the United Nations, official condolences upon the death of Pope Pius XII died, October 9, 1958 in her cablegram to the Vatican.

------------
‘I told him that my first duty was to thank him, and through him, the Catholic Church, on behalf of the Jewish public, for all they had done in various countries to rescue Jews, to save children and Jews in general.’"

1945 Moshe Sharett, Israel’s first Foreign Minister and second Prime Minister, after meeting Pius XII

“The Church and the papacy have saved Jews as much and insofar as they could Christians. Six million of my co-religionists have been murdered by the Nazis... but there would have been many more victims had it not been for the efficacious intervention of Pius XII.”

Dr. Raphael Cantoni, Italy’s Jewish Assistance Committee

-----------------
“This Christmas more than ever Pope Pius XII is a lonely voice crying out in the silence of a continent. The pulpit whence he speaks is more than ever like the Rock in which the Church was founded, a tiny island lashed and surrounded by a sea of war... When a leader hound impartially to nations on both sides condemns as heresy the new form of national state which subordinates everything to itself; when he declares that whoever wants peace must protect against ’arbitrary attacks’ the ‘juridical safety of individual’; when he assails violent occupation of territory, the exile and persecution of human beings for no reason other than race or political opinion; when he says that people must fight for a just and decent peace, a ‘total peace’— the ‘impartial’ judgment is like a verdict in our high court of justice.”

The New York Times, Christmas 1942


--------------------------
Leonard Bernstein, on learning of Pope Pius XII’s death while conducting his orchestra in New York’s Carnegie Hall, tapped his baton for a moment of silence to pay tribute to the Pope who had saved the lives of so many people without distinction of race, nationality, or religion.

-------------------

"Volumes could be written on the multiform works of Pius XII, and the countless priests, religious and laity who stood with him throughout the world during the war." "No hero, in all of history was more militant, more fought against, none more heroic, than Pius XII in pursuing the works of true charity . . . and thus on behalf of all the suffering children of God."

Israel Zolli , chief rabbi of Rome

---------------------------------
According to Israeli archives, at least 860,000 Jews were saved by papal relief programs.

"The Catholic Church under the pontificate of Pius XII was instrumental in saving lives of as many as 860,000 Jews from certain death at Nazi hands."

He went on to add that this "figure far exceeds those saved by all other Churches and rescue organizations combined." After recounting statements of appreciation from a variety of preeminent Jewish spokespersons, he noted. "No Pope in history has been thanked more heartily by Jews . . . .Several suggested in open letters that a Pope Pius XII forest of 860,000 trees be planted on the hills of Judea in order to fittingly honor the memory of the late Pontiff ("Three Popes and the Jews" pp. 214–215)." Levai in his own book did not hesitate to argue that the attacks on the Pope’s wartime record are "demonstrably malicious and fabricated . . . . The archives of the Vatican of diocesan authorities of Ribbentrop’s foreign ministry, contain a whole series of protests—direct and indirect, diplomatic and public, secret and open. The nuncios and bishops of the Catholic Church intervened again and again on the instructions of the Pope,"

Israeli diplomat and scholar Pinchas Lapide

--------------------

"The people of Israel will never forget what His Holiness and his illustrious delegates, inspired by the eternal principles of religion, which form the very foundation of true civilization, are doing for our unfortunate brothers and sisters in the most tragic hour of our history, which is living proof of Divine Providence in this world."

Rabbi Isaac Herzog, chief Rabbi of Israel, in a message to the Vatican, February 1944

-------------------
New York Times Headlines & editorials

- In January 1940 the Times editorialized: "Now the Vatican has spoken, with authority that cannot be questioned, and has confirmed the worst intimations of terror which have come out of the Polish darkness."

- The headline reporting Pius XII's first encyclical, on October 28, 1939, read, "Pope Condemns Dictators, Treaty Violators, Racism."

- Headlines on August 6, 1942, read, "Pope is said to plead for Jews Listed for Removal from France;" three weeks later, the headline was "Vichy Seizes Jews; Pope Pius Ignored."

==========
"the Holy See is lending its powerful help wherever it can, to mitigate the fate of my persecuted co-religionists."

Chaim Weizmann, Israel's first president, 1943
=======

(snip)

In any case, Pius had his Jewish defenders as well. In addition to Lapide's Three Popes and the Jews, one might list A Question of Judgment, the 1963 pamphlet from the Anti-Defamation League's Joseph Lichten, and the excoriating reviews of Friedländer by Livia Rotkirchen, the historian of Slovakian Jewry at Yad Vashem. Jeno Levai, the great Hungarian historian, was so angered by accusations of papal silence that he wrote Pius XII Was Not Silent (published in English in 1968), with a powerful introduction by Robert M.W. Kempner, deputy chief U.S. prosecutor at Nuremberg.
In response to the new attacks on Pius, several Jewish scholars have spoken out over the last year. Sir Martin Gilbert told an interviewer that Pius deserves not blame but thanks. Michael Tagliacozzo, the leading authority on Roman Jews during the Holocaust, added, "I have a folder on my table in Israel entitled ‘Calumnies Against Pius XII.' . . . Without him, many of our own would not be alive." Richard Breitman (the only historian authorized to study U.S. espionage files from World War II) noted that secret documents prove the extent to which "Hitler distrusted the Holy See because it hid Jews."

(snip)

In January 1940, for instance, the pope issued instructions for Vatican Radio to reveal "the dreadful cruelties of uncivilized tyranny" the Nazis were inflicting on Jewish and Catholic Poles. Reporting the broadcast the following week, the Jewish Advocate of Boston praised it for what it was: an "outspoken denunciation of German atrocities in Nazi Poland, declaring they affronted the moral conscience of mankind." The New York Times editorialized: "Now the Vatican has spoken, with authority that cannot be questioned, and has confirmed the worst intimations of terror which have come out of the Polish darkness." In England, the Manchester Guardian hailed Vatican Radio as "tortured Poland's most powerful advocate."

(snip)

In Rome, 155 convents and monasteries sheltered some five thousand Jews. At least three thousand found refuge at the pope's summer residence at Castel Gandolfo. Sixty Jews lived for nine months at the Gregorian University, and many were sheltered in the cellar of the pontifical biblical institute. Hundreds found sanctuary within the Vatican itself. Following Pius's instructions, individual Italian priests, monks, nuns, cardinals, and bishops were instrumental in preserving thousands of Jewish lives. Cardinal Boetto of Genoa saved at least eight hundred. The bishop of Assisi hid three hundred Jews for over two years. The bishop of Campagna and two of his relatives saved 961 more in Fiume.

Cardinal Pietro Palazzini, then assistant vice rector of the Seminario Romano, hid Michael Tagliacozzo and other Italian Jews at the seminary (which was Vatican property) for several months in 1943 and 1944. In 1985, Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust Memorial, honored the cardinal as a righteous gentile—and, in accepting the honor, Palazzini stressed that "the merit is entirely Pius XII's, who ordered us to do whatever we could to save the Jews from persecution."

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/dalin.html

-----
Interview with Historian Rabbi David Dalin of New York (permission to reprint)

(snip)

"during the Second World War, Pius XII saved more Jewish lives than any other person, including Raoul Wallenberg and Oskar Schindler."

(snip)

Lapide was consul general of Israel in Milan and met with many Italian Jews who survived the Holocaust. In his work, Lapide documents how Pius XII worked for the salvation of at least 700,000 from the hands of the Nazis. However, according to another estimate, this figure rises to 860,000.

--Q: Why, then, has there been this change in appreciation?

--Rabbi Dalin: I call today´s critics revisionists because they reverse the judgment of history, namely, the recognition given to Pius XII by his contemporaries, among whom is Nobel Prize Albert Einstein, Chief Rabbi Isaac Herzog of Israel, Prime Ministers Golda Meir and Moshe Sharett; and, in Italy, people like Raffaele Cantoni, who at the time was president of the Italian Union of Jewish Communities. But many articles published at different times in Boston´s Jewish Advocate, The Times of London, and The New York Times can also be perused.

--Q: What did Pope Pacelli do for the Jews?

--Rabbi Dalin: We have much documentation, which shows that in no way did he remain silent. What is more, he spoke out loudly against Hitler and almost everyone saw him as an opponent of the Nazi regime. During the German occupation of Rome, Pius XII secretly instructed the Catholic clergy to use all means to save as many human lives as possible.

In this way, he saved thousands of Italian Jews from deportation. While 80% of European Jews died in those years, 80% of Italian Jews were saved. In Rome alone, 155 convents and monasteries gave refuge to some 5,000 Jews. At any given moment, at least 3,000 were saved in the papal residence of Castel Gandolfo, being freed from deportation to German concentration camps.

For nine months, 60 Jews lived with the Jesuits at the Pontifical Gregorian University, and many others were hidden in the basement of the Biblical Institute. Following Pius XII´s instructions, risking their own lives, many priests and monks made possible the salvation of hundreds of Jewish lives.

(snip)

Rabbi Dalin: I think the time has arrived on the Jewish side to get to work on a new reconstruction of the relation between Pius XII and the Holocaust. This reconstruction, closer to the facts, namely, of what Pius XII really did for the Jews, would arrive at diametrically opposite conclusions to the gratuitous ones of John Cornwell´s book, "Hitler´s Pope."

Pius XII was not Hitler´s Pope, but the greatest defender that we Jews have ever had, and precisely at the time when we needed it.

(snip)

Pope Pacelli was righteous among the nations, who must be recognized for having protected and saved hundreds of thousands of Jews. It is difficult to imagine that so many world Jewish leaders, in such different continents, could have been mistaken or confused when it came to praising the Pope´s conduct during the War. Their gratitude to Pius XII lasted a long time, and it was genuine and profound.

Historian Rabbi David Dalin

www.ewtn.com/vnews/getstory.asp?number=18330

------------------------------

- September 1945, Leon Kubowitzky, secretary general of the World Jewish Congress, personally thanked the pope for his interventions, and the World Jewish Congress donated $20,000 (2,000,000 lire )to Vatican charities "in recognition of the work of the Holy See in rescuing Jews from Fascist and Nazi persecutions."

- In 1955, when Italy celebrated the tenth anniversary of its liberation, the Union of Italian Jewish Communities proclaimed April 17 a "Day of Gratitude" for the pope's wartime assistance.
- On May 26, 1955, the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra flew to Rome to give in the Vatican a special performance of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony—an expression of the State of Israel's enduring gratitude to the pope for help given the Jewish people during the Holocaust.
This last example is particularly significant. As a matter of state policy, the Israeli Philharmonic has never played the music of Richard Wagner, because of his well-known reputation as "Hitler's composer," the cultural patron saint of the Third Reich. During the 1950s especially, the Israeli public, hundreds of thousands of whom were Holocaust survivors, still viewed Wagner as a symbol of the Nazi regime. It is inconceivable that the Israeli government would have paid for the entire orchestra to travel to Rome to pay tribute to "Hitler's pope." On the contrary, the Israeli Philharmonic's unprecedented concert in the Vatican was a unique communal gesture of collective recognition for a great friend of the Jewish people.

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/dalin.html

----------------------------------------

1937 encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge ("with burning concern"), drafted by Pacelli, before he became Pope, and issued by Pius X. The first papal encyclical not written in Latin but written in fucking German to warn the entire world about the dangers, horrors of Nazism and denounce it for the evil, the racist evil it was.


A first draft by Cardinal Faulhaber was revised, partially re-written, and supplemented by the Cardinal Secretary of State Pacelli, who changed its title from Mit grosse Sorge to Mit brennender Sorge for more impact.

The encyclical, dated March 14, was published seven days later, on Palm Sunday of 1937. The Secretary of State secretly instructed that the text be simultaneously read that very Sunday from every pulpit in Germany. The bishops had the document printed, and it was rapidly disseminated nationwide. In the diocese of Münster alone, 120,000 copies were distributed. The encyclical, issued in German in a very clear and forceful style, was "one of the most severe condemnations of a national regime ever made by the Vatican."

Mit brennender Sorge, for its clarity, for its invoking of the truths of the Catholic Faith and their opposition to Nazi neopaganism, for its condemnation of racism and the totalitarian State, caused a violent shock to Germany and in international public opinion. The surprised Führer exploded in frightful anger. But the encyclical had the effect of a threat.12 The encyclical rekindled German resistance to Nazism, which was carried out by Catholics, and, indeed, all Christians.

www.tfp.org/student_action/activities/ student_seminars/pius12_lecture.html

[Walt Starr]

1. Had Pius the XII not worked diplomatically with Hitler at the level he did

the Catholic Church would have been in no position to help the Jewish people at the level they did.

[Tinoire]

3. Thank you Walt. Short but thoughtful. n/t

[Maple]

2. The Church and the Nazis

http://www.nobeliefs.com/nazis.htm

[Tinoire]

5. In other words #5- Einstein, Golda Meir, Moshe Sharett, were gaga

and their opinions do not matter, even though they lived through those times.

:shrug:

Was it their lying eyes Maple? Or were they liars? And all the Jews who praised Pius XII for what he did, were they liars too?

[reorg]

13. i see no relation between Maple's post and your quotes

Einstein did not "live through those times" in Germany -- so I'm at a loss here what exactly he is talking about. Probably the "Confessing Church", or individual Catholic priests.

Had it not been for the Churches, Hitler may never have come to power.

Good summary here:

(...)

Though it was not without antimodernists, the Catholic Zentrum party had antagonized the Vatican during the 1920s by forming governing coalitions with the secularized, moderate Left-oriented Social Democrats. This changed in 1928, when the priest Ludwig Kaas became the first cleric to head the party. To the dismay of some Catholics, Kaas and other Catholic politicians participated both actively and passively in destroying democratic rule, and in particular the Zentrum.

The devoutly Catholic chancellor Franz von Papen, not a fascist but stoutly right-wing, engineered the key electoral victory that brought Hitler to power. Disastrously Papen dissolved the Reichstag in 1932, then formed a Zentrum-Nazi coalition in violation of all previous principles. It was Papen who in 1933 made Hitler chancellor, Papen stepping down to the vice chancellorship.

The common claim that Papen acted in the hope that the Nazis could be controlled and ultimately discredited may be true, partly true, or false; but without Papen’s reckless aid, Hitler would not have become Germany’s leader.

(...)

Catholic apologists describe the Concordat of 1933 as a necessary move by a church desperate to protect itself against a violent regime which forced the accord upon it—passing over the contradiction at the heart of this argument. Actually, having failed in repeated attempts to negotiate the ardently desired concordat with a skeptical Weimar democracy, Kaas, Papen, the future Pius XII (who reigned 1939–1958), the sitting Pius XI, and other leading Catholics saw their chance to get what they had been seeking from an agreeable member of the church—that is, Hitler—at an historical moment when he and fascism in general were regarded as a natural ally by many Catholic leaders.28 Negotiations were initiated by both sides, modeled on the mutually advantageous 1929 concordat between Mussolini and the Vatican.

Now Zentrum’s pivotal role in assuring passage of the Enabling Act can be seen in context. It was part of the tacit Nazi-Vatican deal for a future concordat.29 The Enabling Act vote hollowed Zentrum, leaving little more than a shell. Thus, a clergy far more interested in church power than democratic politics could take control on both sides of the negotiating table. In a flagrant conflict of interest, the devout Papen helped to represent the German state. Concordat negotiations were largely held in Rome, so that Kaas could leave his vanishing party yet more rudderless. Papen, Kaas, and the future Pius XII worked overtime to finalize a treaty that would, among other things, put an end to the Zentrum. In negotiating away the party he led, Kaas eliminated the last political entity that might have opposed the new Führer.30 Nor did the Vatican protect Germany’s Catholic party. Contrary to the contention of some, evidence indicates that the Vatican was pleased to negotiate away all traces of the Zentrum, for which it had no more use save as a bargaining chip. In this the Holy See treated Zentrum no differently than it had the Italian Catholic party, which it negotiated away in the Concordat with Mussolini.

(...)

28. Ronald Rychlak, “Goldhagen v. Pius XII,” First Things, June/July 2002, pp. 37–54, offers a typically convoluted example of pro-Vatican spin when he asserts that the concordat “was a Nazi proposition. The Nazis accepted terms that the Church had previously proposed to Weimar, but which Weimar had rejected.”

http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/paul_23_4.html

[reorg]

15. Einstein

The Concordat was signed on July 20, 1933. Einstein was indeed very lucky not to have to "live through" this time in Germany (he would have lost his job already by then, and most probably would have been languishing in a concentration camp like so many other outspoken secular humanists).

...

At the end of 1932 the Einstein's, Albert and his second wife Elsa, took their preparations for their third journey to America. In the meantime the anti-Semitic campaign against Einstein in Germany increased. In America there was also a wave of protest against him because of his actions for pacifism. Albert and Elsa arrived in California at the beginning of January in 1933. First they went to Pasadena and later followed their first longer stay in Princeton. In the Mount Wilson Observatory he debated the mysteries of universe with Edwin Hubble, the discoverer of the big bang.

In the middle of March 1933 Einstein decided to return to Europe. Already during the way home on board of the ship "Belgenland" they heard further alarming news from Germany. Einstein wrote his resignation to the Berlin Academy already during his crossing to Europe. After his arrival in Antwerpen, Einstein decided not to return to Germany and to never again enter German ground. He spent some time in Belgium and England.

In autumn it was finally decided to leave Europe and to emigrate to the United States. On October 7 in 1933 Einstein and his wife Elsa, his secretary Helen Dukas and his assistant Dr. Walther Mayer, travelled from Southampton to the USA with the steamship "Westerland".

...

http://www.einstein-website.de/z_biography/princeton-e.html

[Tinoire]

23. Einstein escaped the horrors and saw Pius Xii was the ONLY one who spoke

out. I suppose you think he wasn't combing the papers to see who would realize and speak out against the evils. He gave credit to the only leader who spoke out. Why would you dismiss that? Stupid man? Pope lover? Jew hater?

[reorg]

29. Maybe we can make a concerted effort

to try and find out what the quote actually means?

It is from after the war (or 1944, as you say - couldn't find the source) and in very generic terms contrasts the outspokenness of various (presumably German) institutions, the "Church", the media, and universities. I guess he does not speak literally, since he wasn't in Germany at the time of the Machtergreifung. I also don't think he refers to this specific point in time, since the "Church" was as quick to adapt to the Nazi dictatorship as the universities and the media - with the Concordat being negotiated during the first half of 1933.

[Rowdyboy]

4. People tend to catagorize far too quickly, before they have all the facts

Every human has self-imposed limitations, as well as those forced on them by society and the establishment. Though I am not Catholic, I believe that Pius was a good man, who did all that he felt he could in incredibly difficult circumstances.

I hope that I would exhibit his courage in a similar situation

[Tinoire]

6. Wow. Your last sentence sums up how I feel

I hope that I would exhibit his courage in a similar situation.

Thanks

[DemBones DemBones]

7. I always knew that Pius XII was not "Hitler's pope" because I remember

his death quite well and the worldwide grief it caused. People in his own time knew him to be a good man.

Pius was a prisoner in the Vatican during much of the war and maintaining a very delicate balance in communicating with the fascist leaders of Italy and Germany. In recent years, a popular question has been "Why didn't Pius excommunicate Hitler?" It's mind-boggling that people don't realize that would not have stopped Hitler but would likely have inspired him to kill many more people to punish the pope.

[Tinoire]

8. I used to think that was an excuse -

and that he should have excommunicated Hitler, all Nazis and all collaborators until I read about Jewish and Catholic leaders who pleaded with him to tone it down based on direct reprisals entire ghettoes & communities had suffered.

It's a slow long journey that got me to look at Pius differently. I'm glad I undertook it because it's helped me understand to what extent and how viciously those who speak out against modern horrors & injustices will be defamed. We see it happening everyday, under our very eyes and yet we ask few questions about past revisionism.

It's a sad world. Very sad. Talk to you later... Time to drive home :hi:

[Cuban_Liberal]

9. Of course he wasn't.

Only someone woefully ignorant of history would believe that he was.

[Wizard777]

10. Pius XII played both sides just like Prescott Bush.

His ultimate duty as Pope would have been to ensure the survival of the church regardless of who won the war. Germany did very well in the begining of the war. So the Pope would have been wise to form some kind of relationship with Hitler. Just incase that trend continued to his victory. But I do believe that Pius XII personally supported Hitlers anti semitism. But not offically. After all Christ was a Jew. Their are reasons I believe that Pius XII personal politics embraced anti semitism and the Nazi party.
1) A secret letter recently released by the Vatican from the Bishop of Poland to Pius XII. The letter was released durring John Paul II's failed attempt to cannonize Pius XII as a Saint. In the letter the Bishop said to Pius XII, "Judeaism has become a disease upon the minds of the German youth."
2) Pius XII knew of the atrocities occuring in Germany and Poland. He remained silent and said not a word to the Allies fighting Hitler.
3) After the fall of Berlin the Catholic Church helped Nazi's escape Germany to avoid the War Crimes Tribunals. Some of which were guards that worked in the death camps.

I do believe that the world leaders over looked his actions and tried to woo him to thier side toward the end of the war. He was an influentual world leader and with the dirt they had on him. It made him a very controlable leader.

[onager]

11. Yawn. The usual attempt at a whitewash.

So Golda Meir said nice things about Pius XIII when he died. Well, lots of world leaders said nice things about Nixon when he died, too.

And you DO know where Pinchas Lapide arrived at that "850,000" figure, don't you?

That was derived by taking the total number of Jews who survived the Holocaust; attempting to calculate how many were saved by non-Catholics; and crediting ALL the rest to Pius XII.

In other words, typical Religious Accounting...a close relative to Creationist Math.

[Fenris]

12. No he was not.

[Swamp Rat]

14. Pope Pacelli is a saint in my book!

:yourock:

[reorg]

16. since this thread seems to be dying a quick death ...

I might just as well add another quote. It is from a review by Columbia professor V. R. Berghahn, of John Cornwell's study "Hitler's Pope".

HITLER'S POPE

The Secret History of Pius XII. By John Cornwell. Illustrated. 430 pp. New York: Viking. $29.95.


A Deafening Silence

---------------

A new study criticizes Pope Pius XII's failure to speak out against the Holocaust.



By V. R. BERGHAHN


... Cornwell devotes most space to his argument concerning the changing internal organization and power structure of the church itself, which is why his study begins in the mid-19th century with the Vatican's confrontation with the forces of modernity. During this period, the Curia came to believe that rallying the faithful behind a centralized papacy was the only way to secure the survival of Catholicism in a hostile world. The Vatican Council of 1869-70, which proclaimed the dogma of papal infallibility, was a major step in asserting the Pope's unchallengeable spiritual as well as administrative leadership. With the further evolution of canon law, the author continues, another stage in the consolidation of autocratic rule was reached by 1917, when a young Vatican bureaucrat, Eugenio Pacelli, later Pius XII, earned his first laurels as a promoter of centralism.

That the forces of modernity had by then infiltrated Catholic laity merely reinforced this quest for control. Catholic political parties were becoming powerful voices in the parliamentary assemblies of Europe. As elected representatives, they demanded a greater say in the councils of the church. Lay communities persisted in organizing their own associational life and pushed for liturgical reform, while the indigenous hierarchy tried to uphold the principle of ''collegiality'' against rulings from Rome.

In this clash of two very different conceptions of institutional relations and the societal role of Catholicism, the negotiation of concordats -- international treaties with secular governments -- became a key instrument in the hands of the Vatican, not only to regulate its relations with often unfriendly nation-states but also to assert its primacy over those who dreamed of vibrantly pluralist national churches.

If the 1929 Lateran Treaty with Fascist Italy was, as Cornwell puts it, ''designed to cripple political and social Catholicism,'' the ''super concordat'' with Germany, brought to a successful conclusion by Pacelli, the Vatican's secretary of state, in secret negotiations with the Nazis in July 1933, seemingly marked the greatest triumph of this strategy. With Hitler solemnly recognizing Rome as the exclusive voice of the church, the treaty destroyed the independence of German Catholicism. The Catholic Center Party was brutally pushed into self-liquidation; the German bishops who had hitherto staunchly opposed Nazism were silenced; the faithful were told that it was all right for them to serve a dictatorship that many of them had previously voted against. In Cornwell's eyes, this outcome was an unmitigated disaster in that it removed a major center of resistance to Nazism. Ultimately, he believes, the Vatican's centralist strategy, coolly pursued by its chief negotiator, Pacelli, was crucial to the rapid consolidation of the Hitler dictatorship. What he underestimates at this point is that many German Catholics were themselves ready to make their peace with the Nazis, whether out of fear or latent sympathy with many of Hitler's political and economic promises. ...

www.trad.it/pius%20XII's%20silence.htm

Link doesn't seem to work with the forum software, but you'll get there via:

http://tinyurl.com/943a6

[Swamp Rat]

17. Your link doesn't work.

Who is John Cornwell?

[reorg]

18. thanks for the info, try the tinyurl I put in

"John Cornwell, a British journalist and research associate of Jesus College, Cambridge, makes a case in ''Hitler's Pope'' that is very difficult to refute.

Cornwell is a Catholic, and did not expect at the start of his work to be ending up in the camp of those who have highlighted the Pope's sad moral failure and his fallibility as a human being. But reluctantly, he concludes that a loud and widely disseminated statement from Rome would have made a difference to the fate of European Jewry. The least it would have done was to warn the Jews of western Europe that deportation meant certain death, resulting in more of them fleeing or going into hiding. Furthermore, it would have told millions of Catholics that they were involved, as bystanders or even as perpetrators, in a fundamentally evil program, and this recognition would in turn have encouraged resistance and a greater willingness to help their Jewish neighbors."

(same source as in #16)


Editorial review from Amazon

"This devastating account of the ecclesiastical career of Eugenio Pacelli (1876-1958), who became Pope Pius XII in 1939, is all the more powerful because British historian John Cornwell maintains throughout a measured though strongly critical tone. After World War II, murmurs of Pacelli's callous indifference to the plight of Europe's Jews began to be heard. A noted commentator on Catholic issues, Cornwell began research for this book believing that "if his full story were told, Pius XII's pontificate would be exonerated." Instead, he emerged from the Vatican archives in a state of "moral shock," concluding that Pacelli displayed anti-Semitic tendencies early on and that his drive to promote papal absolutism inexorably led him to collaboration with fascist leaders. Cornwell convincingly depicts Cardinal Secretary of State Pacelli pursuing Vatican diplomatic goals that crippled Germany's large Catholic political party, which might otherwise have stymied Hitler's worst excesses. The author's condemnation has special force because he portrays the admittedly eccentric Pacelli not as a monster but as a symptom of a historic wrong turn in the Catholic Church. He meticulously builds his case for the painful conclusion that "Pacelli's failure to respond to the enormity of the Holocaust was more than a personal failure, it was a failure of the papal office itself and the prevailing culture of Catholicism." --Wendy Smith --"

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0140296271/103-6216073-6692664?v=glance

[Bridget Burke]

25. John Cornwell has since modified his views on Pius XII

Devil's advocates were supposed to be fair-minded, and in the past Mr Cornwell, a prolific writer on Catholic matters, has at times been anything but. As he admits, “Hitler's Pope” (1999), his biography of Pope Pius XII, lacked balance. “I would now argue,” he says, “in the light of the debates and evidence following ‘Hitler's Pope', that Pius XII had so little scope of action that it is impossible to judge the motives for his silence during the war, while Rome was under the heel of Mussolini and later occupied by the Germans.”

www.economist.com/books/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3471137

[reorg]

45. this does not address Cornwell's main point

to quote it again:

Cornwell devotes most space to his argument concerning the changing internal organization and power structure of the church itself, which is why his study begins in the mid-19th century with the Vatican's confrontation with the forces of modernity. During this period, the Curia came to believe that rallying the faithful behind a centralized papacy was the only way to secure the survival of Catholicism in a hostile world. The Vatican Council of 1869-70, which proclaimed the dogma of papal infallibility, was a major step in asserting the Pope's unchallengeable spiritual as well as administrative leadership. ...

Catholic political parties were becoming powerful voices in the parliamentary assemblies of Europe. As elected representatives, they demanded a greater say in the councils of the church. Lay communities persisted in organizing their own associational life and pushed for liturgical reform, while the indigenous hierarchy tried to uphold the principle of ''collegiality'' against rulings from Rome.

In this clash of two very different conceptions of institutional relations and the societal role of Catholicism, the negotiation of concordats -- international treaties with secular governments -- became a key instrument in the hands of the Vatican, not only to regulate its relations with often unfriendly nation-states but also to assert its primacy over those who dreamed of vibrantly pluralist national churches.

If the 1929 Lateran Treaty with Fascist Italy was, as Cornwell puts it, ''designed to cripple political and social Catholicism,'' the ''super concordat'' with Germany, brought to a successful conclusion by Pacelli, the Vatican's secretary of state, in secret negotiations with the Nazis in July 1933, seemingly marked the greatest triumph of this strategy.

Cornwell is not the only one who points out this original sin of the Vatican, namely to have co-operated with Hitler during his rise to power, enabling him when he did away with a democratic constitution and thus supporting this openly racist and dictatorial regime.

In the early sixties the German author Rolf Hochhuth wrote a widely known play on "The Deputy" (of the pope, that is), Pacelli, with a foreword by Albert Schweitzer criticising both the Catholic and the Protestant Churches for their roles in the rise of the Nazi dictatorship.

All the "debunking" of Cornwell, Hochhuth and others concentrates on what the Vatican did for Jews, later on, from 1937 onwards.

Interestingly, in about the same time frame, Pacelli supported Franco:

"'With immense joy', the Pope gave his apostolic blessing to the victors reserving special praise for 'the most noble and Christian sentiments' of the Chief of State."

from "FRANCO" by Paul Preston
http://www.iiipublishing.com/franco.htm

I guess since he was a true Catholic it didn't matter that Franco overthrew a democratically elected government and recklessly killed and persecuted those who opposed him during a dictatorship of many decades that followed.

[Jack Rabbit]

19. Interesting quote

He is the only human being who has always contradicted me and who has never obeyed me.
--Hitler on Pope Pius XII

[Spazito]

20. I did not vote because the question is too restricting

Was Pope Piud XII Hitler's Pope? Yes, but only if one asks if all statesmen were Hitler's allies in the beginning. The Catholic Church has it's burden to bear but so do many leaders. Even if the question is restricted to the treatment of Jews, many share the shame, imo. If the question is related solely to the Vatican, it still isolates one amongst multitudes. Collectively, in terms of our leaders, whether they be religious or political, I can think of few who were not 'benign' to Hitler prior to 1939, and as it relates to the concentration camps, complicit in terms of ignoring the facts of extermination of not only Jews but also Gypsy's, Gays, Christians and Communists.

There were few, if any, leaders who spoke out against this aspect of the Nazi regime until forced by circumstances to do so.

[Tinoire]

22. Well, I have to admire your sense of fairness

Because even back in the days when I was upset with Pius XII and believed these things were true, I wondered why he was being singled out especially when you consider that the Vatican was surrounded by Nazi troops.

Can I ask what you think about the Papal Encyclical he penned in 1947 "Mit Brennender Sorge". 1937

and also about the NYT 1940 comment that

"Now the Vatican has spoken, with authority that cannot be questioned, and has confirmed the worst intimations of terror which have come out of the Polish darkness.".

I ask because why, because if he were indeed being silent, where would they have gotten that from?

When I compare that to the Holocaust timeline, 1940 is pretty fast for making it to the NYT, especially at a time when it wasn't being talked about/known in America.

Sept 1, 1939 - Nazis invade Poland (Jewish pop. 3.35 million, the largest in Europe). Beginning of SS activity in Poland.

Feb 12, 1940 - First deportation of German Jews into occupied Poland.

Nov 15, 1940 - The Krakow Ghetto is sealed off containing 70,000 Jews.

The timeline I just used can be found here: http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/timeline.html#1938
So when I look at the dates from the NYT (especially), it seems he spoke out before anyone else did just as Einstein noted.

Also the date of the enclyclical "Mit Brennender Sorge" was 1937. When I put that in the historical timeline, it shows a man who immediately realized and spoke out.

Thanks for a thoughtful answer. Because of your post, I just went and looked for Mit Brennender Sorge (coudn't remember how to spell it) and found the entire thing so I'm going to post it for anyone who cares to read it in full, including myself. Thanks

[reorg]

24. please explain the encyclical

I have read it twice now, in "fucking German" and in English, but have a hard time finding the warning to

"the entire world about the dangers, horrors of Nazism" ... ???

There is a lot of talk about the horrors of children not getting educated in Catholic schools and such, but where is the

"condemnation of racism and the totalitarian State"?

In the encyclical, the pope finally and clearly distances the Church from the Nazi state and ideology, so far I can follow you. But as far as I can see it does not go beyond the claim that

"The Church founded by the Redeemer is one, the same for all races and all nations. Beneath her dome, as beneath the vault of heaven, there is but one country for all nations and tongues; there is room for the development of every quality, advantage, task and vocation which God the Creator and Savior has allotted to individuals as well as to ethnical communities. The Church's maternal heart is big enough to see in the God-appointed development of individual characteristics and gifts, more than a mere danger of divergency."


What about those who are not in the Church? Where does the encyclical speak out for these?


http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_14031937_mit-brennender-sorge_en.html



And I have a question on the Einstein quote: it seems to be drawn from "Three Popes and the Jews" by the Israeli government official Pinchas Lapide. You did not provide a link - do you know for a fact that the quote is accurate? Thanks.

[Tinoire]

31. Google for the quote reorg

It's all over the internet.

The condemnation of "racism and the totalitarian State" is all over that encyclical. What did you need for Pius XII to do? Pen a letter saying

Dear Reorg,
Racism and the totalitarian State are bad.
Pius XII

8. Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a particular form of State, or the depositories of power, or any other fundamental value of the human community--however necessary and honorable be their function in worldly things--whoever raises these notions above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God; he is far from the true faith in God and from the concept of life which that faith upholds.

Now you'll notice I mostly ignored your comments because you came in here with your mind made it and despite all evidence presented, you're going to leave here with the same opinion. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but after years on this board, I can smell sincere desire to talk vs stubborness. Maybe you're not stubborn but time is too short for me personally to go down a long path with you now. If you want to know, just keep looking. If your mind is made up, I really regret that after years of fighting walls on this board when it came to war and injustice, I don't have the stamina anymore. Mostly though, I need to be at work soon and am already late. If you care, please research on your own. Or maybe someone else has the time. Wish I had the time (with which could come the stamina) but not this morning.

Did anything I quoted even prompt you to re-evaluate? To want to really know? If not, truly forgive me, but I would see a discussion as not necessarily a waste of time, but not the most wise use of limited time. Sorry

[reorg]

36. made up minds

Dear Tinoire,

I have great respect for all you have written here in this forum over the years, you provide lots of good sources and most often I agree with your positions and opinions.

I am not an historical expert nor a member of the Catholic Church, nor do I have a desire to promote certain, let alone readily "made up" opinions on the role of the Churches during the rise of Nazism in Germany. I merely pointed out that in the context of your quotes this seems to be a pertinent issue, although your quotes neglect to deal with it.

Why did the Catholic Zentrum party vote for the Enabling Act? Why were so many German Catholics "good Germans" and chose to switch their vote to Hitler in the early thirties (my own grandmother being one of those)? How is it possible that Pacelli made a pact with Hitler right at the time when the first anti-Jewish laws were enacted and Jews were removed from their positions in universities and public office? Not to mention the internment of many communists and social democrats. For me this is only explicable by the fact that the Vatican was always anti-communist and anti-liberal first. Only when their own role and established positions in society were being attacked they were finally talking back to the Nazis.


You quoted this for an example of the pope's "condemnation of racism and the totalitarian State":

"Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a particular form of State, or the depositories of power, or any other fundamental value of the human community--however necessary and honorable be their function in worldly things--whoever raises these notions above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God; he is far from the true faith in God and from the concept of life which that faith upholds."


But this is a far cry from what you purport it to be. Only when "these notions" (according to your interpretion they would probably include "racism", I'm not so sure they include "totalitarianism") are raised "above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level" the encyclical states them to be "far from the true faith in God". Fair enough, but then again I have to ask: What about those of us who don't care so much for the "true faith in God"?

Are there any fundamentals OUTSIDE of the Catholic Church that have to be adhered to, no matter what one may or may not believe about Jesus, Mary and the presumably infallible Pope?

The answer to this question which Kardinal Ratzinger gave in a recent debate with the eminent German philosopher and sociologist Habermas, is actually: no, impossible, you need the authority of the Catholic Church in order to preserve and uphold fundamental values.

And this is where I strongly disagree.

[Tinoire]

37. With great respect and appreciation Reorg

I'll tackle this tonight when I get home. I really meant it when I said I had no time and shouldn't even be peeking at DU now but I'm on break so I have a minute or two.

Forgive me for having been so snappy. It's been a very emotional few years at DU and my frustration level has reached the "last drop to overflow the glass" stage. Pius XII has nothing to do with it but the quality of discourse at DU has sunk to a point I would never have imagined 2 years ago.

I am very, very sorry for being short with you from a combination of that and being pressed for time. Thoughtful questions you asked and I apologize for thinking you didn't really want to talk about it.
Cornwell's book is not a reliable reference and he since admitted as much.

Ok my break is over and have to go but would like to leave you with one more piece of info.... The encyclical that seems so pale to us today, to us Americans used to blunt words, and very unused to diplomatic thought... this encyclical letter was, at the time, considered very blunt. Pius XII first encyclical as Pope, Summi Pontificatus, was even more hard-hitting and the allies dropped over 88,000 copies over Germany where it was forbidden to either publish or reproduce it.

The primary author of the German draft, Professor Gustav Gundlach, S.J., helped Pius XII with his first encyclical, Summi Pontificatus, which was released on October 20, 1939, just after the outbreak of war. Not surprisingly, Summi Pontificatus (which expressly mentions Jews and urges solidarity with all who profess a belief in God) contains language that is similar to the paper on which Gundlach had worked. In fact, Fr. LaFarge wrote in America magazine that it was obvious that Summi Pontificatus applied to the Jews of Europe. He was concerned only that Americans might not realize that it also applied to racial injustice in the United States.

Here are the statements coming from the Vatican at that time:

September 6, 1938, in a statement which—though barred from the Fascist press—quickly made its way around the world, he said:

Mark well that in the Catholic Mass, Abraham is our Patriarch and forefather. Anti–Semitism is incompatible with the lofty thought which that fact expresses. It is a movement with which we Christians can have nothing to do. No, no, I say to you it is impossible for a Christian to take part in anti–Semitism. It is inadmissible. Through Christ and in Christ we are the spiritual progeny of Abraham. Spiritually, we are all Semites.

In January 1939, the National Jewish Monthly reported that “the only bright spot in Italy has been the Vatican, where fine humanitarian statements by the Pope have been issuing regularly.” When he died the following month, the Nazi press denigrated him as “Chief Rabbi of the Western World.”


http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0206/articles/rychlak.html

Here's more of interest (but still not an answer, just more food for thought until I come back to you tonight):

Unlike most encyclicals, which are written in Latin, Mit brennender Sorge was written in German. It was dated and signed by Pope Pius XI on Passion Sunday, March 14, 1937, but it was smuggled into Germany, distributed to all parishes, and read from the pulpits on Palm Sunday, March 21, 1937.

The only reason Mit brennender Sorge was read to anyone was because the Nazis were caught off guard. It was not published in German newspapers. An internal German memorandum dated March 23, 1937 called the encyclical “almost a call to do battle against the Reich government.” The prosecution report for the Nuremberg trials explained the measures that the Nazis took in retaliation: all available copies were confiscated, twelve printing offices were closed, those convicted of distributing the encyclical were arrested, and the Church–affiliated publications that ran the encyclical were banned. Later on, the mere mention of the encyc­lical was made a crime in Nazi Germany.

http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0206/articles/rychlak.html

Ok, now back to work to pay the rent. Talk to you later. And once again my apologies, sincere apologies for having turned into a human snapping turtle. It is hard, over the internet, to tell who is sincerely asking a question or sincerely wanting an honest discussion and who just wants to piss in the pudding. Thanks Reorg.

On edit, now that my memory just placed you, I'm totally embarrassed for snapping at you!

[Spazito]

35. Your response is very thought provoking

and is much appreciated. I was unaware of Pope Pius's comments in 1937, it seems he was aware. It caused me to ask whether he went beyond words and whether the Vatican acted to protect those who he knew were in jeopardy? I ask the question in all honesty because I am unaware of any actions being taken and would like to know if my perception is accurate. If action wasn't taken, the warning contained in the encyclical is less meaningful in it's impact.

I, again, do not mean, in any way, to single out the Vatican for it's lack of action, if, indeed, there was such, because there were few leaders that acted in defiance of Hitler and the Nazi agenda before their own self interests were threatened.

[Tinoire]

39. Hi Spazito

Thanks for giving it thought, you have no idea what that does for me!
I'll come back to this thread tonight! Thank you!

[ButterflyBlood]

21. Read up on the Ustase

Catholic Croats who committed genocide against the Jews and Orthodox Serbs of Yugoslavia. And they were a Nazi ally. They had lots of clergy in their ranks and endorsing their activities. Plenty of other Catholic fascist countries and movements backed the Nazis. Mussolini's Italy, Vichy France, Franco's Spain, the Rexist movement of Belgium, etc.

[Done]

26. Fucking German?

This seemed like a thoughtful academic piece until I got down to the "Fucking German" part.

[Tinoire]

28. Yeah. Fucking German to emphasize that it was written in a secular

language directly aimed at German people and the modern world instead of being written in dusty Latin that only a few could understand. Means he wanted the message spread far and wide so "fucking German" because people don't even realize the significance that had.

[Tinoire]

27. Mit Brennender Sorge - Papal Encyclical 1937

Written by Cardinal Pacelli, later to become Pius XII. The first encycclical written in a secular language -German- thus directly to German Catholics or anyone else who cared to read it which would mostly have been only a few German Catholics. Not even today do people read papal Encyclicals and they're readily available on the internet! 1937. With Burning Sorrow.



Mit Brennender Sorge
Encyclical on the Church and the German Reich
His Holiness Pope Pius XI
March 14, 1937

To the Venerable Brethren the Archbishops and Bishops of Germany and other Ordinaries in Peace and Communion with the Apostolic See.

Venerable Brethren, Greetings, and Apostolic Blessing.

WITH BURNING SORROW and growing surprise, We have long been following the painful trials of the Church and the increasing vexations which afflict those who have remained loyal in heart and action in the midst of a people that once received from St. Boniface the bright message and the Gospel of Christ and God's Kingdom.

2. And what the representatives of the venerable episcopate, who visited Us in Our sick room, had to tell Us, in truth and duty bound, has not modified Our feelings. To consoling and edifying information on the stand the Faithful are making for their Faith, they considered themselves bound, in spite of efforts to judge with moderation and in spite of their own patriotic love, to add reports of things hard and unpleasant. After hearing their account, We could, in grateful acknowledgment to God, exclaim with the Apostle of love: "I have no greater grace than this, to hear that my children walk in truth" (John iii. 4). But the frankness indifferent in Our Apostolic charge and the determination to place before the Christian world the truth in all its reality, prompt Us to add: "Our pastoral heart knows no deeper pain, no disappointment more bitter, than to learn that many are straying from the path of truth."

3. When, in 1933, We consented, Venerable Brethren, to open negotiations for a concordat, which the Reich Government proposed on the basis of a scheme of several years' standing; and when, to your unanimous satisfaction, We concluded the negotiations by a solemn treaty, We were prompted by the desire, as it behooved Us, to secure for Germany the freedom of the Church's beneficent mission and the salvation of the souls in her care, as well as by the sincere wish to render the German people a service essential for its peaceful development and prosperity. Hence, despite many and grave misgivings, We then decided not to withhold Our consent for We wished to spare the Faithful of Germany, as far as it was humanly possible, the trials and difficulties they would have had to face, given the circumstances, had the negotiations fallen through. It was by acts that We wished to make it plain, Christ's interests being Our sole object, that the pacific and maternal hand of the Church would be extended to anyone who did not actually refuse it.

4. If, then, the tree of peace, which we planted on German soil with the purest intention, has not brought forth the fruit, which in the interest of your people, We had fondly hoped, no one in the world who has eyes to see and ears to hear will be able to lay the blame on the Church and on her Head. The experiences of these last years have fixed responsibilities and laid bare intrigues, which from the outset only aimed at a war of extermination. In the furrows, where We tried to sow the seed of a sincere peace, other men--the "enemy" of Holy Scripture--oversowed the cockle of distrust, unrest, hatred, defamation, of a determined hostility overt or veiled, fed from many sources and wielding many tools, against Christ and His Church. They, and they alone with their accomplices, silent or vociferous, are today responsible, should the storm of religious war, instead of the rainbow of peace, blacken the German skies.

5. We have never ceased, Venerable Brethren, to represent to the responsible rulers of your country's destiny, the consequences which would inevitably follow the protection and even the favor, extended to such a policy. We have done everything in Our power to defend the sacred pledge of the given word of honor against theories and practices, which it officially endorsed, would wreck every faith in treaties and make every signature worthless. Should the day ever come to place before the world the account of Our efforts, every honest mind will see on which side are to be found the promoters of peace, and on which side its disturbers. Whoever had left in his soul an atom of love for truth, and in his heart a shadow of a sense of justice, must admit that, in the course of these anxious and trying years following upon the conclusion of the concordat, every one of Our words, every one of Our acts, has been inspired by the binding law of treaties. At the same time, anyone must acknowledge, not without surprise and reprobation, how the other contracting party emasculated the terms of the treaty, distorted their meaning, and eventually considered its more or less official violation as a normal policy. The moderation We showed in spite of all this was not inspired by motives of worldly interest, still less by unwarranted weakness, but merely by Our anxiety not to draw out the wheat with the cockle; not to pronounce open judgment, before the public was ready to see its force; not to impeach other people's honesty, before the evidence of events should have torn the mask off the systematic hostility leveled at the Church. Even now that a campaign against the confessional schools, which are guaranteed by the concordat, and the destruction of free election, where Catholics have a right to their children's Catholic education, afford evidence, in a matter so essential to the life of the Church, of the extreme gravity of the situation and the anxiety of every Christian conscience; even now Our responsibility for Christian souls induces Us not to overlook the last possibilities, however slight, of a return to fidelity to treaties, and to any arrangement that may be acceptable to the episcopate. We shall continue without failing, to stand before the rulers of your people as the defender of violated rights, and in obedience to Our Conscience and Our pastoral mission, whether We be successful or not, to oppose the policy which seeks, by open or secret means, to strangle rights guaranteed by a treaty.

6. Different, however, Venerable Brethren, is the purpose of this letter. As you affectionately visited Us in Our illness, so also We turn to you, and through you, the German Catholics, who, like all suffering and afflicted children, are nearer to their Father's heart. At a time when your faith, like gold, is being tested in the fire of tribulation and persecution, when your religious freedom is beset on all sides, when the lack of religious teaching and of normal defense is heavily weighing on you, you have every right to words of truth and spiritual comfort from him whose first predecessor heard these words from the Lord: "I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not: and thou being once converted, confirm thy brethren" (Luke xxii. 32).

7. Take care, Venerable Brethren, that above all, faith in God, the first and irreplaceable foundation of all religion, be preserved in Germany pure and unstained. The believer in God is not he who utters the name in his speech, but he for whom this sacred word stands for a true and worthy concept of the Divinity. Whoever identifies, by pantheistic confusion, God and the universe, by either lowering God to the dimensions of the world, or raising the world to the dimensions of God, is not a believer in God. Whoever follows that so-called pre-Christian Germanic conception of substituting a dark and impersonal destiny for the personal God, denies thereby the Wisdom and Providence of God who "Reacheth from end to end mightily, and ordereth all things sweetly" (Wisdom viii. 1). Neither is he a believer in God.

8. Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the State, or a particular form of State, or the depositories of power, or any other fundamental value of the human community--however necessary and honorable be their function in worldly things--whoever raises these notions above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God; he is far from the true faith in God and from the concept of life which that faith upholds.

9. Beware, Venerable Brethren, of that growing abuse, in speech as in writing, of the name of God as though it were a meaningless label, to be affixed to any creation, more or less arbitrary, of human speculation. Use your influence on the Faithful, that they refuse to yield to this aberration. Our God is the Personal God, supernatural, omnipotent, infinitely perfect, one in the Trinity of Persons, tri-personal in the unity of divine essence, the Creator of all existence. Lord, King and ultimate Consummator of the history of the world, who will not, and cannot, tolerate a rival God by His side.

10. This God, this Sovereign Master, has issued commandments whose value is independent of time and space, country and race. As God's sun shines on every human face so His law knows neither privilege nor exception. Rulers and subjects, crowned and uncrowned, rich and poor are equally subject to His word. From the fullness of the Creators' right there naturally arises the fullness of His right to be obeyed by individuals and communities, whoever they are. This obedience permeates all branches of activity in which moral values claim harmony with the law of God, and pervades all integration of the ever-changing laws of man into the immutable laws of God.

11. None but superficial minds could stumble into concepts of a national God, of a national religion; or attempt to lock within the frontiers of a single people, within the narrow limits of a single race, God, the Creator of the universe, King and Legislator of all nations before whose immensity they are "as a drop of a bucket" (Isaiah xI, 15).

12. The Bishops of the Church of Christ, "ordained in the things that appertain to God (Heb. v, 1) must watch that pernicious errors of this sort, and consequent practices more pernicious still, shall not gain a footing among their flock. It is part of their sacred obligations to do whatever is in their power to enforce respect for, and obedience to, the commandments of God, as these are the necessary foundation of all private life and public morality; to see that the rights of His Divine Majesty, His name and His word be not profaned; to put a stop to the blasphemies, which, in words and pictures, are multiplying like the sands of the desert; to encounter the obstinacy and provocations of those who deny, despise and hate God, by the never-failing reparatory prayers of the Faithful, hourly rising like incense to the All-Highest and staying His vengeance.

13. We thank you, Venerable Brethren, your priests and Faithful, who have persisted in their Christian duty and in the defense of God's rights in the teeth of an aggressive paganism. Our gratitude, warmer still and admiring, goes out to those who, in fulfillment of their duty, have been deemed worthy of sacrifice and suffering for the love of God.

14. No faith in God can for long survive pure and unalloyed without the support of faith in Christ. "No one knoweth who the Son is, but the Father: and who the Father is, but the Son and to whom the Son will reveal Him" (Luke x. 22). "Now this is eternal life: That they may know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou has sent" (John xvii. 3). Nobody, therefore, can say: "I believe in God, and that is enough religion for me," for the Savior's words brook no evasion: "Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father. He that confesseth the Son hath the Father also" (1 John ii. 23).

15. In Jesus Christ, Son of God made Man, there shone the plentitude of divine revelation. "God, who at sundry times and in divers manners, spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets last of all, in these days hath spoken to us by His Son" (Heb. i. 1). The sacred books of the Old Testament are exclusively the word of God, and constitute a substantial part of his revelation; they are penetrated by a subdued light, harmonizing with the slow development of revelation, the dawn of the bright day of the redemption. As should be expected in historical and didactic books, they reflect in many particulars the imperfection, the weakness and sinfulness of man. But side by side with innumerable touches of greatness and nobleness, they also record the story of the chosen people, bearers of the Revelation and the Promise, repeatedly straying from God and turning to the world. Eyes not blinded by prejudice or passion will see in this prevarication, as reported by the Biblical history, the luminous splendor of the divine light revealing the saving plan which finally triumphs over every fault and sin. It is precisely in the twilight of this background that one perceives the striking perspective of the divine tutorship of salvation, as it warms, admonishes, strikes, raises and beautifies its elect. Nothing but ignorance and pride could blind one to the treasures hoarded in the Old Testament.

16. Whoever wishes to see banished from church and school the Biblical history and the wise doctrines of the Old Testament, blasphemes the name of God, blasphemes the Almighty's plan of salvation, and makes limited and narrow human thought the judge of God's designs over the history of the world: he denies his faith in the true Christ, such as He appeared in the flesh, the Christ who took His human nature from a people that was to crucify Him; and he understands nothing of that universal tragedy of the Son of God who to His torturer's sacrilege opposed the divine and priestly sacrifice of His redeeming death, and made the new alliance the goal of the old alliance, its realization and its crown.

17. The peak of the revelation as reached in the Gospel of Christ is final and permanent. It knows no retouches by human hand; it admits no substitutes or arbitrary alternatives such as certain leaders pretend to draw from the so-called myth of race and blood. Since Christ, the Lord's Anointed, finished the task of Redemption, and by breaking up the reign of sin deserved for us the grace of being the children God, since that day no other name under heaven has been given to men, whereby we must be saved (Acts iv. 12). No man, were every science, power and worldly strength incarnated in him, can lay any other foundation but that which is laid: which is Christ Jesus (1 Cor. iii 11). Should any man dare, in sacrilegious disregard of the essential differences between God and His creature, between the God-man and the children of man, to place a mortal, were he the greatest of all times, by the side of, or over, or against, Christ, he would deserve to be called prophet of nothingness, to whom the terrifying words of Scripture would be applicable: "He that dwelleth in heaven shall laugh at them" (Psalms ii. 3).

18. Faith in Christ cannot maintain itself pure and unalloyed without the support of faith in the Church, "the pillar and ground of the truth" (1 Tim. iii. 15); for Christ Himself, God eternally blessed, raised this pillar of the Faith. His command tO hear the Church (Matt. xviii. 15), to welcome in the words and commands of the Church His own words and His own commands (Luke x. 16), is addressed to all men, of all times and of all countries. The Church founded by the Redeemer is one, the same for all races and all nations. Beneath her dome, as beneath the vault of heaven, there is but one country for all nations and tongues; there is room for the development of every quality, advantage, task and vocation which God the Creator and Savior has allotted to individuals as well as to ethnical communities. The Church's maternal heart is big enough to see in the God-appointed development of individual characteristics and gifts, more than a mere danger of divergency. She rejoices at the spiritual superiorities among individuals and nations. In their successes she sees with maternal joy and pride fruits of education and progress, which she can only bless and encourage, whenever she can conscientiously do so. But she also knows that to this freedom limits have been set by the majesty of the divine command, which founded that Church one and indivisible. Whoever tampers with that unity and that indivisibility wrenches from the Spouse of Christ one of the diadems with which God Himself crowned her; he subjects a divine structure, which stands on eternal foundations, tO criticism and transformation by architects whom the Father of Heaven never authorized to interfere.

19. The Church, whose work lies among men and operates through men, may see her divine mission obscured by human, too human, combination, persistently growing and developing like the cockle among the wheat of the Kingdom of God. Those who know the Savior's words on scandal and the giver of scandals, know, too, the judgment which the Church and all her sons must pronounce on what was and what is sin. But if, besides these reprehensible discrepancies be between faith and life, acts and words, exterior conduct and interior feelings, however numerous they be, anyone overlooks the overwhelming sum of authentic virtues, of spirit of sacrifice, fraternal love, heroic efforts of sanctity, he gives evidence of deplorable blindness and injustice. If later he forgets to apply the standard of severity, by which he measures the Church he hates, to other organizations in which he happens to be interested, then his appeal to an offended sense of purity identifies him with those who, for seeing the mote in their brother's eye, according to the Savior's incisive words, cannot see the beam in their own. But however suspicious the intention of those who make it their task, nay their vile profession, to scrutinize what is human in the Church, and although the priestly powers conferred by God are independent of the priest's human value, it yet remains true that at no moment of history, no individual, in no organization can dispense himself from the duty of loyally examining his conscience, of mercilessly purifying himself, and energetically renewing himself in spirit and in action. In Our Encyclical on the priesthood We have urged attention to the sacred duty of all those who belong to the Church, chiefly the members of the priestly and religious profession and of the lay apostolate, to square their faith and their conduct with the claims of the law of God and of the Church. And today we again repeat with all the insistency We can command: it is not enough to be a member of the Church of Christ, one needs to be a living member, in spirit and in truth, i.e., living in the state of grace and in the presence of God, either in innocence or in sincere repentance. If the Apostle of the nations, the vase of election, chastised his body and brought it into subjection: lest perhaps, when he had preached to others, he himself should become a castaway (1 Cor. ix. 27), could anybody responsible for the extension of the Kingdom of God claim any other method but personal sanctification? Only thus can we show to the present generation, and to the critics of the Church that "the salt of the earth," the leaven of Christianity has not decayed, but is ready to give the men of today--prisoners of doubt and error, victims of indifference, tired of their Faith and straying from God--the spiritual renewal they so much need. A Christianity which keeps a grip on itself, refuses every compromise with the world, takes the commands of God and the Church seriously, preserves its love of God and of men in all its freshness, such a Christianity can be, and will be, a model and a guide to a world which is sick to death and clamors for directions, unless it be condemned to a catastrophe that would baffle the imagination.

20. Every true and lasting reform has ultimately sprung from the sanctity of men who were driven by the love of God and of men. Generous, ready to stand to attention to any call from God, yet confident in themselves because confident in their vocation, they grew to the size of beacons and reformers. On the other hand, any reformatory zeal, which instead of springing from personal purity, flashes out of passion, has produced unrest instead of light, destruction instead of construction, and more than once set up evils worse than those it was out to remedy. No doubt "the Spirit breatheth where he will" (John iii. 8): "of stones He is able to raise men to prepare the way to his designs" (Matt. iii. 9). He chooses the instruments of His will according to His own plans, not those of men. But the Founder of the Church, who breathed her into existence at Pentecost, cannot disown the foundations as He laid them. Whoever is moved by the spirit of God, spontaneously adopts both outwardly and inwardly, the true attitude toward the Church, this sacred fruit from the tree of the cross, this gift from the Spirit of God, bestowed on Pentecost day to an erratic world.

21. In your country, Venerable Brethren, voices are swelling into a chorus urging people to leave the Church, and among the leaders there is more than one whose official position is intended to create the impression that this infidelity to Christ the King constitutes a signal and meritorious act of loyalty to the modern State. Secret and open measures of intimidation, the threat of economic and civic disabilities, bear on the loyalty of certain classes of Catholic functionaries, a pressure which violates every human right and dignity. Our wholehearted paternal sympathy goes out to those who must pay so dearly for their loyalty to Christ and the Church; but directly the highest interests are at stake, with the alternative of spiritual loss, there is but one alternative left, that of heroism. If the oppressor offers one the Judas bargain of apostasy he can only, at the cost of every worldly sacrifice, answer with Our Lord: "Begone, Satan! For it is written: The Lord thy God shalt thou adore, and Him only shalt thou serve" (Matt. iv. 10). And turning to the Church, he shall say: "Thou, my mother since my infancy, the solace of my life and advocate at my death, may my tongue cleave to my palate if, yielding to worldly promises or threats, I betray the vows of my baptism." As to those who imagine that they can reconcile exterior infidelity tO one and the same Church, let them hear Our Lord's warning:--"He that shall deny me before men shall be denied before the angels of God" (Luke xii. 9).

22. Faith in the Church cannot stand pure and true without the support of faith in the primacy of the Bishop of Rome. The same moment when Peter, in the presence of all the Apostles and disciples, confesses his faith in Christ, Son of the Living God, the answer he received in reward for his faith and his confession was the word that built the Church, the only Church of Christ, on the rock of Peter (Matt. xvi. 18). Thus was sealed the connection between the faith in Christ, the Church and the Primacy. True and lawful authority is invariably a bond of unity, a source of strength, a guarantee against division and ruin, a pledge for the future: and this is verified in the deepest and sublimest sense, when that authority, as in the case of the Church, and the Church alone, is sealed by the promise and the guidance of the Holy Ghost and His irresistible support. Should men, who are not even united by faith in Christ, come and offer you the seduction of a national German Church, be convinced that it is nothing but a denial of the one Church of Christ and the evident betrayal of that universal evangelical mission, for which a world Church alone is qualified and competent. The live history of other national churches with their paralysis, their domestication and subjection to worldly powers, is sufficient evidence of the sterility to which is condemned every branch that is severed from the trunk of the living Church. Whoever counters these erroneous developments with an uncompromising No from the very outset, not only serves the purity of his faith in Christ, but also the welfare and the vitality of his own people.

23. You will need to watch carefully, Venerable Brethren, that religious fundamental concepts be not emptied of their content and distorted to profane use. "Revelation" in its Christian sense, means the word of God addressed to man. The use of this word for the "suggestions" of race and blood, for the irradiations of a people's history, is mere equivocation. False coins of this sort do not deserve Christian currency. "Faith" consists in holding as true what God has revealed and proposes through His Church to man's acceptance. It is "the evidence of things that appear not" (Heb. ii. 1). The joyful and proud confidence in the future of one's people, instinct in every heart, is quite a different thing from faith in a religious sense. To substitute the one for the other, and demand on the strength of this, to be numbered among the faithful followers of Christ, is a senseless play on words, if it does not conceal a confusion of concepts, or worse.

24. "Immortality" in a Christian sense means the survival of man after his terrestrial death, for the purpose of eternal reward or punishment. Whoever only means by the term, the collective survival here on earth of his people for an indefinite length of time, distorts one of the fundamental notions of the Christian Faith and tampers with the very foundations of the religious concept of the universe, which requires a moral order.

25. "Original sin" is the hereditary but impersonal fault of Adam's descendants, who have sinned in him (Rom. v. 12). It is the loss of grace, and therefore of eternal life, together with a propensity to evil, which everybody must, with the assistance of grace, penance, resistance and moral effort, repress and conquer. The passion and death of the Son of God has redeemed the world from the hereditary curse of sin and death. Faith in these truths, which in your country are today the butt of the cheap derision of Christ's enemies, belongs to the inalienable treasury of Christian revelation.

26. The cross of Christ, though it has become to many a stumbling block and foolishness (1 Cor. i. 23) remains for the believer the holy sign of his redemption, the emblem of moral strength and greatness. We live in its shadow and die in its embrace. It will stand on our grave as a pledge of our faith and our hope in the eternal light.

27. Humility in the spirit of the Gospel and prayer for the assistance of grace are perfectly compatible with self-confidence and heroism. The Church of Christ, which throughout the ages and to the present day numbers more confessors and voluntary martyrs than any other moral collectivity, needs lessons from no one in heroism of feeling and action. The odious pride of reformers only covers itself with ridicule when it rails at Christian humility as though it were but a cowardly pose of self-degradation.

28. "Grace," in a wide sense, may stand for any of the Creator's gifts to His creature; but in its Christian designation, it means all the supernatural tokens of God's love; God's intervention which raises man to that intimate communion of life with Himself, called by the Gospel "adoption of the children of God." "Behold what manner of charity the Father hath bestowed on us, that we should be called and should be the sons of God" (1 John iii. 1). To discard this gratuitous and free elevation in the name of a so-called German type amounts to repudiating openly a fundamental truth of Christianity. It would be an abuse of our religious vocabulary to place on the same level supernatural grace and natural gifts. Pastors and guardians of the people of God will do well to resist this plunder of sacred things and this confusion of ideas.

29. It is on faith in God, preserved pure and stainless, that man's morality is based. All efforts to remove from under morality and the moral order the granite foundation of faith and to substitute for it the shifting sands of human regulations, sooner or later lead these individuals or societies to moral degradation. The fool who has said in his heart "there is no God" goes straight to moral corruption (Psalms xiii. 1), and the number of these fools who today are out to sever morality from religion, is legion. They either do not see or refuse to see that the banishment of confessional Christianity, i.e., the clear and precise notion of Christianity, from teaching and education, from the organization of social and political life, spells spiritual spoliation and degradation. No coercive power of the State, no purely human ideal, however noble and lofty it be, will ever be able to make shift of the supreme and decisive impulses generated by faith in God and Christ. If the man, who is called to the hard sacrifice of his own ego to the common good, loses the support of the eternal and the divine, that comforting and consoling faith in a God who rewards all good and punishes all evil, then the result of the majority will be, not the acceptance, but the refusal of their duty. The conscientious observation of the ten commandments of God and the precepts of the Church (which are nothing but practical specifications of rules of the Gospels) is for every one an unrivaled school of personal discipline, moral education and formation of character, a school that is exacting, but not to excess. A merciful God, who as Legislator, says--Thou must!--also gives by His grace the power to will and to do. To let forces of moral formation of such efficacy lie fallow, or to exclude them positively from public education, would spell religious under-feeding of a nation. To hand over the moral law to man's subjective opinion, which changes with the times, instead of anchoring it in the holy will of the eternal God and His commandments, is to open wide every door to the forces of destruction. The resulting dereliction of the eternal principles of an objective morality, which educates conscience and ennobles every department and organization of life, is a sin against the destiny of a nation, a sin whose bitter fruit will poison future generations.

30. Such is the rush of present-day life that it severs from the divine foundation of Revelation, not only morality, but also the theoretical and practical rights. We are especially referring to what is called the natural law, written by the Creator's hand on the tablet of the heart (Rom. ii. 14) and which reason, not blinded by sin or passion, can easily read. It is in the light of the commands of this natural law, that all positive law, whoever be the lawgiver, can be gauged in its moral content, and hence, in the authority it wields over conscience. Human laws in flagrant contradiction with the natural law are vitiated with a taint which no force, no power can mend. In the light of this principle one must judge the axiom, that "right is common utility," a proposition which may be given a correct significance, it means that what is morally indefensible, can never contribute to the good of the people. But ancient paganism acknowledged that the axiom, to be entirely true, must be reversed and be made to say: "Nothing can be useful, if it is not at the same time morally good" (Cicero, De Off. ii. 30). Emancipated from this oral rule, the principle would in international law carry a perpetual state of war between nations; for it ignores in national life, by confusion of right and utility, the basic fact that man as a person possesses rights he holds from God, and which any collectivity must protect against denial, suppression or neglect. To overlook this truth is to forget that the real common good ultimately takes its measure from man's nature, which balances personal rights and social obligations, and from the purpose of society, established for the benefit of human nature. Society, was intended by the Creator for the full development of individual possibilities, and for the social benefits, which by a give and take process, every one can claim for his own sake and that of others. Higher and more general values, which collectivity alone can provide, also derive from the Creator for the good of man, and for the full development, natural and supernatural, and the realization of his perfection. To neglect this order is to shake the pillars on which society rests, and to compromise social tranquillity, security and existence.

31. The believer has an absolute right to profess his Faith and live according to its dictates. Laws which impede this profession and practice of Faith are against natural law.

Parents who are earnest and conscious of their educative duties, have a primary right to the education of the children God has given them in the spirit of their Faith, and according to its prescriptions. Laws and measures which in school questions fail to respect this freedom of the parents go against natural law, and are immoral. The Church, whose mission it is to preserve and explain the natural law, as it is divine in its origin, cannot but declare that the recent enrollment into schools organized without a semblance of freedom, is the result of unjust pressure, and is a violation of every common right.

32. As the Vicar of Him who said to the young man of the Gospel: "If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments" (Matt. xix. 17), We address a few paternal words to the young.

33. Thousands of voices ring into your ears a Gospel which has not been revealed by the Father of Heaven. Thousands of pens are wielded in the service of a Christianity, which is not of Christ. Press and wireless daily force on you productions hostile to the Faith and to the Church, impudently aggressive against whatever you should hold venerable and sacred. Many of you, clinging to your Faith and to your Church, as a result of your affiliation with religious associations guaranteed by the concordat, have often to face the tragic trial of seeing your loyalty to your country misunderstood, suspected, or even denied, and of being hurt in your professional and social life. We are well aware that there is many a humble soldier of Christ in your ranks, who with torn feelings, but a determined heart, accepts his fate, finding his one consolation in the thought of suffering insults for the name of Jesus (Acts v. 41). Today, as We see you threatened with new dangers and new molestations, We say to you: If any one should preach to you a Gospel other than the one you received on the knees of a pious mother, from the lips of a believing father, or through teaching faithful to God and His Church, "let him be anathema" (Gal. i. 9). If the State organizes a national youth, and makes this organization obligatory to all, then, without prejudice to rights of religious associations, it is the absolute right of youths as well as of parents to see to it that this organization is purged of all manifestations hostile to the Church and Christianity. These manifestations are even today placing Christian parents in a painful alternative, as they cannot give to the State what they owe to God alone.

34. No one would think of preventing young Germans establishing a true ethnical community in a noble love of freedom and loyalty to their country. What We object to is the voluntary and systematic antagonism raised between national education and religious duty. That is why we tell the young: Sing your hymns to freedom, but do not forget the freedom of the children of God. Do not drag the nobility of that freedom in the mud of sin and sensuality. He who sings hymns of loyalty to this terrestrial country should not, for that reason, become unfaithful to God and His Church, or a deserter and traitor to His heavenly country. You are often told about heroic greatness, in Iying opposition to evangelical humility and patience. Why conceal the fact that there are heroisms in moral life? That the preservation of baptismal innocence is an act of heroism which deserves credit? You are often told about the human deficiencies which mar the history of the Church: why ignore the exploits which fill her history, the saints she begot, the blessing that came upon Western civilization from the union between that Church and your people? You are told about sports. Indulged in with moderation and within limits, physical education is a boon for youth. But so much time is now devoted to sporting activities, that the harmonious development of body and mind is disregarded, that duties to one's family, and the observation of the Lord's Day are neglected. With an indifference bordering on contempt the day of the Lord is divested of its sacred character, against the best of German traditions. But We expect the Catholic youth, in the more favorable organizations of the State, to uphold its right tO a Christian sanctification of the Sunday, not tO exercise the body at the expense of the immortal soul, not to be overcome by evil, but to aim at the triumph of good over evil (Rom. xii. 21) as its highest achievement will be the gaining of the crown in the stadium of eternal life (1 Cor. ix. 24).

35. We address a special word of congratulation, encouragement and exhortation to the priests of Germany, who, in difficult times and delicate situations, have, under the direction of their Bishops, to guide the flocks of Christ along the straight road, by word and example, by their daily devotion and apostolic patience. Beloved sons, who participate with Us in the sacred mysteries, never tire of exercising, after the Sovereign and eternal Priest, Jesus Christ, the charity and solicitude of the Good Samaritan. Let your daily conduct remain stainless before God and the incessant pursuit of your perfection and sanctification, in merciful charity towards all those who are confided to your care, especially those who are more exposed, who are weak and stumbling. Be the guides of the faithful, the support of those who fail, the doctors of the doubting, the consolers of the afflicted, the disinterested counselors and assistants of all. The trials and sufferings which your people have undergone in post-War days have not passed over its soul without leaving painful marks. They have left bitterness and anxiety which are slow to cure, except by charity. This charity is the apostle's indispensable weapon, in a world torn by hatred. It will make you forget, or at least forgive, many an undeserved insult now more frequent than ever.

36. This charity, intelligent and sympathetic towards those even who offend you, does by no means imply a renunciation of the right of proclaiming, vindicating and defending the truth and its implications. The priest's first loving gift to his neighbors is to serve truth and refute error in any of its forms. Failure on this score would be not only a betrayal of God and your vocation, but also an offense against the real welfare of your people and country. To all those who have kept their promised fidelity to their Bishops on the day of their ordination; to all those who in the exercise of their priestly function are called upon to suffer persecution; to all those imprisoned in jail and concentration camps, the Father of the Christian world sends his words of gratitude and commendation.

37. Our paternal gratitude also goes out to Religious and nuns, as well as Our sympathy for so many who, as a result of administrative measures hostile to Religious Orders, have been wrenched from the work of their vocation. If some have fallen and shown themselves unworthy of their vocation, their fault, which the Church punishes, in no way detracts from the merit of the immense majority, who, in voluntary abnegation and poverty, have tried to serve their God and their country. By their zeal, their fidelity, their virtue, their active charity, their devotion, the Orders devoted to the care of souls, the service of the sick and education, are greatly contributing to private and public welfare. No doubt better days will come to do them better justice than the present troublous times have done. We trust that the heads of religious communities will profit by their trials and difficulties tO renew their zeal, their spirit of prayer, the austerity of their lives and their perfect discipline, in order to draw down God's blessing upon their difficult work.

38. We visualize the immense multitudes of Our faithful children, Our sons and daughters, for whom the sufferings of the Church in Germany and their own have left intact their devotion to the cause of God, their tender love for the Father of Christendom, their obedience to their pastors, their joyous resolution to remain ever faithful, happen what may, to the sacred inheritance of their ancestors. To all of them We send Our paternal greetings. And first to the members of those religious associations which, bravely and at the cost of untold sacrifices, have remained faithful to Christ, and have stood by the rights which a solemn treaty had guaranteed to the Church and to themselves according to the rules of loyalty and good faith.

39. We address Our special greetings to the Catholic parents. Their rights and duties as educators, conferred on them by God, are at present the stake of a campaign pregnant with consequences. The Church cannot wait to deplore the devastation of its altars, the destruction of its temples, if an education, hostile to Christ, is to profane the temple of the child's soul consecrated by baptism, and extinguish the eternal light of the faith in Christ for the sake of counterfeit light alien to the Cross. Then the violation of temples is nigh, and it will be every one's duty to sever his responsibility from the opposite camp, and free his conscience from guilty cooperation with such corruption. The more the enemies attempt to disguise their designs, the more a distrustful vigilance will be needed, in the light of bitter experience. Religious lessons maintained for the sake of appearances, controlled by unauthorized men, within the frame of an educational system which systematically works against religion, do not justify a vote in favor of non-confessional schools. We know, dear Catholic parents, that your vote was not free, for a free and secret vote would have meant the triumph of the Catholic schools. Therefore, we shall never cease frankly to represent to the responsible authorities the iniquity of the pressure brought to bear on you and the duty of respecting the freedom of education. Yet do not forget this: none can free you from the responsibility God has placed on you over your children. None of your oppressors, who pretend to relieve you of your duties can answer for you to the eternal Judge, when he will ask: "Where are those I confided to you?" May every one of you be able to answer: "Of them whom thou hast given me, I have not lost any one" (John xviii. 9).

40. Venerable Brethren, We are convinced that the words which in this solemn moment We address to you, and to the Catholics of the German Empire, will find in the hearts and in the acts of Our Faithful, the echo responding to the solicitude of the common Father. If there is one thing We implore the Lord to grant, it is this, that Our words may reach the ears and the hearts of those who have begun to yield to the threats and enticements of the enemies of Christ and His Church.

41. We have weighed every word of this letter in the balance of truth and love. We wished neither to be an accomplice to equivocation by an untimely silence, nor by excessive severity to harden the hearts of those who live under Our pastoral responsibility; for Our pastoral love pursues them none the less for all their infidelity. Should those who are trying to adapt their mentality to their new surroundings, have for the paternal home they have left and for the Father Himself, nothing but words of distrust, in gratitude or insult, should they even forget whatever they forsook, the day will come when their anguish will fall on the children they have lost, when nostalgia will bring them back to "God who was the joy of their youth," to the Church whose paternal hand has directed them on the road that leads to the Father of Heaven.

42. Like other periods of the history of the Church, the present has ushered in a new ascension of interior purification, on the sole condition that the faithful show themselves proud enough in the confession of their faith in Christ, generous enough in suffering to face the oppressors of the Church with the strength of their faith and charity. May the holy time of Lent and Easter, which preaches interior renovation and penance, turn Christian eyes towards the Cross and the risen Christ; be for all of you the joyful occasion that will fill your souls with heroism, patience and victory. Then We are sure, the enemies of the Church, who think that their time has come, will see that their joy was premature, and that they may close the grave they had dug. The day will come when the Te Deum of liberation will succeed to the premature hymns of the enemies of Christ: Te Deum of triumph and joy and gratitude, as the German people return to religion, bend the knee before Christ, and arming themselves against the enemies of God, again resume the task God has laid upon them.

43. He who searches the hearts and reins (Psalm vii. 10) is Our witness that We have no greater desire than to see in Germany the restoration of a true peace between Church and State. But if, without any fault of Ours, this peace is not to come, then the Church of God will defend her rights and her freedom in the name of the Almighty whose arm has not shortened. Trusting in Him, "We cease not to pray and to beg" (Col. i. 9) for you, children of the Church, that the days of tribulation may end and that you may be found faithful in the day of judgment; for the persecutors and oppressors, that the Father of light and mercy may enlighten them as He enlightened Saul on the road of Damascus. With this prayer in Our heart and on Our lips We grant to you, as a pledge of Divine help, as a support in your difficult resolutions, as a comfort in the struggle, as a consolation in all trials, to You, Bishops and Pastors of the Faithful, priests, Religious, lay apostles of Catholic Action, to all your diocesans, and specially to the sick and the prisoners, in paternal love, Our Apostolic Benediction.

Given at the Vatican on Passion Sunday, March 14, 1937.

http://www.newadvent.org/library/docs_pi11mb.htm

[reorg]

32. I'm still having a hard time to find

where it

"warn(s) the entire world about the dangers, horrors of Nazism and denounce it for the evil, the racist evil it was."

It cites "misgivings" and states that Nazis are not true Catholics.

They never claimed they were, to my knowledge.

[Bridget Burke]

30. Interesting that you have such a lot of supporting data....

And Pius haters can only come up with "Hitler's Pope." Whose writer later modified his views considerably.

[Tinoire]

33. Holocaust Timeline

1933

Jan 30, 1933 - Adolf Hitler is appointed Chancellor of Germany a nation with a Jewish population of 566,000.

Feb 22, 1933 - 40,000 SA and SS men are sworn in as auxiliary police.

Feb 27, 1933 - Nazis burn Reichstag building to create crisis atmosphere.

Feb 28, 1933 - Emergency powers granted to Hitler as a result of the Reichstag fire.

March 22, 1933 - Nazis open Dachau concentration camp near Munich, to be followed by Buchenwald near Weimar in central Germany, Sachsenhausen near Berlin in northern Germany, and Ravensbrück for women.

March 24, 1933 - German Parliament passes Enabling Act giving Hitler dictatorial powers.

See also - The Rise of Hitler - from Unknown to Dictator of Germany

April 1, 1933 - Nazis stage boycott of Jewish shops and businesses.

April 11, 1933 - Nazis issue a decree defining a non-Aryan as "anyone descended from non-Aryan, especially Jewish, parents or grandparents. One parent or grandparent classifies the descendant as non-Aryan...especially if one parent or grandparent was of the Jewish faith."

April 26, 1933 - The Gestapo is born, created by Hermann Göring in the German state of Prussia.

May 10, 1933 - Burning of books in Berlin and throughout Germany.

July 14, 1933 - Nazi Party is declared the only legal party in Germany; Also, Nazis pass Law to strip Jewish immigrants from Poland of their German citizenship.

In July - Nazis pass law allowing for forced sterilization of those found by a Hereditary Health Court to have genetic defects.

In Sept - Nazis establish Reich Chamber of Culture, then exclude Jews from the Arts.

Sept 29, 1933 - Nazis prohibit Jews from owning land.

Oct 4, 1933 - Jews are prohibited from being newspaper editors.

Nov 24, 1933 - Nazis pass a Law against Habitual and Dangerous Criminals, which allows beggars, the homeless, alcoholics and the unemployed to be sent to concentration camps.



1934

Jan 24, 1934 - Jews are banned from the German Labor Front.

May 17, 1934 - Jews not allowed national health insurance.

June 30, 1934 - The Night of Long Knives occurs as Hitler, Göring and Himmler conduct a purge of the SA (storm trooper) leadership.

July 20, 1934 - The SS (Schutzstaffel) is made an independent organization from the SA.

July 22, 1934 - Jews are prohibited from getting legal qualifications.

Aug 2, 1934 - German President von Hindenburg dies. Hitler becomes Führer.

Aug 19, 1934 - Hitler receives a 90 percent 'Yes' vote from German voters approving his new powers.



1935

May 21, 1935 - Nazis ban Jews from serving in the military.

June 26, 1935 - Nazis pass law allowing forced abortions on women to prevent them from passing on hereditary diseases.

Aug 6, 1935 - Nazis force Jewish performers/artists to join Jewish Cultural Unions.

Sept 15, 1935 - Nuremberg Race Laws against Jews decreed.



1936

Feb 10, 1936 - The German Gestapo is placed above the law.

In March - SS Deathshead division is established to guard concentration camps.

March 7, 1936 - Nazis occupy the Rhineland.

June 17, 1936 - Heinrich Himmler is appointed chief of the German Police.

Aug 1, 1936 - Olympic games begin in Berlin. Hitler and top Nazis seek to gain legitimacy through favorable public opinion from foreign visitors and thus temporarily refrain from actions against Jews.

In Aug - Nazis set up an Office for Combating Homosexuality and Abortions (by healthy women).



1937

In Jan - Jews are banned from many professional occupations including teaching Germans, and from being accountants or dentists. They are also denied tax reductions and child allowances.

Nov 8, 1937 - 'Eternal Jew' travelling exhibition opens in Munich.



1938 Return to Top of Page

March 12/13, 1938 - Nazi troops enter Austria, which has a population of 200,000 Jews, mainly living in Vienna. Hitler announces Anschluss (union) with Austria.

In March - After the Anschluss, the SS is placed in charge of Jewish affairs in Austria with Adolf Eichmann establishing an Office for Jewish Emigration in Vienna. Himmler then establishes Mauthausen concentration camp near Linz.

April 22, 1938 - Nazis prohibit Aryan 'front-ownership' of Jewish businesses.

April 26, 1938 - Nazis order Jews to register wealth and property.

June 14, 1938 - Nazis order Jewish owned businesses to register.

In July - At Evian, France, the U.S. convenes a League of Nations conference with delegates from 32 countries to consider helping Jews fleeing Hitler, but results in inaction as no country will accept them.

July 6, 1938 - Nazis prohibited Jews from trading and providing a variety of specified commercial services.

July 23, 1938 - Nazis order Jews over age 15 to apply for identity cards from the police, to be shown on demand to any police officer.

July 25, 1938 - Jewish doctors prohibited by law from practicing medicine.

Aug 11, 1938 - Nazis destroy the synagogue in Nuremberg.

Aug 17, 1938 - Nazis require Jewish women to add Sarah and men to add Israel to their names on all legal documents including passports.

Sept 27, 1938 - Jews are prohibited from all legal practices.

Oct 5, 1938 - Law requires Jewish passports to be stamped with a large red "J."

Oct 15, 1938 - Nazi troops occupy the Sudetenland.

Oct 28, 1938 - Nazis arrest 17,000 Jews of Polish nationality living in Germany, then expel them back to Poland which refuses them entry, leaving them in 'no-man's land' near the Polish border for several months.

Nov 7, 1938 - Ernst vom Rath, third secretary in the German Embassy in Paris, is shot and mortally wounded by Herschel Grynszpan, the 17 year old son of one of the deported Polish Jews. Rath dies on November 9, precipitating Kristallnacht.

Nov 9/10 - Kristallnacht - The Night of Broken Glass.

Nov 12, 1938 - Nazis fine Jews one billion marks for damages related to Kristallnacht.

Nov 15, 1938 - Jewish pupils are expelled from all non-Jewish German schools.

Dec 3, 1938 - Law for compulsory Aryanization of all Jewish businesses.

Dec 14, 1938 - Hermann Göring takes charge of resolving the "Jewish Question."



1939 Return to Top of Page

Jan 24, 1939 - SS leader Reinhard Heydrich is ordered by Göring to speed up emigration of Jews.

Jan 30, 1939 - Hitler threatens Jews during Reichstag speech.

Feb 21, 1939 - Nazis force Jews to hand over all gold and silver items.

March 15/16 - Nazi troops seize Czechoslovakia (Jewish pop. 350,000).

April 19, 1939 - Slovakia passes its own version of the Nuremberg Laws.

April 30, 1939 - Jews lose rights as tenants and are relocated into Jewish houses.

In May - The St. Louis, a ship crowded with 930 Jewish refugees, is turned away by Cuba, the United States and other countries and returns to Europe.

July 4, 1939 - German Jews denied the right to hold government jobs.

July 21, 1939 - Adolf Eichmann is appointed director of the Prague Office of Jewish Emigration.

Sept 1, 1939 - Nazis invade Poland (Jewish pop. 3.35 million, the largest in Europe). Beginning of SS activity in Poland.

See also - World War Two in Europe Timeline

Sept 1, 1939 - Jews in Germany are forbidden to be outdoors after 8 p.m. in winter and 9 p.m. in summer.

Sept 3, 1939 - England and France declare war on Germany.

Sept 4, 1939 - Warsaw is cut off by the German Army.

Sept 17, 1939 - Soviet troops invade eastern Poland.

Sept 21, 1939 - Heydrich issues instructions to SS Einsatzgruppen (special action squads) in Poland regarding treatment of Jews, stating they are to be gathered into ghettos near railroads for the future "final goal." He also orders a census and the establishment of Jewish administrative councils within the ghettos to implement Nazi policies and decrees.

Sept 23, 1939 - German Jews are forbidden to own wireless (radio) sets.

Sept 27, 1939 - Warsaw surrenders; Heydrich becomes leader of RSHA.

Sept 29, 1939 - Nazis and Soviets divide up Poland. Over two million Jews reside in Nazi controlled areas, leaving 1.3 million in the Soviet area.

In Sept - Quote from Nazi newspaper, Der Stürmer, published by Julius Streicher - "The Jewish people ought to be exterminated root and branch. Then the plague of pests would have disappeared in Poland at one stroke."

In Oct - Nazis begin euthanasia on sick and disabled in Germany.

Oct 6, 1939 - Proclamation by Hitler on the isolation of Jews.

Oct 12, 1939 - Evacuation of Jews from Vienna.

Oct 12, 1939 - Hans Frank appointed Nazi Gauleiter (governor) of Poland.

Oct 26, 1939 - Forced labor decree issued for Polish Jews aged 14 to 60.

Nov 23, 1939 - Yellow stars required to be worn by Polish Jews over age 10.

In Dec - Adolf Eichmann takes over section IV B4 of the Gestapo dealing solely with Jewish affairs and evacuations.



1940 Return to Top of Page

Jan 25, 1940 - Nazis choose the town of Oswiecim (Auschwitz) in Poland near Krakow as site of new concentration camp.

In Jan - Quote from Nazi newspaper, Der Stürmer, published by Julius Streicher - "...The time is near when a machine will go into motion which is going to prepare a grave for the world's criminal - Judah - from which there will be no resurrection."

Feb 12, 1940 - First deportation of German Jews into occupied Poland.

April 9, 1940 - Nazis invade Denmark (Jewish pop. 8,000) and Norway (Jewish pop. 2,000).

April 30, 1940 - The Lodz Ghetto in occupied Poland is sealed off from the outside world with 230,000 Jews locked inside.

May 1, 1940 - Rudolf Höss is chosen to be kommandant of Auschwitz.

May 10, 1940 - Nazis invade France (Jewish pop. 350,000), Belgium (Jewish pop. 65,000), Holland (Jewish pop. 140,000), and Luxembourg (Jewish pop. 3,500).

June 14, 1940 - Paris is occupied by the Nazis.

June 22, 1940 - France signs an armistice with Hitler.

In July - Eichmann's Madagascar Plan presented, proposing to deport all European Jews to the island of Madagascar, off the coast of east Africa.

July 17, 1940 - The first anti-Jewish measures are taken in Vichy France.

Aug 8, 1940 - Romania introduces anti-Jewish measures restricting education and employment, then later begins "Romanianization" of Jewish businesses.

Sept 27, 1940 - Tripartite (Axis) Pact signed by Germany, Italy and Japan.

Oct 3, 1940 - Vichy France passes its own version of the Nuremberg Laws.

Oct 7, 1940 - Nazis invade Romania (Jewish pop. 34,000).

Oct 22, 1940 - Deportation of 29,000 German Jews from Baden, the Saar, and Alsace-Lorraine into Vichy France.

In Nov - Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia become Nazi Allies.

In Nov - The Krakow Ghetto is sealed off containing 70,000 Jews.

Nov 15, 1940 - The Warsaw Ghetto, containing over 400,000 Jews, is sealed off.



1941 Return to Top of Page

In 1941 - Hans Frank, Gauleiter of Poland, states, "I ask nothing of the Jews except that they should disappear."

In Jan - Quote from Nazi newspaper, Der Stürmer, published by Julius Streicher - "Now judgment has begun and it will reach its conclusion only when knowledge of the Jews has been erased from the earth."

In Jan - A pogrom in Romania results in over 2,000 Jews killed.

Feb 22, 1941 - 430 Jewish hostages are deported from Amsterdam after a Dutch Nazi is killed by Jews.

In March - Hitler's Commissar Order authorizes execution of anyone suspected of being a Communist official in territories about to be seized from the Soviets.

March 1, 1941 - Himmler makes his first visit to Auschwitz, during which he orders Kommandant Höss to begin massive expansion, including a new compound to be built at nearby Birkenau that can hold 100,000 prisoners.

March 2, 1941 - Nazis occupy Bulgaria (Jewish pop. 50,000).

March 7, 1941 - German Jews ordered into forced labor.

March 26, 1941 - The German Army High Command gives approval to RSHA and Heydrich on the tasks of SS murder squads (Einsatzgruppen) in occupied Poland.

March 29, 1941 - A 'Commissariat' for Jewish Affairs is set up in Vichy France.

April 6, 1941 - Nazis invade Yugoslavia (Jewish pop. 75,000) and Greece (Jewish pop. 77,000).

May 14, 1941 - 3,600 Jews arrested in Paris.

May 16, 1941 - French Marshal Petain issues a radio broadcast approving collaboration with Hitler.

June 22, 1941 - Nazis invade the Soviet Union (Jewish pop. 3 million).

June 29/30 - Romanian troops conduct a pogrom against Jews in the town of Jassy, killing 10,000.

Summer - Himmler summons Auschwitz Kommandant Höss to Berlin and tells him, "The Führer has ordered the Final Solution of the Jewish question. We, the SS, have to carry out this order...I have therefore chosen Auschwitz for this purpose."

In July - As the German Army advances, SS Einsatzgruppen follow along and conduct mass murder of Jews in seized lands.

In July - Ghettos established at Kovno, Minsk, Vitebsk and Zhitomer. Also in July, the government of Vichy France seizes Jewish owned property.

July 17, 1941 - Nazi racial 'philosopher' Alfred Rosenberg is appointed Reich Minister for the Eastern Occupied Territories to administer territories seized from the Soviet Union.

July 21, 1941 - In occupied Poland near Lublin, Majdanek concentration camp becomes operational.

July 25/26 - 3,800 Jews killed during a pogrom by Lithuanians in Kovno.

July 31, 1941 - Göring instructs Heydrich to prepare for Final Solution.

In Aug - Jews in Romania forced into Transnistria. By December, 70,000 perish.

In Aug - Ghettos established at Bialystok and Lvov.

Aug 26, 1941 - The Hungarian Army rounds up 18,000 Jews at Kamenets-Podolsk.

Sept 3, 1941 - The first test use of Zyklon-B gas at Auschwitz.

Sept 1, 1941 - German Jews ordered to wear yellow stars.

Sept 6, 1941 - The Vilna Ghetto is established containing 40,000 Jews.

Sept 17, 1941 - Beginning of general deportation of German Jews.

Sept 19, 1941 - Nazis take Kiev.

Sept 27/28 - 23,000 Jews killed at Kamenets-Podolsk, in the Ukraine.

Sept 29/30 - SS Einsatzgruppen murder 33,771 Jews at Babi Yar near Kiev.

In Oct - 35,000 Jews from Odessa shot.

Oct 2, 1941 - Beginning of the German Army drive on Moscow.

Oct 23, 1941 - Nazis forbid emigration of Jews from the Reich.

In Nov - SS Einsatzgruppe B reports a tally of 45,476 Jews killed.

Nov 24, 1941 - Theresienstadt Ghetto is established near Prague, Czechoslovakia. The Nazis will use it as a model ghetto for propaganda purposes.

Nov 30, 1941 - Near Riga, a mass shooting of Latvian and German Jews.

Dec 7, 1941 - Japanese attack United States at Pearl Harbor. The next day the U.S. and Britain declare war on Japan.

Dec 8, 1941 - In occupied Poland, near Lodz, Chelmno extermination camp becomes operational. Jews taken there are placed in mobile gas vans and driven to a burial place while carbon monoxide from the engine exhaust is fed into the sealed rear compartment, killing them. The first gassing victims include 5,000 Gypsies who had been deported from the Reich to Lodz.

Dec 11, 1941 - Hitler declares war on the United States. Roosevelt then declares war on Germany saying, "Never before has there been a greater challenge to life, liberty and civilization." The U.S.A. then enters the war in Europe and will concentrate nearly 90 percent of its military resources to defeat Hitler.

Dec 12, 1941 - The ship "Struma" leaves Romania for Palestine carrying 769 Jews but is later denied permission by British authorities to allow the passengers to disembark. In Feb. 1942, it sails back into the Black Sea where it is intercepted by a Soviet submarine and sunk as an "enemy target."

Dec 16, 1941 - During a cabinet meeting, Hans Frank, Gauleiter of Poland, states - "Gentlemen, I must ask you to rid yourselves of all feeling of pity. We must annihilate the Jews wherever we find them and wherever it is possible in order to maintain there the structure of the Reich as a whole..."



1942 Return to Top of Page

In Jan - Mass killings of Jews using Zyklon-B begin at Auschwitz-Birkenau in Bunker I (the red farmhouse) in Birkenau with the bodies being buried in mass graves in a nearby meadow.

Jan 20, 1942 - Wannsee Conference to coordinate the "Final Solution."

Jan 31, 1942 - SS Einsatzgruppe A reports a tally of 229,052 Jews killed.

In March - In occupied Poland, Belzec extermination camp becomes operational. The camp is fitted with permanent gas chambers using carbon monoxide piped in from engines placed outside the chamber, but will later substitute Zyklon-B.

March 17, 1942 - The deportation of Jews from Lublin to Belzec.

March 24, 1942 - The start of deportation of Slovak Jews to Auschwitz.

March 27, 1942 - The start of deportation of French Jews to Auschwitz.

March 28, 1942 - Fritz Sauckel named Chief of Manpower to expedite recruitment of slave labor.

March 30, 1942 - First trainloads of Jews from Paris arrive at Auschwitz.

In April - First transports of Jews arrive at Majdanek.

April 20, 1942 - German Jews are banned from using public transportation.

In May - In occupied Poland, Sobibor extermination camp becomes operational. The camp is fitted with three gas chambers using carbon monoxide piped in from engines, but will later substitute Zyklon-B.

May 18, 1942 - The New York Times reports on an inside page that Nazis have machine-gunned over 100,000 Jews in the Baltic states, 100,000 in Poland and twice as many in western Russia.

May 27, 1942 - SS leader Heydrich is mortally wounded by Czech Underground agents.

In June - Gas vans used in Riga.

June 1, 1942 - Jews in France, Holland, Belgium, Croatia, Slovakia, Romania ordered to wear yellow stars.

June 4, 1942 - Heydrich dies of his wounds.

June 5, 1942 - SS report 97,000 persons have been "processed" in mobile gas vans.

June 10, 1942 - Nazis liquidate Lidice in retaliation for Heydrich's death.

June 11, 1942 - Eichmann meets with representatives from France, Belgium and Holland to coordinate deportation plans for Jews.

June 30, 1942 - At Auschwitz, a second gas chamber, Bunker II (the white farmhouse), is made operational at Birkenau due to the number of Jews arriving.

June 30 and July 2 - The New York Times reports via the London Daily Telegraph that over 1,000,000 Jews have already been killed by Nazis.

Summer - Swiss representatives of the World Jewish Congress receive information from a German industrialist regarding the Nazi plan to exterminate the Jews. They then pass the information on to London and Washington.

July 2, 1942 - Jews from Berlin sent to Theresienstadt.

July 7, 1942 - Himmler grants permission for sterilization experiments at Auschwitz.

July 14, 1942 - Beginning of deportation of Dutch Jews to Auschwitz.

July 16/17 - 12,887 Jews of Paris are rounded up and sent to Drancy Internment Camp located outside the city. A total of approximately 74,000 Jews, including 11,000 children, will eventually be transported from Drancy to Auschwitz, Majdanek and Sobibor.

July 17/18 - Himmler visits Auschwitz-Birkenau for two days, inspecting all ongoing construction and expansion, then observes the extermination process from start to finish as two trainloads of Jews arrive from Holland. Kommandant Höss is then promoted. Construction includes four large gas chamber/crematories.

July 19, 1942 - Himmler orders Operation Reinhard, mass deportations of Jews in Poland to extermination camps.

July 22, 1942 - Beginning of deportations from the Warsaw Ghetto to the new extermination camp, Treblinka. Also, beginning of the deportation of Belgian Jews to Auschwitz.

July 23, 1942 - Treblinka extermination camp opened in occupied Poland, east of Warsaw. The camp is fitted with two buildings containing 10 gas chambers, each holding 200 persons. Carbon monoxide gas is piped in from engines placed outside the chamber, but Zyklon-B will later be substituted. Bodies are burned in open pits.

In Aug - The start of deportations of Croatian Jews to Auschwitz.

Aug 23, 1942 - Beginning of German Army attack on Stalingrad.

Aug 26-28 - 7,000 Jews arrested in unoccupied France.

Sept 9, 1942 - Open pit burning of bodies begins at Auschwitz in place of burial. The decision is made to dig up and burn those already buried, 107,000 corpses, to prevent fouling of ground water.

Sept 18, 1942 - Reduction of food rations for Jews in Germany.

Sept 26, 1942 - SS begins cashing in possessions and valuables of Jews from Auschwitz and Majdanek. German banknotes are sent to the Reichs Bank. Foreign currency, gold, jewels and other valuables are sent to SS Headquarters of the Economic Administration. Watches, clocks and pens are distributed to troops at the front. Clothing is distributed to German families. By Feb. 1943, over 800 boxcars of confiscated goods will have left Auschwitz.

Oct 5, 1942 - Himmler orders all Jews in concentration camps in Germany to be sent to Auschwitz and Majdanek.

Oct 5, 1942 - A German eyewitness observes SS mass murder.

Oct 14, 1942 - Mass killing of Jews from Mizocz Ghetto in the Ukraine.

Oct 22, 1942 - SS put down a revolt at Sachsenhausen by a group of Jews about to be sent to Auschwitz.

Oct 25, 1942 - Deportations of Jews from Norway to Auschwitz begin.

Oct 28, 1942 - The first transport from Theresienstadt arrives at Auschwitz.

In Nov - The mass killing of 170,000 Jews in the area of Bialystok.

Dec 10, 1942 - The first transport of Jews from Germany arrives at Auschwitz.

In Dec - Exterminations at Belzec cease after an estimated 600,000 Jews have been murdered. The camp is then dismantled, plowed over and planted.

Dec 17, 1942 - British Foreign Secretary Eden tells the British House of Commons the Nazis are "now carrying into effect Hitler's oft repeated intention to exterminate the Jewish people of Europe." U.S. declares those crimes will be avenged.

Dec 28, 1942 - Sterilization experiments on women at Birkenau begin.

Map of Concentration/Death Camps



1943 Return to Top of Page

In 1943 - The number of Jews killed by SS Einsatzgruppen passes one million. Nazis then use special units of slave laborers to dig up and burn the bodies to remove all traces.

Jan 18, 1943 - First resistance by Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Jan 29, 1943 - Nazis order all Gypsies arrested and sent to extermination camps.

Jan 30, 1943 - Ernst Kaltenbrunner succeeds Heydrich as head of RSHA.

In Feb - The Romanian government proposes to the Allies the transfer of 70,000 Jews to Palestine, but receives no response from Britain or the U.S.

In Feb - Greek Jews are ordered into ghettos.

Feb 2, 1943 - Germans surrender at Stalingrad in the first big defeat of Hitler's armies.

Feb 27, 1943 - Jews working in Berlin armaments industry are sent to Auschwitz.

In March - The start of deportations of Jews from Greece to Auschwitz, lasting until August, totaling 49,900 persons.

March 1, 1943 - In New York, American Jews hold a mass rally at Madison Square Garden to pressure the U.S. government into helping the Jews of Europe

March 14, 1943 - The Krakow Ghetto is liquidated.

March 17, 1943 - Bulgaria states opposition to deportation of its Jews.

March 22, 1943 - Newly built gas chamber/crematory IV opens at Auschwitz.

March 31, 1943 - Newly built gas chamber/crematory II opens at Auschwitz.

April 4, 1943 - Newly built gas chamber/crematory V opens at Auschwitz.

April 9, 1943 - Exterminations at Chelmno cease. The camp will be reactivated in the spring of 1944 to liquidate ghettos. In all, Chelmno will total 300,000 deaths.

April 19-30 - The Bermuda Conference occurs as representatives from the U.S. and Britain discuss the problem of refugees from Nazi-occupied countries, but results in inaction concerning the plight of the Jews.

April 19, 1943 - Waffen SS attacks Jewish Resistance in Warsaw Ghetto.

In May - SS Dr. Josef Mengele arrives at Auschwitz.

May 13, 1943 - German and Italian troops in North Africa surrender to Allies.

May 19, 1943 - Nazis declare Berlin to be Judenfrei (cleansed of Jews).

June 11, 1943 - Himmler orders liquidation of all Jewish ghettos in occupied Poland.

June 25, 1943 - Newly built gas chamber/crematory III opens at Auschwitz. With its completion, the four new crematories at Auschwitz have a daily capacity of 4,756 bodies.

July 9/10 - Allies land in Sicily.

Aug 2, 1943 - Two hundred Jews escape from Treblinka extermination camp during a revolt. Nazis then hunt them down one by one.

Aug 16, 1943 - The Bialystok Ghetto is liquidated.

In Aug - Exterminations cease at Treblinka, after an estimated 870,000 deaths.

In Sept - The Vilna and Minsk Ghettos are liquidated.

Sept 11, 1943 - Germans occupy Rome, after occupying northern and central Italy, containing in all about 35,000 Jews.

Sept 11, 1943 - Beginning of Jewish family transports from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz.

In Oct - The Danish Underground helps transport 7,220 Danish Jews to safety in Sweden by sea.

Oct 4 - Himmler talks openly about the Final Solution at Posen.

Oct 14, 1943 - Massive escape from Sobibor as Jews and Soviet POWs break out, with 300 making it safely into nearby woods. Of those 300, fifty will survive. Exterminations then cease at Sobibor, after over 250,000 deaths. All traces of the death camp are then removed and trees are planted.

Oct 16, 1943 - Jews in Rome rounded up, with over 1,000 sent to Auschwitz.

In Nov - The Riga Ghetto is liquidated.

In Nov - The U.S. Congress holds hearings regarding the U.S. State Department's inaction regarding European Jews, despite mounting reports of mass extermination.

Nov 3, 1943 - Nazis carry out Operation Harvest Festival in occupied Poland, killing 42,000 Jews.

Nov 4, 1943 - Quote from Nazi newspaper, Der Stürmer, published by Julius Streicher - "It is actually true that the Jews have, so to speak, disappeared from Europe and that the Jewish 'Reservoir of the East' from which the Jewish pestilence has for centuries beset the peoples of Europe has ceased to exist. But the Führer of the German people at the beginning of the war prophesied what has now come to pass."

Nov 11, 1943 - Auschwitz Kommandant Höss is promoted to chief inspector of concentration camps. The new kommandant, Liebehenschel, then divides up the vast Auschwitz complex of over 30 sub-camps into three main sections.

Dec 2, 1943 - The first transport of Jews from Vienna arrives at Auschwitz.

Dec 16, 1943 - The chief surgeon at Auschwitz reports that 106 castration operations have been performed.



1944 Return to Top of Page

Jan 3, 1944 - Soviet troops reach former Polish border.

Jan 24, 1944 - In response to political pressure to help Jews under Nazi control, Roosevelt creates the War Refugee Board.

Jan 25, 1944 - Diary entry by Hans Frank, Gauleiter of Poland, concerning the fate of 2.5 million Jews originally under his jurisdiction - "At the present time we still have in the General Government perhaps 100,000 Jews."

In Feb - Eichmann visits Auschwitz.

March 19, 1944 - Nazis occupy Hungary (Jewish pop. 725,000). Eichmann arrives with Gestapo "Special Section Commandos."

March 24, 1944 - President Roosevelt issues a statement condemning German and Japanese ongoing "crimes against humanity."

April 5, 1944 - A Jewish inmate, Siegfried Lederer, escapes from Auschwitz-Birkenau and makes it safely to Czechoslovakia. He then warns the Elders of the Council at Theresienstadt about Auschwitz.

April 6, 1944 - Nazis raid a French home for Jewish children.

April 7, 1944 - Two Jewish inmates escape from Auschwitz-Birkenau and make it safely to Czechoslovakia. One of them, Rudolf Vrba, submits a report to the Papal Nuncio in Slovakia which is forwarded to the Vatican, received there in mid June.

April 14, 1944 - First transports of Jews from Athens to Auschwitz, totaling 5,200 persons.

In May - Himmler's agents secretly propose to the western Allies to trade Jews for trucks, other commodities or money.

May 8, 1944 - Rudolf Höss returns to Auschwitz, ordered by Himmler to oversee the extermination of Hungarian Jews.

May 15, 1944 - Beginning of deportation of Jews from Hungary to Auschwitz.

May 16, 1944 - Jews from Hungary arrive at Auschwitz. Eichmann arrives to personally oversee and speed up the extermination process. By May 24, an estimated 100,000 have been gassed. Between May 16 and May 31, the SS report collecting 88 pounds of gold and white metal from the teeth of those gassed. By the end of June, 381,661 persons - half of the Jews in Hungary - arrive at Auschwitz.

In June - A Red Cross delegation visits Theresienstadt after the Nazis have carefully prepared the camp and the Jewish inmates, resulting in a favorable report.

June 6, 1944 - D-Day: Allied landings in Normandy.

June 12, 1944 - Rosenberg orders Hay Action the kidnapping of 40,000 Polish children aged ten to fourteen for slave labor in the Reich.

Summer - Auschwitz-Birkenau records its highest-ever daily number of persons gassed and burned at just over 9,000. Six huge pits are used to burn bodies, as the number exceeds the capacity of the crematories.

In July - Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg arrives in Budapest, Hungary, and proceeds to save nearly 33,000 Jews by issuing diplomatic papers and establishing 'safe houses.'

July 24, 1944 - Soviet troops liberate first concentration camp at Majdanek where over 360,000 had been murdered.

Aug 4, 1944 - Anne Frank and family arrested by Gestapo in Amsterdam, then sent to Auschwitz. Anne and her sister Margot are later sent to Bergen-Belsen where Anne dies of typhus on March 15, 1945.

Aug 6, 1944 - The last Jewish ghetto in Poland, Lodz, is liquidated with 60,000 Jews sent to Auschwitz.

Oct 7, 1944 - A revolt by Sonderkommando (Jewish slave laborers) at Auschwitz-Birkenau results in complete destruction of Crematory IV.

Oct 15, 1944 - Nazis seize control of the Hungarian puppet government, then resume deporting Jews, which had temporarily ceased due to international political pressure to stop Jewish persecutions.

Oct 17, 1944 - Eichmann arrives in Hungary.

Oct 28, 1944 - The last transport of Jews to be gassed, 2,000 from Theresienstadt, arrives at Auschwitz.

Oct 30, 1944 - Last use of gas chambers at Auschwitz.

Nov 8, 1944 - Nazis force 25,000 Jews to walk over 100 miles in rain and snow from Budapest to the Austrian border, followed by a second forced march of 50,000 persons, ending at Mauthausen.

Nov 25, 1944 - Himmler orders the destruction of the crematories at Auschwitz.

Late 1944 - Oskar Schindler saves 1200 Jews by moving them from Plaszow labor camp to his hometown of Brunnlitz.



1945 Return to Top of Page

In 1945 - As the Allies advance, the Nazis conduct death marches of concentration camp inmates away from outlying areas.

Jan 6, 1945 - Soviets liberate Budapest, freeing over 80,000 Jews.

Jan 14, 1945 - Invasion of eastern Germany by Soviet troops.

Jan 17, 1945 - Liberation of Warsaw by the Soviets.

Jan 18, 1945 - Nazis evacuate 66,000 from Auschwitz.

Jan 27, 1945 - Soviet troops liberate Auschwitz. By this time, an estimated 2,000,000 persons, including 1,500,000 Jews, have been murdered there.

April 4, 1945 - Ohrdruf camp is liberated, later visited by General Eisenhower.

April 10, 1945 - Allies liberate Buchenwald.

April 15, 1945 - Approximately 40,000 prisoners freed at Bergen-Belsen by the British, who report "both inside and outside the huts was a carpet of dead bodies, human excreta, rags and filth."

April 23, 1945 - Berlin reached by Soviet troops.

April 29, 1945 - U.S. 7th Army liberates Dachau.

April 30, 1945 - Hitler commits suicide in his Berlin bunker.

April 30, 1945 - Americans free 33,000 inmates from concentration camps.

May 2, 1945 - Theresienstadt taken over by the Red Cross.

May 5, 1945 - Mauthausen liberated.

May 7, 1945 - Unconditional German surrender signed by Gen. Jodl at Reims.

May 9, 1945 - Hermann Göring captured by members of U.S. 7th Army.

May 23, 1945 - SS Reichsführer Himmler commits suicide.

Nov 20, 1945 - Opening of the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal.

Holocaust Statistics



1946 Return to Top of Page

March 11, 1946 - Former Auschwitz Kommandant Höss, posing as a farm worker, is arrested by the British. He testifies at Nuremberg, then is later tried in Warsaw, found guilty and hanged at Auschwitz, April 16, 1947, near Crematory I. "History will mark me as the greatest mass murderer of all time," Höss writes while in prison, along with his memoirs about Auschwitz.

Oct 16, 1946 - Göring commits suicide two hours before the scheduled execution of the first group of major Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg. During his imprisonment, a (now repentant) Hans Frank states, "A thousand years will pass and the guilt of Germany will not be erased." Frank and the others are hanged and the bodies are brought to Dachau and burned (the final use of the crematories there) with the ashes then scattered into a river.

Dec 9, 1946 - 23 former SS doctors and scientists go on trial before a U.S. Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. Sixteen are found guilty, with 7 being hanged.

1947

Sept 15, 1947 - Twenty one former SS Einsatz leaders go on trial before a U.S. Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. Fourteen are sentenced to death, with only 4 (the group commanders) actually being executed. The other death sentences are commuted.

1960

May 11, 1960 - Adolf Eichmann is captured in Argentina by Israeli secret service.

1961

April 11 - August 14 - Eichmann on trial in Jerusalem for crimes against the Jewish people, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Found guilty and hanged at Ramleh on May 31, 1962. A fellow Nazi reported Eichmann once said "he would leap laughing into the grave because the feeling that he had five million people on his conscience would be for him a source of extraordinary satisfaction."


http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/timeline.html#1938

[mmonk]

34. It will always be split no matter

what the facts are. Anti-Catholicism is deeply woven in the fabric of American society as it is in it's mother, England.

[reorg]

38. So what's the deal with Anti-Catholicism and Democrats in the US, anyway?

From my (German and personal) point of view it is hard to imagine that the Catholic Church's political affiliations or leanings may be anything but reactionary.

Maybe it's different on a community level - I have known some young activists who were not conservative - and there are some liberal and outspoken intellectuals, Ranke-Heinemann, Drewermann, Küng (all of them professors banned from teaching) - but never in my entire life have I heard that Catholic bishops in Germany have come out in support of, say, the Social Democrats and against the conservative CDU/CSU ("Christian" Democratic Union). The other way round is quite common, though, with direct advice from the pulpit, from what I hear.

One might argue that Catholicism has had its beneficial influence via such pro-union groups as the CDA (Christian Democratic employees faction in the CDU, with many Catholics among them). And there is the Catholic region around Cologne which is said to be rather liberal (Cologne is the German "gay capital").

But in my personal experience the most apparent characteristics of Catholics has always been their rigid and fundamental opposition to anti-authoritarian ideas and also to socialism. Not to mention the ancient concepts of marriage and love. Maybe it's because German Catholics have always been close to power? Some bishops had been feudal lords around here up until some 200 years ago.


So what's up with this notion that American Catholics are liberal? Has it do with Italian, Polish, Irish, Latino and other overwhelmingly Catholic immigrants not having been fully accepted by a dominant WASP society?

[Bridget Burke]

41. Catholicism was an immigrant faith in the USA.

Charles Carroll of Carrollton was the only Catholic who signed the Declaration of Independence. Most early immigrants were English or Scots-Irish (Ulster Protestants). Germans were the first "foreigners" in large numbers--mostly Protestant, early on.

The Great Famine brought the first large numbers of Irish Catholics. Then the Italians, Polish & others. The Know Nothings were Nativist groups descended from English or Scots-Irish--strong Protestants who hated the newcomers who spoke English oddly or not at all & "bred like rabbits." Of course, Latino Catholics had been on the Continent much longer--but it took a while for Manifest Destiny to bring them into the USA.

EDITED TO ADD: You may have seen some of the controversy about Ratzinger's youth. Do most Germans consider all surviving Hitler Youth to be evil? What about Wehrmacht veterans who did not join the Partei? Are they universally shunned--as some are telling us we must treat Benedict?

[reorg]

47. Ratzinger's youth

This is a total non-issue here, mentioned only as miscellaneous news from the foreign press ... and it puzzles me that someone could get worked up about the mandatory membership in a youth organization of a totalitarian state. Much more interesting do I find the fact that Ratzinger, as was Arnold, and Hitler, to boot! the son of a conservative police officer ... never mind, it probably doesn't mean much, too.

We had a chancellor (Kiesinger) who had been member of the Nazi party (Beate Klarsfeld publicly hit him in the face to make this widely known), we had a minister of state who had written the official commentary on the Nurenberg laws, we had a president (Lübke) who had designed concentration camps, a governor (Filbinger) who as a judge had issued death sentences for deserters during the final years of the war and never saw anything wrong with that ... another one (Dregger) who openly provoked the public by proclaiming he was proud of his past as a member of the Waffen-SS.

All of these were never "universally shunned", they were figures dominating the ruling CDU throughout the fifties and sixties, a party widely perceived by the opposition at the time to be a haven for old Nazis, anyway.

This only changed in the eighties, when Kohl (born in 1930) as chancellor claimed the "grace of the late birth" (Gnade der späten Geburt). Of course he also was in the Hitlerjugend, as was any liberal, conservative, radical or whatever public person in his age group.

[mmonk]

42. American Catholics have been

on both sides of the spectrum. There have been alot of liberal Catholic politicians and a few conservative ones. The bishops here lately have been conservative and a few are bad in my opinion. But there is always the tradition here of liberal activists priests as well. Traditionally, Catholics have voted democrat, I think this last election is one of the few exceptions and was split slightly in bush's favor. As far as acceptance, it took along time for Catholic immigrants to be accepted. There was the Alien and Sedition Act primarily aimed at deporting Catholics and before that when we were colonies, some colonies had anti-Catholic laws. Most rejection of Catholicism today from the left is the Church's stand on homosexuality, abortion, and contraception. Many old myths that contribute to fear of the Church accentuate the dislike. Some rightwing conservatives are more overt in their prejudices but some have used the abortion issue to induce votes for conservative candidates. Yes, the history of rejection and the WASP influence is strong. From when you are a young child, you learn negative things about the Catholic church here, my mind doesn't recall being taught positive things though there may have been some. I still remember as a kid asking my dad what do they mean by protestant work ethic? Does that mean we don't believe in work as catholics? All in all, a mixed bag here.

[reorg]

49. old myths

interesting - I heard this here for the first time that as a child in the US they tell you negative things about Catholics. I don't know of anything like that in Germany, where confessional affiliations are by and large evenly split among Protestants and Catholics, both with long-standing regional traditions. This is not to say people are more tolerant here, I've heard stories of enmity caused by marrying outside of one's confession, but I think this is definitely a thing of the past. Another reason, I believe, why most German Catholics are not so enthused about a pope who is opposed to ecumenical worship.

As to protestant work ethic - IMO its a curse, not a virtue ... and well, Catholics here are generally believed to be better at celebrating, that is true :-) All carnival regions here are predominantly Catholic.

[mmonk]

50. We do have plenty

of people that do get along though. America lately is getting a little fringe concerning religion. I think it typically comes about when or if a politician decides to use it as a weapon. Then it seems the freaks pop out. My friends overwhelmingly in number are protestant and they don't seem to think of me as odd.

[mmonk]

46. Also, if you want to be a successful author,

playwright, or artist, write an anti-Catholic book, produce an anti-Catholic play, or create anti-catholic art displays and you'll make some money here as there is always a ready audience for it.

[xpat]

40. Well, you see, the Pope had to be realistic

At least, that's the argument I have been getting today when I point out that Howard Dean is no the Democratic frontman for maintaining our occupation of Iraq.

Realists always collaborate with Nazis. It's the realistic thing to do. You have all this baggage that you have to protect, so you have to be realistic, all the way to the gas chambers.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

43. No Pius was not Hitler's pope..and one can always argue that people

could have or should have done more. Not doing enough does NOT make one Hitler's pope.

[eagler]

44. I do believe that Hitler thought that Pius was his pope because

Hitler seemed to have dilusions of the days when germanic emperors did control the popes.

[Just Me]

48. I always believed Pius XII exercised great wisdom in a period of great,...

,...madness.

I love the Einstein quote, Tinoire!!! I've been told that my belief Einstein was a deist was wrong. However, I still believe he was a deist.

Fabulous collection of information in your post, as usual. You are one very, bright individual!!!