6 The Death Camps and the Anti-Semitic Crusade

To what extent the Catholics were masters of Nazi Germany soon became apparent as also did the severity with which some of the “Papacy’s high principles” were applied.

The liberals and Jews had plenty of spare time to find out that these principles were far from out-dated, as the most orthodox voices confirmed it. The right the Church arrogates herself to exterminate slowly or speedily those who are in the way was “put into practice” at Auschwitz, Dachau, Belsen, Buchenwald, and other death camps.

The Gestapo of Himmler, “our Ignatius of Loyola”, diligently performed these charitable deeds; civilian and military Germany had to submit “perinde ac cadaver” to this all-powerful organization.

No need to say that the Vatican washed its hands of these horrors. When giving an audience to Dr Nerin F. Gun, a Swiss journalist who had been deported himself and who wondered why the pope had not intervened, at least by providing some assistance to so many unfortunate people, His Holiness Pius XII had the effrontery to answer:

“We knew that, for political reasons, violent persecutions were taking place in Germany, but We were never informed as to the inhuman character of the Nazi repression”.(124)

And that at the time when the speaker of Radio Vatican, the R.P. Mistiaen, was declaring that “overwhelming documentary proof” concerning the cruelty of the Nazis had been received”.(125)

Without any doubt, the Holy Father was not informed either on what was going on in the “Oustachi” concentration camps, in spite of his own legate’s presence in Zagreb.

(124) “Gazette of Lausanne”, 15th of November 1945. (125 ) R.P. Duclos: “Le Vatican et la seconde guerre mondiale”, (Ed. Pedone, Paris 1955. p.255) Imprimatur 1955.

Once, though, the Holy See was seen to take some interest in the fate of certain people condemned to deportation. They were 528 Protestant missionaries, survivors of all those who had been taken prisoners, by the Japanese, in the islands of the Pacific and interned in concentration camps in the Philippines. M. Andre Ribard, in his excellent book “1960 and the secret of the Vatican”, reveals the pontifical intervention on behalf of these unfortunates. The text appears under No.1591, dated: Tokio 6th of April 1943, in a report from the Department for Religious Affairs in occupied territories, and I quote the following extract: it expressed the wish of the Roman Church to see the Japanese pursue their politics and prevent certain religious propagators of error to regain a freedom to which they were not entitled”.(126)

From the “Christian” point of view, this charitable step needs no comment, but is it not most significant, politically speaking? In Slovakia— as we know—Monseigneur Tiso, the Jesuit Gauleiter, was also free to persecute the “separated brethren” even though Germany, to which his State was a satellite, was mainly Protestant. It says a lot about the influence the Roman Church had in the Hitlerian Reich!

We have also seen the part played in Croatia by the representatives of that Church, in the extermination of Orthodox believers.

As for the anti-Jewish crusade, the Gestapo’s masterpiece, it may seem superfluous to mention again the part played in it by Rome, as we have already related the exploits of Monseigneur Tiso, the first provider of Auschwitz’s gas chambers and crematoria furnaces. We will just add a few characteristic documents to this dossier.

First of all, here is a letter from M. Leon Berard, ambassador of the Vichy government to the Holy See:

Marshall Petain, Sir,
In your letter dated 7th of August 1941, you honoured me in asking certain information touching the questions and difficulties which could arise, from the Roman Catholic point of view, out of the measures your government took concerning the Jews. I have the honour to answer that nothing has been said to me, at the Vatican, which could be interpreted as a criticism or disapproval of the laws or directive deeds in question…”(127) The periodical “L’Arche”, when mentioning this letter in an article entitled “The Silence of Pius XII”, tells of a subsequent and complementary report which M. Leon Berard sent to Vichy on the 2nd of September 1941:

(126) Andre Ribard: “1960 et le secret du Vatican”, (Librairie Robin, 38, rue de Vaugirard. Paris 1954, p.80) and Frederic Hoffet: “Politique romaine et demission des Protestants” (demission des laiques) (Fischbacher, Paris). (127) and (129) Leon Poliakov: “Breviaire de la haine” (Calmann-Levy, Paris 1951, pp 345, 350, 351).

Is there a contradiction between the Status of the Jews and the Catholic doctrine? Only one, and Leon Berard respectfully points it out to the head of State. It resides in the fact that the law of the 2nd of June 1941 defines the Jews as a race… The Church (wrote Vichy’s ambassador), never professed that the same rights should be given to all citizens… As someone in authority at the Vatican told me, you will not find yourselves in difficulties over the Status of the Jews”.(128)

There is, “translated into practice”, the “terrible” encyclical letter “Mit brennender Sorge”, against racism, widely referred to by apologists. But we find something even better, in M. Leon Poliakov’s book: “The proposal of the Protestant Church in France that, together with the Roman Church, they should take some measures against the rounding-up of Jews, during the Summer of 1942, was rejected by the Catholic dignitaries”.(129)

Many Parisians still remember how the Jewish children were taken from their mothers and sent, by special trains, to the crematory furnaces of Auschwitz. These deportations of children are confirmed, amongst several other official documents, in a note of the “SS Haupsturmfuhrer Danneker”, dated 21st of July 1942.

The awful callousness of the Roman Church—and of its chief in particular—inspired, not long ago, these revengeful lines from the aforementioned periodical “L’Arche”:

“Over five years, Nazism was the author of outrage, profanation, blasphemy and crime. Over five years, it massacred six million Jews. Amongst these six million, 1,800,000 were children. Who, yes, who said once: let the little children come unto me? And for what reason “Let them come unto me so that I can butcher them?” The militant Pope has been followed by a diplomatic pope.

From occupied Paris, we go to Rome, occupied also by the Germans after the Italian collapse. Here is a message addressed to von Ribbentrop, Nazi Foreign Affairs minister:

“German Embassy at the Holy See. Rome, 28th of October 1943. Even though urged on every side, the pope has not expressed any demonstrative reprobation of the deportation of Jews from Rome. He can expect our enemies to reproach him in this attitude, and see it exploited by the Protestants of Anglo-Saxon countries in their propaganda against Catholicism; when considering this delicate question, the endangerment of our relations with the German government was the deciding factor…”
Signed: Ernst von Weiszaeker (130)

(128) “L’Arche”, November 1958.
(129) See earlier on.
(130) “Secret archives of the Wilhelmstrasse”.

When relating the career of this Baron von Weiszaeker—tried as a war criminal “for having prepared extermination lists”—”Le Monde” of the 27th of July 1947 wrote:

“Perceiving a German defeat, he had himself appointed at the Vatican, taking this opportunity to work closely with the Gestapo”. For the benefit of our readers not yet fully convinced, we will quote the following official German document which sets out the Vatican’s dispositions—and those of the Jesuits—towards the Jews, before the war: “Studying the evolution of anti-semitism in the United States, we note with interest that the number of listeners to the radio broadcasts of Father Coughlin (a Jesuit), well known for his anti-semitism, exceeds 20 millions”.(131)

The militant anti-semitism of the Jesuits in the United States, as everywhere else, is not surprising on the part of these ultramontanes, as it is in perfect accord with the “doctrine”. Let us see what M. Daniel-Rops, of the French Academy, has to say on the subject; this author specialises in pious literature and publishes only under the auspices of “the Imprimatur”. We read in one of his best known works, “Jesus and His times”, published in 1944, during the German occupation:

“Over the centuries, wherever the Jewish race was scattered, blood flowed, and always the call for murder uttered at Pilate’s judgment hall drowned the cry of despair repeated a thousand times. The face of a persecuted Jewish nation fills History, but it cannot obliterate this other face, smeared with blood and spittle, for which the Jewish crowd felt no pity. No doubt, Israel had no choice in the matter and had to kill its God after disowning Him, and, as blood mysteriously calls for blood, Christian charity may have no choice either; should not the divine will compensate with the horror of the progroms the unbearable horror (the Crucifixio’) (132)

How well said! Or, to put it more bluntly: if millions of Jews had to go through the gas chambers and crematory furnaces of Auschwitz, Dachau and elsewhere, it was their just desert. This adversity was wanted by the “divine will” and “Christian charity” would err if turning towards them. The eminent professor M. Jules Isaac, president of the “Amitie judeo- chretienne”, exclaimed when referring to this passage:

(131) “Secret archives of the Wilhelmstrasse”, (document 83-26 19/1, Berlin 25th of January 1939). (132) Daniel-Rops: “Jesus en son temps” (Artheme Fayard, Paris 1944, pp.526, 527). Imprimatur, 17th of April 1944.

“These terrible and blasphemous phrases provoke an unbearable horror themselves”, aggravated the more by a note which says: “Amongst the Jews today…, some of them… try to shrug off this heavy responsibility… Honourable sentiments indeed, but we cannot go contrary to the evidence of History… the terrible weight (of Jesus’ death) which Israel must bear is not up to men to reject”.(133)

M. Jules Isaac brings to our notice that the phrases in question have been altered by the publisher “in the more recent editions” of this edifying book—that is to say, after the Liberation. There is “a time” for everything: the crematory furnaces were out-dated.

So, from the doctrinal affirmation of the papacy’s high principles to their putting into practice by Himmler, “our Ignatius of Loyola”, the ring is closed—and we will add the half mad anti-semitism of the Fuhrer thus loses much of its mystery.

But—going back to this subject—does it not also shed more light on that baffling individual?

The things which were imagined, before the war, in an attempt to explain the evident disproportion between the man and the part he had to play! There was a gap, an obvious vacuum felt by all. To fill this gap, legends were abounding: stories were spread abroad not always without the secret purpose of misleading!, Occult sciences, oriental magicians, astrologers inspired, so we were told, the sleep-walking hermit of Berchtesgaden. And the choice of the swastika as the Nazi party’s insigna, which originated from India, seemed to corroborate the idea.

M. Maxime Mourin refuted this particular assertion:

“Adolf Hitler had been a pupil at the school of Lambach and sang amongst the choir boys in the abbey bearing the same name. He discovered the swastika there, as it was the heraldic sign of Father Hagen, the abbey’s administrator”.( 134)

The Fuhrer’s “inspirations” are also easily explained, without having to resort to mysterious or exotic philosophies. If it is obvious that this “son of the Catholic Church”, as he was described by Franco, was submitted to the impulses of mysterious leaders, we know also that these had nothing to do with oriental magic.

The earthly hells which devoured 25 million victims bear another stamp, easily recognisable: the one of people who had to go through a lengthy and meticulous training, as prescribed in the “Spiritual Exercises” (of the Jesuits).

(133) Jules Isaac: “Jesus et Israel” (Albin Michel, Paris 1948, p.382). (134) Maxime Mourin: “Histoire des Grandes Puissances” (Payot. Paris 1958, p.134).177

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