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Review of Robert Braun, Protectors of Pluralism: Religious Minorities and the Rescue of Jews in the Low Countries during the Holocaust

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 27, Number 3 (September 2021)

Review of Robert Braun, Protectors of Pluralism: Religious Minorities and the Rescue of Jews in the Low Countries during the Holocaust (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019).

By Rebecca Carter-Chand, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum*

* The views expressed are those of the author and do not represent those of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Social scientist Robert Braun has made an important contribution to the study of rescue during the Holocaust, up-ending much of the conventional wisdom and modes of analysis about rescue and rescuers. Braun argues that most studies of rescue are insufficient because they focus too much on motivation, overlook the rescuers’ capacity to effectively carry out the rescue, and do not account for regional variation. This book addresses all three of these factors. Braun is especially skeptical of religious teachings as primary motivating factors, illustrated by a compelling opening anecdote about two Dutch towns in the region of Twente with similar sociocultural profiles but very different responses to the deportation of Jews in 1941. In Almelo many Jews were able to evade deportation with the help of the local Catholic church and 42% of the town’s Jews survived the war. In the nearby town of Borne, the local Catholic churches did not engage in rescue efforts and only 22% of the town’s Jews escaped deportation. Catholic theology and social teaching cannot account for this variation, nor can political or wartime circumstances. Herein lies the guiding question of this study: why are some religious communities willing and able to protect victims of mass persecution and others are not?

Because this is a work of social science, it employs a methodology very different from how historians approach research and thus warrants some explanation. Braun begins with a hypothesis that religious minorities are more likely to assist or rescue persecuted groups from mass violence or genocide. In this framing, religious minorities could hold minority status on a national level because of their small size (e.g., Quakers) or they could be a minority in a given region—Catholics in a majority Protestant region and vice versa. This minority theory is based on the idea that religious minorities recognize a shared vulnerability with other minorities, which triggers empathy. Braun posits that all religious communities seek security and self-preservation. When they cannot achieve this through religious dominance, then pluralism is the next safest option to ensure survival. So, a commitment to pluralism accounts for the willingness factor but minority status also enables capacity. Minority communities are able to engage in clandestine collective action while reducing exposure because of their members’ commitment and their relative isolation (more on isolation below). (40)

Braun proceeds to test this hypothesis through detailed geocoding of Jewish evasion in the Netherlands and Belgium, combining spatial statistics, archival sources, contemporary newspapers and other published materials, and postwar testimony, including materials from Yad Vashem’s Righteous Among the Nations program. Numerous graphs, charts, and maps are included throughout these chapters, as well as an insert of ten colour figures. The maps help to explain the story yet the technical presentation of the data makes these chapters largely inaccessible to those not familiar with social scientific methodologies.

Compelling as it is, the limitations of Braun’s thesis are just as important to understand as the argument itself and the data that supports it. There are a number of significant qualifications, the most important being that it is not just minority status that motivates and enables rescue but a certain level of isolation. (112) To illustrate this point, Braun offers the case of a Catholic chaplain in a majority Catholic area of Belgium who carried out a successful rescue operation because he used farmers in remote locations to hide Jews. The farmers were not socially isolated but rather geographically isolated. (170-171) Another crucial factor to consider is that Jews were more likely to survive when their individual networks overlapped with those of isolated minority groups—when doctors and patients and business owners and business patrons interacted on regular basis.

The book’s concluding chapter considers the applicability of the minority theory in other countries during the Holocaust. Here we see that the seemingly straightforward thesis posited in the book comes with some significant exceptions and qualifications. In order for Braun’s theory to work, the rescue must be collective and clandestine. He outlines three exceptions that suggest why we do not necessarily find religious minorities rescuing Jews to the same extent in other settings during the Holocaust and other modern genocides. Religious minorities may not engage in higher levels of successful rescue where: 1) majority elites, both secular and religious, openly object to persecution and cooperate to stymie the persecution; 2) the rescue is highly individualized and does not require coordination, as in Poland; and 3) the minority groups are closely aligned with the repressive apparatus undertaking the violence. (236) This third point is paramount to understanding the actions of religious minorities in Nazi Germany, where most Christian minorities responded to their perceived vulnerable status by aligning themselves with the Nazi state rather than responding with empathy for other persecuted minorities. Yet the book’s thesis may shed light on German religious minorities if we consider how the Volksgemeinschaft offered belonging and affirmation for previously marginalized groups in German society, thus eclipsing the recognition of shared vulnerability and the promotion of pluralism.

As the author points out, studying clandestine behaviour is hard. (116) Due to the extensive documentation available for the Netherlands, this book is able to compare situations on a granular level and isolate individual factors. Although its applicability may not be as broad as the author explores, he has offered a sophisticated methodology and way of thinking about rescue that moves far beyond religious motivation.

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Response to William Doino Jr. and the Film Lo vuole il Papa

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 21, Number 3 (September 2015)

Response to William Doino Jr. and the Film Lo vuole il Papa

By Susan Zuccotti, Independent Scholar

In the June 2015 edition of the Contemporary Church History Quarterly, William Doino Jr. discussed a documentary televised in Italy on April 1 entitled Lo vuole il Papa. Based on the work of historian Antonello Carvigiani, the film argued that Pope Pius XII was personally involved in the opening of convents and monasteries in Rome to thousands of Jews and other fugitives who were trying to escape arrest by the German occupiers of the Eternal City after September 1943. The film portrayed the oral testimonies of four nuns who, when they arrived as novices at four different religious houses in Rome years ago, were told by some of the older sisters about rescue efforts during the war. Accompanying each of the testimonies were brief filmed excerpts from the wartime chronicles of their institutions, recording a papal role in rescue. In addition, the documentary presented the oral testimonies of two men hidden as boys in two of the convents. Doino found the film persuasive, described it as new, and related it to other documents, accounts, and testimonies that he has discussed elsewhere and believes to be evidence of a clear papal directive for Jewish rescue in Rome.

When examined closely, the testimonies of the nuns and the chronicles are diverse in content and questionable as evidence. Let us begin with content. The first nun represented the cloistered Augustinian Sisters of the Santi Quattro Coronati, where 24 people, including at least 6 and perhaps as many as 17 Jews, were hidden. She explained that she was told that the pope had ordered the convent to open its doors to fugitives, including Jews. Relevant lines from that convent’s handwritten wartime chronicle, first made public in 2006 and thus not particularly new, confirmed her words, stating, “In this painful situation [of the German arrests and torture of fugitives beginning, the chronicler’s account, in November 1943] the Holy Father wants to save his children, including the Jews, and orders that hospitality in monasteries be given to the persecuted, and also the cloistered convents must adhere to the desire of the Supreme Pontiff [emphasis mine].”[1]

The film’s second witness was from the cloistered Cistercian Sisters of Santa Susanna, where roughly 18 military and political refugees and 26 Jews had been sheltered. This nun also referred to a papal directive for rescue, but added that the order had gone to all superiors of all Catholic institutions in Rome. How could she have known that? The accompanying lines from Santa Susanna’s handwritten war chronicle, made public in 2014, differed significantly from the nun’s testimony. The chronicler wrote, “In this situation the ecclesiastical authorities exhort and encourage and give their consent (with a maximum of caution) to opening the doors of the holy cloistered places to hide and receive as many persons as possible…[emphasis mine].”[2] Encouragement and consent from individual unknown prelates are important, but they are not the same as a papal order to all Church institutions. Words matter, and the implications differ. It is also important to note that Jews were not mentioned here, and caution was urged.

The third witness, from the convent of Santa Maria dei Sette Dolori which had sheltered 150 refugees including perhaps as many as 103 Jews, did not evoke a papal order.[3] Instead, she declared that she had been told that “The Holy Father wanted, desired, that the convent welcome these people.[emphasis mine]” Her testimony, in other words, resembled the written account from Santa Susanna. The accompanying handwritten chronicle from Santa Maria dei Sette Dolori confirmed her words, recording simply that the pope wanted institutions to take in fugitives, but “without obligation.” The fourth and final witness was from the Istituto Maria Santissima Bambina, which sheltered 123 people, including Jews. This nun was even more general, testifying simply that the sisters admitted fugitives because the pope appealed to them for charity. The accompanying typed chronicle also did not refer to a precise papal order, but it did provide insight on how rescue probably developed. It declared that at various times during the autumn of 1943 someone at the Vatican Secretariat of State requested the director of this particular institution to take in specific endangered individuals or families. The chronicle added that such a request could not be refused. But, significantly, it also declared that some 120 people, refugees or families made homeless by bombing raids, had already been accepted at the Istituto by the end of September 1943, well before the roundup of Jews in Rome on October 16 and the mass flight of surviving Jews into Catholic institutions.

We shall return to the issues of content raised in the film, but let us next examine the nature of the evidence. It is not easy to question the oral testimonies, filmed in the beautiful settings of their convents, of four elderly nuns, earnest, articulate, and confident of the accuracy of their information. But these women are providing hearsay, not first-hand, evidence. Their information apparently reached them at unspecified times for unknown reasons from unnamed associates, about whose personal histories we know nothing. The older sisters who passed along the information may have been young novices themselves during the war, with no special knowledge at that time about which fugitives were Jews or why they were there. Their own superiors may have told reluctant or fearful younger sisters that the pope wished or even ordered rescue measures to convince them to help fugitives, including atheists, Communists, and, especially, Jews, but the telling did not make it true. This evidence would not hold up in a court of law, and historians should apply similar criteria. Second, why were the young incoming nuns told such things privately in the 1950s, 60s, or 70s at all, at a time when no such accounts were being made publicly, despite the fact that Pius XII had long been criticized for not helping Jews? And why did the nuns wait until now to come forward? And why do they (and those who write about them, like Doino) stress help given to Jews, when it is clear from other records that at least half of those sheltered in religious institutions were political or military fugitives or non-Jewish civilian war refugees?

The written evidence presented in Lo vuole il Papa is equally problematic. The film provides a cursory glimpse of the volumes of war chronicles from the four convents, and then zooms in on the few lines relevant to the shelter of outsiders in each case. It gives no information about when, why, and by whom the rescue accounts were written or why they have not been made public sooner. With this technique it is impossible to detect what is obvious from a more careful study of the accounts—that they were not written during the war, and were often not even recorded by the chronicler who wrote the previous or subsequent entries. Examples abound. In the pages for 1943 and 1944 of the chronicle of the Santi Quattro Coronati, the author wrote in an entry for June 6, 1944, when Rome was liberated, that a general in the army of Mussolini’s Italian Social Republic wanted for war crimes after the conflict was sent to hide in the convent by the Vatican Secretariat of State (this attribution very specific) and stayed for five years. The war chronicle of the Santa Maria dei Sette Dolori referred to gas chambers, which would not have been understood with certainty in the first half of 1944, and to papal efforts to hide fugitives in the Pontificio Seminario Romano Maggiore (referred to as the Laterano) and Castel Gandolfo, equally secret at the time. The chronicles, then, are not wartime diaries but subsequent secondary accounts. Who wrote them, and when, and where did the information come from?

The testimony in Lo vuole il Papa of two fugitives hidden during the war is no more enlightening. Piero De Benedetti Bonaiuto found shelter at the convent of the Santi Quattro Coronati. In that convent’s war chronicle, which recorded the presence of five political fugitives or “patriots,” six Jews, and thirteen unspecified individuals, he was listed as a “patriot.” In his filmed testimony, he briefly discussed his experience in hiding and offered an opinion that special authorization would have been needed because the convent was subject to the rules of strict cloister. As a boy, he would have known nothing about a papal order. The second survivor-witness, Renato Astrologo, hid with his parents, grandmother, and three siblings in the convent of Santa Susanna. According to an article in the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano on June 3, 2014, the women entered the convent on October 24, 1943, while the men hid elsewhere until the end of January 1944. The article also stated that Astrologo was a convert from Judaism to Catholicism. In his testimony, Astrologo expressed his gratitude to the sisters who had saved him and stated his understanding that an order had “come from a high place.” He also could have known nothing more specific at the time.

Lo vuole il Papa might be more persuasive if it were confirmed by the other sources Doino mentioned in his article, but that is decidedly not the case. For example, Doino refers to an article in the Palestine Post on June 22, 1944, in which a correspondent wrote that “several thousand refugees, largely Jews” had been sheltered in the papal palace at Castel Gandolfo “during the recent terror.” This allegation has been repeated endlessly, but there is no evidence that the refugees were “largely Jews.” The pope did offer shelter and sustenance at Castel Gandolfo to hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of refugees escaping Allied bombing raids and German attacks on villages near Rome in the late winter and spring of 1944. Some of those refugees may have been Jews with false papers and not known to be Jewish. But no evidence has yet been unearthed to indicate that those involved in providing assistance believed that they were helping Jews. There is, furthermore, no personal testimony from Jews about receiving such shelter, although Jewish accounts of being hidden in other religious institutions in Rome are plentiful.[4]

Doino also alludes to statements about a papal directive from priest-rescuers Paolo Dezza, Pietro Palazzini, Hugh O’Flaherty and John Patrick Carroll-Abbing; the Jewish survivor Michael Tagliacozzo; and historians Andrea Riccardi, Anna Foa, Sister Grazia Loparco, Antonello Carvigiani, and Pier Luigi Guiducci. His list is not exhaustive; he could have mentioned other secondary sources. Each of these cases must be examined carefully, in more detail than is possible here. Looking briefly at the first four primary sources, however, the Jesuit Father Dezza, rector of the Pontifical Gregorian University during the war and later a cardinal, wrote on June 28, 1964, during the controversy concerning Rolf Hochhuth’s play The Deputy critical of Pius XII, that the pope had instructed him to accept persecuted civilians and Jews.[5] Strangely, Dezza never repeated the claim in his other writings, and it is not clear if refugees were in fact hidden in his institution.

Father Palazzini, also later a cardinal, published a book in 1995 describing his role in helping hide some 145 non-Jews and 55 Jews at the Pontificio Seminario Romano Maggiore. He made no reference to a papal order in his book, but he did refer to “the guidelines provided by Pope Pius XII…to save human lives.” He added that during the war, “to rediscover [the sense of reciprocal charity], one voice was often raised among the din of arms: it was the voice of Pius XII. The refuge offered to so many people would not have been possible with his moral support, which was much more than a tacit consent.”[6]As evidence of the guidelines and support, Palazzini referred to eight papal speeches. Three of the eight, at Christmas 1942 and on June 2, his name day, in 1943 and 1944, included brief references to the pope’s compassion for those persecuted because of nationality and race, but did not directly mention religion or Jews. The other five speeches simply stressed the need for charity to all victims of war.[7]

The Irish Father Hugh O’Flaherty took enormous risks to aid escaped Allied prisoners of war during the German occupation of Rome, but Jews are rarely mentioned among those he helped.[8] The story of the American Father John Patrick Carroll-Abbing, later a monsignor, is much the same. In addition to prisoners of war, Father Carroll-Abbing worked with political fugitives, partisans, civilian refugees, homeless children, and the poor in general. In 2000, he apparently informed Doino that the pope told him many times to help Jews, but his two books about his wartime activities, published in 1952 and 1966, rarely mentioned Jews at all. He never wrote that he took personal initiatives to help Jews, that the pope told him to hide Jews, or even that Jews were hidden in Vatican properties. His single written reference to papal involvement in Jewish rescue was an indirect observation rather than a personal experience. Without declaring that the statement affected his own work, he observed that after the roundup of Jews in Rome on October 16, 1943, “word came from the Vatican that, because of the emergency, nuns would be allowed to give hospitality in their convents to Jewish men as well as their families [emphasis mine].”[9] He added that the permission was given specifically to the Sisters of Nostra Signora di Sion, who passed it along to other convents.

There is little doubt that some 187 Jews were among those hidden by the Sisters of Nostra Signora di Sion. Many of the Jews fled there on October 16, 1943, as the Germans were rounding up their families and friends in the nearby former ghetto of Rome and throughout the city. The initial rescue effort was spontaneous. Since the convent was not cloistered and operated a girls’ boarding school that was virtually empty because of the war, there was no need for immediate papal authorization to receive outsiders. The sisters have never claimed to have received a papal directive for rescue, although they stress that they informed the head of their order and that the pope ultimately knew what they were doing.[10] The situation was similar at the Istituto Pio XI, a boarding school for some 200 to 250 boys run by the Salesians. In his study of more than 80 Jewish boys sheltered there during the war, Francesco Motto found no evidence of a papal order. He too emphasized that Vatican authorities had some idea of what was happening, and that the Salesian brothers immediately involved were convinced that they were acting according to the wishes of the Holy Father.[11]

In addition to many more accounts of Jewish rescue in Church institutions that do not mention a papal directive, there are some that specifically deny it. One example of the latter is Brother Maurizio, the steward at the Fatebenefratelli Hospital that hid some 46 Jews during the German occupation. Brother Maurizio related that after admitting Jewish fugitives on October 16, 1943, the directors duly notified Vatican officials. When they received no response, they took the silence for approval and increased their efforts.[12] Father Elio Venier, later a monsignor, recalled his work at the parish church of Santa Maria della Divina Provvidenza, where about 65 Jews were sheltered. He declared that officials at the Vicariate were informed of the rescue activities because parish churches were under their jurisdiction, but he added that the pope did not get involved in such matters.[13] The French Capuchin Father Marie-Benoît who, working with Jewish and non-Jewish friends and associates, placed and supported some 2,500 Jewish refugees in both religious and secular institutions in Rome, agreed.[14] After the war, but only when asked, he explained that he had received no money and no mission from the Vatican.[15]

Other reasons to doubt the existence of an order from Pius XII for rescue relate to known papal directives that seem contrary to it. Both Francesco Motto, writing about the Salesians, and the spokeswomen for the convent of Nostra Signora di Sion refer to a letter received on October 25, 1943, declaring, “The secretary of state of His Holiness expresses the confidence that [your] conduct…will be inspired by diligent observation of the dispositions and instructions provided by the Holy See and by that discreet and prudent correctness that is always, but now more than ever, necessary.”[16] Such a call was not conducive to extensive rescue. Two months later, on December 27, six days after Italian Fascist and German SS raids on three Vatican properties, Pius XII told the director of La Civiltà Cattolica that it was necessary to be more prudent with regard to refugees and added, “Yes, exercise charity with the many piteous cases that arise, but avoid the use of false documents and any even slight appearance of fraud.”[17] The pope may not have understood that it was almost impossible for fugitives, Jewish or not, to hide in any institutions without false documents.

Another German-Fascist raid on February 3-4, 1944, this time on the huge extraterritorial Basilica di San Paolo fuori le Mura, caused some at the Vatican to pull still further away from support for the rescue of fugitives. Little could be done for the 64 victims of the raid, including five Jews, but Vatican officials publicly and vehemently protested the violation of extraterritoriality to the Germans. Privately, however, they were terrified of additional and still more brutal raids, the arrests of more of their protégés, and the possibility of diplomatic incidents. On February 6, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Luigi Maglione wrote that he had “instructed the abbot [of the monastery at San Paolo], in the name of the Holy Father, not to permit disguises in other clothing: no one should wear religious habits if he is not a priest or monk.”[18] It is not clear how broadly this prohibition was distributed, but it was not an encouragement for rescue.

Far more serious, sometime that same February a message went out from the Vatican ordering that all non-clerics sheltered in a number of properties of the Holy See be asked to leave. Strict penalties for disobedience were specified. Again, all the recipients of this order are not known, but the message clearly went to the Seminario Lombardo, the Seminario Romano Maggiore, and the Collegio dei Sacerdoti per l’Emigrazione Italiana. Directors of the institutions reluctantly obeyed, although they never left their guests in the lurch. New hiding places were found, and in some cases the fugitives returned after a time.[19] Similar orders were issued within the Vatican City itself, where at least 50 outsiders were being sheltered in the private apartments of prelates living in the Canonica di San Pietro.[20] In this case, the prelates engaged in sheltering fugitives appealed, and the order was not enforced.[21]

There is no question that thousands of Jews were sheltered in church institutions in Rome during the German occupation. One survey conducted soon after the war placed the number at 4,447, in 220 female and 60 male religious houses.[22] Another more recent analysis refers to 4,169 Jews in 234 religious houses.[23] While numbers vary, the phenomenon of rescue is clear; what is unclear is how it happened. Historians and other scholars study the story not to glorify or vilify Pope Pius XII but to try to understand the events themselves. To do so, they look to the evidence, both written and oral. When the evidence is conflicting, they examine its validity—its authenticity; the motives of those who supply it; the timing; the possibility of error, bias, or misunderstanding. They also analyze the plausibility and consistency of the evidence within a wider context—in this case, with consideration of the pope’s other actions, statements, and concerns during the Second World War. Finally, they study the precise words used in testimonies. With this in mind, let us return to the documentary film Lo vuole il Papa, examine it in the context of other evidence mentioned here, and attempt to formulate an hypothesis about Jewish rescue in Rome.

Judging from the conflicting evidence in the film and from the other testimony discussed in this article, it seems unlikely that Pius XII ordered Catholic institutions in Rome to open their doors to Jews and other fugitives. It is possible that in some cases he was involved in granting permission to cloistered convents to suspend their rules regarding outsiders, but it is not probable that he ordered them to do so.[24] We have seen here indications of the pope’s hesitancy regarding rescue, his counter-instructions, and his requests for prudence, as well as the denials of a papal directive by some religious spokesmen and the failures to mention it by others. We know from the internal discussion concerning fugitives sheltered within the Vatican City that some prelates opposed their presence and tried to make them leave. Would they have taken that position if the pope had ordered all Catholic institutions in the city to accept them? And in the broader context, Pius XII was anxious to preserve Vatican neutrality and diplomatic privileges, and protect his institution and the Catholic faithful from German reprisals. Why would the pope jeopardize these priorities when a directive for rescue in Rome was not necessary? Romans who followed the pope’s public statements knew that he had urged charity and compassion for the victims of war on many occasions. They had read the articles in L’Osservatore Romano on October 25-26 and 29, 1943, following the roundup of 1,259 Jews in Rome, which referred to “the universally paternal charity of the Supreme Pontiff…which does not pause before boundaries of nationality, or religion, or race [emphasis mine]”—a clear reference to Jews that had not been used in previous papal speeches. They were aware that after Mussolini’s puppet regime ordered Italian police and carabinieri to arrest and intern all Jews in the country on November 30, 1943, two more articles in the Vatican daily newspaper had objected vigorously, though without mentioning German measures of deportation and destruction.[25] Catholics who wanted to hear all this could hear. In rescuing Jews and other fugitives, they firmly believed they were heeding the will of their pope.

But if there was no comprehensive papal order, how did rescue develop? In many cases, as for the Salesians and the Sisters of Nostra Signora di Sion, it was initially spontaneous—fugitives came to the school or convent and asked for help. Authorization came later. But to explain many other cases, it is useful to look again at two of the written testimonies presented in Lo vuole il Papa. The chronicler for Santa Susanna wrote, “In this situation the ecclesiastical authorities exhort and encourage and give their consent (with a maximum of caution) to opening the doors of the holy cloistered places to hide and receive as many persons as possible…[emphasis mine].” Similarly, the chronicler for the Istituto Maria Santissima Bambina recorded that on several occasions during the autumn of 1943, someone at the Vatican Secretariat of State requested the director of the institution to take in specific endangered individuals or families. These claims are credible. Many individual priests and even high-ranking prelates in Rome had their own personal protégés, perhaps an anti-Fascist activist or partisan, or the Jewish spouse of a friend or family member, or a former Jewish teacher or classmate, employer or employee, doctor or nurse—the possibilities are endless. Catholic institutions taking in outsiders needed recommendations about the backgrounds, personal integrity, and, sometimes, economic reliability of prospective guests. Priests and prelates, sometimes at a high level, supplied those recommendations and undoubtedly implied that rescue was the will of the pope. Although directors of religious houses were not unwilling in any case, such recommendations and reassurances were hard to refuse.

The pope did not oppose the opening of religious houses in Rome to fugitives unless he believed that the risks to rescuers and rescued alike were excessive. Although he certainly understood much of what was going on in his own diocese (the pope was the bishop of Rome), he probably did not know the details. He did not wish to become personally involved. And while he allowed some of his advisors to act on behalf of Jews and other fugitives, he was well aware that others close to him opposed rescue.

Does it matter whether there was a broad order for Jewish rescue from Pius XII or whether rescue was rather either spontaneous or the result of the private initiatives of individual priests and prelates? The answer is yes, for two reasons. First, understanding private individual initiatives helps us better comprehend the complexities and risks of the pope’s situation on an international level and the pressures he was under from within. We may learn more about these internal pressures when the Vatican archives of the papacy of Pius XII are opened. Until then, the study of Jewish rescue in Rome provides some clues. But above all, examination of the origins of rescue helps us to appreciate how and why it happened. As we consider the nuns described in Lo vuole il Papa, along with Cardinals Pietro Palazzini and Elio Venier, the Sisters of Nostra Signora di Sion, the Salesian brothers, Father Marie-Benoît, and so many others, we see the true nature of courage, generosity, and commitment to religious and human values. It is to be hoped that Pope Pius XII himself would be among the first to want that heroism recognized.

[1]For more on the chronicle of the Sisters of the Santi Quattro Coronati, see especially 30giorni, n. 7/8, August 2006, pp. 32-46. See also Antonello Carvigiani, “Aprite le porte, salvate i perseguitati,” Nuova Storia Contemporanea, September-October 2014, 131-44. The estimate of 17 Jews sheltered is from an often-cited list published in Renzo De Felice, The Jews in Fascist Italy, trans. Robert L. Miller, (1961 and 1993; New York: Enigma Books, 2001), 751-56, 752. De Felice indicated that the list came to him from the German Jesuit Father Robert Leiber, Pius XII’s close advisor and friend, who in turn stated that it was compiled after the war by another Jesuit priest and verified in 1954. For details on the list, see Susan Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 199-200.

[2]For more on Santa Susanna, see Carvigiani, “Aprite le porte,” 131-44. The number 26 is from De Felice, 752.

[3] The number 103 is from De Felice, 751.

[4] For details on what is known about refugees at Castel Gandolfo, see Susan Zuccotti, “Pius XII and the Rescue of Jews in Italy,” in Joshua d. Zimmerman, ed., Jews in Italy under Fascist and Nazi Rule, 1922-1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 287-307, 306. It is noteworthy that Carvigiani, “Aprite le porte,” 132, cites as an authority, and with approval, statistics by Dominiek Oversteyns, De geschiedenis van de Hebreeërs in Rome tijdens de nazibezetting en vervolging in Rome (Rome: Privata, 2013), n.p., which declare that there were no Jews at Castel Gandolfo. I am not able to verify the Oversteyns citation.

[5] Dezza had been asked to contribute to a special edition of L’Osservatore della Domenica dedicated to the memory of Pius XII. His contribution is on pp. 68-69. Originally titled Der Stellvertreter, The Deputy opened in Berlin in 1963, in London as The Representative in the same year, and in New York in 1964.

[6]Pietro Palazzini, Il Clero e l’occupazione tedesca di Roma: Il ruolo del Seminario Romano Maggiore (Rome: Apes, 1995), 17 and 35.

[7] Palazzini did not mention articles in L’Osservatore Romano on October 25 and 29 and December 3 and 4, 1943, to be discussed below, which did refer to religion and Jews.

[8]See, for example, J.P. Gallagher, Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican (London: Souvenir, 1967).

[9]Carroll-Abbing, But for the Grace of God (London: Secker and Warburg, 1966), 55-56. The first book is A Chance to Live (New York: Longmans, Green, 1952). For Doino’s account of his conversation with Carroll-Abbing, see William Doino, “ The Pope Gave Me Direct Orders to Rescue Jews,” Inside the Vatican, August-September 2001, special insert, x. For details, see Susan Zuccotti, “Pius XII and the Rescue of Jews in Italy,” in Zimmerman, p. 298.

[10]The number 187 is from De Felice, 752. For details on rescue efforts at the convent of Nostra Signora di Sion, see Susan Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows, 189-93.

[11] De Felice, 754, puts the number of boys sheltered at 83. For details on the Salesian rescue effort, see Susan Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows, 191-92.

[12]The number 46 is from De Felice, 754. For Brother Maurizio’s testimony, see Federica Barozzi, “ ‘I percorsi della sopravvivenza,’ (8 settembre ’43-4 giugno ’44): Gli aiuti agli ebrei romani nella memoria di salvatori e salvati,” unpublished thesis, Università degli studi di Roma “La Sapienza,” 1995-96, 156.

[13]Monsignor Elio Venier, interview with this author, Rome, November 13, 1996. The number 65 is from De Felice, 755.

[14] For this estimate of refugees assisted, see Settimio Sorani, L’assistenza ai profughi ebrei in Italia (Rome: Carucci, 1983) , pp. 150-51; and Centro di documentazione ebraica contemporanea (CDEC), Milan, b. 8-A-I, f. Delasem—Settimio Sorani, “Attività della ‘Delasem’ dopo l’8 settembre 1943” by Sorani, May 16, 1944. The number given by De Felice, 755, for “Father Benedict of Bourg d’Iré” (Father Marie-Benoît, or, as he was known in Rome, Father Maria Benedetto) was too high.

[15] For details, see Susan Zuccotti, Père Marie-Benoît and Jewish Rescue (Bloomington, IN: University of Indiana Press, 2013), 179-80 and 223. Vatican documents published in Actes et Documents du Saint Siège relatifs à la seconde guerre mondiale (ADSS), eds. Pierre Blet, Robert A. Graham, Angelo Martini, and Burkhart Schneider (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1975), IX, docs. 433 and 487, reveal that at least one high-ranking Vatican official disapproved of Father Marie-Benoît’s dealings with the Jews and tried to get him to stop.

[16]This appeal accompanied a protective placard issued by General Rainer Stahel, German military commander of Rome, to many religious institutions throughout the city on October 25, 1943. The placard, to be posted outside each institution, read, “This building serves religious objectives, and is a dependency of the Vatican City. All searches and requisitions are prohibited.” As we shall see, this placard did not always prevent raids. For details, see Susan Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows, 193.

[17]Giovanni Sale, “Roma 1943: occupazione nazista e deportazione degli ebrei romani,” La Civiltà Cattolica, IV, quaderno 3683, December 6, 2004, 417-29, 426, from a document in the archives of La Civiltà Cattolica. The pontifical institutions raided were the Seminario Lombardo, the Collegio Russo, and the Istituto Orientale.

[18]ADSS, XI, doc. 30, notes of Maglione, 126.

[19] Reference to this order may be found in the archives of the Seminario Lombardo, b.7.A.73, Diario, “Appendice,” 17-18. For details, see Susan Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows, 225-28.

[20] The number 50 is from ADSS, X, doc. 53, Monsignor Guido Anchini, head of the Canonica, to Pius XII, February 13, 1944, 127-29. Nearly all the guests were men. Roughly 24 of the 50 were non-Jews, another 17 were described as non-Aryan Catholics, and 7 were described as Jews with no mention of religion. There is no record of any guests being hidden elsewhere in Vatican City.

[21] Ibid.

[22] De Felice, 751-56.

[23] Dominiek Oversteyns, De geschiedenis van de Hebreeërs in Rome tijdens de nazibezetting en vervolging in Rome (Rome: Privata, 2013), n.p, cited in Carvigiani, “Aprite le porte,” 132

[24]Rules of cloister are far more complex than is usually stated. Depending on the congregation, the rules often could be temporarily lifted by the head of the order. Also, some cloistered convents operated public spaces like guest houses, where the same strict rules did not apply. Some such convents may have employed Catholic laypersons to work in their public spaces.

[25]The articles in October were on page 1. The later articles, “Carità civile,” and “Motivazione,” appeared on December 3 and 4, both on page 1.

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Papal Rescue in Wartime Rome: A New Documentary and Commentaries

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Contemporary Church History Quarterly

Volume 21, Number 2 (June 2015)

Papal Rescue in Wartime Rome: A New Documentary and Commentaries

By William Doino Jr.

On April 1st, a documentary was televised in Italy entitled, “Lo vuole il Papa” (The Pope Wants It), exploring the role Pius XII played during the German occupation of Rome, when thousands of Jews were given shelter by Catholic institutions in and around Vatican City. The film is based upon the enterprising work of historian Antonello Carvigiani, who cites new evidence indicating  Pius XII personally supported these rescue efforts.

Last year, Carvigiani published a scholarly essay, “Aprite le porte, salvate i perseguitati,” (“Open the Doors, Save the Persecuted,”) published in Nuova storia contemporanea (September-October, 2014) one of Italy’s leading academic journals.

In his essay, Carvigiani examined the histories of several female religious communities in wartime Rome, and– analyzing the texts and records they left behind– found evidence that each acted under a common directive of Pius XII to take in persecuted Jews and other endangered people. Though some critics of Pius XII have questioned whether such instructions were ever given, Carvigiani maintains that he has “found evidence of a written or oral order” which was “delivered to all religious houses in Rome, as well as to all parishes and ecclesiastical structures.”

The documentary, based upon Carvigiani’s essay, expands upon his findings, with new testimony of individuals connected to these wartime events.

Dr. Andrea Tornielli, one of Italy’s leading Vatican commentators and author of a major biography on Pius XII, praised the documentary: “The story of the docu-film is not told by a narrator but by the actual images and testimonies of two survivors, only boys at the time, and by the nuns of the cloisters who had heard from the older sisters what had happened….The director chose to concentrate on the cloisters of SS Quattro Coronati, Santa Susanna, and Santa Maria dei Sette Dolori, and the community of the Istituto di Maria Bambina, whose walls still harbor diaries and chronicles handwritten by the people at the heart of the stories. All of them vouch that the call to offer charity and refuge to the persecuted came from above. Written and oral testimonies refer repeatedly to the Pope, but also to the Deanery of Rome or to Giovanni Battista Montini [the future Pope Paul VI] and close collaborator with Pius XII.”

The aim of Carvigiani’s documentary is “not to be apologetic,” writes Tornielli. Rather, it is to “shed light on an, until now, little-known aspect of it.”

In the war diary of the community of Maria Bambina, continued Tornielli, “every day there was another request [and] every so often a telephone call from the Secretariat of His Holiness from the Vatican, and the reason was always the same: someone on the run, a persecuted family to take in, to protect, to help. One could not have refused a request from the representatives of the Pope…”

The wartime diary of the Augustinian Nuns of the convent of the Santi Quattro Coronati, first publicized in 2006, is one of the most explicit on record regarding Pius XII’s assistance. Relating events in the Fall of 1943, we read:

“Having arrived at this month of November, we must be ready to render services of charity in a completely unexpected way. The Holy Father, Pius XII, of paternal heart, feels in himself all the sufferings of the moment. Unfortunately, with the Germans entry into Rome which happened in the month of September, a ruthless war against the Jews has begun, whom they wish to exterminate by means of atrocities prompted by the blackest barbarities. They round up young Italians, political figures, in order to torture them and finish them off in the most tremendous torments. In this painful situation, the Holy Father wants to save his children, also the Jews, and orders that hospitality be given in the convents to these persecuted, and that the cloisters must also adhere to the wish of the Supreme Pontiff….”

In the register of the cloister of Santa Maria dei Sette Dolori, we read: “At this time, Jews, fascists, soldiers, caribinieri and nobility sought refuge with religious institutions, who, at great risk to themselves, opened their doors to save human lives.”  This was the desire of Pius XII, “who was the first to fill the Vatican with refugees, using the Villa of Castel Gandolfo and the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran.”

The reference to Castel Gandolfo is significant, since many historians have overlooked, or are unaware that Pius XII protected many refugees there, including Jews. During the war years, contemporaneous reports put the number of refugees at Castel Gandolfo at 10,000 or more desperate and frightened people who were clothed, fed and protected there (a number of women even gave birth). Moving pictures of the overflowing refugees survive, and highlight one of the Church’s most significant humanitarian accomplishments during the War.

Of special significance is a dispatch   published in the June 22, 1944 issue of the Palestine Post (today’s Jerusalem Post), from a correspondent reporting directly from Vatican City, just weeks after the liberation. Under the headline, “Sanctuary in the Vatican,” the correspondent wrote:

“Several thousand refugees, largely Jews, during the weekend left the Papal Palace at Castel Gandolfo–the Pope’s summer residence near Marino–after enjoying safety there during the recent terror. Besides Jews, persons of all political creeds who had been endangered were given sanctuary at the palace. Before leaving, the refugees conveyed their gratitude to the Pope through his majordomo.”

Since only Pius XII had the authority to open the doors of Castel Gandolfo, it is unreasonable to maintain that these “several thousand refugees, largely Jews,” were given aid only by other Catholic officials, acting without a clear directive from Pius XII. The sincere gratitude expressed by Jews in Vatican City that day was not misplaced, but given to the man who had supreme authority over Castel Gandolfo, Pius XII, who obviously made their survival possible.

Carvigiani’s new research and documentary is consistent with the testimonies of  priest-rescuers like Cardinals Paolo Dezza and  Pietro Palazzini (honored by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations)  and Msgr. John Patrick Caroll-Abbing, who testified to Pius XII’s active support for the Jews of Rome, and to their rescuers. (There is also evidence and testimony that Pius helped the famous anti-Nazi Irish priest, Msgr. Hugh O’Flaherty, as well). Carvigiani also builds  upon the work of noted historians Michael Tagliacozzo, a survivor of the Nazi raid on Rome’s Jews, and one of the outstanding authorities on it; Andrea Riccardi, author of  L’inverno piu lungo, 1943-1944: Pio XII, gli ebrei e I nazista I Roma (The Longest Winter, 1943-1944: Pius XII, the Jews and the Nazis in Rome, 2008); Anna Foa, Professor of Modern History at the University of Rome; and Sr. Grazia Loparco, who has done extensive research on papal rescue in Rome. Foa has written: “Precisely with regard to Rome, the ways in which the work of sheltering and rescuing the persecuted was carried forward were such that they could not have been simply the fruit of initiatives from below, but were clearly coordinated as well as permitted by the leadership of the Church.” Similarly, Sr. Loparco has stated: “From the documentation and testimonies emerges evidence of the full support and instruction of Pius XII…Many concrete events, such as the opening of monasteries and convents, prove the fact that many Jews were lodged because of the direct concern of the Vatican, which also provided food and assistance.” More recently, Loparco has written an article entitled, “An Order from the Top,” for the Osservatore Romano, (English-language edition, January 30, 2015)  in which she gives additional evidence of specific instances where papal instructions were given to rescue persecuted Jews in Rome.

It should also be noted that, after the liberation of Rome but before World War II ended, Vatican Radio was already broadcasting the life-saving assistance of the Holy See. A review of Pius XII’s charity was broadcast on March 12, 1945 and stated:  “During the occupation of Rome, between 8th September, 1943 and 5th June 1944, he gave shelter in 120 institutes for women and 60 institutes for men, as well as in other houses and churches in Rome, to more than 5,200 Jews who were thus able to live free from fear and misery.”(Cited in Reginald F. Walker, Pius of Peace (London: M.H. Gill and Son, 1945), p. 94).

No examination of the Vatican and the German occupation of Rome would be complete without a careful study of the most important primary documents available; such a collection has fortunately been produced by Pier Luigi Guiducci, in his work, Il terzo Reich contro Pio XII: Papa Pacelli nei documenti nazisti (The Third Reich Against Pius XII: Pope Pacelli in Nazi Documents). Though not yet translated, Professor Guiducci has given an interview in English revealing his findings.

While scholarly research continues around the record of Pius XII during the Holocaust and doubtless will be further assisted when the Vatican releases its remaining wartime archives, it is encouraging that researchers like Carvigiani have brought forth fresh evidence which provides a more complete and balanced picture of Pius XII’s pontificate.

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January 2009 Newsletter

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Association of Contemporary Church Historians

(Arbeitsgemeinschaft kirchlicher Zeitgeschichtler)

John S. Conway, Editor. University of British Columbia

January 2009 — Vol. XV, no. 1

 

Dear Friends,

My very best wishes to you all for the beginning of the New Year. It is particularly appropriate that my first Newsletter this year brings you word of the well-deserved award to our long-time mentor, Professor Gerhard Besier of Dresden University, of an Honorary Doctorate of Theology from Lund University, Sweden, for his outstanding contributions in the field of church history. I am sure our members will join me in sending you, Gerhard, our warmest congratulations. May you long continue to advance the cause of kirchliche Zeitgeschichte.

Once again I look forward to being in touch with you in 2009 even though, to my regret, I have not got the opportunity of meeting many of you in person. However do please correspond if there are points of interest which you find in these Newsletters. I am always glad to hear from you.

May I once again remind you please do NOT press the REPLY button to this message, but to communicate to me at my personal address given at the end of this message.

Contents:

1) Book review:

a) Gallacher, Hurley and Pius XII
b) Henry, We know only men. Rescuing Jews in France
c) Akinsha and Koslov, The Holy Place – Moscow’s Cathedral

2) Comment on Religion and Politics in Post-Communist Romania
3) Dissertation abstract – P. Latvala, Mission to the Soviet Union
4) Correction: Prof N. Stoltzfus, The Rosenstrasse protests.

List of books reviewed in Vol. XIV – 2008.

1a) Charles Gallacher, Vatican Secret Diplomacy: Joseph P. Hurley and Pope Pius XII. [Reprinted with permission from the America Press, copyright 2008, all rights reserved]

Among the movers and shakers of American Catholicism, Joseph P. Hurley (1894-1967) surely deserves a high place. As priest, bishop, Vatican envoy and ally of FDR, he was at the center of twentieth-century debates involving the Church. As influential in his day as his contemporary, Francis Spellman, Hurley remains far less known. Fortunately, with the publication of Charles Gallagher’s new work, Vatican Secret Diplomacy, this forgotten prelate finally receives the attention he deserves.

Gallagher, a Jesuit seminarian, is author of a previous work on the archdiocese of St. Augustine, Florida, which Hurley led from 1940-1967. Granted access to Hurley’s private papers, he has produced a fascinating study.As Gallagher tells it, Hurley was a classic pre-Conciliar Catholic. He believed, as did many U.S. bishops, that a “blessed harmony” existed between the Church and the United States, and thought patriotism “should have the strongest place in man’s affections.” Once ordained, a combative spirit animated him: “Dominating concepts of Catholic militarism, Americanism, patriotism, and athleticism would all be transferred to his religious outlook and his later diplomatic career….To compromise, dither, walk away from a fight, or ‘not face up to facts’ placed one in the detestable category of ‘the Catholic milksop’ ”Fighting the Good Lord’s fight­as he saw it­was Hurley’s specialty. A man of the world as well as the cloth, his abilities were recognized by his superiors, who assigned him posts in India, Japan, and finally the Vatican. That Hurley took well to all these positions­despite any formal diplomatic training­speaks to his natural talents.

Gallagher’s book is as much character study as religious biography. Hurley was a man of contradictions. Though outstanding in many respects, he sometimes allowed prejudice to overtake him. While serving in the Papal Secretariat of State (1934-1940), he sympathized with the controversial priest Charles Coughlin. When he finally took a stand against “Charlie,” as he called him, it was only because of Coughlin’s criticism of FDR, not his anti-Semitism. And yet, to Hurley’s credit, after he witnessed what was actually happening to Jews during the thirties and forties, he became their champion­delivering scorching sermons against Hitler and his “criminal effort to eradicate the Jews.” He also aligned himself with the White House, becoming “the most outspoken critic of American Catholic non-interventionism and arguably the most ardent Catholic supporter of Roosevelt’s wartime foreign policy.” At a time of rampant isolationism, this was daring. Even after America’s entry into the War, conflicts continued, especially when the United States and the Holy See differed. Invariably, Hurley took his government’s side, even promoting the State Department’s “Black Propaganda” against the papacy (meant to influence its political stands). Had the Vatican become aware of this, it could have ended Hurley’s ecclesiastical career.

Though positive toward Hurley, Gallagher offers a one-sided view of Eugenio Pacelli (Pope Pius XII). Relying upon questionable evidence, Gallagher depicts Pacelli as overly cautious; more fearful of Communism than Nazism; and not as outspoken as his predecessor, Pius XI. These are familiar but unpersuasive charges, given that Hitler’s most fervent supporters always blamed Pacelli for the anti-Nazi line taken by the Holy See. Gallagher errs when he writes that Cardinal Pacelli’s 1937 warning to American diplomat Alfred Klieforth was “arguably the only time Pacelli personally expressed his disdain for Hitler.” In fact, as early as 1923, Pacelli, then papal nuncio in Germany, wrote the Vatican (following Hitler’s failed putsch), and denounced the future dictator by name. One of Gallagher’s sources against Pius XII is Hurley himself, who revered Pius XI but doubted Pacelli. But the claim that there was a big difference between Pius XI and Pius XII is unconvincing, since Pius XI appointed Cardinal Pacelli his Secretary of State, and said the Cardinal “speaks with my voice.”

Some of Hurley’s criticisms may have been based on simple ignorance. For example, Gallagher cites an entry in one of Hurley’s papers, where he praises Pius XI’s anti-Nazi encyclical Mit brennender Sorge: “Ratti [Pius XI] said it in March 1937, even if Pacelli missed the point later.” Apparently, Hurley was unaware that Pacelli drafted Pius XI’s encyclical. Similarly, Hurley believed Pius XII’s wartime statements were not direct enough; but the Nazis themselves denounced Pius as a “mouthpiece of the Jewish war criminals,” and many rescuers have testified that Pius inspired them. In 1940, Pius XII suddenly appointed Hurley (still stationed in Rome) the bishop of St. Augustine, a move which had the effect of placing the outspoken prelate in a “backwater” diocese. Gallagher sees this as Pius’s punishment for Hurley’s independent ways. But whatever tensions existed, the pope must have admired the feisty American on some level; for when the War ended, he surprised Hurley by reviving his diplomatic career, appointing him acting chief of the apostolic nunciature in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. There he courageously battled the Communists, even as he met with constant frustration.

Hurley experienced far more success in his St. Augustine diocese, where he returned in 1950, expanding it through savvy real estate deals and religious gusto. If only Hurley’s knack for property development had been matched by a more prophetic imagination. A staunch traditionalist, he opposed Vatican II, and even ridiculed John Coutney Murray as a “master of double-talk.” Last, though an outspoken foe of racism abroad, Hurley was less sensitive to it back home. During 1964, Rev. Martin Luther King transformed St. Augustine into “a major area of civil rights activity and media attention.” Hurley wanted no part of this. Declining to meet with King, he instead sent him an equivocal letter expressing Christian fraternity “among people of different races,” but warning against “any act which might occasion…ill will.” Mind you, this was six years after the American bishops had issued­on the orders of a dying Pius XII­a pastoral condemning the sins of racial segregation. One wonders whether anyone, observing Hurley’s failure, might have mistaken him for a “Catholic milksop.”

William Doino Jr., Weston, Connecticut

1b) Patrick Henry, We only know men. The rescue of Jews in France during the Holocaust. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2007. 191 pp
[This review appeared first in Catholic Historical Review, Vol. 74, no. 3, July 2008]

In 1979 an American professor of philosophy, Philip Hallie, published an account of the notable efforts by a small group of French Reformed Protestants during the second world war to give sanctuary to Jews oppressed by the Nazis and their Vichy collaborators. This pioneering work, Lest Innocent Blood be shed. The Story of the Village of Le Chambon and How Goodness Happened There, described to English-speaking audiences how these villagers, on a lonely rural plateau a hundred miles south of Lyons, undertook what is now recognized as a uniquely heroic rescue attempt. No other communal effort on this scale occurred for this length of time anywhere else in Occupied Europe. Hallie’s findings were later followed by a moving documentary film, Weapons of the Spirit, produced by a film-maker who himself, as a child, was one of those rescued. Not surprisingly, these events have been given prominence, not only to support the cause of post-war Jewish-Christian reconciliation, but also to promote the image of the French resistance to Nazi-organized tyranny.

Patrick Henry, writing a generation later, seeks to amplify Hallie’s account, to correct a few historical errors, and to put the inhabitants of Le Chambon in a wider setting. He also takes issue with some of the mythical interpretations, which perhaps inevitably had crept in. Naturally Henry has to cover a lot of the same ground, but stresses particularly the role of these Protestant Huguenots as the successors to a long history of religious persecution in that part of France. This made them sensitive to the plight of the Jews, a sentiment reinforced by their strong sympathies with the people of the Bible.

Henry is at pains to dispute the view that the villagers of Le Chambon and district were primarily motivated by economic factors. Instead he emphasizes the spiritual calling which they shared with like-minded Christians of the area, such as Quakers, and Darbyites (Brethren). Since ninety percent of the area’s population was Protestant, the Catholics were underrepresented. Their efforts to assist Jews took place elsewhere, and are not here discussed.

This Protestant determination to resist Nazi oppression and to rescue Jews was all the more notable for being linked to their equal commitment to pacifist non-violence. Henry devotes one chapter to the uplifting story of Daniel Trocme, a young cousin of the Le Chambon’s pastor, who with six of his charges was deported by the Nazis. All lost their lives in concentration camps.

Henry also records the equally self-sacrificing but unknown witness of Madeleine Dreyfus, a righteous Jew, who took enormous risks to bring fellow Jews to the sanctuary on the plateau. Arrested in November 1943, she was to spend eleven months in the horrors of Bergen-Belsen, but luckily survived. Henry believes that her story, and that of other Jews who were part of the resistance in France, has been unfairly neglected and deserves to be better known.

In his concluding chapter Henry regrets that not enough attention has been paid to these rescuers. For the first fifty years after the Holocaust, survivors stressed the evils they had endured. But there was also goodness, even love and compassion amongst those, few and far between, who saved Jews. from the death camps. Unfortunately these efforts have sometimes been disparaged, or their motives challenged. Even notable figures, such as the only American Righteous Gentile, Varian Fry,who also operated in southern France, are largely unknown. Henry’s contribution seeks to rectify this omission, and to put the heroes of Le Chambon into a European-wide context. Their legacy, whether as Jews or Christians, is that they protested against the racial hatred of the day, and because they knew only men, witnessed to the essential similarity of all humanity.

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1c) Konstantin Akinsha and Grogorij Kozlov, with Sylvia Hadfield, The Holy Place: architecture, ideology and history in Russia. New York: Yale University Press 2007. 212 Pp. ISBN 978-0-300-11027-2

Two hundred years ago Napoleon’s defeat in Russia seemed to the then Czar, Alexander I, to be a miracle which deserved to be commemorated. He resolved to build a cathedral in Moscow, dedicated to Christ the Saviour. The story of this cathedral, its construction, subsequent demolition and final reconstruction, as told in this sprightly account by two Russian architectural historians, is more of a parable about Russia’s turbulent political history than an architectural treatise, but entertaining on both levels. This is the story of a holy place, where successive rulers of Russia wanted to indulge their views. Alexander yearned for a symbol of universal Christendom; Stalin wanted its replacement to be the tallest building in the world; Yeltsin rebuilt it as a reparation for seventy-four years of Soviet tyranny. Architects of all stripes created hundreds of proposals for the site, but most were doomed to remain unfulfilled. Thinkers, ideologues and artists planned grand decorations which were never realized. As the authors wryly remark: “Alexander was compared to King Solomon creating the Temple, but the history of Christ the Saviour reminds us more of another biblical construction: the Tower of Babel.”

The original site proposed for the cathedral was on the Sparrow Hills, where the University of Moscow now stands. But the vast task assigned to Alexander’s chosen architect, quarrels amongst the leading politicians, problems with the recruited labour, suspicion of Masonic influences, corruption in the procurement of building materials, all caused delays. Then Alexander suddenly died and the project was doomed.

Not until twenty years later was it to be revived. This time, the site was moved to the banks of the Moscow River, not far from the Kremlin, as being much more suitable for ceremonial parades and processions. Czar Nicholas I wanted it to become, not the symbol of European unity, but of Russia’s national superiority and its historic destiny. The decorations and furnishings reflected this new emphasis. The murals, frescoes and numerous statues, all spoke of the history of holy Russia, and included mementos of how God had granted Russia victory over the anti-Christ Napoleon. But progress was very slow, and the cathedral was still not finished in 1855 when Nicholas died from shock at his army’s defeat in the Crimea. Slowly work resumed with more and more expensive, even luxurious decorations added. More than nine hundred thousand pounds of gold were used for the dome alone. The result of these extra embellishments was stylistic cacophany, with East and West reflecting uneasily Russia’s central position in the world. The total cost exceeded more than fifteen million rubles. The Cathedral was finally consecrated in May 1883.

Despite the criticisms of the artistic elite, the cathedral was popular with the masses. Its very size, as the largest church in all Russia, was impressive, even awe-inspiring. It became the most successful mass culture project of its age, instructing the onlooker in the history of both Russia and the Bible. The visitor could be filled with wonder and pride in being Russian.

However, the Cathedral – even with a gigantic statue of Czar Alexander III erected in the 1890s and placed by the front entrance – did not long endure as the mascot of Russia’s imperial monarchy. Thirty-four years after its inauguration, the last Czar, Nicholas II, was deposed and soon after murdered by Bolshevik extremists. The revolutionary violence which engulfed the country, the mass executions of class enemies, and the wholesale confiscation of property, including the church’s, did not leave the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour unscathed. For a while it became the seat of the new Patriarch, whose sermons and decrees were aimed at arousing resistance to the new Communist rulers. He was soon enough placed under house arrest and remained so for several years. His pulpit was then occupied by a fellow-traveller with the Communists, who claimed that the teachings of Christ and Marx were identical. The kingdom of heaven would now result from the success of the Communist revolution. The Cathedral became cold, empty and bird-spattered.

On 5 December 1931, on the orders of the Soviet Politburo, the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour was demolished, blown up by dynamite. In its place, a Palace of Soviets was proposed. Stalin himself gave this idea his full support. Numerous avant-garde architects from all over the world entered the competition to find the appropriate style for the embodiment of the Soviet New Order. The new palace was to be the crowning glory of the Five-Year Plan, and a triumphant vindication of the Communist ideology.

Akinsha’s descriptions of the rival plans for this mammoth piece of architectural idolatry are suitably sardonic. But, as he makes clear, the ordinary Russians were not impressed. The Cathedral’s destruction had been a cruel blow. Memories of its splendour were, however, preserved for an as yet unimaginable future. Instead, under Stalin’s command, a vast and unrivalled edifice was to be built, crowned by a gigantic statue of Lenin. Once the site had been cleared, preparations began for its new fate. By 1941 only a large circular foundation had been built. Then in June the German invasion began. Men and material were immediately transferred for the war effort. The work was never resumed.

After Stalin’s death in 1953, this hole in the ground was turned into Russia’s largest swimming pool, even heated through the depths of winter. But the Cathedral was not forgotten. Its demolition came to be seen as symbolic of the Soviet crimes against civilisation, and its former richness as a sign of Russia’s long-lost heritage. Nostalgia grew for the Cathedral’s golden dome so ruthlessly destroyed by the agents of an increasingly discredited ideology. A revival of interest in religion in the 1970s and 1980s also helped.

With the downfall of the Soviet empire, Russia needed a new identity. Its new leader, Boris Yeltsin, turned to the Orthodox Church as a still viable source for national renewal. The Patriarch, Alexei II, welcomed the chance to recover from seventy years of persecution and exclusion. The price demanded was the rebuilding of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, on its former site, but not with the same elaborate decoration. In September 1994 a powerful committee of both church and state leaders gave the signal for plans for the reconstruction to begin.

Opposition was of course heard from those who objected to the great expense the rebuilding would incur, or from those who wanted to retain their favourite swimming pool. But the church and the city of Moscow authorities launched a large-scale public relations drive and fund-raising campaign which proved highly successful. The Cathedral now became the symbol of the renaissance of the new Russia. By 1997 the exterior was finished in time for Moscow’s 950th birthday, celebrated with passionate Russian enthusiasm. Finally in early 2000, on the Orthodox Church’s first Christmas of the new millennium, the Cathedral was opened for public worship. A few months later, an even more impressive ceremony was held during which the last Czar Nicholas and his wife Alexandra were granted sainthood. At long last, the ruined cathedral was resurrected and the murdered czar sanctified.

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2) Comment on Religion and Politics in Post-Communist Romania (Newsletter, November 2008, Vol . XIV, no. 11, p. 8.

The following comment has been sent in by an Oxford scholar who has recently had occasion to visit Romania several times on church business:

“The two authors, L.Stan and L Turcescu, have clearly gone through
the trauma of living through the horrible stages of Ceausescu’s rule
and eventual death, then within a year or two transferring
themselves to Canada, and taking up, no doubt with considerable
enthusiasm, the freedoms and questioning that Canada allows and
encourages. In particular they have clearly adopted a good many of
the ‘assumptions’ about human society which North Americans take for
granted, but which not only looked different in Romania when they
were there because of the Communist rule and ideology, but which are
also very different in Romania and most other countries, in Europe
and in different ways in other continents. North America has had its
specific history and ideologies which have shaped a set of
assumptions which some people, including these two, find congenial
and ‘natural’, but others are more sceptical about (including me !).
The way they approach the particular questions they choose to
give their space to – church and state, religious education in
schools, homosexuality – is entirely that of a certain sort of
North Americans. They no doubt still speak and read Romanian, but write
as outsiders rather than as insiders. It is also evident that the
great majority of the ‘scholarly’ books they refer to,
understandably enough given that they are living in Canada, are by
American authors and reflect their sets of ‘values’ and assumptions.

I don’t say this ‘against’ them, but I feel sure that most Romanians
reading them will be struck by this North American-centred approach (which I
have of course all too often met in books dealing with China,
especially with China’s Christians!). For some it may be welcome,
as illustrating how they are seen, but for many others I feel pretty
sure that they will be looked at more than a little askance, as
writers who are no longer ‘one of us’ ! And I suppose that my
long-standing search and habitual starting-point has been, and
remains, to try and understand any given society, and the people I
am meeting and hoping in some way to serve, from within their
own outlook(s) and assumptions. I may well not ‘agree’ with
some, even many, of those but it’s virtually always more important
to show people that one has understood and sympathised with them
rather than to rush into showing how differently they ‘ought’ to see
things and behave, let alone how much better they could have done
this and that if only they had listened to me !

So while I find the book, of course, interesting and at points
illuminating, it isn’t the Romania I have met and begun to love in
the people I have been with ! Where are the delights of those
‘painted monasteries’ in Moldavia whose tradition is still so alive
and kicking in the Romanian Orthodox Church, where the hundreds of
young women crowding into the nunneries and offering their time and
service to the poor (of whom there are of course still many in
almost every area), where the thrill with which the people of the
city of Sibiu so evidently welcomed the big Europe-wide Ecumenical
Assembly there a year and a bit ago now … ? I don’t doubt that
most of what these authors write about is factually ‘true’, but
there’s so much more to the life and faith of Romanians than the
things they write about, even if those deserve a lot more
exploration and deeper thinking than they mostly yet get.”

3) Dissertation abstract

Piia Latvala, Valoa itään? – Kansanlähetys ja Neuvostoliitto 1967–1973 Light to the East? – The Finnish Lutheran Mission and the Soviet Union 1967–1973.

Ms Piia Latvala, of the Theological Faculty of the University of Helsinki, Finland, recently successfully defended her doctoral thesis on the above topic. We congratulate her on her success.

The Cold War affected the lives of Christian churches, especially in Europe. Besides the official ecumenical relations between east and west, there existed unofficial activity from west to east, such as smuggling Bibles and distributing information about the severe condition of human rights in the USSR.

This study examines this kind of unofficial activity originating in Finland. It especially concentrates on the missionary work to the Soviet Union done by the Finnish Lutheran Mission (FLM, Suomen Evankelisluterilainen Kansanlähetys) founded in 1967. The work for Eastern Europe was organised through the Department for the Slavic Missions. FLM was founded within the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland, but it was not connected to the church on an organisational level. In addition to the strong emphasis on the Lutheran confession, FLM presented evangelical theology.

The fundamental work of the Department for the Slavic Missions was to organise the smuggling of Bibles and other Christian literature to the Soviet Union and other countries behind the Iron Curtain. No exact figures are available as to how many people supported or took part in these smuggling operations. Even today many of those involved in these operations are either reluctant or do not dare to reveal the extent of their exploits.. But already within a few years, the Department reported employing some two hundred reliable and trustworthy agents. The number of bibles these individuals took with them varied between a few dozen to fifteen hundred books at a time. They also financed several Christian radio programmes produced and aired mainly by the international Trans World Radio. The Department diversified its activity to humanitarian help by distributing material help such as clothes and shoes to the unregistered evangelical and Baptist groups, which were called the “underground churches”.

In Finland the Department focused on information services. It published its own magazine, Valoa idässä (Light in the East), 5 to 6 times per year. Through the magazine and by distributing samizdat material received from the unregistered Christian groups, it discussed and reported the violations of human rights in the Soviet Union, especially when the unregistered Christian groups were considered the victims. In the Department’s opinion, the legally registered churches and communities had lost something of their genuine Christian character. Their collaboration with the Soviet system of tyranny had perverted their true witness. They now needed to be given the unpolluted Gospel truth. This resistance against the Soviet Union was therefore not so much political as religious: the staff members of the Department were keenly motivated and revivalist young people who thought, for instance, that communism was in some way an apocalyptic world power revealed in the Bible. Consequently they unequivocally denounced the religious policies of the Soviet Union as being un-Christian and despotic, and criticized as cowardly the tactical silence of the Finnish church authorities.

Smuggling Bibles was discussed widely in the Finnish media and even in parliament and the Finnish Security Police (SUPO, Suojelupoliisi) – and in the Lutheran Church. From the church’s point of view, this kind of missionary work was understandable but bothersome. Through their ecumenical connections, the bishops knew the critical situation of churches behind the iron curtain very well, but wanted to act diplomatically and cautiously to prevent causing harm to ecumenical or political relations. As a result, the openly critical attitudes towards the Soviet Union proclaimed by these ardent missionaries caused some concern. This led the church leaders to declare that such activities were not part of the official missionary engagement of the Finnish Church.

The leftist media and members of parliament especially accused the work of the Department of being illegal and endangering relations between Finland and the Soviet Union. SUPO did not consider the work of the Department as illegal activity or as a threat to Finnish national security.

The pioneer phase of this mission ended in 1973 when its chief organizer Per-Olof Malk resigned, due mainly to internal quarrels regarding the use of the financial subsidies received. Malk was clearly a skilful propagandist in whose view this controversial mission was fully justified. The Bible’s command laid upon all Christians a duty to go forth and proclaim the truth of the Gospel to the unconverted nations.
Subsequently, the bible smuggling operations continued but were undertaken less spectacularly or flamboyantly. After 1989 they were no longer necessary.
Piia Latvala

4) Professor Nathan Stoltzfus of Florida State University writes to send us the following correction to a quote attributed to him in ‘The Rosenstrasse protest reconsidered’ (item 2b in the May, 2006 newsletter):

“A friend has brought to my attention a piece in this newsletter with a short reference to Antonia Leuger’s excellent essay (<http://aps.sulb.unisaarland.de/theologie.geschichte/inhalt/2006/11.html>http://aps.sulb.unisaarland.de/theologie.geschichte/inhalt/2006/11.html). It asserted that Wolf Gruner “takes issue with the basic contention, put forward for example by Nathan Stoltzfus, that ‘if only more people had behaved like the wives of the Rosenstrasse, the mass murder of the Jews would never have taken place’.

I have not put forth this contention and would not have made the above quote attributed to me. This mistake is reminiscent, however, of one Joachin Neander corrected in the December, 2005 issue of this newsletter (item 2). Neander refuted the charge, printed in the newsletter’s review of Antonia Leuger’s edited collection, Berlin Rosenstrasse 2-4, that the authors believed that the Rosenstrasse Protest “changed the course of history.” (<http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/akz/akz2512.htm>http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/akz/akz2512.htm)

Indeed, in a review of Gruner’s latest book, Widerstand in der Rosenstrasse, I have just corrected a similar charge. Gruner wrote that I “advocate” a thesis that more protests like those on Berlin’s Rosenstrasse would have “impeded” the Holocaust. As evidence for this assertion, Gruner cited a provocative question (an important tool of scholarship) that I had put forward, asking whether further protests might have “slowed or impeded” the annihilation. Gruner also made similar charges, including one that I claim the Nazi regime could not have quelled the protest with force, although I have always argued that the regime avoided using force in this case for tactical reasons (AHR Review 112/5, 1628,

http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/112.5/br_145.html>www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/112.5/br_145.html).

In fact, I have regularly presented considerations that, had more Germans protested, the regime may well have responded more harshly. For example, in Resistance of the Heart (WW Norton, 1996, p. 260), I write: “It is possible to see the release of Jews at Rosenstrasse as a small, isolatable exception the regime made in order to move forward with its larger purposes. In this view, the Rosenstrasse protesters made an isolated, limited demand the regime could agree to, a calculable cost it could pay. The regime could count the protesters, and count their demands–about 1,700 Jews. It could be certain the Rosenstrasse Protest would end with the release of these Jews, and that the regime could then proceed with the enormous program of genocide elsewhere, where there were no protests. A more general protest against the Final Solution itself, that frustrated all of the regime’s will to genocide, would have pushed the regime into responding with brutal force, one might argue. Gutterer [Goebbels’ Under Secretary of Propaganda] implied that the result of the Rosenstrasse Protest did not necessarily indicate that larger protests would have led to further liberations of Jews.” Nathan Stoltzfus

List of books reviewed in 2008.

Anglicanism and Orthodoxy May
Austin, A., China’s Millions.The China Inland Mission and the late Qing Society April
Berdahl, D., Where the world ended. Re-unification in the German borderland September
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich: London 1933-1935 December
Boyd, R., The Witness of the Student Christian Movement April
Brinkmann, H., God’s Ambassadors. The Bruderhof in Nazi Germany November
Burleigh, M, Sacred Causes February
Damberg, W., and Liedhegener, A., Katholiken in der USA und Deutschland Jul/Aug
Daughrity, D., Bishop Stephen Neill October
Dembowski, P, Christians in the Warsaw Ghetto February
Dramm, S., Dietrich Bonhoeffer. An introduction to his thought May
V-Mann Gottes und der Abwehr? Dietrich Bonhoeffer und der Widerstand May
Faltin, L. and Wright, M., eds., The religious roots of contemporary European identity December
Gailus, M., ed., Elisabeth Schmitz November
Green, Lowell C., Lutherans against Hitler. The untold story June
Hughes, M., Conscience and conflict. Methodism, peace and war in the 20th century Jul/Aug
“Ihr ende schaut an” Evangelische Märtyrer des 20 Jahrhunderts December
Jantzen, Kyle, Faith and Fatherland. Parish politics in Hitler’s Germany June
Kammerer, G., Aktion Sühnezeichen Friedensdienst November
Kunter, K., Erfüllte Hoffnungen und zerbrochene Träume October
Lehmann, T., Blues Music and Gospel Proclamation November
McLeod, H., Saarinen, R., and Lauha, A., North European Churches. From the Cold War to Globalization December
Paldiel, M., Churches and the Holocaust, Unholy teaching, good Samaritans and Reconciliation March
Plokhy,S. and Sysyn, F., Religion and Nation in Modern Ukraine January
Ringshausen, G., Widerstand und christlicher Glaube Jul/Aug
Shuff, R .N., Searching for the true church. Brethren and Evangelicals in mid-twentieth century England Jul/Aug
Silomon, A, Der Ost-West Dialog der deutschen evangelischen Kirchen 1969-1991 October
Spicer, K. Ed., Antisemitism, Christian ambivalence and the Holocaust January
Stan, L., and Turcescu, L, Religion and Politics in post-communist Romania November
Tavard, G. H., Vatican II and the Ecumenical Way September
Webb, Pauline, World-Wide-Webb October
Wolf, H., Flammer T., and Schueler, B., eds Clemens August von Galen September
Zumholz, M. A., Volksfrömmigkeit und Katholisches Milieu April

With every good wish
John Conway

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