KGB INTENT ON LINKING PIUS XII WITH NAZIS

MONK here something interesting

Linking Pius XII to the German Nazis may be historical hoax. Pius XII in dire straits to save The Church from destruction by Hitler, bent on intalling new Nazi religion. All Pius XII did was to save Roman Catholics who were in peril under Hitler, although it was RC who elected Hitler in power in 1933.

However, there is one acronym that links Pius XII to the Nazis and it is not KGB.

It is NDH (ISC, Independent State of Croatia, Nazi state and Axis member that existed 1941-45)

Vatican has supported Nazi regime in Croatia although RC were not in peril there like in Germany or elsewhere.

Roman Catholic clergy and nuns took an active role in murdering of over 700 000 Christian Serbs and 60 000 Jews. Roman Catholic priest Draganovic even presided over commission that confiscated the property of murdered Serbs and Jews and distriubuted it to Roman Catholic Croats, strictly against The Canon of RC Church. Instead of being defrocked, he was sent to Vatican.

After Hitler was dead and Nazism defeated in May 1945, Vatican helped fuehrer of NDH Ante Pavelic to hide in Vatican and safely flee to Argentina through the ratlines.

The loot of Croatian Nazis was safeguarded by Vatican banks.

After the war Pius XII elevated Archbishop Stepinac, the head of Church in Croatia to the level of Cardinal.

There was no Hitler around to justify being soft on Nazis. It was out of free will.

Yep, I always knew this was propaganda but never figured it was instigated by the KGB. Very interesting. I have had to defend the church in this for years but the big lie has been well set for a long time.

Another thing that Putin won't admit the USSR did...

I've read that the KGB staged some anti-Semetic incidents (desecration of cemeteries) around Western Europe in 1960 to sow distrust between Germany and the rest of Europe.

They wanted people to think the Nazis were rising again.

Well... there have been priests that collaborated and stepped down, its not like it couldn't have been a possibility.

...as if hes infallible or anything.

ping

What you have been saying for years.

Was it Churchill or Chesterton who said that a lie goes around the world while truth is putting on its pants?

Those are absolutely preposterous and defamatory accusations. Your vicious accusations are as false as the ones made by Nazis and Communists against the Church. The slander campaign against the Catholic Church and the memory of Pope Pius XII was started with Rolf Hochhuth’s play, Der Stellvertreter, (The Deputy in Broadway). This play initiated in 1963 a campaign of denigration falsely accusing the Pope as responsible for Jewish deaths by failing to protest publicly Nazi atrocities.

History contradicts Hochhuth’s vicious slander. Already in 1945, Moshe Sharett, Israel’s first Foreign Minister, and later second Prime Minister, met Pius XII and said: “I told him that my first duty was to thank him, and through him, the Catholic Church, on behalf of the Jewish people, for all they had done in various countries to rescue Jews, to save children and Jews in general.”

Jewish historian Paidiel, of the Yad Vashem, stated that “monasteries, convents, shrines, and religious houses were opened to the fleeing Jews, and their needs attended to, without any overt intention to steer them away from their ancient faith, solely to abide by the preeminent religious command of the sanctity of life. Through this, they epitomized the best and most elevated form of religious faith and human fidelity.”

Hochhuth’s outrageous assertions, while dismissing public declarations of gratitude given by the founders of the Sate of Israel for the rescue of Jews sponsored by Pius XII and the Catholic Church alleging that such leaders were misinformed or playing politics. In fact, there is not a public figure in the world who has received so many expressions of gratitude and recognition by the Jewish community as Pius XII.

Jewish historian and leading authority on the Holocaust, Jeno Levai, has shown that the Pope did not remain silent when his word would save lives. Levai, the only foreign Jew invited as an expert at the Eichman trial in Jerusalem, spoke in defense of Pius XII in the courtroom and repudiated Hochhuth’s judgement unreservedly. In 1963, when the play opened, a number of diplomats accredited to the Vatican during the war publicly rejected the playwright’s thesis, most notably among them, Dr. Robert M. Kempner, deputy chief U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials.

Kemper, who had access to the Secret Services and of Hitler’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs archives, revealed that Pius XII and the Catholic Church sent a great number of protests, direct and indirect, diplomatic and public, secret and explicit, to which the Nazis never responded. Kemper publicly defended the role and charity endeavors of Pius XII

Some of the most outspoken diplomats in defense of Pius XII were Wladimir d’Ormesson, member of the French Academy, Albert von Kessel, attaché to the wartime German embassy, Ambassadors Grippenberg of Finland, Gunnar Haggelof of Sweden, and British Minister to the Vatican, Sir Francis d’Arcy Osborne. In point, Mr. D’Arcy’s letter in protest to the play was printed in the program for the West End performance of the Hochhuth’s play in London by order of the British government.

In “The Deputy” Hotchhouth tried to break the bond created during the war between Jews and Catholics. In his play “The Soldiers”, Hochhuth tried to implicate Winston Churchill in the death of General Wladyslaw Sikorski, President and Commander in Chief of Armed Forces of the Polish government in exile in London. This time Hotchhouth didn’t find an audience willing to accept such a foul slander, in stark contrast to the Pius XII’s smear that appeals to anti-Catholic bigots who are always ready to attack the Church no matter how preposterous the charges. David Frost (the famous English interviewer) discredited Hochhuth in front of television cameras.

General Sikorski died in a plane crash over Gibraltar and the unscrupulous playwright waited after the death of Winston Churchill to follow the same tactic of character assassination he used in his play written after the death of Pius XII. It seems that the former militant in the Nazi Youth movement couldn’t get rid of the hatred towards Jews, Catholics and the Allied leaders, instilled in his soul by his Nazis indoctrinators.

THE FORGOTTEN VICTIMS OF THE HOLOCAUST. The persecution of Catholics.

Without belittling the unspeakable horrors suffered by Jews, we should not ignore the fact that millions of Catholics were also victims of the Holocaust, as were gypsies, homosexuals, and in much less scale, Orthodox and Protestants. Poland had the biggest Jewish population in Europe and was the only country where there was a mandatory death penalty for those hiding Jews. Many, who were caught sheltering Jews, were killed in a gruesome manner, such as being publicly burned as a warning to others.

Although not every Catholic was a victim of the Nazis, it is certain that all the Jews were victims of Hitler’s hatred. Hitler’s “Final Solution” was targeted to the total extermination of the Jewish race-an abhorrent and unforgivable crime against humanity.

We should keep in mind the prevailing situation of complete despair throughout Europe at the beginning of the forties. The Germans already occupied Poland, France, Belgium, Holland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, and Norway; and the invasion of the Soviet Union was going on while England was being bombed daily in preparation for the eventual invasion. The United States stayed out of the war until December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked the American naval base in Pearl Harbor. The neutral nations, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Sweden and the Vatican, were the only temporarily remaining free territories. Without any military force, all the Pope had was his powerful moral pulpit to encounter the all powerful and victorious German troops. Although the Vatican was neutral, The Church and its flock were being brutally attacked and decimated in the Nazi’s occupied countries.

According to historian William J. O’Malley, S.J., “to the genocide of six millions Jews we have to add nine to ten millions Slavic victims (Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Yugoslavs) who were eliminated-not in war, not as saboteurs, not as guerrillas, but sorely because they were Slavic.” The Nazi’s genocide, based on race, should also include half a million gypsies who, just as the Slavs, were executed because they were not member of the superior race, the Aryans. The Nazis in Poland alone murdered more than 3 million Catholics together with over 3 million Jews. (13)

About 2,800 clergymen were interned between 1940 and 1945, at Dachau, the infamous Nazi concentration camp. Among them, 2,579 were Catholic clergymen, 109 Protestants, 30 orthodox and two Moslem clergymen. The Catholics came from 38 nations; 1,780 were Polish, 447 German and Austrian, 109 Czech and Slovaks, 50 Yugoslavs, 156 French, 63 Dutch. The auxiliary Polish Bishop of Wladislava died of typhus while imprisoned at Dachau. At least 1034 died in the camp, some victims of medical experimentation by the infamous Dr. Rascher. In 1940, 800 priests died in Buchenwald, 1,200 in 1942 and 3,000 in 1943. And that was just in Buchenwald.

As O’Malley, pointed out, “That figure, surprising as it might be, does not include the clergy or nuns who were shot, beheaded or tortured to death in squares and alleys and jails all over Europe…In France, in February 1944, the Gestapo had arrested 162 priests, of whom 123 were shot or decapitated before ever reaching any camp. According to the International Tribunal at Nuremburg, 780 priests died of exhaustion at Mauthausen and 300 at Sachsenhausen, and there were hundreds of other camps in the network. Nor does the total figure of 2,771 take into consideration that one-quarter to one-third of those shipped to any camps often arrived dead.” (14)

Polish Cardinal Stephan Wyszynski, in his prison memoirs, notes that he was the only member of his ordination class who escaped the concentration camps; seven died in Dachau; of the six who survived the concentrations camps, several soon died as the result of torture and medical experimentation. It is estimated that the Nazis imprisoned half of the Polish clergy.

The Pope not only had to answer to the pleas from the Jews, but also to those from his own flock. Quite an extraordinary burden to bear. In March 1942 a shattering letter from the Polish Archbishop Sapieha arrived to the Vatican: “Our condition is in truth most tragic, he wrote to the Pope, deprived of almost all human rights, delivered to the cruelty of men lacking for the most part any human sentiment, we live continuously under horrible terror in constant danger of losing everything, either by trying to escape or by deportation, or incarceration in the so-called concentration camps, from which few come out alive. In these camps thousands and thousands of our brothers are held, without any judicial trial, people wholly innocent. Among them there are many priests, secular and religious…to these things the typhus is now added spreading more and more daily.” (15)

Catholic martyrdom was rich in examples of courage.

Catholic martyrdom was rich in examples of courage. When Msgr. Andrew Szeptyckyi was consecrated as Archbishop of Lwow of the Ruthenians, he asked the Pope during the ceremony, an explicit vocation for martyrdom. With that idea he approached Himmler personally on behalf of the Jews; their fate rent his noble spirit. There were many Catholics such as Oskar Schindler and St. Maximilian Kolbe who in brotherly love risked and even offered their own lives in behalf of the Jews.

Hitler, a self-proclaimed pagan, considered the Catholic Church on par with the Jews, as his mortal enemies.

It is documented that Hitler planned for the total obliteration of the Church. For Hitler Jews and Christians were the sources of every evil. “The heaviest blow to humanity” he once said, “was the coming of Christianity. Bolshevism is Christianity’s illegitimate child. Both are inventions of Jews.” In his diabolical mind, the extermination of the Jews would be needed for victory. Hitler designed and implemented a plan at Warthegau, in western Poland, to extirpate the Catholic and the Protestant churches from Europe. There is documentation that Count Von Galen, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Munster, who was an outspoken critic of the racial and eugenic policies of the Nazis, if it were not for the prominence and prestige of his position, would have been annihilated

In 1942, Pius XII told Fr. Paolo Dezza, rector of the Gregorian University, “They want to destroy the Church and crush it as a toad…there will be no place for the Pope in the new Europe, they say that I am going to America, I have no fear and I shall remain here.” (16) Among the many ideological fundaments shared by the Nazis and the Communist was the hatred for religion, specially the Catholic Church. The only form of worship allowed was the cult to the leader of the totalitarian state. Hungarian Cardinal Mindszenty went from a Nazi jail to a Communist jail after the war. There was no respite for Catholics after the War; in fact, the persecution of Catholics increased in the Soviet occupied countries.

In occupied Poland, Arthur Greiser was in charge of the annihilation of the Catholic Church…

Arthur Greiser was in charge of the annihilation of the Catholic Church and the creation of a national German Church loyal to the Führer in Warthegau. The final goal was the complete Germanization of that Polish region, to which end Greiser worked without respite. Bishops were driven out, priests killed or imprisoned. Within a few years one third of the pre-war 2,000 priests were dead and 700 imprisoned; seminaries were closed, the Catholic press and voluntary associations suppressed. The Holy See found itself desperately fighting in two fronts, for the survival of the Jews and for the survival of his own flock. The Church in a beleaguered Poland was being bled to death by the two great scourges of humanity, the Nazis and Communists. In Poland three million Catholics went to their death along with three million Jews at the Nazi’s concentration camps in addition to the millions murdered by the Soviets.

It is documented that, according to Robert M.W. Kempner, former U.S. Deputy Chief of Counsel at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, among the measures scheduled to follow upon Hitler’s victory were the following: “every Catholic State must select its own Pope”…(and) “the Bishop of Muenster will go before the firing squad one day.” Every propaganda move by the Catholic Church against Hitler’s Reich would have been not only “provoking suicide”, but would have hastened the execution of still more Jews and Priests. These and similar threats appeared in the diary of Alfred Rosenberg, the nazi theoretician of racial purity, and in Hitler’s Table Talk.

Millions of Catholics were victims first of the Nazis and later of the Communists.

Most Catholics were anti-Nazi and anti-Communist. We should not forget “the fact that hundreds of thousands of anti-Nazis from communist occupied territories as Poland, the Baltic States and Bessarabia, were sent by Moscow to German concentration camps, while hundreds of thousands of anti-Stalinists refugees living in Nazis territories were sent by Berlin to the Soviet concentration camps” as part of the Stalin / Hitler’s diabolical pact. Shamefully, the Western democracies did the same after WWII; thousands of anti-Communists who fled the Soviet Union during the war were forcedly deported to the Soviet concentration camps, the dreadful gulags. Entire families opted for suicide rather than deportation.

Jewish organizations and the Holy See work together in the rescue of Jews.

The efforts of the Vatican, in coordination with Jewish organizations, to save the Hungarian Jews during those tragic months is well documented in the chronicles of the Holy See day by day, week by week. On March 25, 1944 the Apostolic Delegate in Washington, Msgr. Cicognani, informed the Vatican that the Jewish War Refugee Board were urging that measures be taken to aid the nearly 2 million Jews from Hungary (and Romania) and the Polish refugees who were living under terror and persecution and now threatened with extinction.

The Nuncios insisted, many times unsuccessfully, that the baptized Jews had all the rights of the non-Jewish Catholics, and for the other Jews they demanded that they be treated according to the norms of fundamental human rights. Nuncio Msgr. Rotta protested to no avail to the prime minister, Dom Sztojay, and to the foreign minister himself: “The very fact of persecuting men merely on account of their racial origin, is a violation of the natural law.” It is estimated that Msgr. Rotta alone had given over 80,000 false baptism certificates as a safeguard for the Jews, but, as the Hungarian Foreign Minister replied to the Nuncio’s protestations, “the problem is one of race, which is not changed by baptism.”

The atrocities multiplied and the nuncio, as head of the diplomatic corps in Budapest, mobilized the Ambassadors of the four other neutral Nations. On August 21, Rotta and the envoys of Sweden, Spain, Portugal, and Switzerland, presented a very strong protest to the government. The deportations were “unjust in their motive-for it is absolutely inadmissible that men should be persecuted and put to death just because of their racial origin- and brutal in their execution”; (21) said the draft note written by Rotta. The indefatigable Nuncio and the Holy See continued their struggle in favor of the Jews.

On October 29, The Holy Father sent an open telegram to Hungarian Cardinal Seredi asking for a special day of prayers and a collection to help the Jews. Encouraged by the Pope, the Hungarian priests and religious opened their houses to the Jews. In the end, in spite of all the efforts, about 550,000 Hungarian and refugee Jews had died; 150,000 survived in Budapest and 40,000 in the provinces. As Jeno Levai, the foremost scholar of the Holocaust in Hungary, said of Pius XII that it was “a particularly regrettable irony that the one person in all occupied Europe who did more than anyone else to halt the dreadful crime and alleviate its consequences is today made the scapegoat for the failures of others.” (22)

Slovakia

The most heartbreaking and humiliating case for the Holy Father was that in Slovakia the head of State, Tiso, was a Catholic priest and the population mostly Catholic. Slovakia was a protectorate of Germany since 1939, and as such, the racial anti-Semite laws were applied. Dr. Livia Rotkirchen of Yad Vashem, affirms that it may be said that the letters of protest delivered by the Vatican during the years 1941-1944 prove sufficiently that the Vatican objected to the deportation of Jews from Slovakia and later added that they were backed by numerous oral pleas and protests. As everywhere else, the clergy and religious took Jews into hiding.

Unfortunately, there were other cases where the Catholics supported the Nazis. Some Catholics betrayed one of the main tenets of their faith, “to love your neighbor”, and were involved with the Nazi terror. But one cannot blame Pius XII, nor the Church for the actions of those who strayed from the faith-any more than one can not put the blame upon the Jewish leaders for the fact that there were Jewish Kapos and Jewish policemen who helped the Nazis enforce their extermination policies.

There are allegations that The Church helped some Nazis war criminals escape to South America after the end of the war. While it is fully proven and documented that The Church helped over 800,000 Jews to escape from certain death, there is not a single proven case of a Nazi criminal who had been helped to escape by the Vatican. That does not mean that there may exist a case in which a clergy helped a Nazi to escape, but certainly, not with the knowledge, and much less the approval, of the Holy See. We must not forget that the Nazis tortured thousands of Catholic priests and nuns to death.

To those seeking the truth, what a better witness than the testimony of Albert Einstein, the great Jewish physicist, who had first hand experience of the horrors of Nazism? In 1944 he said: “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 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,” Einstein concluded, “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.”(33

On December 16, 1929, the Vatican Nuncio in Germany, Eugene Pacelli, later Pope Pius XII, was recalled to Rome and elevated to the Sacred College of Cardinals, and, on February 7, 1930, he was named Secretary of State. His departure from Berlin was a remarkable event.

Enthusiastic crowds lined the way with torchlights and a warm speech by Cardinal Bertram who in the name of the whole German episcopate affirmed: “Your Excellency has succeeded in capturing popular affection.” In 1932 Cardinal Pacelli concluded the Concordat with Baden, in 1933 with Austria, and in 1935 with Yugoslavia. The new Cardinal was already recognized and respected worldwide.

It did not take long for Pius XI to confront Benito Mussolini’s Fascist regime. The Encyclical “Non Abbiamo Bisogno” was published in 1931 strongly condemning the Italian Fascist doctrines. Secretary of State Pacelli’s contribution was very important to this Encyclical. When the War broke in 1939, The Holy See tried unsuccessfully to keep Italy out of the War. On June 10, 1940 Mussolini entered the war in the side of Germany.

Hitler takes power over Germany

On January 30, 1933, the German President Hindeburg appointed Adolph Hitler as Chancellor. Since the elections in March 1933 the Nazis were the lawful government of the German people. With the help of the Nationalist allies they had a majority, though small, in the Reichstag. The Enabling Act, passed by the Reichstag, made them rulers with extraordinary powers and without a possibility of change for four years. Very soon, the Nazi regime was to become a brutal totalitarian state destroying the parliamentary democracy. It was the beginning of the end for the Weimar Republic.

According to Peter Gumbel, a prestigious historian with open access to the Vatican’s archives; even before the Nazis came to power, the German Bishops had already condemned the National Socialist Movement and prohibited Catholics from being associated with it or voting for it. On January 30, and on the March 5, 1933’s elections, virtually all the Catholics voted for the “Zentrum” Christian party, well known for its opposition to Hitler’s party.

England, France and Italy recognized the new German regime immediately and proceeded to sign what was called the “four countries pact”. Later, on July 20, 1933, the Holy See signed a Concordat with Germany.

Cardinal Pacelli visits United States in 1936

In October 1936, Cardinal Pacelli visited the United States where he stayed for one month and was accompanied in an 8,000-mile trip by his friend, Msgr. Spellman, then the Auxiliary Bishop of Cardinal O’Connor, Archbishop of Boston. The future Pope visited twelve of the sixteen ecclesiastical provinces, talked with seventy-nine bishops, visited religious institutions, colleges, hospitals, seminaries, and received honorary degrees from four universities. Before leaving Cardinal Pacelli had lunch at Hyde Park with President Roosevelt. This was the prelude of a long personal relationship and of cooperation between the Holy See and the U.S. One of the earliest fruits of that friendship was an innovation in American diplomacy. In the first year of the war, Myron C. Taylor was named “Special Representative of the President to the Vatican” in spite of strong Protestant opposition. As soon as Pacelli was elected Pope, he appointed Bishop Spellman as Archbishop of New York and later as a Cardinal. Spellman became a most trusted conduit during the years of collaboration between Pius XII and President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

You need to look up what "infallible" means.

Thats the "doctrine of infallibility", a Catholic concoction in itself. The word infallible means exactly what I already understood it to mean, as should any right minded person, to not err or make mistakes. God himself is infallible, correct? Does he occassionally make a mistake?Oh I forgot, the chair of Peter makes him perfect when he sits in it. (Snort)

Dqban22, quantity is not replacement for quality of information.

I did not speak about persecution of Roman Catholic Christian in German Nazi occupied Europe. Nor I spoke about Slovakia. It is irrelevant.

The question is Pope Pius XII role in the crime of genocide commited by Croatian Nazis during WWII.

Since you have skipped this issue ENTIRELY and resorted to straw man, I will repeat it again:

1. Upon creation of Nazi Independent State of Croatia, Croatian Nazi started unpecedented hunt on Serbs and Jews. According to German Wehrmacht, some 200 000 were murdered in the most bestial way until February 1942 alone.

2. Croatian Nazis publicly declared that their goal is to exterminate Orthodox Christians and make Croatia Roman Catholic within 10 years.

3. Horendous crimes were often commited by tacit support of local clergy. Especiallly in Herzegovina, Franciscans led the mobs into murderous rampage. Reports about this exists, not from Communists, but from Mostar Bishop, complaining to Archbishop Stepinac.

4. Concentration camp Jastrebarsko was created to exterminate Orthodox Children. RC Nuns were in Charge. Photographs and records are not from Communist sources, but from Red Cross.

5. Forced conversion of hundreds of thousands of Orthodox christians was enforced by Nazi regime and RC Church even created commision for conversions. Many converted were murdered soon after conversion ("we saved your soul, but we can not save your bodies")

6. After the war, Pius XII helped Croatian Nazis escape justice and flee to Argentina, helped save their loot to the present day and elevated Archbishop Stepinac to the level of Cardinal. There was NO persecution of RC at that time, no Hitler around.

I do not dispute what you have written about Western Europe and Slovakia, I point again at the direction you deliberately chose to ignore.

Croatian Nazis were not discreet, they bragged openly about their crimes and Church support. You can not dismiss it as Communist propaganda.

Croatia is RC Church darkest chapter. The role of PIUS XII in helping Croatian Nazis, what do you have to say about it?

You suffer from cranial rectumitis.

>>>>>You suffer from cranial rectumitis.>>>>>>

When someone resorts to vulgar personal insult (and wrong one at that, the proper insult is "cranio rectal inversion") in a public forum, it is mainly because he can not refute the ugly historical facts.

The issue here is Pius XII and his support to Nazi Croatia during the war and Croatian Nazis after the war, including the safeguarding of proceeds of genocide worth several billion dollars in Vatican banks.

The issue is ugly enough that Federal court deals with it.

Nazi Independent State of Croatia, Croatian Nazi

Nazi, Nazi. Please provide us with a link to contemporary sources that refer to the Croatian State as "Nazi". Ah, David Duke is a Nazi" isn't he? Or is that "Fascist"? In fact, the term "Nazi" was so to speak invented by the KGB after WWII and the division of Germany, to make a distinction between the "Good Germans" i.e. those in East Germany, and the "Bad Germans", the "revangists" in West Germany. Unfortunately, like much of KGB invented propaganda, that fiction has been accepted in the West, so that the persecutors of Jews during WWII are now referred to, not as Germans, but as some mythical undefined "Nazis", and of course the Poles, the Ukrainians, the Croatians, the Latvians, the Catholics. Congratulations on the command of Newspeak!

Your vicious slandering of Pius XII and the Catholic Church is just a product of a very sick mind at the service of the enemies of the Church. Never existed any friendly relationship of Pius XII and the Nazis, in fact Cardinal Eugene Pacelli was among the very few that condemned Hitler even before he took power, it is preposterous the alleged involvement or complicity of the Pope or the Church with Nazis’ crimes in Croatia or in any other country. Your false allegation is another proof of how far communist propaganda can survive the test of time and History.

The facts negate your vile and often-made baseless allegation by those who are blinded by ignorance and/or anti-Catholic bigotry. Unfortunately, many people of good will, lacking reliable information, had fallen victims to this campaign of character assassination against Pius XII and the Catholic Church.

There was never any ambiguity on the Vatican Secretary of State’s feelings about Hitler’s regime, and the Nazis knew it. When Cardinal Pacelli was elected Pope on March 2, 1939, the next day the Berlin Morgenpost (the Nazi party’s newspaper) wrote: “The election of Cardinal Pacelli is not accepted with favor in Germany because he was always opposed to Nazism and practically determined the policies of the Vatican under his predecessor.” (2)

According to Mother Pasqualina Lehner, his close collaborator, Nuncio Pacelli said of Hitler: “This man is completely carried away; everything he says and writes has the mark of his egocentrism; this man is capable of trampling on corpses and eliminating anything that is an obstacle. I cannot understand how there are so many people in Germany who do not understand him, and cannot draw conclusions from what he says or writes. Has any of them even read his horrifying ‘Mein Kampf’?” (3)

During Pacelli’s twelve years as Apostolic Nuncio in Germany (1917-29), he made 44 public speeches and in 40 of these attacked the fundamental tenets of the Communism and National Socialism. Already in April 1933, as Secretary of State of Pope Pius XI, he sent an urgent request to the new Nazi government “not to let it be influenced by anti-Semitic aims.”

On April 28, 1935, at Lourdes, where he went as the Pope Legate, Pacelli said to 250,000 pilgrims: “They (the Nazis) are in reality only miserable plagiarists who dress up old errors with new tinsel. It does not make any difference whether they flock to the banners of social revolution, whether they are guided by a false conception of the world of life, or whether they are possessed by the superstition of a race and blood cult.” (4) Certainly, these were very strong words coming from such a consummated diplomat.

Hitler’s discussions with his closest collaborators, as well as the diaries and decrees by Goebbles, Bormann, Rosenberg and Himmler, denote that from the beginning Hitler and his followers were motivated by a pathological hatred toward the Catholic Church. All those who did not adhere unconditionally to their way of thinking and acting were considered and treated as enemies, who had to be annihilated, said Fr.Gumpel.

As Jewish historian Dr. Joseph L. Litchen wrote in the Anti-Defamation Bulletin for October, in 1958, commenting on Pius XII, “the new Vicar of Christ” said Litchen, “showed no softening after his election toward Hitler’s brutal policies; Pius the Pope was the same as Pacelli the priest.” (5)

Pius XII had a deep knowledge of Germany where he served for 13 years as Papal Nuncio during Pope Benedictus XV and Pius XI. No other world leader at that time was more aware than him of the evil nature of Nazism and Communism, the two ideologies that were to bring rivers of blood to mankind. A consummated and experienced diplomat, Pacelli was well groomed by Pius XI to be his successor. There was an extraordinary spiritual and ideological communion between these two great Popes; they both were of one mind. Pacelli dedicated his life to the service of God, The Church, and mankind, through five decades of indefatigable struggle for world peace.

In 1928 the Holy Office had already condemned anti-Semitism. On September 6, 1938, Pius XI told a group of Belgian pilgrims: “Through Christ and in Christ, we are spiritual descendants of Abraham.” Incontrovertible facts prove the extraordinary efforts that Pius XI, Pius XII, and the Catholic Church made in saving the Jews during the Holocaust.

As early as 1935, Cardinal Pacelli describes Nazism as diabolical

Before becoming Pope, and as early as 1935, Pius XII had described as “diabolical” the new German

Regime in conversations with the French Ambassador to the Holy See, Charles-Roux, while the rest of the world were willingly accepting Hitler’s power grasp upon the German government. The Duke of Windsor visited Hitler and Lloyd George even went so far as to call him the “greatest living German”! In the U.S. there were also people in high positions who were openly sympathizers of Hitler, such as Henry Ford I, who was also a strong anti-Semitic.

In 1937, Pius XI published the Encyclical “Mit Brennender Sorge,” stating that Catholics must never be anti-Semite.

On March 14, 1937, before it was fashionable to denounce the German Führer as a villain and long before the creation of the concentration camps and the gas chambers, Pius XI, ably seconded by his Secretary of State, wrote the Encyclical “Mit Brennender Sorge” meaning “with burning anxiety”. It dealt with the nazi threat to racial minorities and specifically the Jews addressing the Encyclical directly to the German people. The Encyclical exhorted that Catholics must never be anti-Semitic because “we are all Semites spiritually” and ought to hold the Jewish people in high regard accordingly. The Encyclical exposed to the world the III Reich’s persecution of the Catholic Church as well as the incompatibility between the principles of the National Socialism and those of the Catholic faith. The German government prohibited the entrance of the Encyclical to the country and it became necessary to smuggle it into Germany under the nose of the ruthless Gestapo. On Sunday March 21, The Encyclical was read from 12,000 Catholic pulpits across Germany. As a result, the Nazi’s campaign of innuendoes against The Church as well as the persecution of Catholics worsened.

The German Catholic hierarchy thanked Pope Pius XI for the letter, which strongly condemned both, racism and anti-Semitism. The Pope pointed to Cardinal Pacelli saying that it was he who had been responsible for the Encyclical. It was the Secretary of State, who asked the German Cardinal Faulhaber to submit a draft text, which he amended carefully. Pacelli also bore the burden of its defense when the Encyclical was the subject of strong German diplomatic protests; he did so personally, not by delegation.

The Vatican condemns Communism with the Encyclical “Divini Redemptori” in 1937

Pius XI and his Secretary of State were following the Magisterium of the Church when they published on March 19, 1937, the Encyclical “Divini Redemptori.” It was a most comprehensive and devastating condemnation of Communism as “intrinsically perverse.” Already Pius IX, as early as 1846, pronounced in the Encyclical “Qui pluribus,” a solemn condemnation of Communism “that infamous doctrine which is absolutely contrary to natural law itself, and if once adopted would utterly destroy the rights, the property and possessions of all men, and even society itself.” Pope Leo XIII in his Encyclical “Quod apostolici muneri,” defined communism as “the fatal plague that insinuates itself into the very marrow of human society only to bring about its ruin.” Pius XI and Pius XII were highly active, energetic and zealous opponents of totalitarianism and oppression in every form-for them, National Socialism and Communism were both intrinsically evil.

Pope Pius XII’s first Encyclical, “Summi Pontificatus”, in 1939, attacks Nazism and Communism

Pius XII’s first encyclical on October 27, 1939, “Summi Pontificatus” reiterated the attack on the German regime and the Gestapo was ordered to prevent its distribution. In it, the Pope declared his position “against exacerbated nationalism, the idolatry of the state, totalitarianism, racism, the cult of brutal force, contempt of international agreements”, against all the characteristics of Hitler’s political system; he laid the responsibility for the scourge of the war on these aberrations. The Allies airdropped 88,000 copies of the Encyclical over Germany.

Jewish historian Richard Breitman has written five books, one on the Holocaust and another on Nazism. He is, up to this day, the only person authorized to study the OSS secret documents of U.S. espionage during WWII. The Italian newspaper “Corriere della Sera.” interviewed him on June 29, 2000. In the article, Breitman not only confirms the role played by Pius XII in defending and safeguarding the persecuted during the Nazi regime but he also found “the Allied silence on the Holocaust surprising. Their first testimonies are from the end of 1942…” He also remarked that the documents denoted how the Nazis considered that the Vatican was in the side of the Allies.

Pius XII, a man of great personal courage dared to be involved in a high risk venture that could even endanger the very existence of The Church-the support of the internal resistance to the Nazis inside the German Armed Forces. The French and the British governments were deaf to the pleas of the Vatican to assist the German internal resistance to the Nazi government. From the very beginning Pius XII tried to persuade the Allies to support the inside German opposition, but they did not heed the Pope.

A number of anti-Nazi plotters inside the Abwehr, the intelligence branch of the armed forces, made repeated, and ultimately futile attempts through the Holy See to reach and persuade the British to back, or even to talk with the German resistance. They were all killed in the July 20, 1944; plot to assassinate Hitler, the last in a long line of foiled attempts to get rid of the dictator. The leader, a Roman Catholic officer, Count Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg was shot on he spot. Other conspirators, mostly Protestants, were not so lucky; they were hung by using piano strings from butchers’ hooks and filmed on Hitler’s orders so that he could watch it himself later.

According to historian O’Carroll, in 1983 the Italian magazine Gente, published the testimony of General Wolff, the commander of the German forces in Italy during WWII. He revealed that in 1943 Pius XII had invited him to the Vatican and tried to persuade him to end the war in Italy on his own initiative. General Wolff was impressed and gave the matter thought; he finally decided against the Pope’s plea. But he recorded the immense personal impression that Pius XII made on him. We already mentioned how the whole leadership of the Italian resistance found refugee in the Church’s facilities in Rome.

Pius XII also served as a conduit for an offer made by a group of anti-Nazi German generals to topple Hitler from power. They wanted to know if the British would make peace with Germany if they succeeded in arresting Hitler and removing him from power. The proposal was made by Colonel-General Ludwig Beck (four star general), who latter was made chief of the German General Staff, but who resigned in 1938 convinced that Hitler was a criminal. Pius XII had known Beck when he was Nuncio in Berlin and “highly esteemed his honesty and integrity.”

The Pope also allowed the Vatican diplomatic corps, which was protected by diplomatic immunity, to carry messages between the Allied powers. There was a close collaboration between the Vatican and the Allies’ intelligence services. In fact, the Vatican forewarned Holland and Belgium of the upcoming German invasion.

Historical facts prove your baseless and defamatory attacks against His Holiness Pius XII and the Catholic Church. His Holiness risked the mere survival of the Catholic Church trying to save the lives of victims of Nazis’ persecution regardless of their race or creed.

CARDINAL STEPINAC A SAINTLY MAN WAS PERSECUTED AND DIFAMED BY NAZIS AND COMMUNISTS.

JEWS HONOR HIS MEMORY

Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac and saving the Jews in Croatia during the WW2
© by Darko Zubrinic, Zagreb (1997)
I will live a pure life in my house and will never tolerate evil
(The Bible, Psalm 101)

Whoever saves one life
is as though he had saved the entire world
(The Old Testament; motto of Yad Vashem)

The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, Jerusalem, or in Hebrew - Yad Vashem, was founded by the Israeli Knesset in 1953. Its main objective is not only to keep memory on the Jewish victims of the atrocities of the WW2, but also to keep memory on those brave people (non Jews) who risked their lives to save the Jews throughout Europe. Yad Vashem therefore established a special honour for The Righteous among the Nations.

There are about hundred persons in Croatia who obtained "The Certificate of Honour" and "The Medal of the Righteous" from Yad Vashem in Jerusalem till now. Their names can be seen in "The Honour Wall in the Garden of the Righteous" in Jerusalem.

We would like to mention only a few of these Croatian Righteous:

Rev. Dragutin Jesih, from Scitarjevo near Zagreb, killed during the WW2. The Jews he saved were sent to him by Croatian Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac. Also the local peasants helped to save their lives.

Prof.dr Zarko Dolinar, a well known Croatian intellectual (biologist) working in Switzerland, saved (together with his brother) about 300 Jews.

Mate Ujevic, Croatian lexicographer and writer, editor in chief of the Croatian encyclopedia (1938-1945), who saved his close collaborator and friend Manko Berman from the infamous Jasenovac concentration camp, together with sisters Stefa and Hermina Müller, and took care about their property.

Sisters (nuns) Cecilija and Karitas Jurin.
Ljubica Stefan, a well known historian (she also risked her life while staying in Belgrade until 1992, when Croatia was already in flames after the aggression of Serbia and the Yugoslav Army; there she managed to prepare in secret her richly documented books about the history of Fascism and anti-Semitism in Serbia during the WW2).
See the list of Croatian Righteous.

There is no doubt that one day the Croatian Archbishop (later the Cardinal) Alojzije Stepinac (1898-1960) will be included into this list. An official request to the Israeli Yad Vashem for the posthumous inclusion of dr Alojzije Stepinac to the list of Righteous has been sent by dr Amiel Shomrony and dr Igor Primorac, now both citizens of Israel. The request has been sent twice, for the first time in 1970, and then in 1994, and both times refused. Bear in mind that only saved Jews and their descendants have the right to nominate candidates to Yad Vashem. Official Jewish organization in Croatia did not send such a request yet.

According to solidly based data he saved several hundred Jews during the WW2: either by direct action, or by secret rescripts to the clergymen, including mixed marriages, conversion to Catholicism, as did some Righteous in other European countries (in Greece for instance).

Already in 1936 Stepinac began to support materially and by other means Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria in Croatia. In 1937, while only 39 years old, he became Archbishop. In 1938 he founded "Action for help to refugees." Archbishop Stepinac also founded Croatian Caritas. In January 11, 1939 he sent a request to 298 addresses of eminent Croats asking for help:

Dear Sir,
Due to violent and inhuman persecutions, a large number of people had to leave their homeland. They are left without means for normal life, and wander throughout the world...

Every day a large number of emigrants contact us asking for intervention, for help in money and goods. It is our Christian duty to help them... I am free to address to You, as a member of our Church, to ask for support for our fund in favour of emigrants. I ask You to write Your free monthly allotment on the enclosed leaflet.

Signature: Alojzije Stepinac, the Zagreb Archbishop

In a confidential rescript sent to Croatian clergy in 1941, Archbishop Stepinac wrote: "The role and task of Christians is on the first place to save people. When this time of madness and wildness is over, only those will remain in our Church who converted out of their own conviction, while others, when the danger is over, will return to their faith." Archbishop Stepinac also gave another instruction to his clergy to issue the certificate of baptism to endangered Jews and Serbs whenever they asked for. This was done with all procedures maximally simplified, often with false names. To our knowledge, these efforts are unique in the occupied part of Europe.

See also about amazing involvement of Croatian secondary school pupils in saving the Jews and Serbs in Croatia, which is without precedent in the history of WW2.

At the same time the metropolitan bishop of the Serbian Orthodox Church Josif Cvijic sent to all of his clergy a public rescript ordering the prohibition of conversion of Jews to Pravoslav (i.e. Orthodox Christian) faith. In this way the destiny of all Jews in Serbia has been sealed up, and after May 1942 there are no more Jews. Also an "Appeal to Serbian people" to support Nazi occupying forces in Serbia has been signed by 545 leading intellectuals in Belgrade in August 1941.

Stepinac most resolutely defended mixed marriages contracted in the Catholic Church. Already in March 1941 he sent a letter to Ante Pavelic where he wrote the following:

...As a representative of Catholic Church, and following my holiest duty, I raise my voice against interference of the state into questions of lawful marriages, that are insolvable, regardless to racial affiliation. There is no state authority having the right to solve these marriages. If it uses physical power, then the state is perpetrating ordinary violence.
On the other hand, it is known that also in the highest circles of our state administration there are similar marriages that are insolvable.

He alluded on Pavelic himself, whose wife seems to have been a Jew (Pavelic's mather-in law was Jewish - Ivana Herzfeld), as well as 12 other highest state officials, whose wifes were either Jewish or Serbian, see [Kristo], p. 141, or [Stefan], p. 15 (the Jewish community in Zagreb has no available data).

Kristian Krekovic, a famous Croatian painter, made several portraits of Pavelic. Krekovic's wife was a Jew (Sina Pevner), educated as pianist and polyglot, born in Paris, daughter of outstanding surgeon in Paris. She lived with Kristian Krekovic in Zagreb during the whole period of WWII (information by mr. Anto Cigeljevic). They both left Zagreb and Croatia in 1946 immediately after the humiliating mock trial (that is, soon after the Yugoslav communist rule started), with the status of displaced persons in their passports.

And here is another letter of protest sent by Archbishop Stepinac to Pavelic in July 1941:

As an Archbishop and representative of the Catholic Church I am free to call your attention to some events that touch me painfully. I am sure there will be hardly anyone having the courage to point to them, so it is my duty to do it. I hear from various sides about inhuman and cruel treatment of non-Arians...
Among the Jews that Stepinac managed to save there were also 60 inmates of the Jewish Old People's Home in Zagreb, that the German authorities in Zagreb ordered in December 6, 1943 to leave within 10 days, otherwise they would be sent to a German concentration camp. Upon the request of the members of the Jewish community in Zagreb, Alojzije Stepinac organized their stay in archbishopric's building in Brezovica near Zagreb, of course with the knowledge of the ustasha officials. Archbishop Stepinac often visited them. It is interesting that the inmates stayed there until 1947, while the Archbishop was already in the communist prison since 1946. Five of the inmates died a natural death during this period. It is regrettable that the total number of saved persons is often unjustly reduced to 55, even by the official Jewish sources in Croatia (as was the case in the ``Voice of the Jewish Community in Zagreb'', in an article written by dr Ivo Goldstein).

In the beginning of 1943 the Zagreb Chief Rabbi dr Miroslav Shalom Freiberger accepted an offer of Archbishop dr Alojzije Stepinac and entrusted him his very valuable private library. The Chief Rabbi had been killed in Auschwitz in 1943. He was arrested in 1943, when Himmler himself arrived to Zagreb, dissatisfied with the way the ustasha regime is "solving the Jewish problem" in Croatia. Stepinac immediately sent a request for his liberation to state officials, but without success. It should be noted that Chief Rabbi Freiberger did not accept an offer by Archbishop Stepinac to take refuge on his court until the end of war, since he wanted to share the destiny of his people. The library was returned to the Jewish community in Zagreb after the end of WW2.

Already in the beginning of NDH in 1941, a group 83 outstanding Croatian physicians of Jewish nationality, mostly with their families, were moved to Bosnia, at that time a part of NDH, to be away from the eyes of German Nazists (see [Jasa Romano, pp. 95-99]). Otherwise they would be liquidated. This has been organized by the NDH minister of health, dr Ivan Petric, with the knowledge and approval of highest NDH officials, including Ante Pavelic (see Ha-Kol, 5960/1999, bulletin of the Jewish community in Zagreb, p. 11; the number of 71 saved Jewish families mentioned in Ha-Kol is wrong: there were 83 families, see the aforementioned monograph of Jasa Romano). An important role in saving these Jewish families had prof.dr Ante Vuletic, 1999 Croatian Righteous (awarded posthumously). The role of these physicians in Bosnia was to struggle against infectious diseases, and against endemic syphilis on the first place.

One of the greatest German speaking actresses of the 20th century was a Jew - Tilla Durieux (1880-1971). In 1933 she escaped in front of the Nazis from Germany to Switzerland, and then to the town of Opatija. In 1941 she happened in Serbia, where chetniks killed her husband. She managed to escape to Crotian capital Zagreb, where (during the NDH period) her life had been saved. It is interesting that she collaborated in Kazaliste lutaka (Theatre of Dolls) in Zagreb. She lived in Zagreb until 1955, that is, for about 20 years, and then returned to West Berlin. Tilla Durieux wrote an interesting autobiographic book, and a little known theatre play "Zagreb 1945", which was performed in Luzern in Switzerland. There is a memorial room devoted to her in the Museum of the City of Zagreb. (Glas Koncila, 2. travnja 2000, p. 21).

Dissatisfied with "solving the Jewish problem" in NDH during WW2, Himmler himself arrived to Zagreb in 1943. In an extensive raid that ensued many Jews were transported to Auschwitz. This has been witnessed by dr Amiel Shomrony, now Israeli citizen, personal secretary of rabbi Miroslav Shalom Freiberger. Even Eugen Dido Kvaternik, chief of the ustasha police (his grandfather was Josip Frank - a Jew), sent a secret message to dr Amiel Shomrony (his name in Zagreb was Emil Schwartz) to save himself as he can.

Dr Juraj Vranesic, a well known Zagreb physician, was hiding two Jews - Milan Sachs (conductor of the Zagreb Opera) and his wife in his sanatorium from 1941 until the end of WW2 (personal information by Ljubica Stefan). Vranesic, who also saved Miroslav Krleza from ustashis, was sentenced to death by YU communists in 1947. There were no Jews to initiate his nomination at Yad Vashem, though he deserved it (and still deserves), like many other anonymous Croatian Righteous. It is also known that there were plenty of Jews in Zagreb wishing to witness in favour of Archbishop Stepinac in the process raised against him in 1946, but were not allowed to (see [Stefan], p 92). Moreover, Dr Amiel Shomrony was adviced not to arrive to Zagreb to witness in favour of Stepinac, under the cynical pretext that nobody could guarantee his return to Israel.

Though it can in no way efface the shame of the ustasha regime, it should be said that the Jewish community in Zagreb was the only one in Europe that acted legally in NDH during the whole WW2 in the period 1941-45 (Tomislavov trg 4).

According to a report of the British Naval Intelligence Division from 1944, the Croatian "Roman Catholic clergy, following the example of monsignor Stepinac, the Zagreb Archbishop, energetically protested against ustasha persecutions of Serbs and Jews, as well as against government's attempts for forced conversion to Roman Catholicism" (written by experts from Oxford and Cambridge in 1944, with note `only for official use'). See Stefan, pp. 127-131.

Cardinal Stepinac in prison
Charles Billich, see source

Only two days after the arrest of Stepinac in 1946 a protest conference was organized by Louis Breier in New York (Bronx), at that time the president of the Jewish community in the USA. He declared:

This great man was tried as a collaborator of Nazism. We protest against this slander. He has always been a sincere friend of Jews, and was not hiding this even in times of cruel persecutions under the regime of Hitler and his followers. Alongside with Pope Pius XII, Archbishop Stepinac was the greatest protector of persecuted Jews in Europe. (my translation from a Croatian source).
His sermons were not allowed to be printed publicly during the NDH period (1941-1945), so that people multiplied and spread them in secret. Glaise von Herstenau, a German Nazi general in Zagreb, declared: "If any bishop in Germany were speaking this way, he would not descend alive from his pulpit!" And when Stepinac visited the Holy See in 1943, he was warned that his life is in danger from the Nazis. There he met Ivan Mestrovic, a famous Croatian sculptor, to whom he said: "With God (=farewell), we are about not to see each other any more. Either Nazists will kill me now, or Communists will kill me later." Here are some characteristic extracts from his public sermons held in Croatian churches during the NDH period (1941-1945):

All people of all colors are God's children. All of them, without any discrimination whatsoever, be they Gypsies, black people, civilized Europeans, Jews or proud Aryans are equally entitled to say" `Our Father who art in heaven...' That is why the Catholic Church has always condemned and it still condemns any injustice committed in the name of class, racial or nationalistic theories. Gypsies and Jews must not be exterminated in the name of a theory which claim that they belong to an inferior race. (A part of the sermon delivered in the Zagreb Cathedral on October 24, 1942.)
There is a diversity of peoples and nations on the Earth. Mankind represents a unique whole. All of them have their roots in God. And all of them, be they of Aryan or non-Aryan race, have the same human nature.
We were always accentuating in our public life the principles of eternal life of God, regardless to whether Croats, Serbs, Jews, Gypses, Catholics, Pravoslavs were in question, or anybody else. Catholic Church knows for races and peoples as creations of God, and its respect goes more to those with noble heart, than to those having powerful fist.
Archbishop Stepinac publicly condemned ruining of the Zagreb synagogue in Praska ulica in 1941 with the following words: "The House of God of any faith is a sacred place..." (witnessed in written by Dr. Amiel Shomrony, citizen of Israel). This sermon, as other, could not have been published in press. But it was copied in secret among ordinary people, and one copy had been sent by Archbishop Stepinac himself to Chief Rabbi Freiberger (see [Stefan], p. 54).

In an unpublished letter sent to editor in chief of the Jerusalem Post in July 29, 1995, reacting on the statement of Reuven Dafni, vicepresident of Yad Vashem, that "Stepinac did not do anything to save the Zagreb synagogue" (Jerusalem Post, July 26, 1995), Dr Amiel Shomrony wrote the following ([Stefan], p. 55-56):

Sir
please allow me through your column to inform your readers truthfully about "Croatia's past stalks relations with Jews", written by Mr. Jan Immanuel. In doing so I hope there is no need to stress that I have no personal interest whatsoever above stating what really happened during W.W.II in Croatia.

As former secretary of the Chief Rabbi of Zagreb Dr. Shalom Freiberger and his personal contact with Cardinal Stepinac I am in the position to point out various misinterpretations if not untruths in the above mentioned article of July 26th.

...The allegation that Archbishop Stepinac welcomed the Nazis is absolutely false; on the contrary, he publicly condemned the Nazis' racial theories as antireligious even before the state of Croatia became "independent" in 1941.

...There are in Israel and the U.S. people who were hidden in 1941 by Stepinac in monasteries during the war. More than 50 elderly Jews were allowed to hide and live until the end of the war on his estate when they were brutally evicted from the old people's home Lavoslav Schwarz. Also the Jewish community received money as well as sacs of flour on a monthly basis from the Archbishop for the inmates of the concentration camp Jasenovac.

...it is a fact that he condemned all laws against Jews, Pravoslavs, Moslems and Gypsis in his Sunday sermons in the cathedral house, "all of them are children of God". Also in his sermons he specifically denounced the destruction of our Synagogue as "being a house of God"; "the perpetrators will be dully punished by almighty God"...

As to the danger to his life - we submitted relevant proofs to Yad Vashem, but the matters being sub judice, I shall refrain from mentioning them here...

Allow me only one more pertinent point: I am today one of the very few survivors from the Jewish community of Zagreb of W.W.II and being honorary member of "The cultural society Dr. Shalom Freiberger" I surely am a more reliable witness than people who base their opinions and "facts" one hearsay.

As for the Jasenovac camp, Stepinac declared in his sermon to be disgrace and shame for the entire Croatian people. He never payed a visit to the Jasenovac camp. There are documents proving that German Gestapo planned assassination of Stepinac, as a result of his brave sermons.

Hans Helm, the public ataché at the German embassy in Zagreb, wrote in March 25, 1943 that Stepinac was a great friend of Jews (see Kristo, p 141).

In his monograph [Les forces armées croates 1941-1945, p. 18] Cristophe Dolbeau mentions organizing and protecting the escape of three boats in the Black Sea to Turkey in 1944, overcrowded with Roumanian Jews:

Peu expérimenté (au débout tout au moins) et plutot mal équipé, la Légion Maritime Croate s'est parfaitement bien comportée tout au long de ses trois ans de présence en Mer Noire où l'amirauté allemande n'a eu qu'à se féliciter de son action. Bon soldats, les marins croates ont combattu dans l'honneur et sans haine : ainsi, le 24 mars et le 21 avril 1944, ont-ils organisé et protégé la fuite en Turquie de trois navires (le Milka, le Marcia et le Bella Citta) remplis de Juifs roumains... De retour à Zagreb le 21 mai 1944, ces matelots auront droit à un bref repos avant de reprendre la mer, dans l'Adriatique cette fois, et pour défendre les rivages de leur patrie.
And here is an example of brave behaviour of ordinary Croatian citizens. When professor Petar Grgec, at that time director of the Archbishopric's classical gymnasium in Zagreb, met a humiliated group of Jews on a street, with yellow armbonds on the sleeves, he took of his hat - expressing thus his deep respect, and silent protest against their suffering. This brave example, given by the old professor, must have left a deep imprint on souls of his pupils. Equally well, antifascist (and later anticommunist) example of Archbishop Stepinac left a deep imprint on the entire Croatian nation.

Gift of Ivan Mestrovic and the Croatian bussiness chamber from Detroit,
Michigan (USA), to the Zagreb Cathedral

Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac was beatified in 1998 by Pope John Paul II in Marija Bistrica near Zagreb.

Archbishop Stepinac's Reply at the Communist Trial (1946)

Ivan Mestrovic: ON RELIGIOUS ART (1954), excerpt: "...The head of that suffering Church is Cardinal Stepinac, my compatriot, my dear friend, of whom I and all Croats are proud. I am sure that our feelings are shared not only by all the Catholics throughout the world but also by all men of goodwill everywhere who cherish freedom of spirit..."

Saving the famous Sarajevo Haggadah (Jewish Bible) in 1941
I dare ask You taking the trouble (especially if You are a Jew) to read the following:

Let me repeat again, the ustasha regime in Croatia and the Jasenovac camp are the greatest shame in the history of Croatia. According to Vladimir Zerjavic, an upper bound of the number of victims is
85,000 killed in Jasenovac, out of which
48-52 thousand Serbian victims,
13,000 Jews killed in Jasenovac (also 6,000 killed Jews in other camps and ditches in Croatia, and 7,000 outside of Croatia),
12,000 Croatians,
10,000 Romanys (Gypses).
There are views among Croatian scholars that Zerjavic's number of 85,000 killed in Jasenovac is exaggerated, see for example books of Jurcevic and Ivezic. It should be taken into account that altogether 62 Yugoslav concentration camps are known to have existed in the period from 1945-1951 (including the Jasenovac camp from 1945-1947), with unknown number of victims of communist terror, see here.

The Serbian propaganda claims 700,000 victims in Jasenovac (and even 1.5 million, claimed by Serbian politician Vuk Draskovic in Paris in the 1990s), i.e. almost 10 to 20 times more than estimated by Zerjavic. It would be important to revisit uncritical statements and numbers written by Menachem Shelach in The Encyclopedia of Holocaust, IV, pp 1716-1722, New York (see Yugoslavia). Who was professor Menachem Shelach? Born in Zagreb (as Raul Spicer), he died as a university professor in Haifa in 1995. He said in an interview published in an Israeli weekly Hotam (December 30, 1994), that he "deathly hates the Croats" (in Hebrew: sin 'at mavet)!! Croats as such, the entire nation. We all know what is anti-Semitism, but what is this and how to name it? Due to Shelach's inventions and lies, even the University of Haifa published a letter (signed by a secretary of the University) stating that the rules of professional ethics cannot be applied to everything that Shelach published as a history lecturer at this University. Dr Milan Bulajic, Belgrade, was his close collaborator. And the article in The encyclopedia of Holocaust, written by Shelach, has been read and is still read by millions of Jews and others throughout the world. The last days of his life, dying of cancer, Shelach was able to speak only - in Croatian.

The brilliant figure of Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac is shining on, despite double refusal of Yad Vashem to acknowledge his courage and perseverance in saving the Jews in Croatia. Explaining the refusal, the spokesperson of Yad Vashem (Iris Rosenberg) wrote in an official letter to a Croatian weekly that "persons who assisted Jews but simultaneously collaborated or were closely linked with a Fascist regime which took part in the Nazi orchestrated persecution of Jews [compare with Shomrony's letter], may be disqualified for the Righteous title." We know of plenty of examples showing that this is not true. See some of them in the book "Stepinac i Zidovi" by Ljubica Stefan, p. 133-137: Giorgio Perlesca (Italy), Oskar Schindler (Poland), patriarch Papandreu Damaskinos (Greece), Georg Duckwitz (Denmark), Max Schmeling (well known boxer, Germany, member of Wermacht during the whole WW2). It is impossible to efface the truth about Cardinal Stepinac.

We know that Belgrade was the only European capital with two concentration camps - Sajmiste (exclusively for Jews) and Banjica, and with the number of victims comparable to those in Jasenovac. But there are no memorial tablets as in the similar places elsewhere in Europe. No mention of Belgrade concentration camps is made in the Encyclopedia of Holocaust. To our knowledge, also the existing Museums of Holocaust in Israel and in the USA do not have Belgrade on their maps of concentration camps in Europe. Thus it turns out as if the ustasha regime in Croatia was the only one responsible for holocaust on the territory of former Yugoslavia.

Probably the most outstanding falsfier of the history of the Jewish Old People's Home in Zagreb, that Archbishop Stepinac saved from German Nazis in 1943, was Dr Lavoslav Kadelburg, Croatian Jew born in Vinkovci (1910-1994). He was the president of the Union of Jewish Communities of Yugoslavia during many years, from 1965 to 1994, representative in many Jewish organizations in the world, vicepresident of the European Jewish Congress until his death. Also the judge of the Supreme law-court of the Socialist Republic of Serbia.

Kadelburg himself sent a signed statement against Archbishop Stepinac to Yad Vashem.
An unknown number of documents containing signed Jewish statements in favour of Stepinac during the process raised against him in 1946 was in the possession of the Jewish community in Zagreb and then sent to Belgrade. When Dr Amiel Shomrony asked Kadelburg (president of the Union of Jewish Communities in YU, Belgrade) to send him copies, he answered: "These documents have no importance, and I destroyed them." See [Stefan].

I kindly ask Jewish authorities to contact Igor Primoratz, Amiel Shomrony (both citizens of Israel), Ljubica Stefan, and Frano Glavina (Zagreb), who are without any doubt among the greatest connaisseurs of the subject covered by this web page.

Memorial book of the Old People's Home in Zagreb published by the Jewsih community in Zagreb in 1960, does not even mention Alojzije Stepinac and his decisive role in saving the Jewish inmates during WW2, see [Kristo].

An appeal of my mother, related to a Jewish school-teacher that taught her to read, write, calculate, and draw in a small town of Sveti Kriz - Zacretje (near Zagreb) from 1941 to 1943. It was a very young person - Stefica Rubin, that all pupils adored (photo, 370 K). She was teaching there despite the existing ustasha regime. When she was killed by a partisan bomb in a train, all her classes were crying. Any information about her and her family would be most welcome. Another Jew of which all citizens of Sveti Kriz - Zacretje keep best memories was Mr Lemberger, a physician. And a nearby village bears the name Zidovinjak (roughly - Jewish village!), situated in Hrvatsko Zagorje, less than 40 km north of Zagreb. The name of the village, which bears witness about presence of Jews in this region so explicitly, was left unchanged also during the NDH period in Croatia (1941-1945).

I express my gratitude to Ljubica Stefan for valuable information that enabled the creation of this web-page. For more details see:

>>>>>Nazi, Nazi. Please provide us with a link to contemporary sources that refer to the Croatian State as "Nazi".<<<<

Compare contemporary definitions of Fascism by Benito Mussolini and Nationalsocialist practice and you will find where WWII Independent State of Croatia fits.

You can call WWII Croatia by any name but it will not smell any better.

Walk like a duck, talk like a duck but you say it ain't duck...

/Fuehrer Ante Pavelic (first one on the left) Archbishop Stepinac (first from the right)/

Dqban22,

You repeatedly speak about Pius XII and Hitler. I do not speak about it nor I deny one single word you wrote about it.

You are preaching to the Choir on this topic.

Hovever, you completely evade the grim topic of the genocide committed in Croatia 1941-45 and the position of Vatican as a state and Holy See towards it and the perpetrators DURING and AFTER the war.

I speak about the official policy of Independent State of Croatia to exterminate Orthodox Christians and make Croatia 100% Roman Catholic within 10 years.

It was official policy, publicly declared by Ustasha regime DURING THE WAR, as early as 1941. Numerous Ustasha documents exist and confirm this. In order to complete it, mass extermination of Orthodox Christians and Jews was put in place, as well as forced conversion of Orthodox Christian to RC faith.

To make things worse, it is not historical question. Vatican still refuses to return the proceeds of the crime stashed in Vatican banks and admit wrongdoing.

It seems that Seventh commandment has been suspended.