What did the Vatican do to help stop the Holocaust?

Question

If the answer is "nothing," I'll understand getting few responses to this question.

Answer 1

Nothing.

Answer 2

Not much. But surely these things need to be put into context and what did people know or not know. Everyone today assumes that all people knew about the holocaust as it was happening. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

The Nazi's did not announce to the world what they were doing. They didn't go to the Vatican and ask the Pope to give his blessing to the killing of people. Thousands upon thousands of Germans did not realize or understand what was going on. The Jews were being deported, they were told.

To look back now, knowing what we know and btw, found out after the fact, is not being very realistic. Only a small number of Nazis actually knew what they were doing. To everyone else they said the Jews and the others they killed were being sent to concentration camps or being deported. Remember that the actual killing of people on a large scale only lasted a couple of years. And so, just how would you know if you lived in France, Germany, Italy, or any other other place, what was going on? The Nazis controlled all the news that came out of Germany and all the occupied countries.

Answer 3

"The voice of Pius XII is a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping Europe this Christmas.... He is about the only ruler left on the Continent of Europe who dares to raise his voice at all." --Editorial, The New York Times, Dec. 25, 1941


The Vatican did a great deal...there were many priests and Catholics put to death in the concentration camps too. Pope Pius is responsible for saving hundreds of thousands.

Many people were unaware of what Hitler's "final solution" really was.

Pius XII was neither silent nor inactive. As the Vatican's secretary of State in 1937, he drafted an encyclical for Pope Pius XI condemning Nazism as un-Christian. The document was then smuggled into Germany, secretly printed there in German and read from Roman Catholic pulpits. The Nazis responded by confiscating the presses and imprisoning many Catholics.

The pope's crime--if that is what it is--is that he chose the role of diplomatic peacemaker rather than martyr for the cause. Both the Allies and the Axis powers pressured him to take their side. It was clear, as the Times reported and the Nazis complained, that Pius XII stood for Western freedoms. But the pope refused to sign an Allied condemnation of Nazi atrocities against the Jews (and Christians) if he could not also condemn the slaughter of Jews and other religious believers by Stalin, then an ally of the United States. As it happened, about 5 million of the 6 million Jews who died came from Russia and Poland, where the pope had no power to command anyone.

Answer 4

How about some words from a Nazi officer himself:

Joseph Goebbel says in his diary:

" It's a dirty, low thing to do for the Catholic Church to continue its subversive activity in every way possible and now even to extend its propaganda to Protestant children evacuated from the regions threatened by air raids. Next to the Jews these politico-divines are about the most loathsome riffraff that we are still sheltering in the Reich. The time will come after the war for an over-all solution of this problem."

Pope Pius XII saved 800,000 Jewish lives, hiding Jews in monasteries, convents, and inside the Vatican itself; that he got to the Jews money for travel; he issued fake baptismal certificates so they could pass as Christian; he was praised by Jews at the end of the war (by everyone from Golda Meir to the Communist Albert Einstein) as a "righteous gentile"; he was called by the New York Times the only voice among the silence on the topic of the Jewish persecutions; that the Chief Rabbi of Rome was so impressed by this Pope's holiness and heroism toward his fellow Hebrews that he took his name when he converted to Catholicism -- these things have been written about by people much more talented than I.

Below I have links --please read them-- and as you do, remember that ignored in the singular focus on the tragedy of the Jewish "holocaust" is the destruction of Christians that took place simultaneously: not only were Catholics also murdered by Nazis (3,000,000 in Poland alone!), but, at the same time, 15 million Christians were being murdered by our ally, "Uncle Joe" Stalin, much-beloved by FDR, American liberals, and American media.

Answer 5

The Vatican aided and abetted until they knew Hitler was going to lose then the Vatican took in a couple thousand Jews real quick and said see we was trying to help.

Answer 6

The Church leaders were in fear of man so did nothing. However many individual Chatholics helped discreatly and are to be commended for helping Holocaust victims.

A terrible bloodguilt therefore rests on the Vatican! As a leading Religious Power it helped significantly in putting Hitler into power and in giving him “moral” support. The Vatican went further in tacitly consenting to Hitler’s atrocities. During the long decade of Nazi terror, the Roman pontiff kept quiet while hundreds of thousands of Catholic soldiers were fighting and dying for the glory of the Nazi regime and while millions of other unfortunates were being liquidated in Hitler’s gas chambers.
Well, to take one example, how did the tyrant Adolf Hitler become chancellor and dictator of Germany? It was through the political intrigue of a papal knight whom the previous German chancellor, Kurt von Schleicher, described as “the kind of traitor next to whom Judas Iscariot is a saint.” This was Franz von Papen, who marshaled Catholic Action and leaders in industry to oppose communism and unite Germany under Hitler. As part of a sellout bargain, von Papen was made vice-chancellor. Hitler sent a delegation headed by von Papen to Rome to negotiate a concordat between the Nazi State and the Vatican. Pope Pius XI remarked to the German envoys how pleased he was that “the German Government now had at its head a man uncompromisingly opposed to Communism,” and on July 20, 1933, at an elaborate ceremony in the Vatican, Cardinal Pacelli (who was soon to become Pope Pius XII) signed the concordat.
One historian writes: “The Concordat [with the Vatican] was a great victory for Hitler. It gave him the first moral support he had received from the outer world, and this from the most exalted source.” During the celebrations at the Vatican, Pacelli conferred on von Papen the high papal decoration of the Grand Cross of the Order of Pius. Winston Churchill, in his book The Gathering Storm, published in 1948, tells how von Papen further used “his reputation as a good Catholic” to gain church support for the Nazi takeover of Austria. In 1938, in honor of Hitler’s birthday, Cardinal Innitzer ordered that all Austrian churches fly the swastika flag, ring their bells, and pray for the Nazi dictator.
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Answer 7

Nothing the Vatican like Churchill turned a blind activity to the actions of Hitler till it was too late for fear of invasion. Hitler ruled Europe through fear and intimidation. He even had the Vatican on the run. So to your your Question ...absolutely nothing in fear of loosing their position in Europe and the position of the Church and yes Hitler could have destroyed the Vatican if he choose to and often remined them of them fact.

Answer 8

The Truth is they did absolutely Nothing. They did not want to get involved fearing the wrath of Hitler.

Answer 9

They aligned themselves with Nazi Germany, I remember Pope John Paul II apologizing for the church's actions in those dark day. In that light they did far less than nothing.
wow, I tell the truth, one that can be verified, and I get thumbs down for it. i guess a couple of people don't want to hear the truth.

Answer 10

They allowed some Jew to convert but not very many.

The Russian tanks were what did most of the holocaust stopping.

Answer 11

They did exactly what their religion teaches them to do; be like Christ. God did nothing to stop the Holocaust, and so did they.