OSV STORY FOR MAY 18

Pope Pius XII’s Secret War

Since the height of World War II and the Holocaust, Pope Pius XII has been denounced as a weak leader, an anti-Semite and even a Nazi collaborator. But two new books, added to a wealth of scholarship on the question, show that the Pope ran a quiet unde rground railroad behind the walls of the Vatican that saved thousands of Jewish lives and prevented even further bloodshed.

The Vatican and the Holocaust

By Mary DeTurris

For decades, Pope Pius XII has been accused of everything from the sin of silence to sympathy for Hitler during the Holocaust.

But that image is being shattered by a new book that tells the Pope’s story — not in his words but in the words of the people who were saved from almost certain death because of his actions.

"Yours Is a Precious Witness" (Paulist Press, $15) looks for the reasons behind some surprising statistics: While 67 percent of all European Jews were killed during the Holocaust, 85 percent of all Italian Jews were saved.

The book’s author, Sister Margherita Marchione, M.P.F., believes that while some of that can be attributed to "the Italian temperament," much of it is a direct result of the fact that Pope Pius XII "was part of the Italian underground.&q uot;

Rather than make loud protestations, Sister Marchione explained, the Pope used "diplomatic means" to get around racial laws, raids and attempts to "liquidate" Jews and Jewish sympathizers.

His was a campaign of quiet action, she said, and that meant he could not alienate the enemy or he would lose the water supply, the electricity and the food supply that kept alive thousands of Jews who were hiding in convents, monasteries and within th e Vatican itself.

Even the Pope’s summer residence at Castle Gandolfo became a shelter for those fleeing Nazi barbarism during the war.

"What would have happened if he had denounced Hitler?" Sister Marchione asked. "Would Mussolini have allowed him to keep doing what he was doing? It’s such a delicate situation and something so sad, when you think of it, that there was a ll of this condemnation."

Sister Marchione said that, despite criticism from some quarters, the Jews themselves did not fault the Pope for his actions, but praised him. She recalled an interview with a Jewish businessman who said that "only the Jews could understand why th e Holy Father couldn’t denounce the Nazi government."

"They were being saved," she explained. "They knew very well that if he did denounce the government, they would no longer be safe."

In her book, Sister Marchione writes of one bishop’s experience while in a concentration camp: "Whenever protests against Nazi atrocities were made by the Church, thousands of priests in concentration camps trembled. Bishop Jean Bernard of Luxembo urg, an inmate of Dachau from February 1941 to August 1942, declared that the treatment of prisoners worsened immediately."

When Sister Marchione began her research in Rome, it was only to chronicle the work of her religious order during World War II.

Some of the nuns gave her their firsthand accounts of how they cared for 114 Jewish men, women and children.

"I learned from them that the Holy Father spread word that the doors of convents and monasteries should be open. That’s what gave me the impetus to investigate more," said Sister Marchione, professor emerita of Italian literature and language at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Madison, N.J.

"Right after the war, the Jews themselves recognized how much the Pope had done. It was only in 1963, when the German playwright Rolf Hochhuth wrote the play ‘The Deputy,’ where he portrays Pius XII as a Nazi collaborator, that things began to cha nge."

"The whole world began to think that Pope Pius XII really did nothing" she said, adding that people wanted to blame someone, and "the easiest thing" was to blame the Pope.

"What did Roosevelt do? What did Churchill do? They were aware of what was going on," she said. "The general public at that time could not believe that there was such barbarism, such cruelty. It was difficult. Even when people escaped a nd told the story, the Jews themselves here in America couldn’t believe it."

In working on the book, Sister Marchione received guidance from Jesuit Father Robert Graham, a Vatican historian on World War II who died in February. He had edited 11 volumes of documents on the Holocaust, four of them dealing completely with Pope Piu s XII’s humanitarian contributions during the war.

"He pointed out certain things that I was able to emphasize. The one thing he said was that there were no written documents that the Pope was giving these orders, but word spread. Why didn’t they have written orders? Because the Germans were takin g the archives — not only of the Jews, but any archives they could get their hands on. They wanted the names of Jews," said Sister Marchione, who dedicated the book to Father Graham.

Photos in the book show refugees under St. Peter’s Square Colonnade waiting to be admitted to a Vatican-run dining hall, and homeless Jews in makeshift dormitories at Castel Gandolfo.

Another photo shows Pope Pius at a bakery where nuns prepared thousands of loaves of bread for distribution to wartime victims.

While the photos are haunting and telling, it is the actual stories of the people who lived through the terror that touch the heart and remind the reader just how cruel people can be to one another, and at the same time just how brave people can be on behalf of one another.

The story of Enrichetta Levi gives a glimpse into the trust that existed between Jews and Catholics in wartime Italy. Sister Marchione recounts the story of the young women begging her father and husband to seek refuge in a cloistered convent after hea ring gunshots as Jews were captured in the streets of Rome. They packed their belongings and arrived at a monastery before dawn.

"When Sister Maria Rita saw the refugees, she expressed her willingness to help them. She hastened to the mother superior and inquired whether the convent could accommodate three more guests," Sister Marchione writes.

"Cognizant that they were endangering the lives of all the nuns, they did not hesitate to welcome the Jews. Several nuns were moved to another section of the monastery, and the Levi family occupied their rooms."

In an interview with Our Sunday Visitor, Sister Marchione pointed out how unusual it was that cloisters let any outsiders within their walls.

"You have to remember, 50 or 60 years ago no convent would have dared to allow lay people enter the cloistered areas. . . . So the regulation was suspended during that period," she said, noting that such a directive could have come only from the Pope.

Stories in the book recount how convents and monasteries helped Jews get false identification cards and how Jewish children were taught to pray the Our Father and Hail Mary in order to be mistaken for Catholics.

One survivor recalled having to switch in mid-prayer from the Hebrew Shema Israel to the Latin Ave Maria when a stranger entered his bedroom door one night.

"Many of the Jews who are survivors were saved because of those little cards pretending they are Catholics. I think the biggest thing is that the Jews themselves, from the war on until [Pope Pius XII] died, did nothing but praise him," Sister Marchione said.

"I have documents which show that they actually said to the Holy Father, ‘Look, we realize that you saved thousands of lives that were hidden in the convents and the churches and all the different places that belonged to the Church all over the co untry.’ And they actually say how much was done under the direction of the Pontiff."

Sister Marchione said that the only way future generations can avoid the terrible mistakes of the past is to keep the memories and the facts alive and in public view.

"It’s going to be the only way. That’s why I am so convinced that my book is right. I think it must be told. This is the truth," she said.

The Vatican and the Allies

By Peter T. Farrelly Jr.

"It was the most gigantic game of hide-and-seek you’ve ever seen," said William Simpson, but the stakes were enormous in 1944 as 75,000 escaped British and American prisoners of war took refuge in the farmhouses and flats of Italy while Germa n troops scoured the country in search of them.

Simpson, then a major in the British army, was one of those escaped prisoners, and he claims that it was the courage of an Irish priest working out of the Vatican and the pluck of the Italian people in general that got the escaped soldiers through the deadly eight-month-long game of cat and mouse.

Simpson pieces it all together in his fast-paced book "A Vatican Lifeline" (Sarpedon, $25), which tells a little-known tale of the "remarkably courageous" and resourceful job done by thousands of everyday Italians to protect Allied soldiers trapped behind enemy lines during the final stages of World War II.

Speaking from his home in Long Island, N.Y., Simpson, now a retired insurance executive, told Our Sunday Visitor that he also wrote the book "to set the record straight" regarding continuing criticism of the Vatican and Pope Pius XII for supp osedly taking a back seat in the war.

According to Simpson, the Vatican’s neutrality in the war was a fragile shield from the Gestapo and the German troops occupying Rome.

"Hitler had issued orders for the German commanders not to hesitate to take over the Vatican and kidnap the Pope if they had to," he said. "If Pope Pius XII had said anything, the impact would have lasted a day and the Vatican would have lasted 30 minutes."

A Scottish Presbyterian, Simpson tells firsthand how Jewish refugees and escaped war prisoners alike were given refuge in the basements and attics of many Catholic seminaries and universities throughout Rome, through the assistance of Msgr. Hugh O’Flah erty of the Vatican diplomatic corps.

"Some people thought the Catholic Church should have denounced the Nazis and Germany, that it might have hastened the end of the war," Simpson said, but he disagrees with that line of reasoning.

He believes instead that the quiet role the Vatican did take was "immensely helpful" to the Allied war effort.

"I think the Monday morning quarterbacking the Vatican has had to endure for so many years has been totally unjustified," he said.

Simpson has great respect for the Vatican, and particularly for the determined Irish monsignor who assisted thousands of soldiers, Jews and refugees of many other creeds and nationalities hidden throughout Rome and the Italian countryside.

It was through Msgr. O’Flaherty’s unofficial organization that the war refugees received food, clothing and money to reimburse their hosts — what Simpson calls a "Vatican lifeline."

Simpson was among the thousands of soldiers captured in Africa during early stages of the war with Germany and was later transferred to prison camps in Italy.

In September 1943, the Italian government surrendered to the Allies, "and most folks in Italy expected the Allies to just march up Italy and take over," he explained.

The belief was not without grounds. Simpson said that "the British war office had given secret orders to the imprisoned troops to stay put" and wait for the Allies when the Italian guards left their posts.

U.S. Gen. George Patton and British Field Marshall Bernard Law Montgomery were in Sicily, and the first Allied contingents were on the toe of the Italian peninsula. Nobody expected two German armies to pour into the country. The Gustav Line of defense set up east and west of Cassino quickly became an impregnable position that held the Allies at bay for eight months.

It also trapped the escaped prisoners behind enemy lines. Most had ignored the directions to "stay put" and fled into the countryside. In retrospect, Simpson says his group’s decision to wait "was the stupidest thing we ever did."

German paratroopers quickly took over his camp. Of the 75,000 prisoners of war, the Germans caught about 30,000 and shipped them north out of Italy. Simpson managed to escape by deftly jumping out of a transport truck en route to the train depot.

In the countryside outside Sulmona, as in other small villages, Simpson and others like him were quickly taken in by the Italian peasants.

Anti-fascist villagers opened their homes despite the threats of discovery, hiding them in attics, barns, basements and sheds. Even as their food stocks dwindled through the winter, the Italian people shared what meager food they had, Simpson said.

The Germans continued to search for the missing 45,000 soldiers, who posed a serious security threat. As the wait for Allied rescue continued, "what started as a nice game of hiding prisoners became very, very risky, indeed," he said. The Ger mans were offering rewards for information, "and anybody caught harboring an Allie would be shot."

Simpson and his group, with the help of a village girl, made contact with Msgr. O’Flaherty in Rome, first receiving financial assistance through the pipeline the priest had established.

Then, as the German’s were about to snare his group, they fled to Rome with the hope of linking up with the monsignor.

It was Simpson’s attention to detail in reporting how funds were expended that prompted the monsignor to enlist him in a key role of distributing food and funds to the thousands of soldiers secretly billeted throughout Rome.

German security troops were watching Msgr. O’Flaherty, suspecting his activities, and Simpson was among several people he drafted to continue his efforts.

"He was a fantastic man," Simpson said of his Vatican benefactor. "He used to play games with the Germans," going out whenever he needed to, even though he was subject to arrest. He even treated Simpson to a tour of Rome with a runn ing lecture on its history.

Only after the monsignor received a stern warning from the Germans was the operation moved into the Vatican grounds.

Then Simpson and others, with forged identity cards, had to pass the scrutiny of the Swiss Guards before gaining admission.

Originally, the operation was funded with 150,000 lire from a wealthy private donor. Eventually, the British extended a line of credit for Msgr. O’Flaherty’s unsanctioned activities through the Vatican bank.

Finally, in April 1944, Simpson and others tried to reach the Allied lines by boat and were caught. He spent the next seven weeks in Rome’s Regina Coeli jail, listening to the terrifying screams of prisoners being interrogated, tortured and beaten.

"It was pretty rough," he said. "We expected to go next."

But the weather and the tide had turned in Cassino, and the Allies marched into Rome in June. The fleeing Germans left the 800 prisoners in the hands of Austrian soldiers, who had no heart for the task. The day before the Allies entered Rome, "the re was a mass exodus from the prison. I’ll never forget that day," Simpson said.

In the months afterward, Simpson put it all down in a report that "lay fallow these 50 years."

"I’ve been amazed at the reception of the book," Simpson said. "I seem to have lifted a curtain on this corner of World War II that people didn’t know about."

Copyright Our Sunday Visitor, 1997; from the 5-18-97 edition

HEADLINES FOR MAY 18

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Finding the spirit of liberty in their captivity

Are U.S. Catholics in a ‘state of disunion’?

Mother of all Christians

"Its rightful owner’

‘Citizens, yes. But what kind?’

The language of revelation