An anniversary
Rorate coeli is a conservative blog quite sympathetic to the Lefebvrite FSSPX. It has just posted what it thinks is the first English translation of the pastoral letter issued by the bishops of the Netherlands on the deportation of the Jewish population. Issued seventy years ago on July 20, 1942, it was read, despite threats from the occupying German authorities, from Catholic pulpits on the 26th. According to accompanying commentary and further discussion on the site, the response of the authorities was an immediate intensification of actions against Catholics and in particular against Jewish converts to Catholicism. Among the latter were Edith Stein and her sister who were arrested a week later, deported to Auschwitz, and gassed, it is thought, on August 9th. This reaction is said to have influenced Pius XII in his decisions as to how to respond to the Nazi attempt to exterminate Jews.
This is stirring news. I don’t think I have seen this before. Has it been discussed?
The Dutch bishops’ letter is very inspiring.
Indeed, Thorin. We Americans honor “the greatest generation” of American soldiers who fought in WW II, and their courage deserves to be honored, but the courage of such bishops who openly opposed the Nazis and the other Europeans who actively fought in the underground should never be forgotten. i sometimes wonder just how much the new generation of Americans have heard about these selfless people.
Many thanks for posting this. Was there a consistent policy in German-ruled Europe in these years towards Jewish converts to Christianity? My sense is that there was not, either in Germany itself, or in the occupied countries, and that some Jewish converts were left alone, and others were deported. Does anyone know? I would think that for those who took seriously Nazi views on race, a Jew would be racially a Jew, and there for religious belief (or lack of it) would make no difference.
Would a Jewish convert to Lutheranism in Germany fare better than a Jewish convert to Catholicism?
Ann Olivier’s comments about the need to remember those who opposed the Nazis are spot on.
Nicholas, the policy was: All Jews must die. That included converts to Christianity. It also was intended to include Jews who worked for Hermann “I decide who is a Jew” Goering. Administratively, there had to be some kind of order (ordern muss sein), so Jews married to Germans and Jews who had been decorated for bravery during WWI were given a reprieve in the beginning. Their death was a matter of timing and the convenience of the regime, not prudence or policy. That said, in some of the conquered countries the occupiers were less zealous than in others. But not so much that they deserve applause.
Shouldn’t this lay to rest that the claim that many did not know the mass killling of Jews was occurring?
Bill, in the letter I read of deportation and forced labor abroad, not of extermination.
Just last month I talked to someone who was a student in Lyon (France) and learned about the mass killing of Jews from a new clandestine publication that was circulating in class under people’s coats: Temoignage Chretien. No official publication, no mainstream media talked about it.
The Holocaust was so horrible that even if I had heard rumors about it, I wouldn’t have believed them. I daresay that is true of many Germans and others. Deportation, yes. Extermination, no.
The Dutch Bishops’ Letter and its consequences is briefly discussed in the powerful German film, “The Ninth Day,” a somewhat fictionalized account of a priest from Luxembourg, provisionally released from the priests’ block at Dachau in order to persuade his bishop to cooperate with the Nazi occupation.
Here is a review of the film for those not familiar with it:
http://decentfilms.com/reviews/ninthday
Among those writing for and distributing “Témoignage Chrétien” was the great French theologian, Henri de Lubac. But Joseph Komonchak can speak to this better than I.
I found Denmark’s response to its “Jewish problem” in World War II to be the most inspirational and heroic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescue_of_the_Danish_Jews
It was known, Ann, in Germany and out. It’s a horrible knowledge to have to deal with, though. Try the exercise: how might you have dealt with it?
Shouldn’t this lay to rest that the claim that many did not know the mass killling of Jews was occurring?
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I found Denmark’s response to its “Jewish problem” in World War II to be the most inspirational and heroic
It should be noted that the “final solution” to that long-standing “Jewish problem” was not arrived at until January 20, 1942, at the Wannsee Conference, and it was not implemented until March 1942. Even then, the “solution” was not known to the general public, although the mass deportations that began obviously were.
That is only a short while before the Dutch bishops’ protest letter.
Timeline from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum –
It was not until a month after the bishops’ letter, between August 15–August 28, that “Gerhart Riegner, representative of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) in Switzerland, sends a cable through the British Embassy to Rabbi Stephen Wise, the President of the WJC. Riegner explicitly informs Wise of the German implementation of their plan to physically annihilate the Jews of Europe.”
And it was not until three months after that, on November 24, that, “After receiving confirmation of the report on the German plan to annihilate the Jews of Europe from the US Department of State, Rabbi Stephen Wise, President of the World Jewish Congress, publicizes the contents of the Riegner telegram, exposing German implementation of the ‘Final Solution.’”
Apparently the United States government knew, but said nothing about it before the Allies issued a joint statement on December 17, “stating explicitly that the German authorities were engaging in mass murder of the European Jews, and that those responsible for this ‘bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination’ would ‘not escape retribution.’”
In his Christmas 1942 message, Pope Pius also lamented “the hundreds of thousands of persons who, without any fault on their part, sometimes only because of their nationality or race, have been consigned to death or slow extermination.”
Meanwhile, of course, Cardinal Pacelli had been a major contributor to the drafting of the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge blasting the Nazi regime.
Also, while the mass genocide of Jews was not yet known (and was not yet Nazi policy), the the killings of mental patients and other social undesirables was known, and these too were loudly protested in joint pastoral letter of the German bishops and in a series of sermons in 1941 by Bishop of Münster, Clemens August von Galen, which were copied and sent throughout Europe, and were a major inspiration for the formation of the White Rose.
Just shows the difficulties of history. Here is an event within our life time and there is so much spin, lies and cover-up.
The Wannsee Conference in January of 1942 formalized, authorized and assigned duties for what we know as the”final solution,” but to think of that as a bright-line date is wrong. As early as 1935, the Nuremberg Laws — which harassed Jews with everything from a ban on them displaying the national flag (as if they’d were eager to) to a ban on mixed marriages — showed which way things were going to go. The law distinguished between citizens and subjects; Jews suddenly were subjects.
Again, before the invasion of the Soviet Union in June of 1941, Hitler’s orders to his generals and the Army’s own orders, were rife with language about how mercilessly the soon-to-be-captive nations were to be treated, with special emphasis on being beastly to Jews. And special squads followed the Army into Russia killing local leaders for being possible sources of opposition and Jews for being Jews.
Hitler started with a vision of a “Jew-free Europe.” He didn’t have a detailed blueprint, but he signaled to anyone who wanted to look, well before 1942, how the New Order would look.
Bender –
If I had heard rumors of total extermination, I doubt that I would have believed them because people sometimes tell terrible lies just to get attention. Further, many people exaggerate so that bad things are expanded to nonsensical proportions. I would probably need some hard evidence that the extermination was so. And I don’t doubt that this was true of many Europeans. It would be a different matter if I were living in the town of Dachau or Auschwitz.
How would you react? I grant you people permit stupid, even self-injuring things by their inaction. For instance, right now most of us are doing nothing to have Congress outlaw the sale of assault weapons, in spite of dramatic evidence that over time thousands will be killed with them. And the same is true of ordinary handguns. Maybe a psychologist could explain why we are so stupid and/or uncaring.
the Nuremberg Laws . . . being beastly to Jews . . . Hitler started with a vision of a “Jew-free Europe.” He didn’t have a detailed blueprint, but he signaled to anyone who wanted to look, well before 1942, how the New Order would look
Yes, those were some of the earlier “solutions” to the Jewish Problem. Another “solution,” prior to reaching the “final” one, was deportation. For instance, many in France advocated deporting their unwanted Jews to Madagascar.
Certainly there had been indiscriminate killing of Jews here and there before Wannsee, but it wholesale extermination was not possible before they saw how useful the gassing operations had been in the T-4 euthanasia program, which they then shifted for use as a means of genocide.
Of course, the assertion that “everyone” knew from the beginning that the plan was mass genocide is easily proved by the fact that President Roosevelt and Churchill and de Gaulle all condemned it in the 1930s when Hitler came to power. Oh wait, that’s right. They didn’t say anything of the sort. They were silent.
As I understand it, the bishops’ letter may have hastened the deportation
of converts in the Netherlands, but it did not cause it. In areas the Germans
controlled with little local mediation (like Poland, the Protectorate of Bohemia/Moravia,
Austria, Netherlands, and of course Germany proper) the Nuremberg laws were implemented and thus no exception
was made for people who had three or more Jewish grandparents. They were considered
full Jews and deported and murdered in the course of the year 1942.
The rapid action of the Nazis in this case understandably horrified the pope, but (again)
it’s incorrect to state that this letter caused the death of these Jewish converts. The letter provided an excuse for the German administration in the Netherlands to do what it would have done a few weeks/months later. The work of Wolfgang Seibel is instructive on the nature of Nazi rule
in the Netherlands. We learn from him (a point also made by Christopher Browning) that the death rate of Jews was so high in the Netherlands to a large extent because the country was under direct Nazi Party/SS rule.
Mr. Bender seems a bit defensive for some reason. My comment that anyone — not “everyone” — could have seen where things were going to go accuses no one of anything but preoccupation with more immediate concerns. Have you read Mein Kampf? It’s all there in embryo, and that was written while Hitler was eating sweet cakes in prison, long before he came to power.
The fact that something is apparent does not mean people will believe and act on it. At the moment, the United States is asserting a right to perform executive executions beyond its borders. When this precedent comes home to roost, people will say, “How did that happen?” And people like me will say, “You could have seen it coming when the president said he was doing it, and the loyal opposition said he was just bragging to win the election, but nobody jumped up and down and screamed.”
And just a further note to Mr. Connelly’s helpful thoughts: The Nazi’s work was made easier in the Netherlands by the efficient civil servants’ collection of date on everyone neatly kept on punch cards for bureaucratic (not murderous) purposes before the war.
Very stirring words from President Hollande this weekend on the deportation of Jews from Drancy.
And people like me will say, “You could have seen it coming
You must be quite blessed Tom to have been endowed with the ability to know the future.
Bruce, “When they sow the wind, they shall reap the whirlwind.” It doesn’t require endowed prescience, only turning off FoxNews.
Many thanks to Fr. Komonchak for introducing this thread and for those who prepared and posted the translation from Dutch. Several comments, especially that of John Connelly, have been most helpful. The topic of wartime Netherlands is not new to me, as annually I widened my preparation to read Anne Frank’s Diary with my eighth grade classes. We also knew someone who emigrated from the Netherlands to New York after enduring the German occupation. She told of being at Mass when the Nazis arrived to take reprisal for the killing of soldier, a scene apparently often repeated. Soldiers marched into church, seized ten men, and immediately shot them outside the doors. That raises the question of how to deal with the evil tactic of reprisals. I may dare to risk my own life. However, if my daring words or actions are highly likely to bring reprisals against others, may I still speak out or act in defiance? I do not have an answer. We must also look at the experiences of calling general strikes in 1941 and 1943. Apparently, the 1941 strike was partly a protest against the treatment of the Jews.
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Is the Dutch text of this letter available? I wonder about the Dutch Episcopate calling itself “venerable.”
As most of the posts here state the widespread killing of the Jews was well known. In the case of the Obama assassinations m,any ate loudly protesting. Though the holocaust was worse both show that Christians are terribly lacking. All these universities, chanceries and parishes. Mostly verbiage.
Joe McMahon, I think that this is the document.
http://www.rkdocumenten.nl/rkdocs/index.php?mi=600&doc=134
Maybe “High Dutch Episcopate” works better than “venerable Dutch Episcopate”
How can I suggest that without knowing a word of Dutch?
- find search terms that, in google translate, easily lead to the English version of the letter
- with google translate, get the equivalent in Dutch
- enter the Dutch search terms into the google search engine
- click on the result that appears most promising (here, a web page called “documenten” …)
- look at the position of the word “venerable” in the English text, find the approximate corresponding position in the Dutch text
- take that line from the Dutch document, and with google translate, get the equivalent in English.
Result: “High Dutch Episcopate”!
Oope. First line of procedure: “google translate” should read “google search engine”
Therefore, my search, which is of minor significance relative to the deliberate, murderous actions of the Nazis, is for the contextual meaning of Hoogvaardig. Thanks for your help, Claire.
Joe