Into That Darkness: From Mercy Killing to Mass Murder (50 page)

Commenting on details I raised from “Brockdorff’s”
Flucht vor Nürnberg,
Monsignor Bayer recalled the Croatian theologian Monsignor Krunoslav Draganovic, who was abducted by Tito agents in 1967, taken back to Yugoslavia and executed for collaboration with the enemy. He is said to have been one of the chief administrators of the Genoa branch of the “Vatican Escape Route”, which functioned specially for the benefit of members of the Ustaca – the infamous organization which, during the rule of the Nazis’ puppet government in Croatia, outdid the Germans in killing not only Jews (although they were rabid anti-Semites) but also, and with even more enthusiasm, many thousands of Orthodox Serbs and Croats (who refused to be converted to Roman Catholicism). “Oh yes,” said Monsignor Bayer, “its quite true that after the war various groups set themselves up to help their own nationals. I remember Draganovic very well. He was head of the Croatian Committee. Yes, it’s quite likely that he received support from Cardinal Siri who is now Archbishop of Genoa; there again, you see, one’s obligation was simply to help people who were in need of help.…”

He spoke at length about his own activities for the German prisoners of war. “The Holy Father opened the Papal Assistance Agency for German
POWS
and put Sister Pascalena in charge of all the material sent to, or obtained by, the Vatican for refugees.”

Sister Pascalena Lehner, a lay sister of eighteen when she first went to work for Eugenio Pacelli in Munich, never left his service thereafter. It has often been claimed that she had considerable influence on the Pope, which she has always denied. Now old and bitter at the allegations and rumours about her, she has said that she will never again leave her Roman convent or speak to anyone but the Sisters there for the rest of her life.

“There were warehouses full of stuff,” said Monsignor Bayer. “Everything – clothes, food, toilet articles, cigarettes – especially cigarettes – very important to the
POWS
because there were certain categories to whom the Allies allowed no privileges whatever. All ranks of
SS,
for instance, and parachutists, couldn’t get cigarettes or anything. I remember, there were two and half million cigarettes in Sister Pascalena’s warehouses, left by the Brazilian Corps
*
– they were called ‘Red Birds’. And she gave me the lot for the soldiers.…”

It has been claimed by some writers that Sister Pascalena had a say in actually selecting men from the
POW
camps who were to benefit from die “Vatican Escape Route”.

“I think that’s nonsense,” said Monsignor Bayer. “She wasn’t that sort of person at all; I don’t think she’d have known who to ‘select’. Goodness, everybody knows her type; that type of good German nun; she had no political interest, knowledge or influence.”

“Did she have influence on the Pope?”

“Well, she was in charge of the three nuns who looked after the Pope’s household – the domestic personnel. But I cannot imagine for a moment that she had any ‘influence’ on the Pope in the sense you mean. He was a highly cultured man, the most sophisticated pope, certainly, of our time.…” (Father Schneider had gone further in his description of Pius
XII
: “He was the most remarkable pope of modern times,” he’d said. “The greatest political mind.”)

Inevitably, the subject of Martin Bormann came up in my conversation with Monsignor Bayer – and he, like everyone else, expressed doubt about Bormann’s supposed survival, and ignorance about his having come through Rome, or having been helped in Rome. (Brockdorff-Jarschel gives a very precise – indeed, disconcertingly exact description of Bormann’s alleged escape through Rome in
Flucht vor Nürnberg.
In addition, the author’s wife was to tell me that her husband had actually met Bormann in a “conference of international Fascism” that took place in the Middle East in the late 1950s.)

“I was in fact very involved with the whole Bormann business,” said Monsignor Bayer, “because of the children. You see, Bormann’s wife and children were living in the South Tyrol where, as of course you know, Frau Bormann died in 1945. Theo Schmitz, the
POW
chaplain in Merano, was with her much of the time; he helped her die. But during all that time we were working on finding solutions for the children; they were very young and homes had to be found for them. Well, to me it seems psychologically very unlikely that, knowing his wife and children to be in Merano and her dying, Bormann would have travelled repeatedly between Genoa and Rome at that time – as the reports claim – and would not have gone to see them.”

I said that, assuming he really did survive, I didn’t find it all that unlikely; after all, it would have been very dangerous for him; he would have been aware that the Allied intelligence services would have been watching his family day and night in the expectation of just such a move.

“Yes, that
is
true,” said Monsignor Bayer, “and it is of course also true that their relationship by this time had deteriorated very sharply; they had serious ideological differences; she had finally heard of some of the things he had been involved in. On the other hand, I really think I would have heard if he had been around anywhere; I really
was
on the lookout for him because of the children. You see, apart from everything selse, there were all kinds of financial problems, all kinds of arrangements needed to be made. You can imagine, had he been available I would have
had
to get to him. No, I don’t know whether Hudal would have told me – we weren’t that close. But I still think I would have heard.…”

When I mentioned that Bormann’s children are supposed to have said in 1948 that their father was alive, Monsignor Bayer said he’d never heard of that either. He spoke with contempt of Bormann’s oldest son, who, having become a priest, has now left the priesthood – “and married a
nun
”, he said.

I asked Monsignor Bayer his opinion of “Brockdorff’s” claim that the
SS
escapers in Rome had to go through a kind of screening before being allowed to go abroad.

“If there was really a screening,” he said, “an attempt at detailed research by examining each of the people concerned, it would have required at least a dozen German-speaking priests. I knew them all. There were of course quite a few, but they were incredibly busy – too busy, I think, for the kind of supervision of the many people he describes in his book.”

I asked him what sort of questions were put to people who applied for help.

“Well, of course we asked questions,” he said. “But at the same time, we hadn’t an earthly chance of checking on the answers. In Rome, at that time, every kind of paper and information could be bought. If a man wanted to tell us he was born in Viareggio – no matter if he was really born in Berlin and couldn’t speak a word of Italian – he only had to go down into the street and he’d find dozens of Italians willing to swear on a stack of Bibles that they knew he was born in Viareggio – for a hundred lire.”

I told him that Stangl claimed to have stayed in a convent or monastery, to have eaten in a canteen, and later to have obtained work from the nuns.

“There was a special ‘Mensa’ for foreigners,” Monsignor Bayer said. “Each of the National Committees had one; the one in Rome provided lunch and dinner for something like two hundred people. And he may well also have worked there for the nuns. And yes, he may well have stayed in a convent or monastery. As for his story of Hudal knowing he was coming: of course, talking to you he chose to put the emphasis in a certain way; he chose to make it sound as if, when Hudal said, ‘You must be Franz Stangl, I’ve been expecting you,’ he meant he had
always
known about him, knew his record and approved of it, and was still – or even because of it – willing to help him. But the emphasis
can
be put in another way. It seems more likely to me that the ‘comrade’ Stangl met on the Tiber bridge rang Hudal and said, ‘A man I know, Franz Stangl, is coming to see you; I know him, he is all right,’ or words to that effect. And that would in fact have helped Stangl – it happened all the time, to me too. In the absence, very often, of any proof of identity, this sort of recommendation was valuable, and all of us accepted it
faute de mieux
.…

“No, I don’t think Hudal could have got him a job, a visa or anything for Syria. Those he’d have had to get for himself.” (Information I got later from the International Red Cross, and Frau Stangl’s confirmation of Stangl’s account to me, both contradict Monsignor Bayer on this point.)

“There were certainly Nazi sympathizers sitting in these Middle Eastern countries preparing the ground for these people, and Hudal may have given him an introduction, or the name of someone in Syria who would be prepared to help him after his arrival in Damascus. We were an aid-committee, you know,” he said tersely, “not a labour exchange. And I think it is ridiculous to believe that Hudal handed him the International Red Cross passport. He would certainly have had to queue up for that himself – hundreds did, for hours each. I don’t think I remember one single case where the Red Cross gave
me
a passport and I handed it to these fellows. I sometimes went with them to the Red Cross, you know, to tell them that the chap was all right.…

“Yes, Stangl would have received money – which came from the Vatican – or a ticket to Syria, but rarely both. Perhaps there were some exceptional cases where they were given a ticket
and
money, but it didn’t happen to anyone I helped.…

“As far as we were concerned, these were people who had the right to make their own decisions as to where they wanted to live. [He was referring primarily to the former pows he was in charge of.] For thousands, after all, the choice was whether to live under the Russians or not.”

“Do you think”, I asked, “that the Pope, Hudal, others who were involved in these aid progammes – you too – ever wondered whether some of these men didn’t have serious, very serious things on their conscience?”

“Do you really believe”, he replied, “that there were more villains and thieves amongst them than amongst the British and Americans?”

“I am not really talking about stealing – I am talking about murder.”

“Look here, there were thousands and thousands of men; how could we possibly know?”

“Well, perhaps
you
in your capacity as
POW
chaplain took care of thousands of men. But Bishop Hudal seems to have handled specifically these
SS
men. Do you think
he
wondered what they were fleeing from and whether they should be helped by the Church to escape justice?”

“You know, Bishop Hudal helped Jews before he ever helped
SS
men; he helped more Jews than
SS
men.” (Gustav René Hocke, correspondent in Rome throughout the war and now for the
Arbeitsgemeinschaft Frankfurter Neue Presse
and
Die Tat
of Zürich, told me that to his knowledge Bishop Hudal during the war hid a total of sixteen people in the Anima – Americans, British and Jews.)

“Those others, they came to me too – luckily they weren’t within my competence as I was in charge specifically of
POWS.
Still, one or two tried to slip in; now you tell me, how could we have known what they had done? After all, they didn’t
tell
us; they weren’t that stupid. And they weren’t famous, you know. After all, who knew Eichmann at that time? Stangl? Mengele? Now yes, now we all know their names. But then? I’d never heard Eichmann’s name until his trial in Israel.” (Others in Rome said the names of people like Eichmann, Mengele, Bormann, Rauff and Müller
were
known at the time, although not Stangl’s nor any of the Polish death-camp men.) “Of course we knew that many of them had been in the
SS.
But the
SS
were also fighting units; one couldn’t identify them only with the horrors – about which, anyway, we knew very little then.…

“Even so, we
tried
to question them; we asked everyone questions. And the International Red Cross didn’t just give these passports to anyone, without proof of identity. They required
some
assurance of the person’s particulars and character. Well yes, it
was
difficult. All we could – and did – do if we suspected a man, was to insist on witnesses, somebody who could vouch for what he said. But of course they all helped each other. I might have phoned the Pastor who was doing the same sort of thing for Protestants, Pastor Dahlgrün, and ask him whether he knew about this and that chap; and if he said, ‘Yes, that’s the one who comes from Leipzig and I’ve had two others here who said they knew him there …’ well, there you are; that was confirmation.

“Stangl, as his description to you of his months in Italy would indicate, must have known a
lot
of people there. He was in Fiume, Verona, Venice, the Isle of Rab – he may well have earned the hatred of some people, but he probably helped others and made friends – people who then ’owed him a good turn’. So I think myself that the story he told you is quite likely true; obviously he could easily get out of an open prison in Linz – there is nothing startling about that. No, I don’t think he’d have needed money to get away. In fact, if he’d had money, he wouldn’t have needed to come to us.” (Not quite correct; he would still have needed to come for papers – the proof being that other, far higher ranking Nazis, who were presumably well supplied with funds, also went by the Vatican escape route.)

“And of course he wouldn’t have needed any papers to cross the Austrian-Italian frontier. Anyone who says a man needed papers for that, at that time, just doesn’t know what he is talking about. By that time, all those fellows had told each other which little villages on the Brenner or nearby were the best for crossing, which peasants were old Nazis or just friendly, or to be had for money. But there were enough guides anyway – old hands at smuggling, who took them across for nothing.