Into That Darkness: From Mercy Killing to Mass Murder (53 page)

“No, I certainly did not feel the Pope was pro-
Nazi.
But he was certainly pro-German. In a political sense he was primarily anti-Communist, one mustn’t forget that. This was certainly so until the end of ’14, beginning of ’14. Until that time Germany appeared – must have appeared to him – as the main bulwark against Communism. I do think that this was what mainly determined his attitude. Yes, there was – there always has been – latent anti-Semitism within the Vatican. After all, it was inherent in traditional Catholic teaching: you know, Christ-killers and all that. Now that is somewhat outmoded. But I think it quite possibly had influence on Pius
XII
’s thinking and actions – even if only unconsciously. Then, of course, there was fear too; the Vatican, however powerful, was in the middle of Fascist and subsequently Nazi Rome.… However, it would have been impossible to touch the Pope at all until after September 1943; the Duce and the Italians would never have stood for interference with the Vatican.”

General Wolff’s statement to the press about plans to arrest the Pope had been published a couple of weeks before I met Dr Dollmann, and I asked him about it. (At the time I did not know that Father Robert Graham had given a similar statement to the press.) “There was talk, but it never came to an actual order – nothing like that could have been planned without my knowledge. It simply didn’t happen.”

“How much did
you
know about what was happening to the Jews?”

“Well, there were rumours all over the place about the camps. But of course, again, it hardly applied to Italy with its comparatively few Jews. We never knew that Jews were actually being exterminated in the East, we really didn’t. I remember, after the war, when I was preparing my book, I went to see Kesselring. I asked him, in all honesty, for the purpose of historical information: had he known about these horror-camps. And he said, ‘I swear to you, I had no idea they existed.’ Yes, of course – I know: the army in the East – soldiers, officers, command – they
must
have known; it was inevitable; how could they avoid it? No, I don’t understand myself how it could then have failed to become known everywhere. It is perfectly true; they came on leave; they must have talked about it. But the fact remains:
we
didn’t know.

“I always thought – as most people did – that the Pope, like everybody else, didn’t have any precise and reliable information on the precise nature of the atrocities against the Jews, or their extent.

“Of course, if the record now shows – as you say – that he did know, if not before, then certainly at the end of 1942, then of course the whole picture changes: then one must really ask oneself what could possibly have stopped him from speaking up.…”

8

D
ID
P
OPE
P
IUS XII
know of the true situation in Poland, and specifically of the extermination of the Jews? We have, of course, discussed this point in various places earlier in this book. But the man best able to inform us fully on this uniquely vital point is Monsieur Kazimierz Papée, Polish Ambassador to the Holy See from July 14, 1939, to December 1958.

Although Poland now no longer has an official representative at the Vatican, Monsieur Papée was still listed in the
Annuario Pontificio
as “Agent of Embassy Affairs”, when I visited him in March 1972. A small brass plate on the door of his third-floor flat at 7D Via St Pancrazio in Rome announced “Polish Embassy to the Holy See”.
*

Kazimierz Papée was eighty-two years old at the time of our meeting and in full possession of his remarkable faculties; a
Grand Seigneur
from the past, small, thin, impeccably elegant, with an exquisite use of language. He spoke with me in French.

(Carlo Falconi, in
The Silence of Pius XII,
describes him as “an outstanding Polish diplomat with a brilliant career behind him at, amongst other places, The Hague, Berlin, Copenhagen, and finally Prague.… Active relations between the Holy See and the Polish government [in exile] depended on the Ambassador in Rome, Casimir Papée. It was probably because it had such a trusted man in Rome that the Vatican sidestepped [throughout the war] appointing a representative in London [to the Polish government in exile].”

A thin and silent elderly maid, with a face out of a Polish wood carving, dressed in a long creamy-white robe and headcovering, somewhat like a lay nun, opened the door. The large drawing room with its gleaming parquet and furniture, exquisite etchings, signed photographs of statesmen and clerics with household names, and innumerable lovely
objets d’art
on fragile tables was an accurate representation of the man.

Monsieur Papée’s memory covers minutely his activities during the war years and afterwards. His very special position now – I soon realized – was delicate: he was, and yet was not, part of the Vatican community. It is unlikely – and it would not have occurred to me to ask – that, after the political upheavals in Poland he had retained any personal wealth. The implications of what he said – and didn’t say – and of what I have learned since about his circumstances, are that his position in Rome (not to speak of his personal integrity) requires considerable discretion.

We spoke of many things: life in the distant past; great men he has known; fundamental values which he treasures and the disappearance of which I – much younger than he – found myself regretting with him.

The way Monsieur Papée spoke of his beloved Poland, the war years, his own activities on behalf of all the Poles – Christians and Jews – and Pope Pius
XII
, was filled not with anger or resignation, but with pain; the pain felt by a man whose long life has been one of service, and whose efforts in the end proved to be in vain.

He recounted in detail the steps he took throughout the tragic years 1940–4 to inform the Holy See of the situation in Poland; his repeated audiences with the Pope, and his continuous communications by letter and in person with the three Cardinals at the Vatican State Secretariat (Secretary of State Cardinal Maglioni; Second Secretary Cardinal Montini – the present Pope Paul
VI
– and Cardinal Tardini).

Later, as I was about to leave, Monsieur Papée signed and handed me a book. “If you study it carefully,” he said, “it will perhaps answer some of your questions better.…”

Monsieur Papée’s book,
Pius XII a Polski 1939–1949
(Pius
XII
and Poland 1939–1949), is a compilation of letters, comments,
aide-mémoires
and reports from the Polish government in exile, Polish ecclesiastics in occupied territory and from Monsieur Papée himself, to the Holy See. It was published in Rome in 1954, by Editrice Studium, with the financial help of the Ford Foundation.

While many of the papers are of course of great relevance, the “careful study” Monsieur Papée so kindly – and generously – recommended, revealed that what is perhaps most important to an understanding of that period are not the documents which are published in this volume, but those which – as Monsieur Papée quietly points out in the preface – “remain in the archives until a future date”.

With the help of (exiled) Polish sources of various political persuasions, I have been allowed sight of some of these documents which are being kept in Polish archives abroad.

It is essential to mention here that these particular documents, which are of the greatest possible significance in the context of establishing the extent of the Vatican’s early awareness of the situation in Poland with particular reference to the extermination of the Jews (and which Monsieur Papée, for very obvious reasons, felt unable to include in his book), have also been excluded from the
Actes et Documents du Saint Siège relatif à la Seconde Guerre Mondiale.
*
This omission, in view of the purpose of the publication and the nature of these papers – all of which were highly relevant official diplomatic communications – raises the gravest doubts as to the integrity of the Vatican publications.

Considerations of space prevent the reproduction of all three of these documents shown to me; but the most incontrovertible proof of the Vatican’s complete knowledge of the methods and extent of the extermination of the Jews in Poland at least as of December 1942, is provided by one of them, the letter the Polish Ambassador personally handed to Cardinal Tardini on December 21, 1942:
†

“The Polish Embassy has the honour of communicating to the State Secretariat of His Holiness the following information emanating from official sources:

“The Germans are liquidating the entire Jewish population of Poland. The first to be taken are the old, the crippled, the women and children; which proves that these are not deportations to forced labour, and confirms the information that these deported populations are taken to specially prepared installations, there to be put to death by various means [while] the young and able-bodied are killed through starvation and forced labour.

“As for the number of Polish Jews exterminated by the Germans, it is estimated that it has passed a million. In Warsaw alone there were, in the ghetto in mid-July 1942, approximately 400,000 Jews; in the course of July and August 250,000 were taken East; on September 1 only 120,000 ration cards were distributed in this ghetto, and on October 1 40,000 cards. The ‘liquidation’ is proceeding at the same rate in the other cities of Poland.

“The Polish Embassy takes this opportunity to assure the State Secretariat of his Holiness of its highest esteem.

Vatican, 19 December, 1942.”

(Here a handwritten remark in Polish: “Handed personally by the Ambassador to Monsignor Tardini, 21/11.42”)

(This was the seventh communication on the subject written by, or communicated through the offices of, Monsieur Papée. The first was dated March 30, 1940. Descriptions of other Nazi atrocities and pleas to the Pope to declare his condemnation of them were, of course, received by the Holy See; and many of those are included in the collection of documents published by the Vatican. Apart from some indicative footnotes, however, none of these refers specifically to the Jews.)

Three days after receiving this letter, on Christmas Eve, 1942, Pope Pius
XII
made public reference to what was happening to the Jews. In full knowledge of the fact that by that night at least a million human beings had been methodically put to death in “specially prepared installations” in occupied Poland – a slaughter unrelated to any act of war – he made one oblique reference to the fact, almost at the end of a Christmas message more than 5,000 words long, to the Catholics of the world.
*
By the time he reached this sentence he would have spoken for approximately forty-five minutes, and the sentence itself was part of a repetitive series of injunctions saying that humanity owed

“…  a solemn vow not to rest until, in all people and all nations of the earth a vast legion shall be formed of those handfuls of men who, bent on bringing back society to its centre of gravity, which is the Law of God, aspire to the service of the human person and of his common life ennobled in God. This vow humanity owes to the innumerable dead who lie buried on the battlefields. The sacrifice of their life, the fulfilment of their duty, is an offering to a new and better social order. Humanity owes this vow to the endless, sorrowful army of mothers, widows and orphans, who have been deprived of light, comfort and support. Humanity owes this vow to the innumerable exiles, torn from their motherland by the hurricane of war and scattered on foreign soil, who might join in the lament of the prophet: ‘Our inheritance is turned to aliens, our houses to strangers.’ Humanity owes this vow to the hundreds of thousands of people who, through no fault of their own,
sometimes only owing to nationality or descent
, are doomed to death or to slow decline.
*

Humanity owes this vow to the many thousands of noncombatants, women and children, ailing and old people, whom aerial warfare – whose horrors we have repeatedly denounced since the very beginning – indiscriminately robbed of life, possessions and health, charitable institutions and places of prayer. Humanity owes this vow to the endless stream of tears … etc, etc, etc.”

Carlo Falconi says, with great precision and presumably with deliberate irony, that the above was “unquestionably the most courageous denunciation of all the acts of violence against civilians that Pius
XII
dared to pronounce during the whole war.…”

In Rome (and in Germany) in 1972 and 1973, priests again and again referred to the Christmas message of 1942 as conclusive proof of the Pope’s willingness to take a public stand towards the Nazi horrors.

Did he think, I asked Kazimierz Papée at the end of our talk, that the Pope could have done more to stop the slaughter of the Jews and Christians in Poland?

“He
was
in a very very difficult position,” Monsieur Papée said, unhappily. “He was – one must appreciate this – surrounded by Fascism: he had very little freedom of movement.”

(A year later I telephoned Monsieur Papée from London to ask him one more question that had troubled me: “Do you think,” I said, “that there is a possibility – even the most remote possibility – that the Pope did not
see
the documents you sent or handed to the State Secretariat? Could they have tried to protect him from this knowledge?” There was a long pause while he thought. And then, he answered, in the same anguished voice with which he had replied to some of my original questions, “It is not possible. The Holy Father saw all such communications; it would not have been possible to withhold them from him.”)