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Conference Report: 8th Annual Summer Workshop for Holocaust Scholars, International Institute for Holocaust Research, Yad Vashem

Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 22, Number 1 (March 2016)

Conference Report: 8th Annual Summer Workshop for Holocaust Scholars, International Institute for Holocaust Research, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, July 6-9, 2015

By Suzanne Brown-Fleming, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum*

The experiences of Christians defined as “non-Aryans” by Nazi and Axis racial laws remain among the most fascinating and under-researched aspects of the Holocaust, not least because this very specific category of Christians, made so by the sacrament of baptism, is sometimes still misunderstood/misrepresented. They are seen as Jews and are (literally) counted as “Jews” rescued or aided by Christian institutions, NGOs, and individuals.  In July 2015, the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem organized a workshop for seventeen scholars from eight countries (Austria, Germany, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Serbia, the United States), to present their work-in-progress and compare their findings on this issue.

Monday, July 6, began with stimulating opening remarks by Head of the International Institute for Holocaust Research and Incumbent of the John Najmann Chair of Holocaust Studies at Yad Vashem, Dan Michman. The first panel focused on Christians defined as non-Aryans by Nazi laws residing in Germany. Assaf Yedidya (Yad Vashem and Efrata College, Israel) presented his research on hundreds of converts from Christianity to Judaism, and their treatment under Nazi law. True to the Nazi racial definition of a Jew as someone with Jewish parents and/or grandparents, a Christian of “Aryan” descent who asked to convert to Judaism was not only permitted to do so, but was shielded from deportation by state authorities on the basis of his or her “Aryan” race credentials. Nor could a religious convert to Judaism who was an “Aryan” marry another (racial) Jew, since this was prohibited by the Nuremberg Laws.

Maria von der Heydt (Centre for Antisemitism Research, Technical University Berlin, Germany) followed with her research on so-called “Geltungsjuden,” defined in Nazi racial law as those born into mixed marriages and who met three conditions: if they belonged to a Jewish religious community after September 1935; if they were married to a Jews; or if they were born out of wedlock to a Jewish mother after July 1936. The number of Germans meeting this set of criteria was small, numbering only about 2,000 in 1943, at which time essentially they were subjected to the same fate as so-called “Mischlinge.”

In a session moving across the Vatican city-state, France, and Romania, Suzanne Brown-Fleming (USHMM) opened with her early findings from Vatican records generated during the key latter half of 1938, when the annexation of Austria, the Italian racial laws, and the Kristallnacht pogrom in Germany drove many Catholics in mixed marriages or who were themselves defined as “non-Aryan” to write to the Vatican for aid and succor. Many of these letters reflected a feeling of belonging neither to the Catholic nor to the Jewish communities. As such letters mounted rapidly in the latter half of 1938, Pope Pius XI contacted the United States National Catholic Welfare Conference to request aid for Catholics impacted by the racial laws and attempting emigration. Internal correspondence between the Vatican and various nunciatures (diplomatic headquarters) around the world revealed a clearly stated lack of willingness to offer help to either practicing or secular Jews.

Eliot Nidam Orvieto (Yad Vashem) followed with a nuanced and fascinating presentation about rescue of Jews, Catholics defined as such by Nazi/Axis racial laws, and so-called “Mischlinge” by the Congregation of Priests of Notre Dame de Sion and their sister community, the Congregation for Religious of Notre Dame de Sion. Founded in the mid-nineteenth century by Jewish converts to Catholicism, both communities were originally founded to seek the conversion of Jews. Nidam Orvieto examined the broader issues of conversion and the motivations for it, the preference given or not given to the baptized, and the way Catholics impacted by the racial laws were treated in the case of Notre Dame de Sion in France.

Ion Popa (Free University Berlin, Germany) discussed the case of Romanian Jews who sought conversion to Roman Catholicism, and attempted to do so in large numbers after 1941 in the hopes for Vatican protection. Describing the bans on conversion in Romania issued in 1938 and 1941 and the fight against these measures by papal nuncio Andrea Cassulo, Popa highlighted the acceptance of the ban against conversation by the Romanian Orthodox Church and the open opposition to it by the Roman Catholic Church. He also described the particular case of Bukovina, where Jews converted in large numbers to a small Evangelical Church before 1940, providing the context of the vicious persecution of Jews in Romania in the 1930s driving such trends.

On Tuesday, July 7, the case of Poland was the focus of three presentations, the first by Rachel Brenner (University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA). Brenner gave a moving presentation on the interwar “intellectual-artistic Polish-Jewish” milieu in Warsaw and rescue efforts by three Polish-Gentile members of this circle: Zofia Nałkowska, Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, and Aurelia Wyleżyńska, focusing specifically on the psychological crises, emotional stresses, and intellectual justifications used by the Polish-Gentile diarists under study as their behavior toward friends considered as equals prior to the stresses of the war and Holocaust changed, often not for the better. Katarzyna Person (Jewish Historical Institute Warsaw, Poland) presented her research on the Jewish Order Service in the Warsaw Ghetto, often described in contemporary accounts by other Jews as consisting largely of “converted” or “highly assimilated” Jews. Using lists of members in the Jewish Order Service in Warsaw, Person found that its membership also included orthodox Jews and Jews with strong Zionist backgrounds. Emunah Nachmany Gafny (Independent Scholar, Israel) discussed Jewish children in hiding on the “Aryan side” in Poland, their experiences in formulating a false Christian identity, their reception by Polish Catholics, and their own conflicted feelings as they professed to become part of the Christians community.

A session on Serbia followed. Jovan Ćulibrk (Jasenovac Committee of the Holy Assembly of Bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church) presented a picture of the small Jewish community in pre-war Yugoslavia, which consisted of the Zagreb Jewish community that in large numbers converted in Roman-Catholicism in 1938; the Sephardi community with its strong identification with the Serbian national cause; and the “new” generation that embraced Zionism. Ćulibrk argued that where one understood oneself–and was understood by others–to fall on this spectrum had a distinct impact on one’s fate. Bojan Djokic (Museum of Genocide Victims, Belgrade, Serbia) presented a list of over 657,000 individuals who died during World War II, some of whom had at least one Jewish parent but are not understood to be “Jewish” victims. Djokic outlined the complex research required to better document which victims were, in fact, of Jewish origin.

Wednesday, July 8, began with a set of presentations on Austria and Germany. Michaela Raggam-Blesch (Austrian Academy of Sciences) focused on the living conditions of those classified as so-called “Halbjuden” (half-Jews) and their parents in so called “Mischehen” (mixed marriages) during the Nazi regime in Austria. With dramatic changes to their situation and status in 1938 with the Anschluss, in 1941 with the introduction of the yellow star, and during the war with the deportations of Jews, the remaining population of Christians defined as Jews by the racial laws could suddenly find themselves in positions of authority in the Jewish Council of Elders, even though they held no religious ties to the Jewish community.

Maximilian Strnad (Ludwigs-Maximilians-University of Munich, Germany) presented his research on the over 12,000 Jews in “privileged” mixed marriages who had been spared deportation and were still living in the so-called Altreich in September 1944. In the final year of the war, the Nazi regime established labor battalions in the Rhineland, Westphalia and Breslau, followed by orders for deportation to Theresienstadt in the spring of 1945. Strnad laid out the internal dynamics within the Nazi regime driving the increasingly radical, though not necessarily successful, policy in the final months of the war.

Geraldien Von Frijtag (Utrecht University, Netherlands) discussed the fascinating case of Hans Georg Calmeyer, the figure within the German administration in the Netherlands authorized to decide upon 5,500 cases of Jews who petitioned for a change in their administrative status from so-called “Volljude” (full Jew)  to “Mischling” or non-Jew. Von Frijtag discussed how Calmeyer treated these cases, based on his own background and political inclinations.

Jaap Cohen (NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies) presented a large-scale rescue operation, the Action Portuguesia, set up by a group of Sephardic Jews in the Netherlands in order to evade deportation. The Action Portuguesia formulated an argument that because they were of a different “race” than Ashkenazi Jews, Sephardim should not be regarded as Jews under Nazi and Axis racial law. Cohen examines the precedents, arguments and ultimate fate of this school of thought as espoused by members of the d’Oliveira family.

The final day of the workshop, July 9, began with a presentation by Susanne Urban (International Tracing Service, Bad Arolsen, Germany), who examined the postwar fates of so-called “Halbjuden” and “Mischlinge.” She discussed their own “self-understanding/self-perception” as expressed in their applications to the International Refugee Organization (IRO) for displaced persons (DP) status, and analyzed how IRO officials categorized such applicants. This depended on many factors, including whether they had spent the war years in forced labor, in a concentration camp, or even as draftees into the German Wehrmacht.

Joanna Michlic (University of Bristol, United Kingdom and Brandeis University, United States) presented what she called “atypical” histories of Polish Jewish children during and after the war. The children she studied came from highly culturally assimilated middle-class Jewish families, from ethnically mixed marriages between Polish-Jews and ethnic Poles, and from relationships between Jewish fugitives and their rescuers.

The workshop concluded with two presentations relating to Italy. Valeria Galimi (University of Tuscia, Italy) examined the Italian racial laws of 1938 and how they were understood and implemented by the Mussolini regime and during the Republic of Salò. Especially interesting was her analysis of petitions for exemption in “cases of special merit” (benemerenze particolari), which often contained letters directly to Mussolini reflecting the petitioner’s thoughts on the “Fascist cause” and their own place within it. Maura de Bernart (University of Bologna, Italy) examined the fate of Jews and Christians defined as such in Forlì, culminating in the massacres at the Forlì airport (June to September 1944).

Dina Porat (Chief Historian, Yad Vashem and Tel Aviv University, Israel) offered closing comments, remarking on the difficulties of making any broad generalizations about those Nazi and Axis victims who found themselves defined, in whole or in part, as Jews under the racial laws. Factors included conversion to Christianity (and the date at which it took place), level of implementation at the local level, attitudes of the local population and religious institutions, radicalization of the Nazi and Axis regimes in the face of defeat, and many other influences discussed over the four days of the conference. Workshop participants agreed on the need to continue study of what the organizers called “non-Jewish Jews” at the city/community, regional and national levels, so as to be able to best contextualize these victims within the larger history of the Holocaust.

 

* The views as expressed are the author’s alone and do not necessarily represent those of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

 

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Review of David Bankier, Dan Michman, Iael Nidam-Orvieto, Pius XII and the Holocaust: Current State of Research

Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 19, Number 4 (December 2013)

Review of David Bankier, Dan Michman, Iael Nidam-Orvieto, Pius XII and the Holocaust: Current State of Research (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2012).

By Jacques Kornberg, University of Toronto

This book, on an enduring controversy, offers something new.  Based on a workshop in 2009, which was jointly organized by the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem and Reverend Roberto Spataro of the Salesian Theological Institute of Saints Peter and Paul in Jerusalem, the book aims for dialogue rather deepening controversy. There is a story behind this unusual aim. Relations with the Vatican had deteriorated over statements in the Yad Vashem museum that Pope Pius XII did nothing about the genocide of European Jewry during World War II.  This charge led the Apostolic Nuncio to Israel, Archbishop Antonio Franco, to threaten to boycott the 2007 annual memorial ceremony on the Holocaust held at Yad Vashem.  Negotiations led Franco to withdraw his threat. In return, Yad Vashem somewhat softened its statement on the pope, mentioning another point of view, that papal neutrality might have helped the Church rescue Jews, and that final judgment awaits opening the wartime archives.  Still it stuck to its view that the pope’s record was one of “moral failure.”

BankierPiusThe workshop was a further attempt to mend frayed relations.  Yad Vashem and the Reverend Roberto Spataro (acting “on behalf of the Nuncio”) each chose five scholars for the workshop.  The latter: Andrea Tornielli, Matteo Napolitano, Grazia Loparco, Jean-Dominique Durand, and Thomas Brechenmacher; the former: Paul O’Shea, Michael Phayer, Susan Zuccotti, Sergio Minerbi, and Dina Porat.  Summing up at the end, the Reverend Spataro commented: “we met in an atmosphere of confidence, trust and mutual respect.”

The book is organized around key issues: Pacelli’s personality and the Jews, which also covers his policies as Secretary of State and later as Pope; Pius XII and rescue in Italy, which dealt with Vatican policies during the German occupation of Rome; post-war assistance to fleeing Nazis and policies on hidden Jewish children, which covers the infamous “rat-line” and Vatican policies on returning hidden Jewish children to families or to Jewish institutions.  All of these subjects have long been examined by scholars, but always bear re-assessment especially when new evidence emerges.

Though originating in political stroking and mutual deference, the book has a good deal of scholarly value. For one, it avoids the hyperboles of overheated debate. Discussion is focussed on key documents, thus firmly grounded, foregoing sweeping generalizations.  Of course a document’s meaning is not self-evident but subject to varying interpretations. This is what makes the book valuable.

Some participants introduce new archival documents; some reread old and well-known ones.   Andrea Tornielli argues that Pacelli acted to alleviate the Jewish plight. He points to a Pacelli letter of 16 November 1917 to the Foreign Minister of Bavaria. Pacelli,  Nuncio to Bavaria,  urged the Foreign Minister to safeguard the Jews of Jerusalem, endangered by Ahmed Gamal Pasha, the Turkish military governor of Syria (including Palestine), who threatened to expel them. Ahmed Gamal saw Zionism as an enemy of Turkish rule and took steps to remove Jewish settlements, as part of an overall policy of repression of Arabs and Armenians in Syria during World War I

Next, Tornielli notes a Pacelli letter of 1938 as Vatican Secretary of State, opposing a law forbidding Jewish ritual slaughter (shechita) in Poland.  Tornielli translates Pacelli’s words: the law “would constitute a real persecution against the Jews.”  The letter about shechita is published in the appendix to the book. Another report notes that Pope Pius XI brought up the matter in talks with Polish bishops.

These documents challenge long-held views, based on multiple documents, of Pacelli’s public silence over crimes against Jews, including the German pogrom of November 1938.  These long-held views are articulated by others in this book.

Jean-Dominique Durand also argues the case for Pacelli. He points to a document, this time a well-known report of 19 August 1933 by Ivone Kirkpatrick, British chargé d’affaires to the Vatican, to R. Vansittart, Permanent Under-Secretary of State in the British Foreign Office, recounting a conversation he had with the Cardinal Secretary of State Pacelli. Durand quotes Kirkpatrick: “Cardinal Pacelli criticized the German government’s internal policy, the persecution of the Jews, their actions against their political opponents, and the regime of terror to which the whole nation was submitted.”   What Durand left out is crucial and weakens his argument.  Kirkpatrick wrote that Pacelli’s views were “for private consumption only. I do not think there is any question of any public expression by the Vatican of disapproval of the German government.”

It is gratifying to note that after over fifty years of scholarship on the role of the Vatican in the 1930s and 1940s, wide consensus has been achieved on some issues.  Most scholars now agree on Pacelli’s early assessment of Nazism as an enemy of civilization and of the Church. Few see the concordat signed with Nazi Germany in July 1933, as anything else than a harsh necessity.  The concordat did not carry any endorsement of Nazi rule.  Indeed, the Vatican sought a concordat with Bolshevik Russia as well, but failed to reach an agreement.   In addition, as Torielli points out, the first international agreement signed with Nazi Germany was not the concordat, but the Four Power Pact signed by Great Britain, France, Italy and Germany in mid-June 1933, requiring mutual consultations on all foreign policy issues in the spirit of the League of Nations, the Locarno Pact and the Briand-Kellogg Pact.

Other issues would be better illuminated by the opening of the Vatican archives for the pontificate of Pope Pius XII.  One controversy is about whether Pius XII acted out of any concern for the fate of Jewish-Italians, more particularly Jewish-Romans, during the German occupation of Italy.  We know that he was advised not to issue any protests against Germany during the occupation, because Hitler’s volatile rages may well have led to a German occupation of the Vatican.  Documents also show that Pius sought to dampen polarization between Italians and German occupying forces, because he feared a communist uprising in Rome.  But was rescuing Jews part of his strategy?

Consensus does exist on how to interpret the absence of a written papal directive to Catholic institutions to rescue Jews.   The pope would not have undertaken such a recklessly, transparent measure in view of the German occupation. Further, it was not papal policy to direct Catholics to risk their lives by helping Jews evade deportation. In summary: the pope wanted to distance the Vatican from anything provocative.  However, Grazia Loparco points to Vatican undersecretary Giovanni Montini’s  (later Pope Paul VI), response to a Jesuit request for guidance on whether to help rescue Jews, that it was their own responsibility.  She goes on to point out that we do not know whether or how much face-to-face personal encouragement  or approval Vatican officials provided on the issue of rescue.  Pius XII implicitly encouraged rescue in a statement to the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano of 25/26 October 1943, where he spoke of the “universally paternal charity of the Supreme Pontiff [which] …does not pause before boundaries of nationality, religion or descent.”  But he did not go any further than this.  He did not protest the round-up of Jewish-Romans on 16 October 1943,  though his defenders argue that the round-ups in Rome ceased  simply because he threatened protest through German diplomatic channels.   But the evidence for this, based on timing, is weak.  Indeed, after an interval, deportations of Jewish-Romans continued, though many by now had moved from their homes and were in hiding.  My own view is that rescuing Jews was far less important to him than having a non-confrontational German occupation.

A final controversy deals with the aid Vatican officials provided to Nazi war criminals seeking to flee to South America.  Michael Phayer poses the question: “Did the Pope know what was happening? ”  He makes a strong case for “yes.”  The reason: the pope hoped to supply South America with fervent anticommunists.

The lessons of this book are that documents are often slippery; they too often can support conflicting interpretations; that what is omitted in reading documents is as important as what is left in; and that further documentation through the opening of the wartime Vatican documents is essential.

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