During the Holocaust, members of the Catholic Church were involved in rescuing Jews from persecution in Nazi Germany. They lobbied Axis officials, provided false documents, and hid people in monasteries, convents, schools, with sympathetic families, and within the institutions of the Vatican itself. Members of the Catholic Church saved hundreds of thousands of Jews; Israeli diplomat and historian Pinchas Lapide estimated the number saved to be between 700,000 and 860,000.
The Catholic Church itself faced persecution in Nazi Germany. Institutional German Catholic resistance to Nazism centred largely on defending the Church's own rights and institutions. Broader resistance tended to be fragmented and led by individual efforts within Germany, but priests played a part in rescuing Jews in all countries under German occupation. Aiding Jews was met with severe consequences and many rescuers and would-be rescuers were killed, such as Saint Maximilian Kolbe.
Pope Pius XII's actions during the Holocaust are still a topic of much debate; some say he stayed quiet as Jews were being killed in large numbers, while others believe he secretly helped victims through diplomatic efforts and secret actions.
Overview In the prelude to the Holocaust, Popes Pius XI and XII preached against racism and war in encyclicals such as Mit brennender Sorge (1937) and Summi Pontificatus (1939). Pius XI condemned Nazi racial ideology in general, rejecting claims of racial superiority and emphasizing that there was only 'a single human race'. His successor, Pius XII, employed diplomatic measures to aid the Jews and directed the Catholic Church to provide discreet assistance. However, he faced criticism for his perceived silence during the Holocaust, including incidents such as the Nazi-perpetrated murder of Polish priests in 1939. Various Polish officials and members of the government-in-exile criticized the Pope in 1942 for his failure to speak out on behalf of the suffering Polish population. While Pius XII engaged in diplomatic efforts during the war, his public condemnations of the mass killing of civilians were often indirect, framed within broader humanitarian or theological contexts. For example, in his 1942 Christmas radio address, he denounced the murder of "hundreds of thousands" of innocent people on the basis of "nationality or race," and he intervened by attempting to block Nazi deportations of Jews in various countries. The indirect nature of this condemnation has been a subject of historical debate.
Catholic bishops in Germany sometimes spoke out on human rights issues, but protests against anti-Jewish policies were often limited to private lobbying of government ministers. After Pius XII's 1943 Mystici corporis Christi encyclical (which condemned the killing of the disabled amid the ongoing Nazi euthanasia program), a joint declaration from the German bishops denounced the killing of "innocent and defenseless mentally handicapped, incurably infirm and fatally wounded, innocent hostages, and disarmed prisoners of war and criminal offenders, and people of a foreign race or descent".Richard J. Evans; The Third Reich at War; 2008 pp. 529–30 Resistor active in rescuing Jews included priests Bernard Lichtenberg, Alfred Delp, Maximilian Kolbe, as well as laywomen Gertrud Luckner and Margarete Sommer. They used Catholic agencies to aid German Jews, under the protection of Bishops such as Konrad von Preysing.
In Italy, the popes lobbied Mussolini against anti-Semitic policies, while Vatican diplomats, among them Giuseppe Burzio in Slovakia, Filippo Bernardini in Switzerland, and Giuseppe Angelo Roncalli in Turkey, rescued thousands. The apostolic nuncio to Budapest, Angelo Rotta, and to Bucharest, Andrea Cassulo, have been recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem. The Church played an important role in the defense of Jews in Belgium, France, and the Netherlands, encouraged by the public protests and statements of leaders such as Cardinal Jozef-Ernest van Roey, Archbishop Jules-Géraud Saliège, and Johannes de Jong. From his Vatican office, Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty operated an escape network for Jews and Allied escapees. Priests and nuns of orders like the Jesuits, Franciscans, and Benedictines hid children in monasteries, convents, and schools.Martin Gilbert; The Righteous: the Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust; Holt Paperback; New York; 2004; Preface Margit Slachta's Hungarian Social Service Sisterhood saved thousands. In Poland, the Żegota organization also rescued thousands, and Mother Matylda Getter's Franciscan Sisters sheltered hundreds of Jewish children who escaped the Warsaw Ghetto. In France, Belgium, and Italy, Catholic underground networks were particularly active and saved thousands of Jews, particularly in Central Italy where groups like the Assisi Network were active, and in Southern France.
The Third Reich
While the Catholic Church in Germany was one of the few organizations that offered organized, systematic resistance to some policies of the Third Reich,Theodore S. Hamerow; On the Road to the Wolf's Lair - German Resistance to Hitler; Belknap Press of Harvard University Press; 1997; ; p.210 the considerable energies expended by the German church in opposing government interference in the church were not matched in public by protests against the anti-Jewish policies of the regime. According to Ian Kershaw, while the "detestation of Nazism was overwhelming within the Catholic Church", traditional Christian anti-Judaism was "no bulwark" against Nazi biological antisemitism.Ian Kershaw; The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation; 4th Edn; Oxford University Press; New York; 2000; pp. 210–212 The Church in Germany was itself facing Nazi persecution.Theodore S. Hamerow; On the Road to the Wolf's Lair - German Resistance to Hitler; Belknap Press of Harvard University Press; 1997; ; p. 136 German bishops feared protests against the anti-Jewish policies of the regime would invite retaliation against Catholics.Hamerow, 1997, p. 138 Such protests as were made tended to be private letters to government ministers.
The relationship of the Church to Jews had a complex history of cooperation and conflict, entailing both suspicion and respect. The Jews and Christians were rivals, sometimes enemies, for a long period of history. Furthermore, Christians traditionally blamed Jewish leaders for the crucifixion of Christ. At the same time, Christians showed devotion and respect. They were conscious of their debt to the Jews, as Jesus and all the disciples and all the authors of the gospels were of the Jewish race. Christians viewed the Old Testament, the holy book of the synagogues, as equally a holy book for them...".Blainey, 2011, pp. 499–502
Hamerow writes that sympathy for the Jews was common among Catholics in the German Resistance, who saw both Catholics and Jews as religious minorities exposed to bigotry on the part of the majority. This sympathy led some lay and clergy resistors to speak publicly against the persecution of the Jews, as with the priest who wrote in a periodical in 1934 that it was a sacred task of the church to oppose "sinful racial pride and blind hatred of the Jews". The leadership of the Catholic Church in Germany, however, was generally hesitant to speak out specifically on behalf of the Jews.Hamerow, 1997, p. 74 Church resistance to the Holocaust in Germany was generally left to fragmented and largely individual efforts. German bishops such as Konrad von Preysing and Joseph Frings were notable exceptions for the energy and consistency of their criticism of the government's treatment of Jews.Phayer, Michael. 2000. The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–1965. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. ; p 77
Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber gained an early reputation as a critic of the Nazi movement.Encyclopædia Britannica Online: Michael von Faulhaber; web Apr. 2013. Soon after the Nazi takeover, his three Advent sermons of 1933, entitled Judaism, Christianity, and Germany, affirmed the Jewish origins of the Christian religion, the continuity of the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, and the importance of the Christian tradition to Germany. Though Faulhaber's words were cautiously framed as a discussion of historical Judaism, his sermons denounced the Nazi extremists who were calling for the Bible to be purged of the "Jewish" Old Testament as a grave threat to Christianity: in seeking to adhere to the central tenet of Nazism, "The anti-Semitic zealots..." wrote Hamerow, were undermining "the basis of Catholicism. Neither accommodation, nor acquiescence was possible any longer; the cardinal had to face the enemy head on."Theodore S. Hamerow; On the Road to the Wolf's Lair - German Resistance to Hitler; Belknap Press of Harvard University Press; 1997; ; p. 140 During the 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom, Faulhaber supplied a truck to rabbi of the Ohel Yaakov Synagogue, to rescue sacred objects before the building was torn down. Following mass demonstrations against Jews and Catholics, a Nazi mob attacked Faulhaber's palace and smashed its windows.Martin Gilbert; Kristallnacht - Prelude to Disaster; HarperPress; 2006; p. 143
The Bishop of Munster, August von Galen, though a German conservative and nationalist, criticized Nazi racial policy in a sermon in January 1934, and in subsequent homilies spoke against Hitler's theory of the purity of German blood.Anton Gill; An Honourable Defeat; A History of the German Resistance to Hitler; Heinemann; London; 1994; p.59 When in 1933, the Nazi school superintendent of Munster issued a decree that religious instruction be combined with discussion of the "demoralizing power" of the "people of Israel", Galen refused, writing that such interference in curriculum was a breach of the Reich concordat and that he feared children would be confused as to their "obligation to act with charity to all men" and as to the historical mission of the people of Israel.Theodore S. Hamerow; On the Road to the Wolf's Lair - German Resistance to Hitler; Belknap Press of Harvard University Press; 1997; ; p. 139 In 1941, with the Wehrmacht still marching on Moscow, Galen denounced the lawlessness of the Gestapo and the cruel program of Nazi euthanasia and went further than just defending the church by speaking of a moral danger to Germany from the regime's violations of basic human rights: "the right to life, to inviolability, and to freedom is an indispensable part of any moral social order", he said - and any government that punishes without court proceedings "undermines its own authority and respect for its sovereignty within the conscience of its citizens".Theodore S. Hamerow; On the Road to the Wolf's Lair - German Resistance to Hitler; Belknap Press of Harvard University Press; 1997; ; p. 289–90
Response to Kristallnacht and increasing brutality