Pope Pius XII and the Attitude of the Catholic Church During World War II
This is the continuation of the interview with Fr. Peter Gumpel, S.J., the relator of the cause of Pope Pius XII. He continues sharing his research of Pope Pius XII’s pontificate and actions during World War II.
I’d like to go to a different subject now. We know that during the war here in Rome, there were maybe up to 9,000 Jews during the Nazi occupation. Could you tell us, based on your personal knowledge, exactly what happened on October 15-16, 1943, when the Nazis began arresting the Roman Jews and how the Church and the Pope reacted to this?
First of all, you are mentioning rightly that this happened in the night between the 15th and 16th in October, 1943. Of course, it must be pointed out that in this period, Rome, northern Italy, and part of central Italy were occupied by the Germans. Mussolini had been deposed and the Germans had invaded Italy and occupied Rome. Now, in Rome there were, as you said, several thousand Jews. It is very difficult to determine the exact data; at least 6,000 to 7,000 permanent residents. But many Jews from other parts of Italy had flocked to Rome and also people from abroad because they felt Rome was a safe place, safer than any other place in Italy or elsewhere.
Secondly, many people came to Rome because they knew the Pope was making every possible effort to facilitate their immigration in neutral countries–especially in the US–if at all possible through France, Portugal, etc. So there were more than the usual Jewish residents in Rome. The exact number is very difficult to ascertain because the people who illegally came to Rome from other countries anonymously did not, of course, announce it to the police. They were very careful not to announce their presence.
Having stated this, what really happened? Well, Himmler, the person most violently opposed to the Jews, had sent down a detachment of 365 SS men led by a certain Captain Dannecker. That’s the name of the man who was supposed to arrest all of the Jews living in Rome. Of course, 365 people is very little. So he made an appeal to the general commander in Italy (in the South Front, as it was called), Field Marshall Kesselring, who refused point blank to give even one single soldier. This was because his troops were still doing much fighting south of Rome against the Americans, the Allies, the English, etc. So, he said no.
The military commander of Rome went further. He told his staff, “I won’t have anything to do with this swinish business.” This military commander was an Austrian, an officer of the old school, a Christian, although not a Roman Catholic: but a so-called Old Catholic (people who had broken away, a schismatic sect which had broken away from the Roman Catholic Church in 1870), but a very honest person. This is the background.
Previously, through the 15th of October, the SS in Rome had taken another step. They called the heads of the Jewish community. They knew who they were. They had both been Fascists, therefore they felt safe. They called them and they said, “In a very short period if you do not produce 50kg [110 lbs.] of gold, 200 Jews will be deported to Germany.” Now the Jews did their best to bring this amount in a very short period. They succeeded in getting 35kg [77 lbs.], but not 50. At that moment, the chief rabbi of Rome, Israel Zolli, went to the Vatican. He met with one of the heads of the financial department of the Vatican, a certain Dr. Nogara, and explained the situation. He said, “Can you possibly loan us the 15kg of gold?” He said, “Well, I can’t give you permission like that.” But he went directly to the Pope, and the Pope said, “Of course. If necessary, we will melt down gold chalices. Ask whether they will perhaps accept payment in dollars or equivalent. However, we will do what we can.” As on a loan basis, with no period fixed for repayment, no interest, absolutely nothing.
The intention was, really, that he didn’t want to humiliate them because Zolli had said of course they were going to repay it. So it was to be given under these favorable conditions. However, it turned out that the help of the Vatican was not necessary. It seems the difference of 15kg of gold was made up by Roman Catholics in Rome. There is no definitive proof, but where did the gold come from? Not from the Jews, because they had given whatever they had. However, this is incidental.
When this happened, Isaac Zolli, the chief rabbi, had told the lay people in charge of the Jewish community, “Look, let’s close down the temple. Let’s remove the names” (because they had a full list of all the Jewish people living in Rome). “Let’s give a period of vacancy or holiday, and pay all the employees we have.” Now they laughed at him and said, “Your alarm is for nothing! Nothing is going to happen to us. We have lived here in Italy for so long, there is no problem.” So they didn’t do anything. So when, falling short on the promise to leave the Jews in peace when they had paid to go on, breaking that promise, the Nazis invaded the temple and took hold of everything: the money, all the names and addresses, etc. So they knew exactly where to go.
Of course, there was a lot of noise when this happened. About 1,000 people were arrested–not all of them–because a detachment of 365 was simply not sufficient. This caused a lot of noise, and a lady was looking out her window and saw what was going to happen: these people were carted off in lorries [trucks]. She called her friend, Princess Pignatelli Cortez Aaragon, a person with whom I had, years ago, several long interviews and talks because I wanted to find out directly from her what happened. She called—she was in a sense very curious–a member of the German embassy, a certain Wollenweber. And he with his diplomatic German pass took her right into the Vatican.
She was a courageous woman, a very tiny little person, but a courageous woman. She knew where the Pope was celebrating Mass in his private apartment. She entered, spoke to the Pope, and the Pope in her presence called the secretary of state, ordering him to call immediately the German ambassador to make a very strong protest. And in fact, the meeting took place. The German ambassador, Ernst von Weizäcker immediately went to see Cardinal Maglione, the Secretary of State. And the cardinal made it perfectly clear that the Pope was outraged by this, that in his own diocese, practically under his windows as was later said, these things happened. Weizäcker said, “For heaven’s sake, don’t make a public protest! You know what Hitler is like! Leave it to me, I’m going to take care of the matter.” And they left it at that.
But the Pope didn’t trust that. In fact, Weizäcker didn’t do a thing. Nothing...until the next day, when everything was over. In the meantime, however, a combined effort was made by an Austrian bishop, an otherwise rather disreputable person, and a German diplomat who was hostile to Hitler. They prepared a letter, and the letter had no effect whatsoever. But now another actor comes in: one of the most confidential collaborators of the Pope who did a lot to help Jews and other persecuted people. He was a Bavarian and he knew this German commander, Brigadier General Stahl. He went to him and insisted that the Pope wanted something effective to be done, something to stop it once and for all. Stahl listened and sent his assistant to the ambassador, requesting he take immediate action. The ambassador said he could do nothing.
What was the name of the Austrian who was a close collaborator of the Pope?
It was Fr. Pankratius Pfeiffer, the general of the Salvatorians, who lived close by. So when Stahl’s appeal, which he made by request of Pius XII, had no success with the German ambassador, he took the matter into his own hands. Now, what I’m going to tell you now is not very publicly known, but it may be useful that you know it. I got in touch with General Dietrich Beelitz, who was the liaison officer between headquarters of Field Marshall Kesselring and the headquarters of Hitler himself. As a liaison officer he listened to every single communication that went on between these two headquarters. And, of course, he knew Stahl. After some difficult negotiations, I got in touch with Beelitz and we had several long telephone conversations. I said, “General, you must know exactly what Stahl did. I know that he telephoned Himmler, but I don’t know anything about what he said. Do you know about that?” He said, “I do.” He never gave this information to journalists, but he gave me permission to use it for the process of Pius XII and I printed it.
He told me the following: Stahl took it upon himself to phone Heinrich Himmler, the chief of the SS, directly and threatened him. Of course, humanitarian reasons with a man like that were absolutely useless. So he used military reasons. He said, “Herr Himmler, if you continue to do what you are doing now, you will make it impossible for me to provide our troops which are still fighting far to the south of Rome with the material they need, which is one of my chief tasks here. If you continue, I am afraid there will be an uprising in Rome, there will be an uprising south of Rome, and it will not be possible for me to provision our fighting troops–we can write them off. Right away. If you want to do it, go ahead. I won’t.” He threatened him like that.
He said, “Look, during the day, the Allies have absolute dominion in the air. They are strafing our trains, our lorries, etc., so that’s very difficult. During the night, we have to deal with the partisans. This difficult situation is already very critical. You continue, and it is hopeless.” Now Hitler, who was not a military man, listening to a highly decorated general was so impressed that immediately he ordered him to stop the deportation of the Jews. This telephone conversation took place about noon on the 16th, and two hours later at 2pm, Hitler gave the order to stop everything immediately. Unfortunately, nothing could be done for the 1,000 people who had been arrested and were here in the College Romano. The Pope sent a member of the Secretariat of State to see what could be done about them but the man wasn’t admitted, so nothing could be done. That was the true situation. Here again, you see that the intervention of the Pope was instrumental and providential in saving Jews. He regretted very much that he could do nothing for these 1,000 people who were miserably, brutally, criminally killed in Auschwitz.
What is the common theory of the Roman Jewish community today concerning the reason that the arrests were stopped?
The details that I just told you are not commonly known, but they should have known that the Pope gave an order to open all 155 ecclesiastical houses in Rome. This is well known; they know it. Also, there is the fact that, for example, in 1946, there was the first general assembly of all the Jewish communities in Italy. And in Via Tasso, the famous prison and headquarters of the SS and Gestapo in Rome, they put up a huge marble slab on which, in a very moving way, they thanked Pius XII for all that he had done for the Jews in Rome during this terrible period. Unfortunately, the slab is no longer there, but I photographed it. It was published in certain publications, but rarely.
Recently the slab disappeared. I made an inquiry. I said, “What’s happening?” They said, “Well, we restructured the whole thing and the slab broke, etc.” Maybe or maybe not. You must take into account the attitude of many Jewish people. They are not the people who lived under those conditions. They have fallen victim to mystification. They seem to have forgotten or they do not dare to speak out about it. That is the question: we have tried with certain people years ago, and there are still people alive who were sheltered in Roman houses. At times they were put in cassocks so that in case there was an invasion, they would be mistaken as priests. The women were clad as nuns. They were taught to say the Our Father and the Hail Mary–typical Catholic prayers.
If there were any neighbors close by, they were assembled in the chapel reciting these aloud, giving the impression that they were Roman Catholic priests and nuns. And then, of course, they had to be provided with food and everything because they had nothing–they had no ration cards, etc. There was real hunger in Italy. So to provide them with food was another serious problem for the Pope–to provide thousands of people extra food without rations.
This brings me to another point. There has always been a notion–in fact at Yad Vashem the placard states that it was because of the Pope’s silence–that all the individual European bishops and priests were left to act independently from the apostolic household and universally sheltered as many Jews as possible during the war. Would you comment on this?
If you allow me to use a very frank term, it is simply nonsense. For example, before all these problems started, before the German occupation of Rome: in the Palatine Guard, the noble guard, there were about 200 to 300 people. At the end of 1943 there were nearly 4,000 people in there, of which 400 were demonstrably Jewish. Two hundred lived permanently in the Vatican; the other 200 lived outside the Vatican because there were no accommodations. The Vatican is very small. But they had official documents that they were in service to the Vatican and therefore came under international protection. Nobody can say that this could have been done without the Pope. And it is well known that many Jewish people besides these 400 took refuge in the Vatican.
The other thing is this: We know the names of those people who went around and alerted all the heads of the Roman houses in Rome. I’m speaking of churches, parishes, ecclesiastical convents, student houses, universities, etc., and alerted them that it was the formal will of the Pope to help these persecuted Jewish people as much as possible. For example, a Monsignor O’Flaherty, Fr. Pankratius Pfeiffer, and Fr. Weber of the Pallotine Fathers. There is plenty of evidence. How can they say a thing like that? All these people have spoken up.
Of course, a Jewish scholar, Dr. Susan Zuccotti, said the Pope didn’t do anything about it. The reason? There is no written document of it. Now this argument–excuse me–is downright stupid to argue because there is no written document signed by Hitler ordering the Holocaust. And this was the reason why a holocaust-denier like David Irving claimed the holocaust never took place. He said this could never have taken place without a written order of Hitler, and there is no written order, therefore the holocaust didn’t take place. This foolish argument has been refuted first of all–and rightly so–by Jewish sources.
Why is there no written document? Well, anybody who has lived under that period–even as a boy I knew this and had to be careful not to put anything in writing—knew that if there would have been a written document, it could have been spread all over. Any person on the street could at any moment have been stopped by the SS if it was known he had come from the Vatican. The Vatican was surrounded by troops or, at least, paratroopers. And if he was stopped, if they had found that paper on him, what would happen to the Church? If it would have been found in a convent, there was always the very great possibility that these convents would be invaded, and in certain instances it happened. It happened at St. Paul’s, it happened at the Oriental College–they invaded it, found certain Jews, and arrested them. And people were punished for that, because harboring a Jew and sheltering a Jew was punishable by death. A number of people in Germany and Rome who sheltered Jews were killed for that very reason.
This is one of the things that Sir Martin Gilbert, a famous Jewish scholar, has pointed out. He said, “I personally am not absolutely sure that I would have opened my door.” And these are decisions that people nowadays consider to be very easy: “If I had lived at that time, I would have done this, that, etc.” But this did happen to me, and I always look at these people and say, “I have neither the right nor the intention to question what you are saying. But please remember that you have not yet looked into death as I did under the Nazi regime. It is only at those moments that you can demonstrate what you are saying, and I hope for you that you will never be placed in such a situation.” And then they become a little more reflective.
There’s some information I discovered that I would like to ask you about. Sister Pasqualina was the nun in charge of the papal household. I was told—and maybe you could verify this–that she was actually running a group of little trucks.
Before discussing and answering your question directly, it may be useful to tell you how I came to know Sister Pasqualina and what kind of relationship I had with her. We became through the years very close. This will substantiate what I’m going to say and the truthfulness of what I’m going to say.
In high school, I jumped two grades. I took the final examination when I was barely 17. From there I went immediately to university, and at the age of 20 I was a doctor of philosophy. So I joined the Jesuits only then, at the end of the war, because during the war it would have been too dangerous for them–not for me–to join them. After the two-year novitiate, I was sent as a teacher to a Dutch Jesuit college in Amsterdam, the College of St. Ignatius. Suddenly a telegram to the rector arrived that I should immediately within three days be in Rome to take the place of a 45-year-old philosophy teacher who became so ill at the beginning of the academic year that it was obvious he could never resume this activity.
It was very unusual that such a young person was ever called to Rome. We had no passports. All the passports issued in Germany before the end of the war had been declared invalid. So nobody could come from Germany, Austria, etc. I was living in Holland, and in Holland there was a diplomatic representation of the Holy See, an apostolic nuncio, which in Germany simply did not exist in 1947. So I got a Vatican passport, was sent to Rome, and took up my task there.
I was also acting at the same time as secretary of the director of this pontifical college. And it was in that capacity that I got an internal phone call to go down to the parlor to see what a Sister wanted. Now this was normal–many people came in to ask for food or other things, so I usually was in charge of that. I met this Sister, and she presented herself as being Sister Pasqualina, the housekeeper of Pope Pius XII, and she came in that capacity. She said, “The Pope has sent me here. I wanted to speak to the rector.” She bluntly said, “You seem to be extremely young.” I thought, “Well, this person is very direct to say a thing like that to your face...”
She said, “I really come to ask whether in your library you have a certain book.” She gave me the title. I said, “I’m very new here; I have to go up and see. What do you want with it?” “The Pope wants it.” She told me that the Pope had a fabulous memory which I later would see for myself: When he was apostolic nuncio in Germany he remembered he had read a book which he now wanted, a book which he wanted to quote in one of his speeches. He had a habit never to quote anything unless he had seen the original text in front of him–never from second or third sources. She told me, “He even remembers the exact page of this book. Have you got it? If so, could you lend it to the Pope?” I said, “Of course, if we have it.” So I went up, and we found it.
That started a whole friendship. Not every week, not even every month, but quite frequently. And that’s how I met her–we became well acquainted. When I had finished my task for the two-year period in the Pontifical German College, I studied for four years in England, then two years in Spain, and then returned again to the college, but this time in a much higher capacity as Acting Prefect of Studies. And we resumed our friendship, although this time she did not only ask books which were in our library–which was a very rich library–but rather whether I could obtain through my personal relations from national libraries in Germany certain books which were extremely rare. I asked her, “The Pope has an apostolic nuncio in Germany. Isn’t it simpler to do that?” She said, “No, he doesn’t want to draw attention to the fact, and he doesn’t want to use his nuncios to come begging for things like that. So he prefers a private channel. He knows your family, he knows that you are capable of doing it. Can you do it?” I said, “Well, I’ll try,” and I did.
This became much more frequent. This is the beginning of the friendship. Occasionally we had a little chat beyond these things. She was always in a hurry, but I asked her several things. Our friendship became extremely frequent after the death of the Pope. Something happened that should never have happened but did happen and not in this case alone. I’ve observed now personally several times that as long as a secretary of a Pope is acting, his master and lord is alive, people cater to him: this is normal. It happens in other administrations, and although it shouldn’t happen in the Church, it does. Therefore, if they want to get something, they are polite, cordial, even at times servile. I’ve seen it myself. But when the lord and master dies, the attitude changes. Then they are practically persecuted. This happened to the private secretary of John XXIII, it happened to the private secretary of Paul VI, and it happened to Sister Pasqualina. She had a very difficult time. It was Cardinal Spellman who saved her by putting her in charge of the household of the Pontifical North American College nearby.
But, of course, since we had met so frequently, she very frequently came to see me, and I consoled her because she was highly sensitive about this poor treatment that certain people gave her. Then she had time and I gave her time, and I learned many things. I asked her most specifically because I was interested what exactly she had experienced during the German occupation of Rome, being a German. She told me, among other things, and this is the exact answer to your question, that she herself drove around Rome with a little truck so as to provide foodstuffs, clothing, shoes, other things, necessities, soap, even toilet paper–God knows what–everything these people needed because they had nothing.
The communities in which they were living had to live on spare food and rations. Everything was rationed–even in 1947 when I came here that was the case. She told me that herself, without any pretense. She considered that to be the most normal thing in the world. She was also put in charge by the Pope of the papal warehouse. You see, the papacy, the Vatican, was neutral, and they got plenty of stuff from South America: meat from Argentina, train loads full of material came in from Spain, from Portugal, etc. This could reach the Vatican, and the Vatican didn’t use it for their own purposes. The Pope was extremely sober in eating–he liked only a cup of coffee in the morning.
But since the Romans couldn’t have coffee and there were tons of coffee in the warehouses, he renounced having any coffee at all. He didn’t want any heating because the Roman people didn’t have it. He didn’t take any holidays because they couldn’t afford it. So it was not for himself that all these foodstuffs came into the Vatican; it was to help the people who were starving, and to a larger extent it went to the people who were persecuted, who were in hiding, who had nothing and who could not be sufficiently fed, clad, etc., by the people who sheltered them. She was instrumental; she was head of the warehouse.
So this absolutely shows that the Pope at the time was directly involved?
Yes, I think so. What else could you expect? I mean, this could have not happened in the Vatican without the Pope’s knowledge, without his will. She explained to me that she never meddled in Church politics, and the Pope would never have tolerated that. Nor would she have ever dared to do this, because the Pope on this was extremely sensitive. And this never happened. But, as far as the helping of people was concerned, she was put in charge of the warehouse, and not all of the monsignors liked it. Before she was appointed, many things disappeared from the warehouse. Understandably, people had families in town and they were suffering from hunger–I’m not criticizing, I’m just stating the fact. But once she took over nothing disappeared because she was severe and precise—the typical German-Bavarian precision, if you wish. People didn’t like it, and that made many enemies for her. Later, she had to pay for it.
I was told that the summer palace of the Holy Father, Castel Gandolfo, also had Jews sheltered there. Do you have any knowledge of this?
Yes, I have investigated that. Especially here, as a trained historian, I don’t want to put in documents or investigate things that are not demonstrated. I had read in several Catholic publications that 3,000 Jews were sheltered at Castel Gandolfo. I was a little bit hesitant to believe that. So I got in touch with the director at Castel Gandolfo at the time and asked, “Can you confirm this?” And he said no. And he gave me the real story.
What really happened began with some refugees at Castel Gandolfo, but not to the extent above. But it so happened that when the Allied troops–American and English–were threatening to encircle Rome and were beginning to occupy the Albanian hills, the German military command, not wanting to get these civilians implicated on a battlefield, ordered them to leave their villages within three hours. Now where were these people supposed to go? Many of them decided to take refuge in Castel Gandolfo.
There was an iron gate there, but they forced it open, throwing it down, pushing against it, until 3,000 people entered. Of course, nobody thought about driving them out. And a number of them perished because, although this was a Papal domain, it was bombed twice with serious casualties. Now, can it be said that all these people were Jews? Definitely not. There may have been and plausibly were some Jews among them, but nobody could tell me how many. So that is an honest answer. We should not use arguments that are not correct and not demonstrated.
(To be continued.)
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