Pope Pius XII's response to the Roman razzia ("roundup"), or mass deportation of Jews, on October 16, 1943, to Auschwitz, where almost all the deportees were murdered, is a significant issue relating to Pius and the Holocaust.
Under Mussolini, no policy of abduction of Jews had been implemented in Italy. Following Italy's capitulation to the Allies in 1943, Nazi forces invaded and occupied much of the country and began deportations of Jews to extermination camps. The Vatican protested at diplomatic levels, but Pius himself did not offer any public protests. Several thousand Jews found refuge in Catholic networks, institutions and homes, including in Vatican City and Pius's Summer Residence. The Catholic Church and some historians have credited this rescue in large part to the Pius's own direction. However, historian Susan Zuccotti researched the matter in detail and states that there is "considerable evidence of papal disapproval of the hiding of Jews and other fugitives in Vatican properties."Zucotti (2005) pp 287-89, 307 For example, after a 1944 Fascist raid on San Paolo Basilica found refugees, including Jews, hidden there, Church leadership ordered the canons (chaplains) and other members of the staff of St. Peter's who had been concealing fugitives in the Canonica, the canons' residence in the Vatican, to eject all of them. A number of cardinals asked Cardinal Rossi, who had ordered the expulsion, to change his mind, but he refused, stating that the order had come from Pius himself. The other clergy asked the Cardinal Secretary of State to intercede with Pius, who eventually relented.
Various historians have given differing emphases in their accounts of Pius's response to the razzia. According to historian Michael Phayer, "the question of the pope's silence has become the focus of intense historical debate and analysis" because the deportations occurred "under his very windows," a phrase also used in the title of a book on the subject by Zuccotti.Phayer, 2008, p. 70. The phrase is based on language used by Ernst von Weizsäcker, the German ambassador to the Vatican, who reported to Berlin that the razzia had taken place "under the Pope's windows."Sánchez, 2002, p. 26.John T. Pawlikowski. "The Papacy of Pius XII: The Known and the Unknown". In Rittner and Roth, 2002, p. 77. It also echoes the reported words of the protest made to Weizsäcker by the Vatican secretary of state on the morning of the roundup: "It is sad for the Holy Father, sad beyond imagination, that here in Rome, under the very eyes of the Common Father, that so many people should suffer only because they belong to a specific race."Documented protocol in: Actes et documents du Saint Siège relatifs à la Seconde Guerre Mondiale. Volume IX, Document 368, p. 505
Phayer's and Zuccotti's emphasis on "papal silence" can be contrasted with that on "papal action" by Jewish Holocaust historian Martin Gilbert, who wrote that when the Nazis came in search of Rome's Jews, Pius had already "A few days earlier... personally ordered the Vatican clergy to open the sanctuaries of the Vatican City to all 'non-Aryans' in need of refuge." (Gilbert's citation to back up this statement is to a page in Meir Michaelis's book Mussolini and the Jews; however, the relevant sentence by Michaelis - "But as soon as Weizsacker informed the Curia of Hitler’s decision to respect and safeguard the extra-territorial status of the Vatican City and its multitude of enclaves, Pius XII personally ordered the clergy to open these sanctuaries to all non-Aryans in need of refuge.” - does not itself have a citation or reference.)
Zuccotti argues that there is no written evidence of this supposed papal directive and that claims of its existence only appeared after the 1963 production of a play critical of Pius' failure to protest the Holocaust.Zucotti (2005), p 288 Gary Krupp, a retired medical-equipment dealer who has become an outspoken defender of Pius, wrote that "it was not only normal but essential for any incriminating documents, even slips of paper, to be destroyed lest they fall into Nazi hands and endanger the carrier or the referee. In fact, as [writer Ronald] Rychlak points out, Zuccotti had spelt this out herself in an earlier book...: 'Any direct personal order would have had to be kept very quiet to protect those who were actually sheltered' ('The Italians and the Holocaust,' 1987)."Krupp, Gary L., Pope Pius XII and World War II, The Documented Truth, Pave the Way Foundation, 2012, pp. 243-44. Zuccotti has stated, however, that dangerous documents could be and indeed were "kept very quiet," i.e., hidden in churches, during the German occupation, and that "it is not difficult to hide a document somewhere in the Vatican City!" The days after the raid on San Paolo generated significant incriminating documentation - including information about the refugees housed in the St. Peter's Canonica and the priests who were hiding them - which not only was written down but was then retained in the Vatican archives. Zuccotti has commented, too, that a written papal order to conceal Jews, if such an order existed, would have been viewed as highly valuable, given the questions expected to be asked after the inevitable Allied victory.
Lead up to roundups Foreknowledge of Vatican According to Phayer, there is no doubt that "Pius XII knew of the plan to murder Roman Jews." Phayer writes that Pius's under-secretaries of state Giovanni Montini and Domenico Tardini first learned of the planned deportations in mid-September 1943.Phayer, 2008, p. 71. Specifically, the Vatican learned of a "telegram from Berlin instructing the SS in Rome to seize the city's Jews" several weeks before the razzia began. According to historian and rabbi David G. Dalin, "A fair reading suggests Pius had heard rumors and raised them with the Nazi occupiers. Enza Pignatelli Aragona reported that when she broke in on the pope with the news of the roundup early on the morning of October 16, 1943, his first words were: "But the Germans had promised not to touch the Jews!"
Events prior to the razzia in July 1943, following a series of disastrous defeats culminating in the Allied invasion of Sicily, Benito Mussolini was deposed. On 3 September 1943 the new government decided to capitulate to the United States and Great Britain and on 13 October 1943, the Kingdom of Italy officially joined the Allied Powers by declaring war on its former Axis partner Germany. In response, Hitler deployed increasing numbers of German troops into Northern Italy and the areas around Rome starting in early September. Up until this time, the Fascists who had dominated the Italian government had refused to cooperate with the efforts of their German allies to exterminate the Jews. It was clear to many German military and diplomatic officials that there was nothing to be gained (and much to be lost) by allowing a roundup and deportation of Italy's Jewish population.[Field Marshal Kesselring]:"If it were important to do something with the Roman Jews, he would favor... using Jewish labor for defense construction work around Rome." By October, "various members of the German military and diplomatic corps" were attempting to prevent the planned deportation of Rome's Jews. Weizsäcker took over from bishop Alois Hudal the task of compiling a comprehensive list of the properties of the pope in Rome and sending hundreds of "letters of protection" to those properties, guaranteeing them extraterritorial status. However, Weizsäcker delegated the task of actually warning the Roman Jewry to his assistant Albrecht von Kassel, who encountered great difficulty because of prevailing opinion, generated by Jews Dante Almansi and Ugo Foa, that there was "no cause for alarm."Phayer, 2008, p. 73. In any case, according to Phayer, "Pope Pius gave them no warning." In the end, very few Jews "availed themselves of opportunities to hide" before October 16. According to Zuccotti's research, there exists no evidence that "the populations of convents and monasteries surged before the fateful day", though Zuccotti's findings conflict with those of other accounts.
According to Gilbert, the pope had helped the Jews of Rome in September by contributing to the 50 kg of gold demanded by the Nazis. At the same time, wrote Gilbert, the Capuchin Father Benoit had saved large numbers of Jews by providing them with false identification papers, helped by the Swiss, Hungarian, Romanian and French embassies, and a number of Italian officials. Gilbert posited that a few days before the October 15–16 roundup, Pius personally directed Vatican clergy to open the sanctuaries of the Vatican to all "non-Aryans" in need of refuge.Martin Gilbert The Holocaust: The Jewish Tragedy. Collins; London; 1986; pp. 622-623.
According to Zuccotti, not only did Pius not aid the efforts of Father Benoît, he actively discouraged his work,Phayer, 2008, p. 74. providing no aid for his efforts to help the Jews escape Italian-occupied France in June 1943.Zuccotti, 2002, p. 181. With respect to Benoît's actions during the razzia, Zuccotti wrote, "far from claiming receipt of material aid from Vatican officials, Benedetto never even wrote that they encouraged him."Zuccotti, 2002, p. 185. Zuccotti further stated that Vatican officials actively attempted to "subdue" the efforts of Benoît and others, cautioning them against even meeting with Jews, with "whom it would be better to speak less." When Benoît asked Montini for a letter of recommendation that he needed in order to provide false documents to Jews, "he received little but a reprimand."Zuccotti, 2002, p. 186.
Dalin has queried Zuccotti's methodology and conclusions, writing, "There exists testimony from a Good Samaritan priest that Bishop Giuseppe Nicolini of Assisi, holding a letter in his hand, declared that the pope had written to request help for Jews during the German roundup of Italian Jews in 1943. But because the priest did not actually read the letter, Zuccotti speculates that the bishop may have been deceiving him — and thus that this testimony should be rejected. Compare this skeptical approach to evidence with her treatment, for example, of a 1967 interview in which the German diplomat Eitel F. Möllhausen said he had sent information to the Nazis' ambassador to the Vatican, Ernst von Weizsäcker, and 'assumed' that Weizsäcker passed it on to Church 'officials'. Zuccotti takes this as unquestionable proof that the pope had direct foreknowledge of the German roundup". (Dalin doesn't provide a reference for Zuccotti's having written that Möllhausen simply "assumed" Weizsäcker passed this information on to Church officials. In her book Under His Very Windows: The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy, Zuccotti wrote, "The ambassador was eager to see that the Jews were privately warned and dispersed before they could be arrested. According to Möllhausen, Weizsäcker’s office therefore informed officials at the Vatican Secretariat of State of German plans for a roundup. These officials certainly notified the pope." Zuccotti's own reference is to Black Sabbath: A Journey through a Crime against Humanity by Robert Katz, who was the historian who conducted the 1967 interview with Möllhausen. In Black Sabbath, Katz wrote, regarding a telegram Möllhausen received saying Hitler had ordered that all of Rome's thousands of Jews be transported, "He passed it along to Weizsacker’s embassy, which in turn enlightened the Vatican.” Katz also wrote, summarizing his view of the situation as of October 6, "from that moment on the highest authorities of the Church, including Pope Pius XII, knew beyond any doubt that the Germans were planning to deport the Jews of Rome.”)
Pius agrees to lend Jews of Rome ransom demanded by SS