Churches and Religion in The Second World War 9781845204839, 9781845208226, 9781474220439, 9781472504807

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CHURCHES AND RELIGION IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR

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Occupation in Europe Series Churches and Religion in the Second World War is part of the European Science Foundation (ESF ) programme ‘Occupation in Europe: The Impact of National Socialist and Fascist Rule’.

The ESF acts as a catalyst for the development of science by bringing together leading scientists and funding agencies to debate, plan and implement pan-European scientific and science policy initiatives. It is also responsible for the management of COST (European Cooperation in the field of Scientific and Technical Research). ESF is the European association of seventy-seven major national funding agencies devoted to scientific research in thirty countries. It represents all scientific disciplines: physical and engineering sciences, life, earth and environmental sciences, medical sciences, humanities and social sciences. The Foundation assists its Member Organizations in two main ways. It brings scientists together in its Scientific Forward Looks, Exploratory Workshops, Programmes, Networks, EUROCORES , and ESF Research Conferences, to work on topics of common concern including Research Infrastructures. It also conducts the joint studies of issues of strategic importance in European science policy and manages, on behalf of its Member Organizations, grant schemes, such as EURYI (European Young Investigator Awards). It maintains close relations with other scientific institutions within and outside Europe. By its activities, the ESF adds value by cooperation and coordination across national frontiers and endeavours, offers expert scientific advice on strategic issues, and provides the European forum for science.

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CHURCHES AND RELIGION IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR

Jan Bank with Lieve Gevers Translated by Brian Doyle

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

LON DON • OX F O R D • N E W YO R K • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY

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Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square London WC 1B 3DP UK

1385 Broadway New York NY 10018 USA

www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2016 © European Science Foundation, 2016 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN : HB : PB : ePDF : ePub:

978-1-8452-0483-9 978-1-8452-0822-6 978-1-4725-0480-7 978-1-4725-0479-1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Bank, Jan, 1940- author. | Gevers, Lieve, 1947- author. | Doyle, Brian (Translator), translator. Title: Churches and religion in the Second World War / Jan Bank with Lieve Gevers; translated by Brian Doyle. Other titles: God in de Oorlog. English Description: London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016. | Series: Occupation in Europe | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2015034840| ISBN 9781845204839 (hardback) | ISBN 9781845208226 (paperback) | ISBN 9781472504807 (ePDF) | ISBN 9781472504791 (ePub) Subjects: LCSH: World War, 1939-1945—Religious aspects—Christianity. | World War, 1939-1945—Moral and ethical aspects. | Christian ethics—Europe--History—20th century. | Christianity and politics—Europe—History—20th century. | Fascism—Europe—History—20th century. | National socialism—Europe—History—20th century. Classification: LCC D810.C5 B3613 2016 | DDC 940.53/1—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015034840 Series: Occupation in Europe Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk

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CONTENTS

List of illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction

vi viii x

1

Church and State, Church and Nation after the First World War

2

Religion and Totalitarian Ideology

53

3

Churches in Occupied Territories 1

115

4

Churches in Occupied Territories 2

163

5

Religion in All Out War

219

6

Churches between Loyalty and Resistance

255

7

Churches between Forced Labour and Resistance

297

8

National Socialist Mass Murder and the Churches: Persecution in Nazi Germany

333

National Socialist Mass Murder and the Churches: Persecution in the Occupied Countries

369

10 National Socialist Mass Murder and the Churches: Allies and Vassal States of Nazi Germany

419

11 National Socialist Mass Murder and the Churches: The Christian Dimension of Relief and Refuge

469

12 Supreme Pastors and Ecumenism

483

Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index-of-themes Index of Names

515 531 575 593 595

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1

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ILLUSTRATIONS

1 2 3 4 5

6 7 8 9

St Michaels Cathedral (late fourteenth century) in Coventry; bombed in 1940 and combined with a new church (1956).

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Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin; the original church (1895) was bombed in 1943 and combined with a new church (1961).

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Roman Catholic girls, walking in procession under the banner of ‘Christ the King’, past the city hall of Brussels.

24

Ludwig Müller during his confirmation as ‘Reich bishop’ in front of the Dom in Berlin (23 September 1934).

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Reich Bishop Müller presides over the wedding of Reich Marshal Hermann Göring and the actress Emmy Sonnemann in the Dom in Berlin (10 April 1935).

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Cardinal Faulhaber, Archbishop of Munich, sprinkles holy water with an aspersory during an open-air liturgy.

92

The abbot Albanus Schachleiter, clerical supporter of Hitler and the Nazi regime, lies in state in the Church of All Saints in Munich (21 June 1937).

102

Cardinal Innitzer, Archbishop of Vienna, pays a visit to the Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dolfuβ.

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The priest and State President of Slovakia, Jozef Tiso, takes the salute in Bratislava. In the centre, his opponent, the prime minister Vojtech Tuka.

133

10 Hans Frank, governor general in occupied Poland, receives a mark of honour from the Ukrainian Orthodox Metropolitan. The Nazi regime in Kraków supported the Ukrainian Church.

151

11 Marshal Pétain meets Cardinal Baudrillart, member of the French Academy.

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12 Cardinal Van Roey, Archbishop of Mechelen (Belgium), welcomes the Belgian king Leopold III .

178

13 The dead body of the Romanian Fascist leader Codreanu is exhumed, while a Orthodox priest says a prayer, November 1940.

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14 A member of the Bosnian SS -Division hangs a portrait of the Grand Mufti of Palestine, exiled in Nazi Germany.

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15 Aloizije Stepinac, Archbishop of Zagreb, during an open-air mass in Croatia.

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16 Gavrilo Dožić, the patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church.

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Illustrations

17 Cardinal Schuster, Archbishop of Milan, on the balcony of his cathedral on the day of the liberation of the city.

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18 Statue of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in the western entrance to Westminster Abbey, London. Gallery of twentieth-century martyrs.

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19 Statue of Maximilian Kolbe in the western entrance to Westminster Abbey, London.

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20 Bust of Edith Stein in the town hall of Wrocław (Breslau).

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21 Romanian dictator, Marshal Antonescu, takes the salute in Bucharest on the occasion of the New Year 1941. Prelates and leaders of the different Churches in Romania remain in the background.

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Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This scholarly work originates from a research programme about ‘The Impact of National Socialist and Fascist Occupations in Europe’ (INSFO ). It was subsidized by the European Science Foundation in Strasbourg. First, I wish to extend words of thanks to Lieve Gevers (Leuven), my colleague in guiding the study group. She had already edited with me a collection of essays, which became one of the (important) sources for this book. Owing to various causes she could not take part in the writing of the manuscript. Fortunately I have benefitted from her erudition (scholarship) and moral support for nearly a decade. In establishing the ESF programme, Johannes Houwink ten Cate (Amsterdam) played a major part. The project was conducted by Wolfgang Benz (Berlin) and Hans Blom (Amsterdam). But for Hans’ unremitting encouragement and the continuous assistance by Conny Kristel, project secretary, this monograph would not have come about. The first separate studies were carried out by members of the ESF study group. I remember a lot of lively debates, thanks to Katrin Boeckh, Idesbald Goddeeris, Tamara Griesser-Pečar, Emilia Hrabovec, Johan Ickx, Anders Jarlert, Jure Krišto, Grigorios Psallidas, Radmila Radić, Lieven Saerens and Mikhail Shkarovsky. Vilma Narkute also made a valuable contribution. Lieve Gevers and Hans Blom perused the complete manuscript. Katrin Boeckh and Radmila Radić, Johan Ickx and Karel Berkhoff, Louis Vos, Bart van der Boom and Piet Hagen read parts of it. I am grateful to them for their critical judgement. Brian Doyle took care of the English translation. His linguistic competence and his knowledge of ecclesiastical terminology are outstanding. I am greatly indebted to him for his cooperation. Once the project had got off the ground, Lieve Gevers and I derived much benefit from our stay at, and the services by, the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS ) in Wassenaar. In 2004–2005 we had the possibility to reside at the Dutch institute; this opportunity was created by a grant from the Dutch–Flemish committee for scientific cooperation. I wish to express my gratitude to Henk Wesseling and Wim Blockmans, rectors of NIAS , and the members of staff for an inspiring year of study. I am grateful for the use of the well-stocked library of the Netherlands Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies (NIOD ) in Amsterdam and the lending facilities of the NIAS library in Wassenaar. I should also make mention of the Amsterdam University Library and the Royal Library in The Hague; the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris and the Biblioteca Nazionale and the Vatican Library in Rome; and the national libraries in Munich and Vienna. A prolonged stay for research in Rome was made possible for me by the hospitality of the Koninklijk Nederlands Instituut in Rome (KNIR ). viii

Acknowledgements

During all my investigations and scholarly travels Truusje Middelhoff, my wife, was a prop and support to me; in her diligence as well as personally. Her steadfastness made me persevere. Truusje stayed in the background, yet without her indefatigable encouragement and inspiration I would not have managed to come to the fore. Jan Bank

ix

INTRODUCTION

Two large internationally renowned war monuments testify to the destruction of church buildings: the Anglican cathedral in coventry in the English Midlands and the German Evangelical church commemorating Kaiser Wilhelm (I) in Berlin. Both were constructed after the Second World War from ruins that remained partially visible. These dual constructions could be interpreted as a narrative of confrontation and destruction followed by resurrection. There was a clear desire after the war to express both in stone. And on the occasion of the inauguration of Coventry Cathedral in 1962, Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, the twentieth century’s musical ‘In Memoriam’ was heard for the first time. Christian Churches have martyrologies, clergy as well as (prominent) lay people who shed their blood as a result of persecution. The latter often held positions of authority in institutions and organizations with a Christian signature. Countless numbers met their death in front of firing squads or in camps in occupied countries. They included resistance fighters, who were inspired by their faith to engage in civil – and sometimes militant – disobedience. Some were imprisoned in Dachau concentration camp near Munich and held in a special barracks. From 1940 until the end of Nazi rule, 2,720 church officials were held there from 20 different countries. The largest group (1,870) was Polish, the second German (447), the third French (156), and the fourth Czech (109).1 Of all these, 93.8 per cent were Roman Catholic, 4.9 per cent Protestant and a small percentage Orthodox.2 Among the last mentioned two Serbian bishops. In times of war and occupation, church leaders can often be confronted with dilemmas, especially when it comes to their stance on violence and persecution. Not infrequently, they are asked to make a choice between a selfless if risky moral testimony and the defence of interests acquired by the church in question in the course of its history in a given country. During the Second World War, the churches were confronted with two dilemmas: the power of the totalitarian state and the consequences of intentional disobedience on the one hand, and, on the other, the persecution of individuals and national groups who were excluded on account of their ‘race’ or personal convictions and subsequently murdered. This was particularly true of the Jews, who shared their sacred books and their history with Christians. Both exclusion and mass murder should inspire a crisis of conscience among genuine Christians who respect the consequence of their ethical convictions. In 1900, the churches had fought to establish themselves in European society with remarkable tenacity, fending off the spirit of modernity and secularity that governed the day. They did not appear on the horizon as mere tradition, but rather as the product of the preceding nineteenth century and as part of its creative dynamics.3 The relative x

Introduction

Figure 1 St. Michaels Cathedral (late fourteenth century) in Coventry; bombed in 1940 and combined with a new church (1956). Photographer: Schlaier.

success of their message, the growth in the number of communities and clergy, and the expansion of church-based education led one German historian to speak of a Second Confessional Era in Europe (the first being the Reformation).4 Confessionalism in this sense meant that the churches tried – with success – to give institutional form to their religious identity and embed it in society as a whole. They found substantial answers to three processes that are ascribed to the Enlightenment or the Romantic Movement, in the origins of which the churches themselves had little if any part to play: the emergence of the nation state including the process of ‘nation building’, the advance of liberal democracy in the secular state, and the expansion of the empirical science. The idealistic attraction of these ideas and concrete institutions penetrated deep into the churches’ own ranks and led to a loss of membership and influence. The most successful response in relative terms was to the emergence of the nation state. Churches had traditionally enjoyed a close association with monarchies, especially the Habsburgs, the Hohenzollerns and the Romanovs, the ruling European dynasties. Nevertheless, they also managed to assert themselves as an important factor in the formation of the nation state. They were the custodians of the national language and often became national churches. Support in this regard tended to come from the lower clergy who felt a bond with the nationalist movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The senior clergy tended to remain faithful to the dynasty. xi

Introduction

Figure 2 Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin; the original church (1895) was bombed in 1943 and combined with a new church (1961). Photographer: Cmglee.

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Introduction

The churches’ reaction to liberalism was considerably more negative. The revolutionary acquisition of the separation of church and state was contested by the churches, as was the emergence of parliamentary democracy. Pius IX ’s Syllabus Errorum, for example, a catalogue of heresies (1864) confirmed at the First Vatican Council (1870) within a climate of maintaining ecclesial power of the head of the Roman Catholic Church, roundly condemned liberalism. His successor, Leo XIII , by contrast, opened the door to reconciliation with the Third Republic in France. It would appear, in hindsight, that the churches were able to rediscover their spiritual and social mission where the separation of church and state was most rigorously maintained, ‘robbed’ as they were of a sometimes ill-fated attachment to state power. Parliamentary democracy in the twentieth century also appeared to offer a place to political parties that were based on one or another form of Christian confession. The churches’ response to the emergence and expansion of the modern sciences was clearly the most determined. This process penetrated deeply into domains that the churches had considered their own territory, some of which it understood to be governed by eternal truths. Psychology became an alternative to traditional pastoral care and the modern biblical sciences were seen as an attack on traditional exegesis. The latter led to increasing debate within the churches between modernists, who were happy to adapt to new insights, and conservatives, who dug in their heels in the name of tradition. The modernization of the philosophy of the medieval Dominican Thomas Aquinas in the Roman Catholic Church and of Protestant theology in Germany, however, can be seen as an example of the reconciliation of tradition and new ideas. The workers’ revolt in Paris in 1871, known as the Commune, reverberated powerfully through the history of European socialism and acquired symbolic value. It became a point of reference for the modern workers’ movement that unfolded across Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; a humanistic response to the industrial revolution. The movement took on a variety of forms in terms of organization and ideology, ranging from social democracy to communism, and calculated atheism was also a factor of significance. Both the industrial revolution and the modern workers’ movement thus became a new threat to the Church. The challenge was initially countered with a negative response, in which the churches distanced themselves from the labour relations being established in the new industries and exhibited an apparent indifference to ‘religious disaffection’ among the workers. An albeit small number of examples, however, suggest the recognition of social issues, especially the pioneering work of individual priests and pastors in a mission oriented towards workers and in the emergence of a Christian workers’ movement in Western Europe. In the twentieth century – the Age of Extremes according to Eric Hobsbawm – the churches in Europe were confronted with the messianic ideology of the totalitarian state.5 The October Revolution in 1917 resulted in the Soviet Union, a revolutionary state that was officially atheist and one that engaged in a bloody persecution of the churches. This exposed the gulf that divided Christianity and communism. Fascism saw its first constitutional manifestation in Italy after the First World War, but quickly became a European phenomenon with National Socialism in Germany as its ‘high point’. While xiii

Introduction

this ideology had lay roots, its concrete realizations took on the features of what writers such as Franz Werfel and political philosopher Eric Voegelin described at the time – 1930s – as a ‘political religion’.6 From a Christian perspective, the totalitarian programme of fascism and, in particular, National Socialism crossed the boundary into a form of state idolatry and the spiritual climate they generated gave rise to ‘a strong strain of racial and political mysticism’.7 The central question of the present book is the following: how did the Churches in Europe fare during the Second World War and what were their thoughts and, perhaps more importantly, their deeds as institutions made up of church leaders as well as individual believers? Taking this central question as our point of departure, we have formulated four subsidiary questions: ●

According to their ‘vocation’, churches are ethical institutions that would be expected to be critical – to a greater or lesser extent – towards the violent ideology and violent deeds of the occupier, particularly (but not exclusively) with respect to racial persecution. Were the churches inclined to substantiate this moral imperative and were they at liberty to do so?

●

Christians could use the same doctrinal/ethical teachings to support secular totalitarian regimes or to motivate resistance. Which religious arguments were employed to motivate potential endorsement and did they choose to limit themselves to unarmed resistance or was armed resistance also part of the picture?

●

Churches are often considered as ‘bulwarks’ of the nation, a pillar of support for the nation’s identity. Did the occupying regime choose to suppress them or contain them in this regard?

●

At the level of ideas and organization, the churches are integrated branches of society and can thus serve as an obstacle to the totalitarian ambitions of party and state. Did the occupying regime consider it necessary to neutralize these institutions or combat them?

A number of choices – three in total – had to be made: a choice for the Churches, for the period and for Christianity. Christian Churches are a plural phenomenon. The present study focuses on the four main streams of Christianity in continental Europe: the Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodoxy, Lutheranism and Calvinism. While all four share the same gospel, their history and organization differs at various levels: from centralist governance (Roman Catholic Church) to synodal organization with the local community a core (Calvinism); in episcopal structure (Lutheranism) or presbyteral structure (Calvinism); from socially organized and expansive (Catholicism) to explicitly liturgical with a mystical bias (Orthodoxy). Christian variants representing smaller groups – such as the Baptists – are mentioned in passing. The same is true for the Jehovah’s Witnesses, a religious fraternity that was targeted by the National Socialists primarily on account of its principle of refusing military service.

xiv

Introduction

The research programme that gave rise to the present study and that enjoyed the support of the European Science Foundation was entitled ‘The Impact of National Socialist and Fascist Occupations in Europe’ (INSFO ). Occupying regimes are thus the central focus of this study, although attention is also given to the states who implemented the said occupations. The Second World War was fought on four continents, but this ESF project addresses the European context in the first instance. The periods addressed are borrowed from Timothy Snyder’s much-discussed book Bloodlands.8 This means that adequate attention is given to church persecution in the Soviet Union as part of Stalin’s Great Purge. This is an essential element in the historical exploration of the policies and opinions maintained by the Christian churches in the Interbellum. The historical discussion that ensues is thus based exclusively on the study of related literature. Archives were not directly consulted and original sources were only read when they were available in source publications. The present study has opted to focus exclusively on the Christian churches. This means that the ‘Jewish synagogue’ and the ‘Muslim mosque’ have been more or less excluded. The former is particularly relevant for Europe as a whole, the latter for the Balkans. Judaism in the Holocaust became a ‘religion in captivity’. As synagogues were destroyed or closed down, rites and prayers ‘resumed’ in Nazi-created ghettos and in the concentration camps. This was a different historical setting, one in which religion was able to reinforce a sense of solidarity and offer strength and comfort to the oppressed, and one which calls for a separate historical study of its own.

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CHAPTER 1 CHURCH AND STATE, CHURCH AND NATION AFTER THE FIRST WORLD WAR

Introduction The first chapter of this volume begins with a panoramic survey of Christianity in the European continent, providing explanation for a number of facts and developments related to the end of the First World War. The close of the war had important political consequences in and for Europe: new borders, new states and, on occasion, new internal relationships within societies. The churches took cognizance of the said consequences and set about the process of coping with them. Two international ecclesial authorities – the Roman Pontiff and the Patriarch of Constantinople – also took on a different significance as a result of the war. Attention will be focused on this process of adaptation together with the political upheavals that characterized the transition from war to peace. One such revolution had profound significance for the churches: the Russian (Bolshevist) revolution of October 1917, which heralded a violent attack on the Russian Orthodox Church. The chapter closes with a sketch of the evolution of the ecumenical movement, which also accelerated as a result of the First World War. The structure of our discussion of the consequences of the First World War has its reasons. As we observed above, the churches became a factor of cultural and political significance in the emergence and legitimating of the nation states. In the new political entities that emerged from the war, therefore, the churches were expected to be granted the same functions or fulfil the same roles. They shared in the restructuring of Europe and had a voice in the international debate on the war as such, on its consequences and on the peace treaties of Paris (1919–20). The juridical status and administrative organization of the churches had to be adapted to new boundaries and to a new language. From the end of 1917 in the Soviet Union, Europe’s largest Orthodox Church was confronted for the first time with the omnipotence of a totalitarian state, a confrontation that was followed with interest and fear by Christians in Europe. The response of the churches to the ideologies that had become relevant during the Interbellum period will constitute the subject of the second chapter.

1 Baltic Lutheranism – the mare lutheranum 1.1 Protestantism in Germany The First World War profoundly disturbed the Protestant churches in Germany and inspired them at one and the same time. The clergy gave expression to the euphoria of 1

Churches and Religion in the Second World War

belligerence in the summer of 1914 and likewise to the crisis that preceded defeat in 1918. The so-called ‘stab-in-the-back’ legend was in fact a message from the pulpit, a sermon on the stab in the back delivered to the emperor and the soldiers at the front. In response to a wave of strikes, court chaplain Bruno Döhring proclaimed on 3 February 1918 in the Dom of Berlin that the German army had been deprived of victory in the First World War because it had been attacked from the rear by socialists and democrats. The legend became a primary theme in the ensuing political embitterment with the stipulations of the Versailles Peace Treaty (1919). The proclamation from the pulpit of the Dom demonstrates that a close bond existed between the Evangelical Church and the monarchs, and between the same church and ‘warring Germany’.1 After all, were the roots of this war not to be found in the Protestantism that was born and bred in Germans, as the writer Thomas Mann had argued? Was not the war simply an expression of the ‘age old German struggle against the Spirit of the West’ and that of ‘the Roman World against wayward Germany’?2 For historical reasons, Protestantism in Germany was embedded in the so-called Länder, the (federal) states. A process of ecclesial centralization did not follow the political unification of these regions into an empire in 1871. The Landeskirchen continued to be linked to the highest authority in the state, the Landesfürst, and the Prussian Church to the Summus Episcopus, Emperor Wilhelm II . The bearer of the latter title left an extraordinary legacy to the Church, especially in his capital. The Dom in Berlin was renovated on his instructions in 1905 as a worthy monument to the victory against France in 1870 and as the mother church of Protestantism. A second ‘Dom of West Berlin’ was constructed in Charlottenburg in 1895 in memory of Emperor Wilhelm I and a third church appeared in the Hansa Viertel in memory of Emperor Friedrich, his father. A total of twenty-eight Landeskirchen existed, differing in size and significance. Fifteen were Lutheran (sixteen million members), and twelve were the so-called unierte Landeskirchen, or churches with a mixed Lutheran and Reformed (Calvinistic) rule (twenty million members). The most important of these was the Evangelische Kirche der altpreussischen Union in Prussia. One single church in East Friesland was exclusively Reformed (230,000 members). The Lutheran Church in Germany followed a Konsistorialverfassung. In other words, the local ruler/prince was the highest authority who appointed the members of the consistory. The Reformed churches – a minority in German Protestantism – employed a Presbyterialverfassung: community self-governance via the Church Council and Church governance via the Synod. The November revolution of 1918 occasioned a breach with various traditions in German Protestantism. The hour of renewal gave rise to a republic and a revival of faith in democracy especially characteristic of the time. Within the Protestant churches, this created the idea among its members of a people’s church and the right to vote. This was short-lived, however, and disappointing. The (occasional) church elections that took place in Baden and Württemberg gave rise to a conservative majority. For the first time in German history, the Weimarer Verfassung of 1919 proclaimed the separation of church and state. The Republic’s decision not to recognize a state-church robbed German Protestantism of its unique and privileged relationship with the political authorities. 2

Church and State, Church and Nation after the First World War

Prayers for the local prince and for the emperor were dropped from Sunday services. The church of Württemberg was the only one to introduce a new prayer for the government, although church ministers in Prussia are known to have taken similar measures on their own initiative. While the state continued to finance church ministers and collect taxes, and regional diversity remained explicitly intact, the Landeskirchen were forced to look for a new highest authority, this time within their own ranks. A number of churches clearly struggled with the idea: a bishop or – as in Prussia – a superintendent? The monarchist elite among the Protestant clergy had problems with the reality of a Republic. In the search for new forms of political representation, the possibility of a Protestant political party was tabled in line with the Catholic Church’s Zentrum Party, which had already been representing Catholic interests for a considerable period of time and had been one of the founders of the Weimar Republic. But the Protestant equivalent never materialized. The majority of church ministers (80 per cent) considered themselves nationalist and conservative and most were able to accommodate themselves within the Deutschnationale Volkspartei (DVP ), which favoured the restoration of the monarchy.3 A smaller group, the so-called cultural Protestants who constituted the liberal wing of the Church, found political refuge in the Deutsche Demokratische Partei (DDP ). A tiny minority identified themselves with the Christian socialist movement that had its roots in Switzerland. Prominent theologians such as Ernst Troeltsch supported the republic for democratic reasons – Troeltsch even held a position in the Prussian government for a time – but they were in reality a liberal shambles. Their most important representative, the church historian Adolf von Harnack, who had in fact been granted a noble title by the emperor, became a Vernunftrepublikaner – a rational republican – and even played a part in the establishment of the constitution in 1919.4 Ten years later, the gulf between the Evangelical Church and the Republic had shrunk to some degree. The leaders of German Protestantism sought more and more to engage in loyal cooperation on the basis of rational considerations: Vernunftrepublikanismus or common sense republicanism. The November revolution had finally made the Church independent. As Otto Dibelius, General Superintendent of the Prussian Union Church, put it in his frequently reprinted book Das Jahrhundert der Kirche (first published in 1926): ‘Ecclesiam habemus!’ (We finally have a Church!). At the annual Church congress (Kirchentag) held in 1929 in Königsberg, a ‘patriotic manifestation’ was organized during which three core concepts were discussed and underlined: obedience to the government, love of the fatherland and the ideology of the German nation. This ‘republican rationality’ applied only to the leadership of the Evangelical Church, however, while anti-democratic resentment continued to be tangible in the intermediate ranks and among ordinary church members. But here too traditional reserve had evaporated. From 1929 onwards, Evangelical Church ministers developed a hitherto unheard of political awareness, influenced by the economic crisis and the confrontation between democracy and radical ideologies. The relationship between German Protestantism and the German nation had both theological and historical foundations. Lutheran teaching alluded to ‘two regimens’ or kingdoms: God’s spiritual regimen over the churches and religious communities and 3

Churches and Religion in the Second World War

the government’s earthly regimen over its subjects. Both were intended to serve the community of Christ and his believers, but they were clearly distinguishable nevertheless. Luther rejected the idea of rebellion against the authorities as rebellion against the Godgiven order. The Reformation theology of Ulrich Zwingli and John Calvin, on the other hand, relativized the (fatalistic) distinction between the two regimens; the Church’s discipline extended to all Christians and was not limited to the members of the Church community. The faithful, including the government, bear immediate responsibility with respect to the world. Should the authorities become tyrannical, however, resistance was legitimized. Martin Luther’s thesis served as a source of obedience. In the historical context, this virtue was applied to the choice of religion made by the local prince on his own behalf and on behalf of his people, expressed in the renowned principle of the Peace of Augsburg (1555): Cuius regio illius religio. The Church of the prince determined the Church of the region or Land in which he ruled. This promoted religious uniformity by authority of the state; the Landeskirche coincided with the Land. In the Weimar Republic, however, the boundaries of the regions and free cities had been altered and enlarged. This implied among other things that the jurisdiction of the Landeskirche often no longer coincided with the (federal) state. As a consequence of the Treaty of Versailles, a number of regions in the East had been placed under Polish sovereignty. The Prussian Church thus ‘lost’ more than two million believers, although they continued to cherish their German national awareness at the level of faith and Church alike. German Protestantism was the religion of the middle-class elite and the Lutheran Church a self-evident part of the Establishment. In Wilhelm’s empire, this elite was served hand and foot at the intellectual level by a liberal theology that bore the mark of Von Harnack to a considerable degree and came to be known as ‘cultural Protestantism’. Every thesis has its antithesis, however. Pietistic movements of diverse origins and cultural affiliations thus evolved into a radicalizing factor within the Church. In the resulting spread of the idea of a ‘People’s Church’, an ambition to increase the involvement of ordinary Christians became visible. From the theological perspective, cultural Protestantism likewise became a stumbling block. The new theological movements of the interbellum period served as the pre-eminent expression of a confrontation with the theology of the Church’s bourgeois elite. 1.2 The Scandinavian People’s Church The idea of a ‘People’s Church’ was open to different interpretations in the Lutheran context and was not only confined to Germany. In the Scandinavian countries, for example, where the Lutheran Church had been a choice of the ruler during the Reformation, the idea of a ‘People’s Church’ came to the fore with considerable frequency. In the course of history, the Scandinavian churches evolved as institutions of the prevailing religion of prince and people. During the Interbellum, membership of the Lutheran Church in each of the Scandinavian states was particularly high, in some instances as much as 90 per cent. With numbers like this it already constituted a ‘People’s 4

Church and State, Church and Nation after the First World War

Church’, although it had never been so designated. In terms of its administrative organization and finances, however, a bond of dependence had evolved over time between the state and the Lutheran Church, and the latter had become a state-church in the fullest sense of the word. The expression ‘People’s Church’ was also used (polemically) to identify groups of citizens who turned their back on the prevailing liberalism and lived out their piety individually or, as was often the case, in small communities. Generally speaking, such groups had an internal ‘revivalist’ mission and could be understood in the history of the Church as a form of ‘confessionalization’, a concept mentioned in the ‘Introduction’ and related to the length and breadth of the nineteenth century, which alludes to the expansion and intensification of the Christian confession of faith after the period of the French Revolution. This ‘Internal Mission’, the main institution of a revivalist movement in Denmark, was active on the west coast of Jutland. Furthermore, a specific variant of Pietism emerged in the same place under the influence of the Danish pastor and poet Nicolai F.S. Grundtvig. Where pietists turned their backs to the world in guilt, Grundtvig’s followers did the opposite, turning towards the world with a degree of optimism that gave explicit expression to a specific Danish religious culture. The education of the people, one of Grundtvig’s most important goals, led to the invention of adult education centres, which later enjoyed considerable representation throughout all the Scandinavian countries. The dichotomy continued to exist into the twentieth century, although the liberal side was now marked by an interest – especially among Christian students – in the dialectic theology of Karl Barth with the journal Tidehverv (Turn) as its voice. This interest coincided in Denmark with a renewed and radical interpretation of the writings of Søren Kierkegaard, understood in a shallow and otherwise pietistic manner in the past. Denmark’s (liberal) government had decided in 1842 to change the name of the statechurch to Den Danske Folkekirke, the ‘Danish People’s Church’, a step in the direction of the separation of religion and state sought after by the liberals. The paradox of Danish Church history remains, however, that the Church continued to maintain a strong bond with the state in terms of its governance and organization, while enjoying freedom legitimated by the same authority at the local level of communities and conventicles that were then able to represent a particular (pious) tendency within Lutheranism as a whole. It was only in 1920 that the path to greater autonomy was opened as a consequence of the referendum that took place after the First World War and that resulted in the return of the northern part of Schleswig to Denmark. The rules governing Church life had to be adapted, and democratic rights such as obligatory Church Council consultation in the appointment of a pastor, the election of bishops and the introduction of district synods were taken over from the German regulations. As a consequence of this democratization, the episcopacy evolved into an executive function legitimated by the Church’s membership. The bishops were thus able to function en bloc as an unofficial Church council over and against the civil authorities. Two cultural traditions can be distinguished in Scandinavian Lutheranism: the Danish Church, which also exercized influence in its sister-Church in Norway in the 5

Churches and Religion in the Second World War

early modern period, when the latter still owed allegiance to the Danish monarch; and the Swedish Church, which also established roots in Finland during the period of Swedish domination. In both Norway and Finland, the implantation of the Lutheran Church took on extraordinary national significance. In the former, which fell under the Swedish crown in the nineteenth century, the Church became an important institution of Norwegian culture. The first Norwegian king Haakon VII was crowned in 1905 in the Nidaros cathedral of Trondheim, where medieval pilgrims honoured King Olaf, patron saint of Norway. There was also some evidence of a ‘confessionalization’ in the Norwegian Church. This saw the emergence of a variety of societies supporting the ‘Internal Mission’ and with the additional goal of underlining and upholding the Lutheran character of the country. Freedom of religion was only accepted as a principle in Norway in 1969. Opposition to the liberal tendency consolidated within the Norwegian Church in the twentieth century. The pietistic movement took shape in scores of lay associations presided over by the theologian Ole Hallesby, who took up the struggle from within his own association and occasionally made use of boycotts in support of his position. Polarization led to the foundation of a pietistic college of theology in the (new) capital Oslo in 1908: in addition to the state university’s faculty of (liberal) theology, a new faculty was set up for the pietistic communities, a Norwegian Lutheran School of Theology. The confrontation lost its edge in the 1930s even though it remained unresolved. The horizon of the Finnish capital Helsinki is dominated by two cathedrals of neoclassical proportions: the Lutheran cathedral and the Russian Orthodox cathedral. Both were built in the middle of the nineteenth century, one in neo-classicist style and the other in an architecture considered to be monumental in Russian Orthodoxy. The two cathedrals mark a cultural boundary between North and East, between core countries of Lutheranism and the Christian religion of the East. For centuries under Swedish domination, Finland’s religious history was closely related to that of its neighbour. The bishop of the Lutheran Church resided in Turku located adjacent to Sweden. In 1809, however, Finland was annexed by the Russian Empire, although it continued to exercise a degree of autonomy as a grand duchy. Helsinki, located adjacent to Russia, became the new capital. The Tsars also made use of church construction in Helsinki as part of their programme of Russification of the outlying provinces of their empire. Indeed, the promotion of Russian Orthodoxy was considered to be a contribution to the country’s Russian identity. When it was granted autonomy in 1892, the Finnish Orthodox Church had an archbishop and 60,000 members – 2 per cent of the Finnish population. The majority of Finns, however, remained Lutheran, and the Lutheran Church was able to maintain organizational independence, a remarkable fact given the process of Russification introduced by the tsarist occupiers. From the middle of the nineteenth century onwards, the Lutheran Church developed under Russian rule into a pre-eminent factor of Finnish national consciousness. Church officials took pride in the ‘fennomanization’ or Finnification of their liturgy. The Church thus became a nursery for the Finnish language and for the development of a Finnish culture detached from its Swedish past and free visà-vis its Russian masters. When the independence of Finland was declared in 1918, the Lutheran Church became a state religion. 6

Church and State, Church and Nation after the First World War

1.3 Shifting boundaries The end of the First World War introduced radical changes to Germany’s eastern and western borders. As we noted above, the East witnessed the transfer of two million Protestants to Polish sovereignty, a process that had consequences for their Church and their relationship with the authorities. In the midst of the German colonists in the Hungarian part of the Habsburg Empire, the Evangelical Church was a religious and, more importantly, a cultural binding-agent in a pluralistic society. After 1918, the German-speaking Lutherans of Transylvania were obliged to separate themselves from a centuries-old bond with the Habsburg monarchy and find a place for their own Church in the new Romania. The same could also be said for the colonists in the Danubian Plain in their relation to the new Yugoslavia. In the independent Baltic states, in particular Estonia and Latvia, the German elite lost their ancient privileges. Christianity had been introduced to the area in the Middle Ages by crusades stemming from Germany and Scandinavia. German knights and merchants had converted to Lutheranism during the Reformation. A large number of the churches fell under the patronage of German landlords, who determined the choice of pastor and cultic language, not only for their own compatriots but also for the local farmers of Estonian and Latvian origin. Dorpat (Tartu) had housed a German-speaking theology faculty since 1632, which served as an important centre for German Lutheran theology. When the Russian Tsar extended his dominion in the eighteenth century to include the Baltic port-cities of Reval (Tallinn) and Riga, however, Russian Orthodoxy was employed once again as an instrument of his politics of power. In 1832, the Lutheran Church was placed under political supervision. An Orthodox cathedral was built in Tallinn, close to its ancient Lutheran counterpart. Riga witnessed a similar scenario. In some districts, the majority of the farming population joined the ranks of the Orthodox in an effort to offset the privileges of the German elite that had been upheld under tsarist rule. This fact alone was sufficient to occasion initiatives in the Lutheran camp to intensify its own Church’s influence among the native population. After the First World War, Estonia and Latvia – and Roman Catholic Lithuania – were granted independence. As a consequence, German predominance within the Lutheran Church had to be replaced by a more indigenous culture. The right of patronage held by the resident German aristocracy was abolished after confiscation of their estates and the announcement by the state of a new distribution of land. Church and state were separated and the ecclesial authority of the head of state made way for that of the bishop. In 1921, the flamboyant Archbishop of Uppsala, Nathan Söderblom, Primate of the Swedish Lutheran Church, who considered the Baltic to be an inland Lutheran sea (mare lutheranum), ordained the first bishop of the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church, Jakob Kukk, in a liturgy harking back to the former Swedish rulers. A year later, he served in a similar capacity at the ordination of the first incumbent of the Lutheran Church of Latvia, Archbishop Kãrlis Irbe. On the same occasion he also ordained a second bishop who was to take responsibility for the German communities. Antagonism between the indigenous population and German believers was acute in both countries

7

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and it continued to exist for a long period. In 1927, the Estonian government ordered the expropriation of the German Lutheran cathedral in the capital on request of the Estonian Church leadership. In 1931, the cathedral in Riga was taken from the German congregation and given over to the Latvian parish. Nationalization was also a necessity for Russian Orthodoxy and, as a result of independence, autonomy was acquired for the Estonian Orthodox Church in 1923 and for the Latvian Orthodox Church in 1936. Roughly 80 per cent of the Estonian population and 60 per cent of the Latvian population were Lutheran. This was the case in Latvia’s Courland (Kurzeme) and Livonia (Vidzeme) regions. Letgale (Latgale) in the eastern part of the country, which was under Polish rule between 1561 and 1772, had remained Catholic. The religious nationalization sought during the Interbellum, however, did not succeed completely on account of a remarkable secularization in both countries. In 1922, for example, 92 per cent of Estonian children were baptized into the Lutheran Church. In 1933, the percentage had shrunk to seventy-seven, an annual decline of almost 2 per cent.5 After the First World War, on Germany’s western border, the regions of Alsace and Lorraine were returned to French jurisdiction. Protestantism in Alsace was the religion of a quarter of the population, especially in the French department of Bas-Rhin, the majority belonging to the Lutheran Church, which had referred to itself since 1918 as the Église de la Confession d’Augsbourg d’Alsace et de Lorraine (ECAAL ). In the borderlands with Switzerland and in the city of Mulhouse in the Haut-Rhin department a minority of the population was Calvinist: Église Reformée d’Alsace et de Lorraine (ERAL ). Both regions had occupied an extraordinary position in the history of Church and state in France. After the Peace of Westphalia (1648), the region enjoyed freedom of religion and the rights of the Lutheran and Calvinist Churches were restored. During the reign of Louis XIV, efforts were made to win back Alsace in its entirety for the Catholic Church and, as a consequence, the Roman liturgy was reinstated in the cathedral of Strasbourg. As a result of the war of 1870, the region was annexed by the German Empire. This also implied that the highly controversial law separating Church and state introduced by the Third Republic (1905) was not implemented. When the French authorities returned, the régime concordataire from the time of Napoleon was still in place. The pastors of the Lutheran and Calvinist Churches were financed by the Third Republic as was Christian education and the Protestant Theological Faculty in Strasbourg. The ratio of Calvinist to Lutheran pastors in Alsace was one to four. Lutheran ministers, who had often been educated in Germany, found it difficult to accept the Frenchification process that followed after 1918. Even secularization was associated with the process: ‘Quand les Allemands partirent, les églises strasbourgeoises furent vides.’ (When the Germans left, the churches in Strasbourg became empty.)6 Adhesion to the French state was much more palpable in the – considerably smaller – Reformed Church. Calvinism, after all, bore a French hallmark, not only because of the fatherland of its founder, John Calvin, but also on account of the proximity of the French-speaking and predominantly Calvinist part of Switzerland. 8

Church and State, Church and Nation after the First World War

2 The Calvinist communion On 12 November 1920, a large funeral procession made its way through the streets of The Hague in the Netherlands for the burial of Calvinist pastor and politician Abraham Kuyper. The procession was watched by hundreds of his supporters, most of them members of the Reformed Churches. Kuyper had won the respect and admiration of workers, farmers, tradesmen and even members of the aristocracy in the Netherlands for his theological and political leadership. His modern version of the doctrine of John Calvin had even reached the shores of the United States. This doctrine underlined the idea of ‘sovereignty within one’s own sphere’, which set out to build a dam against the expansion of the modern (liberal) state and to introduce a Christian confession into institutions such as schools and trades unions. Kuyper was the architect of a neoCalvinism, which had overcome orthodoxy’s traditional pessimism concerning human sinfulness. So the ‘antithesis, which originally called for a deadly fight against modernism’, grew into a curious doctrine in praise of plurality and diversity.7 Kuyper had not only managed to mobilize ordinary Reformed men and women in the struggle against Liberalism, he had also battled within the ranks of the orthodox Calvinists against a pious withdrawal from the world. He had overcome the ‘politicophobia’ of his fellow believers and thus triggered an active Protestant influence on (Dutch) society. He was at the origins of his own denomination – The Reformed Churches in the Netherlands – as well as of his own university, the Free University (i.e. free of state influence) and of his own political party. This party referred to itself as the Anti-Revolutionary Party on account of its rejection of liberalism, the modern state and the other consequences of the French Revolution. This Reformed variant was and remained an active minority in the broad spectrum of Dutch Calvinism, representing roughly 9 per cent of the population. The Dutch Reformed Church, reflecting the Calvinism that had been the religious inspiration behind a political revolt against the absolutism of the Spanish Habsburg monarch Philip II in the sixteenth century, represented almost 35 per cent of the population and was thus in the majority. In the nineteenth century this Church was torn apart by confrontation between the proponents of modern theology and the supporters of orthodox Calvinist teaching: between liberals and pietists. As a result, the Church’s general synod was de facto nothing more than a federation of diverse movements: orthodox, confessional, ethical and liberal. This diversity was respected and regulated, and as a result the Reformed Synod was often obliged to abstain from making doctrinal statements. In spite of this, however, local communities repeatedly separated themselves from their Calvinistic mother-Church in the nineteenth century and grouped together in their own (orthodox) communities. The confrontation between modernism and orthodoxy had left its mark throughout Protestant Europe. The major Reformed Churches had since adopted a governing structure in which a variety of voices served as the point of departure, and common decisions were only possible on the basis of rarely exhibited unanimity. Rooted in the principle of local community independence, moreover, they had become a multicoloured 9

Churches and Religion in the Second World War

establishment: the local community decided for itself whether it was going to be liberal, orthodox or strict. The core of the organization was thus local; the Church Council called the pastor to ministry and evaluated his preaching. The faithful at this level were also at liberty to set up their own congregations – the so-called conventicles – with or without missionary influence. Protestantism’s adherence to the foundational character of the Bible made it susceptible to the emergence of the natural sciences and to an empirically oriented historical science, which confronted the practitioners of biblical exegesis with new questions and challenges. The latter were particular evident in the theological formation of pastors. Armed with the intellectual liberalism that they had acquired at university, they were sometimes forced to confront the ordinary and undisputedly orthodox members of their own communities or the lay preachers that had emerged from the revivalist movement. The orthodox space occupied by Calvinism was able to accommodate a group of so-called bevindelijken, believers with a strong awareness of sinfulness and of the uncertainty of divine election. This radical form of Pietism led to passivity, to repentance and the avoidance of worldly activities and pleasures. In the nineteenth century, French Protestantism also witnessed a revivalist movement – known as the Réveil – as well as an internal struggle between orthodox and liberal tendencies after 1848. In 1872, at the national Synod of the Église Reformée, this even resulted in a schism and the creation of an (orthodox) Union of Reformed Evangelical Churches in addition to a more liberal-minded Union of Reformed Churches. ‘Alors que j’habitais une ville qui comportait une chapelle et un temple, le temple était la place stable du protestantisme de la ville, la chapelle était la place la plus pieuse.’ (The town in which I lived had a [Reformed] church and a [Reformed] chapel, the former frequented by urban middle-class Protestants, the latter the most pious.)8 Under the influence of the law separating church and state, in 1909 an umbrella organization known as the Fédération Protestante de France was established in which the various Protestant tendencies succeeded in establishing a degree of unity. A new unity movement emerged in 1938 in which the liberal and orthodox churches of Calvinist France came together in the Église Réformée de France. Another factor of historical importance was the fact that Calvinism never established itself as the religion of an entire nation in continental Europe; it remained a majority or minority Church in a pluralistic country. While the Calvinist Kirk was dominant in Scotland, this was not the case for the remainder of the United Kingdom. In the Netherlands and the French-speaking part of Switzerland, this Church was in the majority; in France, Hungary and Romania it was in the minority. The Reformed Church of Western Europe had a synodal structure, while the Church in Hungary employed an additional ‘General Convent’ consisting of bishops and other delegates from five episcopal districts. This was reduced to four in 1920, after which the fifth episcopal district of Transylvania became part of Romania. Institutional diversity together with the varied options of the Calvinistic bourgeoisie in the said countries gave rise to a situation in which different positions were maintained in the name of the Protestant religion according to historical and social circumstances of a given nation. 10

Church and State, Church and Nation after the First World War

In countries with a Catholic majority such as France and Hungary, the Calvinist community had come to identify itself with Liberalism. In 1849, Hungary’s Protestant aristocracy and bourgeoisie sided with the revolution against Catholic Habsburg domination. Lajos Kossuth declared Hungarian independence in the Great Church in Debrecen, the much revered centre of Hungarian Calvinism. Protestants in France (4 per cent of the population) blamed their numerical paucity on the martyrdom of the Huguenots who were persecuted in two wars of religion. In certain more remote regions such as the highlands of the Cevennes, Calvinist farmers had managed to preserve their faith. From 1911 onwards, the said religious wars and persecution were commemorated during French Protestantism’s annual ‘open day’ in the Musée du Desert in Mialet, a village in the Cevennes in Southern France, where, faithful to custom, French Protestantism commemorated the martyrs of the religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The museum was established in 1911 in the birthplace of Rolland Laporte, leader of the so-called camisards, resistance fighters in Cévennes who fought against the persecution of the Huguenots by Louis XIV after the repeal of the Edict of Nantes. Calvinism was also the religion of the financial and industrial elite in France. In the first decades of the Third Republic, the latter sided with the Radical Party. The law of 1905, which confirmed the separation of Church and state in France, was ultimately a welcome development for the country’s Protestant minority. The Calvinists in Hungary constituted of 20 per cent of the population and for years had listened to their pastors distance themselves from the Catholic Habsburg dynasty. In the liberally inclined ‘official church’, Calvinist Protestantism represented a source of patriotism vis-à-vis the ‘foreign’ Habsburg oppressors. In addition, and especially in eastern Hungary, a fervently pietistic movement emerged – the so-called ‘Debrecen orthodoxy’ – which established itself in small congregations. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Calvinism was faced with a new dilemma: how should it relate to the advance of social democracy? Intellectuals, such as the Protestant poet Endre Ady, portrayed a purified Protestantism, an indispensible ally of progressive Hungary. In line with the Dutch pastor Abraham Kuyper, however, the Budapest theologian Jenő Sebestyén favoured a third way, a specifically Protestant way, between social democracy and Catholicism and with a broader social vision than that prescribed by Liberalism. An additional influence during the Interbellum period stemmed from the Protestant youth movements, focused for the most part on the Anglo-Saxon world. The two large Christian youth organizations that stimulated both internal mission and the ecumenical movement were founded in England in the middle of the nineteenth century: the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA ) in 1844 and its sister organization the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA ) in 1854. Both quickly found their way to the United States and spread with relative speed through the world’s Protestant Christian countries. At the end of the nineteenth century, Christian students in England took their leave of the association to form their own organization, focusing first on the internal mission and later on society as a whole. The British example was followed by France and the Netherlands. These unions of Christian students formed an important basis for the recruitment of potential pastors. During the First World War, the English and 11

Churches and Religion in the Second World War

French unions experienced enormous losses, mainly because their executive members often served as officers in the army and were expected to lead the troops into battle. In the Interbellum, summer camps and summer universities were a typical vehicle for consciousness-raising and discussion, and a source of religious and social radicalism in the Protestant world. In 1923, student Marc Boegner became the chairman of the Fédération française des Associations chrétiennes d’étudiants, the French version of the Christian student unions. Calvinist students in Hungary formed the youth movement Soli Deo Gloria, intent on the edification of the rural population in the puszta or ‘plains’ as the core of the Hungarian fatherland. The Netherlands had its own variants: a liberal union, a moderately orthodox student organization and a reformed union. After the war, the Dutch organizations provided the framework within which the dialectic theology of Karl Barth became known in the Netherlands. In the winter of 1922/3, their members were reading the latter’s renowned Römerbrief, a treatise on the Letter of Paul to the Romans, at a time when no single Dutch theology professor had ever mentioned it in class.

3 Vigorous Catholicism 3.1 Domestic reconciliation From the political perspective, the First World War was a historical turning point for the Roman Catholic Church in Western and Central Europe. Catholicism emerged from the defensive position into which it had been forced by its conflict with secular liberalism, which reached its climax in the school funding controversy that erupted in the second half of the nineteenth century in a number of different countries and in which the centuries-old position of the Church in the educational system was at stake. In 1914 and in 1915, priests and laity alike took the opportunity to demonstrate their love for the fatherland. Bishops called upon their flocks to endure the hardships of military confrontation in the awareness that they were participating in a conflict of national and religious proportions. The war effort obliged the political powers in turn to reach unity on the home front: the Burgfrieden policy in Germany and the union sacrée in France. In addition to the (self evident) Protestant interpretation of the war, the Catholic Church in Germany also voiced its opinion on the matter. Michael von Faulhaber, for instance, Archbishop of Munich in 1917, referred to the armed conflict as an example of a just war against the atheistic French Republic beyond the Rhine and against the ‘Babylon of the West’, namely Paris. As military bishop, he visited the trenches and considered the military confrontation to be akin to a moral challenge that had to be sustained against every form of defeatism. German priests and seminarians were exempt from national service from sub-diaconate onward. In spite of this, however, scores of clergymen and students were enlisted in the army, especially in the medical regiments. The 1917 Burgfrieden policy – reconciliation made concrete – led to the repeal of the law stemming from the Kulturkampf period in which the Jesuits (and their secondary schools) were forbidden in the German Empire. In a pastoral letter addressed to the 12

Church and State, Church and Nation after the First World War

faithful and dated All-Saints Day 1917, the German episcopate insisted that ‘the Catholic people’ should reject every attack on the monarchy and royal dynasty, and that they should ‘be ready at all times to protect both altar and throne against the hostilities of foreign and domestic enemies; against the powers of the revolution and their desire to construct a delusionary future on the ruins of the existing social order’.9 In the last year of the war, the political position of Catholicism in Germany became a crucial one. In contrast to established Protestantism, its political party, the Zentrum, had played an important role in calling for a peace compromise and in the process of assimilating defeat, which was seen as a moral crisis initiated by capitalism and liberalism.10 In 1919, the party belonged to a coalition that took responsibility for the construction of a democratic republic. It opted for cooperation with the social democrats in a union of two Second Empire outsiders. Matthias Erzberger, one of Zentrum’s leaders, was a member of the German delegation in the capitulation negotiations in 1918 and peace negotiations in 1919, and he was among the German signatories to the ‘infamous’ Treaty of Versailles. He was shot in 1921 in the first of a series of political murders that were to characterize the first years of the Weimar Republic. On the other side of the front, French Catholicism was fighting a similar battle. When the war was only six weeks old, a procession ‘for France’ was organized in the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris in which relics were carried round of the French saints Geneviève, Rémy and Vincent de Paul together with a statue of ‘blessed Joan of Arc’. Just as the cult of the Sacred Heart, symbolized in the new basilica on the top of Montmartre, was a defensive Catholic response to the Commune (1871) and to the laicism of the Third Republic and had divided France, so the medieval heroine Joan of Arc would unite France during the war. In May 1920, she was canonized and a national feast day was set aside in her honour. Roughly 33,000 priests and seminarians were active in and around the trenches as chaplains, stretcher-bearers or simple soldiers. Their number included 9,000 religious priests and brothers who had been able to return from exile after – and as a consequence of – the law separating Church and state (1905). Estimates suggest that around 5,000 priests and seminarians died. In 1924, the Union sacrée from the First World War was already a thing of history. The political Cartel des Gauches, a coalition of radicals and social democrats under the leadership of Prime Minister Edouard Herriot, was explicitly laicist in its policies, promoting public education at the expense of confessional education. In comparison, and a decade later, the Popular Front of the socialist Léon Blum – a coalition of radical, social democrats and communists – was in theory at least a continuation of the anticlerical politics of the Cartel but in reality it was more reserved.11 The majority among them ‘remained deeply conservative, not merely in politics but in life-style and values. There is a rough but convincing fit between the map of Catholic practice produced by Canon Boulard’s religious sociology and the map of electoral conservatism worked up by the students of André Siegfried.’12 In Italy, which declared war on Germany and Austria in 1915 and thus came face to face with the predominantly Catholic Habsburg Empire, the struggle represented a 13

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similarly unifying factor between the two camps. In 1868, in an explosive confrontation on the status of the Church with the movement for the unification of Italy, Pius IX uttered his now renowned ‘non expedit’. The Sacred Penitentiary – a department of the Curia – decreed that it was ‘not expedient’ for Catholics to exercise their active and passive right to vote. In response, the liberal elite attempted to establish a ‘national religion’ in the education system and in the army, the two pillars of national formation that were to bring about the involvement of the people in the ‘Third Italy’, or so it was hoped. The school was seen as the ‘modern church’, in which the (old) Catholic religion was no longer taught. The rituals of this national religion were given concrete form in the pompous state funerals of prominent individuals – beginning with King Victor Emmanuel II in 1878 – and in the creation of national feast days, such as unification day (3 May) and the liberation of Rome (20 September). A feast day (4 November) to celebrate victory in the First World War was added in 1921. On that occasion, the remains of the Unknown Soldier were interred in the Altar of the Fatherland, the central part of the giant monument dedicated to King Victor Emmanuel II in Rome. Post-war patriotism was shared nevertheless by the entire population. The Franciscan priest Agustino Gemelli – in 1921 the founder of the Catholic University of Milan, the institute intended to become the intellectual powerhouse of a new, Catholic Italy – wrote in 1918 that for Catholics the source of one’s patriotism was to be found in God, and the fatherland was to be understood as a source of Divine Providence. In the words of Emilio Gentile, ‘as the oldest expression of Italian identity, the Catholics maintained they were the true interpreters of the nation, besides being the surest guide to lead Italy to new greatness’.13 Estimates suggest that roughly 20,500 priests, religious and seminarians, served at the front, once again as chaplains, stretcher-bearers and ordinary soldiers. In 1916, the Catholic politician Filippo Meda took his seat in the government as Minister of Finance, thus marking the end of the ostracism of Ultramontanist politicians in liberal Italy that stretched back to 1870. In 1917, Emmanuele Orlando, a liberal politician, became president of the Council of Ministers. The victory of 1918 was achieved under his leadership. With his prior knowledge and approval, initial contacts were stabled with the Holy See in 1919 with a view to settling the Roman question. Belgium, the first target of the German invader in August 1914, also made the acquaintance of a union sacrée. In this instance the Catholic Party had already enjoyed a majority position in the government for decades thanks to the prevailing voting system. Leading figures from the liberal and social-democratic camps entered into a coalition of national unity in 1914. Priests and seminarians were dispensed from military service and did not serve at the front. This made the words of Cardinal Desiré Mercier, Archbishop of Mechelen and a well-known Thomistic philosopher, all the more powerful when he spoke in his Lenten pastoral letter of the necessity of patriotic love – in his words an ‘almost mystical Belgian patriotism’ – and of the injustice of the German occupation of his country.14 Mercier became the guardian of a nation that had come into existence in 1830 via an alliance between the liberals and Catholics; a nation in which the Church was also able to guarantee its future existence. 14

Church and State, Church and Nation after the First World War

The unity of Belgium’s vigorous Catholicism, however, was to be eroded from unsuspected quarters. During the war, Flemish soldiers at the front discovered that they had been discriminated against when compared to the French-speaking officers. Fraternization in the trenches, a frequent theme in the First World War, became a new source of Flemish nationalism. This was also the case for a minority of Flemishminded intellectuals who responded positively towards the German occupier’s so-called Flamenpolitik and contributed actively to the idea of Flemish autonomy in occupied Belgium and even its independence. The said intellectuals took the right to selfdetermination seriously – the primary wartime goal of the American president Woodrow Wilson – and demanded it for Flanders. 3.2 The right to self-determination At its origins in the nineteenth century, the Flemish Movement championed the use of the language in Flemish public life, and the cultural emancipation of the Flemish population. It enjoyed the support of the educated lower middle-classes and of a number of priests. As such, it also constituted a level of Catholic resistance against Belgian, French speaking modernity. After the First World War, a radical variant of the movement became visible. A generation of students and seminarians demonstrated their support for an integral Catholicism and a Flemish nationalism that flatly challenged the Belgian state. They encountered resistance from the bishops, under Cardinal Mercier’s leadership, who continued to support the Belgian constitution. This episcopal resistance ultimately occasioned the anti-clericalism that became an essential component of the Flemish national ideology. Priests routinely occupied positions of leadership in the Flemish Movement. The priest Guido Gezelle, for example, emerged in the nineteenth century as the poet of the traditional Flemish dialect. This was a European phenomenon, to be observed among the lower clergy of all of the Christian churches. On account of their formation and pastoral status, priests were naturally well-disposed to such leadership roles, especially, but not exclusively, in those territories in which the emancipation of the education system had still to gain inroads. Some priests explored national culture and politics in a movement geared towards national independence, just as it was in other European nations such as Slovakia, Slovenia and Croatia. Lithuanian nationalism was strongly influenced by a ‘peasant-oriented romanticism’. The Lithuanian language was the primary factor and the clergy of the Catholic Church its most important ‘proliferator’. Priests cultivated the national language in their churches in addition to the language of the Roman liturgy and saw to it that the (Catholic) religion became an essential factor in the emergence and – after the war – realization of a nation state. On occasion, their attitude placed them at odds with the political authorities. In the multi-ethnic kingdoms of Europe, such conflicts also had the potential to involve the churches, especially when the senior clergy (such as Cardinal Mercier) sided with the state’s existing hierarchy. The right to national self-determination – the declared goal of the Entente powers – appeared to be alive and well in 1918, especially in Central and South Eastern Europe. 15

Churches and Religion in the Second World War

The defeat of Germany, the double monarchy in Austria and Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire, prepared the way for a new political arrangement. The position of the Catholic Church was at stake, especially in the Habsburg Empire, in which the ruling dynasty had guaranteed Catholic domination in this part of the European continent for centuries. In 1758, Pope Clement XIII granted the Habsburg monarchs the title ‘apostolic king’ as an incentive. When the monarchy started to show signs of exhaustion as a result of the duration of the war, Pope Benedict XV took a peace initiative in 1917, motivated primarily by his desire to conserve the position of the dynasty. In 1915, when Italy decided to side with the Entente powers in the war, the Pope was explicitly excluded from the peace negotiations. His exclusion, however, did not guarantee his silence. On 10 November 1918, still prior to the official armistice, L’Osservatore Romano published a letter from Pope Benedict XV to his secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Gasparri, in which he declared that the goal of the Church – ‘a complete society’ in itself – was the sanctification of people of every nation and at all times. Just as the Church had adapted itself to differing forms of government, so it would accept the territorial and political changes taking place among the nations without difficulty, as long as they were legally established.15 The Habsburg preference for Catholicism in its Roman, but also on occasion Greek, variant constituted a legacy that the new national governments had to account for. They did so in a variety of ways, ranging from a politics of conscious detachment by a laicized republic such as Czechoslovakia to an equally conscious political identification of the nation and religion as in Poland, which experienced a national revival in 1918 on the basis of three defunct empires. Religion in the new Yugoslavia, on the other hand, became a pre-eminent factor of diversity. The so-called ‘November storm’ that brought Czechoslovakian independence in 1918 also raged within the Church. On 3 November, a demonstration was organized in Prague to commemorate the Battle of White Mountain (1620), a disastrous defeat of the Protestant Bohemian army against the Catholic League in the Thirty Years War. Demonstrators destroyed the Pillar of Our Lady that had been placed in the old city as a symbol of the Counter Reformation. Elsewhere in Prague and in Czechia in general, statues of Saint John of Nepomuk were torn down or destroyed. This iconoclastic wave – 273 incidents were reported between 1918 and 1921 – was the immediate expression of a cultural conflict, a break with the Counter Reformation, the dire heritage of Habsburg domination. The reformer Jan Hus enjoyed a prominent place in the process of constructing a national identity. In the historiography of the nineteenth century and in a number of historical novels, Hus had already been rediscovered as a Czech personality. His martyrdom during the Council of Constance (1415) occasioned 6 July as a national day of commemoration in the new republic. His last words before being burned at the stake were in the Czech language ‘Pravda vitezi’ (Truth prevails). Those words also appeared on the standard of the first president, Tomas Masaryk. Most of the new countries that had been carved out of the three old pre-war empires started life as parliamentary democracies. With one exception, however, all of them had become authoritarian dictatorships by the 1930s. The exception was Czechoslovakia.16 16

Church and State, Church and Nation after the First World War

The republic not only introduced a democratic and laicized constitution, it also created a new religious culture. Masaryk’s statement, ‘We have settled scores with Vienna and we shall settle scores with Rome’, was much quoted. He deliberately pressed for a return to the historical religion of Bohemia, personified in the figure of Jan Hus and in the Bohemian Brotherhood. A union of Czech-speaking priests was set up in November 1918 in opposition to the established hierarchy, which had consisted of German and Hungarian bishops under the Habsburgs. At the beginning of 1920, this association gave rise to the idea of a Czech National Church, which introduced the vernacular in the spirit of Jan Hus and abolished celibacy. Sixty members of the priestly fraternity transferred to the national Church and 108 opted for laicization. The influx of members consolidated itself after a few months around the 800,000 mark (5.3 per cent of the population) and its importance continued to be limited.17 In these early days, eighty-six churches and sixtynine chapels were requisitioned, some of them for simultaneous use with the Roman Catholics. The majority were later returned to the Roman Catholic Church. The Vatican responded with a counter-offensive, directed in the first instance against a nationalization of the Church and favouring the replacement of the ‘Habsburg’ bishops. At the end of 1919, a Czech professor at Prague’s Charles University was appointed archbishop of the city and an additional Czech archbishop was ordained in 1921 in Olomouc. In 1925, on the occasion of an official celebration of the 610th anniversary of the death of Jan Hus, the confrontation escalated into a conflict. The papal nuncio left the republic in protest. The turnabout came a couple of years later and the celebration of a saint served once again to occasion a historic moment of change. The Church and the state were reconciled in the anniversary of the martyrdom of Václav or Wenceslas, duke, martyr and patron saint of Bohemia in the tenth century; a person with whom the Hussites and the Lutherans would have been able to identify. The large and for the most part Catholic demonstration organized on Wenceslas Square in Prague included Masaryk. Czechoslovakia emerged in its turn as a multi-ethnic state, also at the level of religion. While the Catholic Church’s membership in Czechia and Moravia decreased – from 96 per cent before the First World War to 71 per cent in 1919, and no more than 55 per cent in Prague – the percentage of Catholics in Slovakia, the other half of the republic, and in the western regions of Bohemia, where Germans were sometimes in the majority, remained high. The Catholic People’s Party, which was founded and led in 1918 by the priest and charismatic politician Andrej Hlinka, dominated Slovakian politics. The desire for Slovak independence, of which the party was a living expression, could easily be identified with Catholicism, in part because parish priests had preserved and developed the Slovak language and culture under Hungarian rule. In 1931, during a commemoration of the foundation of the first Christian church in Slovakia eleven hundred years earlier, Hlinka’s official speech was marked by a strong national accent. The papal nuncio likewise sided with those who aspired towards independence and the authorities in Prague procured his dismissal shortly thereafter. In neighbouring Poland, which prior to 1918 had been divided over three empires: Russian, German and Habsburg, there was evidence of an extraordinary identification of 17

Churches and Religion in the Second World War

nationalism with the Roman Catholic faith. This ‘fusion’ had its roots in the political situation in the middle of the nineteenth century, when religious feasts provided an opportunity for the expression of popular longing for national independence. The rituals of the Catholic faith offered the occasion par excellence for such fervour. While it had always enjoyed a high degree of prominence in Poland, the cult of the Blessed Virgin established itself with even greater zeal in the new century. The veneration of the image of the Black Madonna at the monastery of Jasna Gora in Częstochowa went hand in hand with the liturgical celebration of Mary as Queen of Poland. The emotional significance of the faith did not come without a price, however. Popular devotion was much stronger than intellectual insight into the Church’s teaching. Nationalism was an added feature. Priests and – on occasion – bishops acquired the function of mentors and even active propagandists of national independence. When the desire for independence had led to revolt in the past – in 1830 and in 1863 – they also participated in the struggle and were sometimes imprisoned or martyred for the freedom of their fatherland. The Holy See, by contrast, followed a different line of approach. Popes Clement XIV and Pius VI urged the Polish church to accept the subdivision of the country. In 1832, Pope Gregory XVI promulgated the encyclical Cum Primum in which he condemned the revolt in Poland and urged Catholics to be submissive to the Tsar. In 1894, Pope Leo XIII continued this policy, exhorting the Polish bishops to reconcile themselves with ‘the holy discipline of the state’.18 At the end of the First World War, a subdivision that had lasted one-and-a-half centuries was undone. Independent Poland was a pluralistic society; constitutionally a state ‘for the Polish nation’, but it contained the largest population of Jews in Europe and the second largest (after the Soviet Union) of Ukrainians and Belarussians. In addition to roughly 20 million Catholics (75 per cent), the country boasted almost 3 million Orthodox believers (10.5 per cent), almost 3 million Jews (10.4 per cent) and a little more than a million Lutherans (3.7 per cent), whose national Church – or a considerable part thereof – had once been the Prussian Church. Of the 20 million Catholics, more than 17 million belonged to the Latin rite (63.9 per cent) and 3 million to the Greek rite (11.1 per cent).19 The reorganization of the Church brought together three traditions. In Russian Poland the Church had concentrated itself on the liturgy, the only thing it was in fact permitted to do. In Galicia, the ecclesial reforms of Emperor Joseph II had left their secular traces. In the formerly Prussian part of the country, the Catholic Church entangled itself in the Kulturkampf. This oppositional attitude disappeared in the new Poland. But the struggle had given rise to the phenomenon of the socially involved priest, a phenomenon that continued to exist in political terms in Polish Christian democracy. Unification reached completion in 1925 with the establishment of a concordat. The primate of the Polish Church had his seat in the city of Gniezno (and not in Warsaw) and August Hlond was appointed to the position in 1926. In the following year he was granted the cardinal’s hat. Adam Stefan Sapieha had been Archbishop of Kraków since 1911. In the pre-war Russian zone, priestly formation had been centred by order of the Tsar in the Theological Academy in Saint Petersburg. This was moved to Lublin where it became 18

Church and State, Church and Nation after the First World War

the core of a Catholic University. In the same period, the independence of the Catholic Church in Lithuania was confirmed by the Vatican. Lithuanian bishops took the place of their Polish predecessors, with the exception of Vilnius, which remained under Polish rule and Polish episcopal supervision. Government policy in Warsaw had to choose between two conflicting insights in relation to the eastern provinces. One option was represented by Marshal Jozef Piłsudski who initiated the authoritarian, so-called ‘Sanitation government’ in 1926 and who supported a federative solution in the tradition of the sixteenth century Polish– Lithuanian Commonwealth under which White Russian, Lithuanian and Ukrainian minorities would retain their cultural autonomy. This federative solution – a ‘wall to protect Christianity’ against the Soviet Union – was not intended as a re-Catholization of the Orthodox territories but as a nod to the Ukrainian nationalism that had emerged after 1918. The alternative was the Polish national-democratic policy supported by Roman Dmowski, Piłsudski’s political rival. Dmowski was intent on the Polonization of the Ukrainian population in terms of both language and religion. Polonization thus also implied a significant extension of the influence of the Roman Catholic Church. While Piłsudski understood the independence of the Orthodox Church in Poland as an instrument in the federative construction of the new state, the national-democratic politicians were determined to weaken the Orthodox Church and recover ecclesial properties that had been confiscated from the Catholic Church by the Tsar in the nineteenth century.20 Galicia formed part of the Polish state during the Interbellum period and witnessed the implantation of the Greek Catholic Church; a legacy of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth that had endeavoured to combine the Byzantine rite with the jurisdiction of the Pope of Rome in 1596 (Union of Brest). The Church was dominated by the person and prestige of Roman Aleksandr Maria Sheptytsky. He came from a noble Ruthenian family that had considered itself Polish for more than a century. In 1888, he became a monk and entered the Greek Catholic Basilian Order, thus expressing his desire to be incorporated into the Orthodox tradition. He took the name Andreas, founder of the Byzantine Church. In 1899 he became Bishop of Stanislaviv, and in 1900 Metropolitan of Lemberg (the Austrian name for Lviv). During the First World War, the Greek Catholic Church was a source of support for Ukrainian nationalism under his leadership. After the Russian conquest of Galicia, he was exiled to a Russian monastery, in part because the Tsar had no fondness for an Orthodox prelate who had a duty of obedience to the Pope of Rome. Metropolitan Sheptytsky returned home in 1918, actively supported the declaration of a western Ukrainian National Republic, and had offered to supply chaplains for the new Ukrainian Galician Army. After 1921, under Polish rule, Ukrainian nationalism resisted the Polonization of Ukrainian culture and education, and the Latinization of the liturgy. In the 1925 concordat the Greek Catholic Church was officially granted equal status to the Roman Catholic Church, although its missionary work still encountered obstacles in regions such as Volhynia. In 1938 the Polish government launched a violent 19

Churches and Religion in the Second World War

‘revindication’ campaign in the Chelm region, confiscating from the Ukrainian Orthodox the former Uniate churches (in 1938 alone, 115 churches were destroyed, while others were transferred to the Roman Catholics) and forcing Orthodox descendants of Uniates to convert to Roman Catholicism.21 Sheptytsky publicly spoke out in favour of Ukrainian Orthodoxy and accused the Polish government of placing the Holy See in a compromising situation by suggesting that it had supported his campaign for the Polish Catholic churches. 3.3 Soviet-style republics in Central Europe The advance of Bolshevism, which realized a (second) revolution in Russia in October 1917, was part of the inheritance of the First World War. It had an enormous impact on Europe, in both intellectual circles and the workers’ movements. It also created the expectation that the revolution would not halt at the, by then, hard-won boundaries of the new Bolshevik state. During the crisis that brought a concrete end to the First World War in November 1918, the said expectation seemed neither utopian nor a nameless fear. Soviet-style republics, a political construction of Bolshevik ideology, were declared in a number of regions in Central Europe. This development was also relevant for the Churches in that it confronted them with the reality of revolution and offered them an example of what they might expect to encounter in the future. While a revolutionary climate prevailed in defeated Germany in November 1918 and a republic was in fact declared in Berlin, the Bavarian variant, namely Munich’s soviet-style republic of 1918–19, came into existence on 7 November, one year after the October Revolution in Russia. It started as an initiative of the left-wing socialists and social democrats under the leadership of Kurt Eisner. Events entered a more radical phase after the latter was assassinated in February 1919, which ended in May 1919 with a victory against the Bavarian Republic of Soviets (Councils) by a force of volunteers under the command of the authorities in Berlin. Of all the cities in Germany, Munich had the largest number of Catholics. It was inevitable, therefore, that the revolutionary vanguard would ultimately clash with the Catholic Church. At a meeting of the Spartakus Bund (the organization of revolutionary socialists) in December 1918, the participants were called upon to hang the bishops from the street lamps. The introduction of the separation between Church and state in the Bavarian republic inspired the Minister of Education, Johannes Hoffmann, to abolish Church supervision of the educational system as well as religious education at state schools. This mobilized the Catholic Zentrum Party, which restyled itself in Bavaria as the Bayerische Volks Partei – Bavarian People’s Party (BVP ). Michael von Faulhaber, Archbishop of Munich and convinced monarchist, felt threatened. How could ‘a foreign Galician writer’ (Kurt Eisner) persuade the Bavarian people, with its proverbial loyalty to the throne, to accept a republic so easily? In 1922, in a public reflection on the revolution he was to speak of ‘perjury’ and ‘high treason’, a ‘Mark of Cain’ on Bavarian history.22 Eugenio Pacelli, appointed apostolic nuncio in Munich in 1917, initially sought refuge in Switzerland but returned when the revolution had entered its radical phase and citizens 20

Church and State, Church and Nation after the First World War

were being taken hostage. The nunciature itself was not passed over in the house-tohouse searches conducted by groups of Bavarian revolutionaries. An anti-Semitic accent was evident in the counter-revolutionary struggle. The Bayerische Volks Partei declared that it did not recognize any difference between Christian and Jewish Bavarians, but it also insisted that the ‘numerous atheistic elements of a certain international Judaism of a predominantly Russian hue’ had to be combated.23 Reports from nuncio Pacelli to his Roman superior also made mention of a ‘Jewish-Russian revolutionary tyranny’.24 He thus joined the ranks of a process of collective conceptualization in which emancipated Jewish intellectuals were identified with Bolshevism. Some were even inclined to indulge conspiracy theories in this regard. In Hungary – our second example – independence was rooted in defeat. In November 1918, Count Mihály Károlyi, head of a government of leftist liberals and social democrats, declared the establishment of the republic. Hungary cast off the Habsburg monarchy. Revolutionary expectations and a longing for cultural emancipation increased but it was not always possible to realize them in the short term. In March 1919, the Communist Party under the leadership of Bela Kun thus took charge of a second revolution. Hungary became a Republic of Soviets (Councils), in line with its Russian exemplar. Land reform and the demolition of aristocratic society followed. The communist regime governed for 133 days and was violently suppressed on 1 August 1919, when Romanian troops invaded Budapest with the blessing of the Entente powers, especially France. The Hungarian republic also adopted the Soviet Union’s example by privatizing religion. Revolutionary disapproval tended to focus on the Roman Catholic Church and less on its Calvinist sister church. The Roman Catholic Church in Hungary enjoyed power and prestige. The Archbishop of Esztergom was not only prince and primate; he was also First Lord of the Pendant, a title that granted the highest dignity in the kingdom next to the monarch. The bishops were ex officio members of the House of Magnates and the priests had the status of civil servants. Prior to the First World War, the Church owned vast estates that were administered by the state. Land reform was thus also an ecclesial issue. Bela Kun’s government wasted little time in nationalizing the Catholic education system – complex and extensive in Hungary at every level – and expropriating churches and monasteries. The dismantlement of the Catholic Church was in the hands of the Office for the Liquidation of Religious Affairs, which gave leadership to a campaign of secularization and the introduction of a new morality. This process was accelerated by the overly zealous ‘Lenin Boys’, who were not afraid to use violence. Churches were desecrated and nuns literally made homeless. ‘The image of nuns living in squalid rented rooms and working as charwomen remained powerful long after the Bolshevik regime collapsed. Others lived off the furtive kindness of their parishioners.’25 Memories of the murder of priests, Protestant pastors and a religious sister remained vivid for years to come. The ‘Red Terror’ cost the lives of tens of dozens of religious men and women, including those who fell during an attack on a Blessed Sacrament procession. One particular aspect of the Soviet-style republic was to have far-reaching consequences. Of the thirty-four commissioners who constituted a part of the highest organ, the 21

Churches and Religion in the Second World War

Revolutionary Council, twenty-three were of Jewish origin. As the historian István Deák put it, ‘the Jewish Bolsheviks who seized power in 1919 and ruled the country for 133 days never admitted their Jewishness in public and were completely uninterested in Jewish issues. Still, in this small country, everybody knew who was and who was not a Jew. The result was a greatly heightened anti-Semitism in which it was immaterial that the vast majority of the Hungarian Jews had wished to have nothing to do with the Bolshevik regime.’26 On 15 November 1919, a Hungarian army marched from Szeged to the capital, preceded by Admiral Miklós Horthy, the kingdom’s Viceroy, riding on a white horse. In an address to parliament, he lambasted the city for rejecting Hungarian Christianity’s thousand-year-old history, for soiling the Crown and the Flag, and for igniting into a ‘red rage’. It was nothing short of a biblical sermon against the ‘sinful city’, against the Communist Party and Jewish civilian scapegoats; the beginning of a ‘White Terror’, causing the death of real or alleged communists as well as Jews, irrespective of whether they had participated in the Soviet-style regime or not. The three Hungarian Protestant churches (Calvinists, Lutherans and Unitarians) called for the identification of Christian morality with love of the fatherland in an expression of support for the new regime of the regent (and Calvinist) Horthy. The counter-revolutionary militancy of the conservatives became visible in a dispute concerning the appointment of the bishop of the ‘diocese on the Danube’ (Budapest) in 1921. Their own candidate was László Ravasz, a professor at the theological seminary in Cluj (Koloszvár), a city in what at that time had become Romanian Transylvania. Ravasz had made a name for himself because he emphasized Hungarian culture in theology and the Church and was critical of the ‘Jewish spirit’. He succeeded in being elected bishop. His appointment was a Calvinistic contribution to a national campaign for a ‘Christian Hungary’. Horthy’s solution was a re-Christianization of Hungary, but first his country had to deal with another catastrophe. In 1920 in Trianon, the Hungarian share of the Paris peace settlements was rendered permanent. Hungary lost half of its pre-war territory and half of its pre-war population to new states such as Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia. Even after the reduction of Hungary proper at Trianon, the Catholic Church remained the largest landowner in the country with a comfortable 400,000 hectares. The largely conservative episcopate wanted to keep it that way. The Bishop of Székesfehérvár, Ottokár Prohászka, was the spokesperson for a movement within the Church that supported Christian social politics. He was an exception, however. A characteristic feature of the ‘magyarization’ of the Catholic Church in Hungary was the fact that three prominent figures who succeeded one another in the twentieth century as Archbishop of Esztergom and Primate of Hungary, each started their priestly career with a different surname: János Csernoch had the Slovakian name Cernoch, Jusztinián Serédi the Slovakian name Szapuscek and József Mindszenty the German name Pehm.27 As primate they were obliged to have a Hungarian name. Our third example comes from independent Poland which defended itself during its initial years against the Red Army and against Bolshevism. Nothing had been determined 22

Church and State, Church and Nation after the First World War

during the peace negotiations in Paris with respect to independent Poland’s eastern border. There was thus no other option than to go into battle. Polish forces initially enjoyed a degree of success in conquering cities such as Minsk and Vilnius, because the Bolshevists were preoccupied with the civil war against the ‘Whites’. At the end of 1919, however, the Red Army was in a position to strike back with some effect. Large portions of what was then Eastern Poland were retaken and the prospect of a Polish Soviet-style republic became a real one. In the defeated city of Bialystok, for example, a polrevkom, or Polish revolutionary committee, was established. The Polish bishops appealed for the defence of Christianity and thousands of volunteers enlisted in the Polish military forces. In August 1920, a Polish army under the command of General Jozef Piłsudski defended Warsaw against the Red Army. On 15 August, the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Russians were driven back on the banks of the Vistula. ‘The fact that this took place on the feast of the Assumption confirmed for many the special role played by the Matka Boska, the Mother of God, in Polish history.’28 The Treaty of Riga finally established Poland’s eastern border in March 1921. In the same year, 1921, work began on the demolition of the recently built (only nine years earlier) Russian Orthodox cathedral on Saxons Square, in Warsaw. The same happened in Lublin. The demolition was of enormous symbolic significance equal to that associated with the building’s construction. The hallowed monument of Russian domination had to be removed from the Polish capital. A small part of the Jewish population – more specifically, the militant members of the Communist Party and of the Bund (the Jewish socialist organization) – had demonstrated an appreciable sympathy for the Soviet Union, against whose power the nascent Polish state had been obliged to defend its independence. This became a new source of antiSemitism in the Polish context. Polish Jews were accused of falling short, of supporting independence but not defending it. For a segment of the population, this was reason enough to adopt an anti-Semitic position.29 3.4 Religious and political manifestations The Interbellum was the period in which European Catholicism manifested itself with considerable vigour and its repertoire was no longer limited to Church rituals and popular devotions. The Church’s leadership in Rome encouraged the faithful to make their presence felt in society at large, in organizations as well as in manifestations. The limits were virtually boundless. Catholics became visible as such in the youth movement, in socio-economic organizations such as the industrial and farmers’ unions, in organized sport, and in the political parties. Pius XI , who succeeded Benedict XV in 1922, made the presence of Catholics in society the primary goal of his pontificate. To this end he exploited what was called Catholic Action, a collective concept linking a variety of organizations whose goal was the propagation of Catholic teaching in every corner of modern society. ‘Catholic Action was to be the instrument for nothing less than a Christian reconquest of a society 23

Churches and Religion in the Second World War

corrupted and enslaved by the evils of the modern world.’30 Explicit reference to political participation, however, remained absent. In the papal imagination, Catholic Action was an authentic battle array – ‘sicut acies ordinata’ – of young people and professional groups, dedicated to the realization and representation of the ‘Kingdom of Christ’ in every land. With this in mind, he established the feast of Christ the King in 1925 (the Holy Year in which the 1,600th anniversary of the Council of Nicea [325] was commemorated), which served to symbolize the Church’s restoration after the ‘public disaffection’ that had been such a disaster ‘for a society that had brought forth laicism’.31 In 1932, Pius XI made the existing feast of the Sacred Heart a day of reparation and supplication throughout the Catholic Church. In the meantime, these new social guidelines enjoyed the backing of a new Code of Canon Law – Codex Juris Canonici – which was solemnly promulgated on Pentecost Sunday, 27 May 1917. This canonical unification offered new evidence of centralization and the increasing power of the Pope. The said centralization had been set in motion by Pius IX as a reaction to the fall of the Papal States in 1870. The abolition of the Pope’s temporal power stimulated the growth of his spiritual authority; a deliberately steered process that had its roots in the promulgation of the dogma of papal infallibility at the First Vatican Council in 1871. Papal prestige was reinforced by Catholic Action’s international range and its capacity to mobilize clergy and laity alike in support of

Figure 3 Roman Catholic girls, walking in procession under the banner of ‘Christ the King’, past the city hall of Brussels. Photo: KADOC , Leuven. 24

Church and State, Church and Nation after the First World War

Catholic social teaching and Catholic activism in society. The best-known example in this regard was Leo XIII ’s encyclical on labour relations Rerum Novarum (1891), which offered Catholic groups Christian arguments in support of their own interpretation of social order in the industrial society. Both the rewritten canons and the outreach of Catholic Action, however, had to be implemented country by country. This was the core argument behind a concordat policy that determined the Holy See’s strategy between the wars. Two curial prelates who were closely involved in the genesis of the new Code of Canon Law were made responsible for the endeavour to establish concordats: a secretary of state Pietro Gasparri, and his successor in the canonical commission and as secretary of state, Eugenio Pacelli. In their understanding, the state had to make the observation of the canones possible and thus recognize the juridical space of the Church. The implementation of canonical principles thus became the canon of Vatican politics and determined curial policy to a far greater extent than was evident to ordinary Catholics at the time.32 The so-called Eucharistic Congresses were massive attention grabbers at the religious level. In the first instance, the congresses were liturgical manifestations both inside and outside the Church, directed by a legate sent from Rome. In the twentieth century, they were also organized outside the countries in which they had originally been conceived, namely France and Belgium. In the Netherlands (1924), Czechoslovakia (1935) and Hungary (1938), for example, they were ostentatious gatherings that not only provided an opportunity for religious reflection, they were also intended to demonstrate the power and outreach of Catholicism in a society in which it was considered necessary to do so. The so-called ‘Catholic Days’ were variant large-scale gatherings stemming from Germany with a mixed religious and social character. These open-air meetings were generally organized in enormous public stadiums, a product of the advance of organized sport. A comparison is possible between the Protestant and Catholic youth movements that enjoyed tremendous growth in the Interbellum at all levels of the population. A pioneer group of Catholic students was inspired by the work of the French and decidedly neoThomistic philosopher Jacques Maritain and his followers. His book Humanisme Integral (1936) became their more or less undisputed canon. Organized youth took to the streets with unashamed vigour, driven by a hitherto unheard of vitality. Its organizations – from working youth and farmers’ unions to student associations – cultivated a camaraderie that resounded long into the war years. But these forms of Catholic Action were also part of an effort to counter secularization. A publication entitled La France pays de mission? (‘France, a missionary country?’) in 1943 offered a sociological analysis that raised eyebrows at the time and focused people’s attention on the fact that large segments of the population of Western and Central Europe, particularly the workers, had become alienated from the Church or were in the process of doing so.33 Catholic representation in society at large was quite visible in Western and Central Europe. The question continually arose as to the extent to which clergy and laity were permitted to manifest themselves in this arena in the name of their faith. The positive response was a political battle to save Catholic education and often occasioned varying 25

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degrees of politicization. Public organizations and manifestations gave the Church both a position and an interest in the existing social order. When totalitarian movements started to emerge in the Interbellum and aspired to win a monopoly of power, confrontation with the Church, which had by this time put down social and political roots, was unavoidable. The question had a dual significance for the priests who had acquired a leadership role in such parties. In Germany, Italy and the Netherlands, for example, the Catholic Party had a priest as its leader for a period of time: Ludwig Kaas, Luigi Sturzo and Willem Hubert Nolens respectively. In several instances, priests such as the Austrian Theodor Innitzer, the Slovenian Anton Korosec in Yugoslavia and Jozef Tiso in Czechoslovakia were even appointed to ministerial positions. In inter-war Austria, the priest Ignaz Seipel was elected Chancellor on no less than two occasions. After 1918, the Catholic political family was greater than ever, a consequence of the extension of electoral suffrage after and on account of the First World War. The overview thereof provided by French historian Jean-Marie Mayeur reaches from Rome to The Hague and from Madrid to Kaunas, the (temporary) capital of Lithuania.34 Mayeur gives pride of place to the Catholic parties that emerged in the nineteenth century in response to the need for a confessional defence in the face of a liberal and sometimes anti-clerical state. The said parties are characterized to varying degrees by ideas rooted in Catholic social teaching. Episcopal support, which tended not to favour political pluralism among the faithful, was of considerable importance. Such parties existed in Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Switzerland and – with more and original social teaching and fewer unification ambitions – in Germany (Zentrum Party) and Austria (Christian Social Party). A second category brought together the so-called Popular parties, in the first instance the Italian variant of the Partito Populare, but also that of Spain, the Parti démocrate populaire in France and to a certain degree the Czech People’s Party and the Christian Democratic parties in Poland. Most of these parties came into existence after the First World War in countries with a Catholic majority. As such, they tended not to have an overtly defensive disposition. Rather, they represented Catholic or Christian Democratic social teaching. They also did not tend to unite the majority of Catholic voters. On the contrary, a pluralistic tradition continued to predominate among Catholics in the states in question. The representatives were occasionally appointed to a ministerial post within one or other coalition government, but they never served as chair of the Council of Ministers. The third category consisted of parties that defended the Catholic heritage and propagated a social variant rooted in a religious tradition. These parties also referred to themselves as ‘popular’, but the designation in this instance was intended to give expression to the romantic concept of a ‘people’. They saw themselves as representatives of a people, of a (small) fatherland. They identified the struggle for national rights with the struggle for the rights of the Church. They were particularly oriented towards rural Christian groups and were suspicious of the liberal state. The Bavarian and Slovakian People’s parties were a good example of this category, together with their Croatian and Slovenian counterparts. 26

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4 Church persecution in the Soviet Union 4.1 Russian Orthodoxy in 1917 While most Christian churches in Europe were facing a totalitarian ideology for the first time in the twentieth century with the outbreak of the Second World War, the same moment represented something of a breathing space for the Russian Orthodox Church. The temporal perspective in both instances was a different one. Russian Orthodoxy was confronted with the consequences of an ideological revolution relatively early, with the establishment of a utopian socialism as its goal and the dictatorship of the proletariat as its means. This Church had been subject to a bitter and ever more intensive idealistic and social elimination by the Bolshevik regime that had seized power after the October Revolution of 1917. It makes sense to begin our description of the historical situation in Russia in 1917, prior to the October Revolution that was set in motion in that same year. The first decade of the twentieth century – praised in modern Russia as an intellectual and cultural ‘Silver Age’ – has come to stand in a new light, now that what followed it, the Bolshevik revolution, is no longer understood as an inevitable and definitive phase in Russian history. Society was in a state of ferment. Spectacular moments, such as the bloody outcome of a demonstration of workers in front of the Tsar’s Winter Palace in 1905 or the democratic revolution of February 1917 were occasion and climax of a collective search for new forms of governance and organization. The Russian Orthodox Church also played its part in this process. The debate on the Church, its authorities and the laity, that was provoked by external political events and acquired the form of an All-Russian Council (sobor) in 1917, can be compared in scope and intensity with the Reformation of the sixteenth century or with the Second Vatican Council in the twentieth.35 Until 1917 the Russian Orthodox Church was a component part of the tsarist state. It was an important instrument in the dissemination of Russian culture, and of norms and values throughout the enormous empire. The Church was under the supervision of an emissary of the Tsar, an Oberprokuror who enjoyed voting rights as a member of the Holy Synod. For its organization, the Russian Orthodox Church relied on the ‘Spiritual Regulations’ of 1721, which had been promulgated by Tsar Peter the Great. It was subjected to constant and sometimes stultifying state authority, and sometimes saw its influence belittled in the interests of accommodating the peoples of other faiths in the empire. The Patriarchal See had been vacant for three centuries. The Church had what was referred to as a ‘black clergy’, the monks that had committed themselves to the celibate life, from the ranks of which the bishops were chosen. This group had enjoyed academic formation and constituted an elite of dedicated administrators whose primary loyalty was to the Church as an institution. Inner-church anti-clericalism was generated by the so-called ‘white clergy’: the parish priests who were free to marry and were closer to the people, especially in rural areas but also in the cities. As Harvey Fireside has put it, ‘the sumptuously accoutred bishop, a monastic swathed in

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the mysteries of ancient ritual, stood versts apart from the peasant world of the married priest, who as often as not tilled his own fields, dickered with his parishioners over baptismal fees, or drowned his frustrations in the vodka bottle’.36 The majority of the laity, the third category, was comprised of farmers whose fidelity to their faith was nothing short of proverbial. The Russian Orthodox Church was a church of the countryside, although its more magnificent churches were to be found in the city. By 1900, the urban intelligentsia had turned its back on Orthodoxy to a significant extent and tended to be conceptualized as agnostic or atheist. The children of the priests can be singled out as a group who made their mark in successive generations, partly because they were supporters of religious and ecclesial renewal, and partly because they were granted access to secular functions after the modernization of the education system, from which position they even managed to spearhead social protest and political radicalism on occasion. The democratic revolution of February 1917 also deluged the Church with its links to the Tsar and his state. In some places, church estates were confiscated by revolutionaries and clergy considered conservative were deposed. The spirit of the times was one of reorientation and reform. A new Oberprokuror, appointed by the Provisional Government, set about preparations for the council that had earlier been rumoured in 1905. Led by the Oberprokuror, the Synod promulgated provisional statutes, whereby local church councils were granted the authority to choose their own pastors. On 15 August 1917, the All-Russian sobor assembled for the first time in the Kremlin’s Uspenski Cathedral (‘Dormition of the Mother of God’), the church that had been used for the coronation of the Tsars. This Council of bishops, priests and laity debated for two months on the question whether the Church should endeavour to regain its independence by restoring the Patriarchate of Moscow and its democracy by establishing a synodal form of governance. The issue was resolved by external circumstances. The Bolshevik October Revolution of 1917 sowed doubt among the Council members about the future of the Russian Orthodox Church, making the restoration of the patriarchate a matter of necessity. They chose three candidates and, faithfully to tradition, left the definitive decision in the hands of fate, ‘the divine choice’. The recently-appointed Metropolitan of Moscow, Tikhon Belavin, became the patriarch and was installed in Uspenski Cathedral during a magnificent liturgy with the permission of the Muscovite soviet. One of the participants captured the scene with his memory of the words of a simple farmer ‘who explained in his own way why the peasants wanted a patriarch. He said: “We have a Tsar no more; no father, whom we may love. It is impossible to love a synod, and therefore we, the peasants, want a Patriarch.” ’37 The revolutionary tumult wormed its way into the ecclesial assembly with reports that Kremlin icons had been desecrated in clashes between Bolsheviks and military cadets. The Orthodox Council continued its meetings until September 1918, when it had to be dissolved for lack of funds. One of its most important and final decisions was the reinstatement of the old Orthodox rule allowing for bishops to be elected by a diocesan council of priests and lay people. In hindsight, this measure appears to have reinforced 28

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the Church’s defences with respect to the Bolshevik regime. The Council ended with two emergency decisions. The first granted the patriarch an extraordinary mandate should the synodal or conciliar decision-making process become impossible. The second stipulated that the patriarch was permitted to make a testamentary disposition containing the names of three bishops who could take his place as deputy – in Latin locum tenens. 4.2 Church and Bolshevism In 1914, the Russian Orthodox Church numbered 117 million members spread across the entire empire. The Church was organized into 67 dioceses with 130 bishops, more than 48,000 functioning parish churches and a total of more than 50,000 priests and monks. It was also in charge of 35,000 primary schools and 58 seminaries – ‘which in Russia meant a combination of secondary general education with incomplete undergraduate theological education’ – and four graduate theological academies.38 By 1941, a little more than a quarter of a century later, the number of churches and priests had been reduced to roughly one-tenth of the figures of 1914: 4,225 churches and 5,665 priests. Where there were 130 bishops in 1914, the Church of 1941 had no more than 28, four of whom were in the Russian part of the Soviet Union. The statistics refer not only to the churches and priests of the Russian Orthodox Church under the Patriarch of Moscow, but also to the so-called ‘Living Church’, a Church renewal movement that enjoyed the support of the Soviet authorities in the 1920s.39 The invisibility of the ‘Church of the Catacombs’, the underground religious movement, made their number impossible to estimate. The violent annihilation of the Russian Orthodox Church had devastating consequences for the position of religion in public life. In spite of twenty years of persecution, however, the majority of the soviet people still appeared to be intent on holding on to their religious convictions. Although churches were demolished, priests imprisoned or executed and the social institutions of the Church were eliminated under Stalin’s oppression, the census of 1937 – two decades after the October Revolution – revealed that 57 per cent of the population (i.e. around fifty-six million) still confessed allegiance to one or other form of religion. Besides forty-two million Orthodox Christians, there were Muslims, Jews, Buddhists and Catholics, with a smattering of Protestants. Of the Soviet citizens over fifty years of age, no less than 78 per cent were religious, and of those in their twenties – still a solid 45 per cent.40 Two primary levels of conflict can be discerned between the new Soviet regime and the Russian Orthodox Church: an institutional level and an ideological level. The former had its roots in Lenin’s claim that the Church had been guilty of exploitation on account of its relationship with the Tsar. For that reason, all of the Church estates and monastic buildings were confiscated by force of a decree dated 4 December 1917. This constituted a part of the general nationalization of land and the legalization of what had already been appropriated in spontaneous actions in the course of 1917. The immediate effect was that the Orthodox institutions were robbed of their material provisions and incomes. 29

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The withdrawal of legal recognition for Church weddings under Bolshevik family law and its simplification of marriage and divorce procedures was a grave matter to the Church, which feared the creation of a new form of immorality. The most important decree was issued on 23 January 1918 and concerned the separation of Church and state, and the Church and state educational systems. The Russian Orthodox Church was thus robbed of civil status and its institutions of the right to own property. The Church could no longer claim the right to a place for its liturgical services. Groups of twenty believers (dvadtsatka) were left with the task of negotiating the use of such facilities with the local soviet. Whenever rights were granted, they were granted to individual persons and not to groups, certainly not an ecclesial institution. It was painful to observe that the new Bolshevik constitution considered the Orthodox clergy as unemployed and as servants of the bourgeoisie. This meant that they lost their right to vote as well as certain assurances with respect to the distribution of food and the right to higher education for their children. The ideological level of conflict had to do with the incompatibility of historical materialism and religion. Religion was considered the ‘opium of the people’ and thus a stumbling block to scientific progress and the intensification of class consciousness. The Bolshevik regime established an organization of atheists, the Union of the Godless, which was to manifest itself in a variety of campaigns, including satirical processions and the foundation of atheistic museums, preferably in churches. In the 1920s and 1930s the population of the Soviet Union was the target of a relatively aggressive propaganda campaign in support of atheism focused on the public domain, military service and the workplace. The campaign embraced the ‘hooliganism’ of Komsomol activists – the communist youth organization which destroyed churches – as well as the ‘softer’ intellectual atheism of the Soviet press. Two magnificent churches, the Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan in Leningrad and the Cathedral of Christ Redeemer in Moscow, were stripped of their Orthodox ecclesial status. Both had been contributions on the part of the Church to the celebration of Russian victory against Napoleon in 1812. The former became an atheist museum, the latter was demolished to make way for the House of the Soviets, but the plans were never realized. Orthodoxy was seen as an obstacle on the way to the large-scale industrialization and agrarian collectivization of the Soviet Union. Three determining factors can be discerned in the implementation of soviet policy. A genuinely communist society could only come about through a deliberately pursued transformation of the population; the new Soviet man or woman should not be ‘cursed’ by the weakness of a belief in God or faith. This priority implied that every state-declared ‘armistice’ with the Church was insecure from the outset. The second determining factor contradicted the first: the atheistic state was not a first-order goal. ‘The atheist drive can be conducted only when there are no primary national problems pressing for resolution, and it has to be put on ice in times of general mobilization or crisis.’41 The third and final factor was the recurring-pattern phenomenon. In the two decades after 1917, the Orthodox Church was subject to two rounds of severe state persecution with an interim period of relative calm between each round. 30

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4.3 Persecution of the Church: Round One In the first year of the revolution, the (new) patriarch openly criticized the anti-clerical policies of the Bolsheviks, and the bloodshed and fratricide that had been the result of the civil war. The people listened to him. On a visit to Petrograd in May 1918, the road from the train station to the cathedral was lined with kneeling supporters. The patriarch also openly resisted the peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk and condemned the assassination of the Tsar. The first member of the clergy to be killed under Bolshevik harassment was archpriest Ioann Kochurov in Tsarskoye Selo, on 31 October 1917. The first bishop to die was the Metropolitan of Kiev, Vladimir (Bogoyavlensky), who was murdered in Kiev’s Cave Monastery on 25 January 1918, when the Bolsheviks took control of the city. After the fall of the Soviet Union, both were canonized ‘neo-martyrs’ in April 1992 by the assembly of Russian bishops. They were random victims of the struggle between Orthodoxy and the State, which concentrated in the first instance on the social position of the Church. Bishops, monks and priests were forced to renounce the riches of the tsarist state-church, to live in opposition to atheistic communism and accept a life of poverty and humility. This, however, only served to increase their standing among the peasants and labourers of the Soviet state. The first phase of more intense persecution coincided with the great famine during the winter of 1921–2. Having won the civil war and rendered their political adversaries impotent, the Bolshevist regime now considered itself strong enough to break the stronghold of the Russian Orthodox Church, especially since a number of bishops and other clerics had sided here and there with the Whites. Church treasuries were plundered and icons were seized and offered for sale, the income designated to fighting the famine. The complete abolition of the ‘cult of corpses and mummies’ was first decreed, after which the icons were removed to state museums. Patriarch Tikhon protested openly and called upon the Church to make only un-consecrated treasures available. Court cases followed in which forty-four of the accused clerics were sentenced to death. In 1922, 2,691 secular priests, 1,962 monks and 3,447 nuns were liquidated. The total number of victims ran to 8,100.42 This first round of intensive persecution was heralded and determined by oppositional stirrings both to the left wing and the right wing of the Russian Orthodox Church. The patriarch was faced with political embarrassment when a group of Russian bishops, who had supported the Whites in the civil war and had later fled the country, assembled in November 1921 – at the height of the famine – in Sremski Karlovci, in what was then Yugoslavia. The most important among them was the Metropolitan of Kiev, Antoni (Hrapovitsky), who had received the majority of the votes in the patriarchal elections that took place during the sobor of 1917, but had not been singled out by fate. He was a monarchist and he managed to have a resolution passed at the meeting offering Church support for the restoration of the Romanov dynasty. Karlovci then became the centre of a Russian emigrant Church. While patriarch Tikhon was being placed under house arrest and later transferred to the government prison in August 1922, an oppositional group emerged within the

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Orthodox Church that wanted to demonstrate its loyalty to the Soviet regime and now engaged in open criticism of the Church leaders who wanted to distance themselves from it. They called themselves ‘Renovationists’. Some of them had been involved in Christian socialism in pre-revolutionary Russia – especially in 1905 – and saw a future for themselves in the struggle to democratize the Orthodox Church. The vast majority of the Renovationists were priests who wanted to counter the preponderance of the ‘black clergy’ in the Church. Since the monasteries were the cradle of episcopal appointments, their opposition was focused on the Church’s episcopal elite. ‘They wanted to transfer the administration of the Russian Church from the black or monastic episcopate to the “white” parochial clergy. In fact, they also wanted to abolish the Patriarchate and replace it with a Synod in which the priestly element would predominate.’43 Of greater importance, however, was the Renovationists’ endorsement of the Bolshevik revolution and their declared intention to actively participate in the construction of a socialist fatherland. The Soviet government looked on with favour and initially offered the movement its public support. In 1922, 20,000 Russian church buildings were handed over to the church councils of the Renovationists. This number comprised two-thirds of the then still functioning churches. Objectors were persecuted, the best-known among them being the charismatic Metropolitan Venjamin (Kazansky) who suspended the so-called ‘red priests’ in his diocese and was later arrested in the presence of one of their number; ‘an act that encouraged the comparison with Judas’ betrayal of Christ at Ghetsemane’.44 After a court-case, he was condemned to death and executed in July 1922. His martyrdom became a blot on the Renovationist escutcheon. In August 1922, the first ‘All-Russian Congress of White Clergy of the Living Church’ was held in the Third House of the Soviets, Moscow’s former theological academy. Of the ninety-seven active bishops, thirty-seven appeared to support the programme of the Renovationists. The meeting also suspended the excommunication of the writer Leo Tolstoy of 1901. In April 1923, the Renovationists succeeded in acquiring permission from the Soviet regime to convene an All-Russian sobor, an ecclesial assembly they considered to be a continuation of the Council of 1917. Of the 430 delegates, 250 were members of the ‘Living Church’. The assembly sent their greetings to Lenin, the champion of the ‘great social transformation’.45 The majority decided to deprive patriarch Tikhon of his administrative competences and to create a Church Council (soviet) of bishops, priests and laity, membership of which was also open to the married bishops of the ‘white clergy’. When a delegation brought the decision of the sobor to the patriarch – under house arrest in Donskoy Monastery – he wrote on the document that he considered illicit the decisions of a council he himself had not convened. A month after the council of the ‘Renovationists’, Tikhon signed an act of loyalty to the Soviet regime in his prison cell. While the British government was exercising pressure to have him set free, he declared himself guilty of all the statements and deeds against the government of which he had been accused and stated that he no longer considered himself the enemy of the Soviet state. He alluded – in the characteristic style of Bolshevik self-accusation – to the social milieu from which he had come and blamed it for his errors.46 After the publication of the declaration, the patriarch was set free and returned 32

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back to his office. The ‘Living Church’ became less important in the eyes of the Soviet regime, although it did not cease to enthuse young theologians attracted by the ‘protestant’ emphasis on ethics and philosophy, and on a synodal ecclesial structure of the Church. The Church of the Renovationists established seminaries that were open to both men and women. Its intellectual dimension, however, continued to be an obstacle for the devotional peasant population, the core and majority of the faithful who remained loyal to the patriarch. While the Patriarchal Church was referred to as a mass without organization, the Renovationists appeared to be an organization without mass. In the years that still remained to him, Patriarch Tikhon tried to establish a modus vivendi with the authorities. After his death on 7 April 1925, the Soviet press published a testament that was to elicit considerable amazement. Based on the Letter of Paul to the Romans, the testament in essence called upon the Russian faithful to be loyal to the Soviet regime and to refrain from any form of association with the enemies of the Soviet Union. ‘But the hardest point to take was that in which he refuted “rumors” that the Patriarchal office could not express itself freely.’47 The reaction of the faithful was unexpected. Thousands of people followed his funeral and started to revere him as a saint and martyr. 4.4 The succession of the patriarch The administrative vacuum that was created by the death of Patriarch Tikhon was initially exploited by the Soviet regime to give preference to the Church of the Renovationists who tried once again to convene a sobor at which the successor designated by Tikhon, Metropolitan Petr (Poliansky), was expected to legitimate the new direction the Church had taken. Petr refused to budge, however, and offered no support to the ‘leftist church’. Thus rendered ‘unfit for use’ by the Soviet regime, he was arrested on accusations of counter-revolutionary activity and exiled to an island in the Ob estuary. The patriarchal throne remained vacant on Stalin’s orders. An alternative name was chosen from the three designated in Tikhon’s will: Sergii Stragorodsky. Up to that moment, Sergii had served as a missionary in Japan, priest to the Russian embassy in Athens, professor and rector to the Theological Academy in Saint Petersburg and Orthodox bishop in Finland. A well-travelled hierarch and an able scholar, Sergii led a rather colourful life before the Revolution, moving comfortably among Church circles, the intelligentsia, and notorious monks such as Gregorii Rasputin. He was among the first bishops to be briefly placed under arrest by the Bolsheviks in 1917. He had associated himself with the ‘Living Church’ in 1922, but during the sobor of the Renovationists in 1923 he was being held in a Soviet jail, thus preventing him from participating in the sobor’s deliberations. Dressed as a monk, he did penance in front of Patriarch Tikhon in January 1924 and received from his hands the white headdress, a sign of his episcopal dignity as Metropolitan of the city of Nizhny-Novgorod (then Gorki). Initially Sergii was able to obtain official recognition for his ecclesial position from the Soviet government on 10 June 1926. However, when his letter encouraging the emigrant bishops of Karlovci to form their own Church community became public, he 33

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was arrested for the third time in December 1926. After a short period in prison, on 30 March 1927, together with the metropolitans of a provisional Synod, Sergii signed a declaration of loyalty to the Soviet regime. This declaration went beyond the neutrality Patriarch Tikhon had been able to muster. On 27 July 1927, the document was sent to the priests and faithful of the Russian Orthodox Church, its signatories referring to the Letter of Paul to the Romans. ‘We wish to be Orthodox and at the same time to recognize the Soviet Union as our civil motherland, whose joys and successes are our joys and successes, and whose failures are our failures.’48 This particular sentence was to elicit a shower of protest from the clergy and laity alike, both within the Soviet Union and beyond it. As Dimitry Pospielovsky has put it, ‘somehow, no one seemed to notice that he was using the feminine after “motherland”, while “Soviet-Union” is a masculine expression. Metropolitan Sergii himself later pointed out to a visiting bishop that he had deliberately made this semantic distinction in the text, which unfortunately so few people managed to notice.’49 The declaration of loyalty was signed not only by Sergii, but by all of the members of the provisional Synod. One of the latter was Aleksii (Simansky), the new Metropolitan of Leningrad who was later to become Sergii’s successor. In exchange for this support, the Soviet regime granted the Orthodox Church the freedom to establish a formally recognized ecclesial administration and to publish its own journal, the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate. ‘Thus began the official “armistice” between Church and state in Soviet Russia, or the new struggle for survival.’50 At the same time, the declaration led to a withdrawal of the support of a number of bishops who were then arrested. Metropolitan Petr, the rightful locum tenens, was among those who rejected Sergii’s stance, but the most remarkable and perhaps most stirring rejection of the Metropolitan’s policy was formulated in an open letter by the bishops who had been exiled to the monastery on Solovsky Island in the White Sea close to the Polar Circle. On 27 September 1927 they wrote that the clause about the Church rejoicing together with the state implied that they should rejoice at the moment the state had finally destroyed the Orthodox Church. In their mind, Sergii had denied the actuality of Church persecution. The revolutionary leader Lenin died in 1924. His followers laid him to rest in a shrine underneath Red Square in a ritual reminiscent of the tradition in which the original saints of Rus’ were laid in state in the Cave Monastery of Kiev. In the words of James H. Billington, ‘Joseph Stalin, the former seminarian and future successor to leadership, intoned a set of catechistic pledges of fidelity to Lenin at his funeral. The first, most fundamental and most enduring element in the new legitimacy – a quasireligious cult of veneration for an allegedly infallible political leader – was thus established at the very beginning of the new political entity.’51 This ambiguity was a typical feature of the religious politics of the Bolsheviks. Their active campaign in support of atheism appeared to have been effective among the younger generation, but the older generation were not to be kept from their faith with punishments alone. For that new rituals had to be found. Although the state had abolished religious feast days and replaced the Julian calendar with the Gregorian, problems were observed nevertheless with respect to working hours and productivity, especially during (what had formerly been) Easter time. New rituals 34

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were thus invented as a secular variant on the originally religious feast. A foreigner present in Leningrad during the Orthodox celebration of Easter observed groups of young people who were marching through the streets singing that factory smoke was better than incense. As Richard Stites has put it, ‘eventually a whole counterfestival calendar emerged made up of “parallel” days, opposing Electric Day to Elijah Day, Forest Day to Trinity Sunday, Harvest Day to the Feast of the Intercession, and the Day of Industry to the Feast of Transfiguration. The problem was that if the performance were salted with anti-religious skits, they descended back to carnival; if they were not, they were dull.’52 Family celebrations were also secularized. Parents in fact led a double life: they openly celebrated the feast days established by the state, such as 1 May and 7 November (Revolution Day), but continued to celebrate religious feasts in the intimacy of the home, much to the confusion of their children. Grandparents became the ‘guardians of religious faith’. It was the grandmother who took the initiative to baptize a Soviet child, in some instance without the knowledge of its parents. Others opted to raise their children without religious points of reference, while maintaining ecclesial traditions in their own lives.53 During so-called ‘red weddings’, the church ceremony was replaced by a secular alternative in which the bride and bridegroom exchanged vows with one another and dedicated their lives to communism. For entirely different reasons, the Orthodox tradition of public confession of sins and public contrition became the model for the characteristically Bolshevik act of self-accusation.54 4.5 Persecution of the Church: round two Between 1928 and 1932, the Bolshevik regime implemented the Veliky Perelom – the Great Turning Point – intended to combine accelerated industrialization in the cities with an equally accelerated collectivization of the agricultural sector in a forced expansion of socialism that was designed to establish the Soviet Union as a modern society. The process of collectivization was a frontal attack on the independence of the farmers, the relativelyaffluent so-called kulaks, who opposed the process and from time to time even sabotaged rural and livestock resources. The conflict also involved the Orthodox Church, which was strongly represented in rural society. The kulaks had to be eliminated, and because they were often faithful to the Russian Orthodox Church, religion once again became a target of political persecution and destruction. In January 1930, for example, a group of communist activists raided the village of Novo Provskoe, intending to confiscate the church bells.55 The faithful villagers saw them arrive and climbed the church tower to ring the bells. The surrounding farmers then assembled to protect their bells and the group of activists was forced to retreat emptyhanded. Even a more senior delegation that presented itself a couple of days later was unable to acquire the bells from the angry crowd. Defence of the church bells represented defence of tradition, the village’s liturgy, and its property and community. They would ring to remind the community that it was time to stop work or to celebrate a feast. The distance the sound of the bells could reach defined the community. ‘In contrast to 35

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Protestant and Roman Catholic houses of worship, aside from the human voice, no other instrument could be heard in Russian churches. Moreover, the distinctive Russian style of chiming (zvon) that developed in this context – variously described as “hypnotic” and “cacophonous” – unlike other ecclesial art forms, belonged to ordinary Russian believers as their own creation.’56 For the Bolsheviks, the church bell represented the traditional life, which had to be vanquished in the process of collectivization and industrialization. In 1929 local authorities were granted the right to regulate the use of church bells and a campaign was organized to silence these so-called ‘counter-revolutionary instruments’. By that time, a custom had been established by using a particular chiming pattern to warn the inhabitants of the villages that Bolshevik agitation was on the way. The Bolsheviks developed their own alternative, ranging from the idealization of the factory whistle, through the introduction of loudspeakers and radio, to the representation of modernization in cinema. The Union of the Godless offered its assistance. During the heyday of collectivization (1929–30) 1.1 million tons of bronze was confiscated. According to statistics dating from 1930, 54 per cent of the 13,754 reported incidents were the result of resistance to collectivization, 17 per cent to ‘de-kulakization’ and only 11 per cent had to do with conflicts concerning church bells. Nevertheless they had a more important role to play in the disturbances ‘than the statistics would have us believe’.57 After two years of economic and personal aggression and a new famine, the collectivization campaign slowed down in 1930, albeit provisionally. Stalin signalled this with the publication of an article in Pravda entitled ‘Dizzy with Success’. At the same time, Metropolitan Sergii generously agreed to grant two interviews to Russian and foreign journalists in which he declared, to the surprise of many, that the Church was not being persecuted in the Soviet Union and that the arrests of priests and lay faithful had nothing to do with their faith but rather with a variety of their actions against the government. He had, of course, instructed that prayers should be said in the churches on behalf of these imprisoned individuals. The interviews revealed a Church leader doing everything in his power to maintain some degree of manoeuvrability for his institution. In order to demonstrate the Church’s freedom, Metropolitan Sergii was finally permitted – or ordered – to accept his office in a magnificent liturgy in the Cathedral of the Patriarchate on 27 April 1934. He granted himself the title His Excellency the Metropolitan of Moscow, although the rightful claimant to the title, Metropolitan Petr, was still in prison. Twenty bishops, forty-four priests and fifteen deacons took part in the ceremony. The declarations of loyalty signed by Patriarch Tikhon and his successor Sergii led to a decline in the influence of the Church of the Renovationists. Bishops of the ‘Living Church’ endeavoured to narrow the gulf with patriarchal Orthodoxy. The Soviet-style Church Councils, the highest organ of governance, made way for the Holy Synod. As Edward E. Roslof has put it, ‘Old-church bishops, finally free to return to their former dioceses thanks to Sergii’s declaration, received a martyr’s welcome from local believers.’58 On the other hand, the bishops, priests and faithful who considered this attempted rapprochement to be in conflict with the true faith, sought refuge in an underground Church, or in the terms employed in Christian Antiquity, a ‘Church of the Catacombs’. 36

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The prehistory of this Church was rooted in the groups and movements within Russian Orthodoxy, that had distanced themselves on the administrative and – occasionally – on liturgical levels from the patriarchate because of its obedience to the Soviet regime. Prior to Metropolitan Sergii’s declaration, reports were thus in circulation, alluding to ‘true orthodox believers’ who lived their faith and held their meetings in secret and under their own steam. The icons that such individuals kept at home were often of still-to-becanonized martyrs, i.e. Christian victims of the Soviet atrocities. In the 1920s these ‘true believers’ were marginal, and in 1927 they went underground.59 While Russian Orthodoxy was gradually losing its public and institutional structures, it was able to fall back on the ancient traditions of miracles and vagabond monks, ‘Holy Fools’ and other examples of extremely personal piety. The Catacomb Church in Kiev, for instance, was led by two priests, the monk Antonii and the former Bishop of Žitomir, Leontii Filippovič. Antonii was of aristocratic blood, born Prince David Abašidse in Tiflis (Georgia) in 1867. He served as inspector at the Orthodox seminary in the Georgian capital while Stalin was studying there under the name Josef Vissarionovich Djugasvili. David Abašidse was familiar throughout the Soviet Union on account of a widely distributed picture in which he was portrayed expelling Stalin from the seminary. David resigned in 1918. By this time he had been ordained bishop, and his mystical fervour compelled him to withdraw as monk Antonii into the renowned Cave Monastery of Kiev. Following the dissolution of the monastery, he rediscovered himself in the ‘Catacomb Church’ in which he lived as a ‘Holy Fool’ consciously denying his own personality. His collaborator, the former bishop Leontii, carried out his pastoral activities dressed as a woman.60 The underground Church also functioned in captivity. When two metropolitans, four bishops, two priests and six active lay members of the ‘Catacomb Church’ by accident met one another in a transit camp in Siberian Irkutsk, they decided to organize a clandestine Church assembly. One of their number, who was destined to be sent into exile and not held in prison, was charged with committing the decisions of the underground sobor to memory and passing them on to the faithful. The assembly concluded that it was illicit to receive the sacraments from a clergyman validated by an anti-Christian regime and called for dialogue in prayer and liturgy between all the branches of the original Church of Christ. Looking back on this period in Russian ecclesial history, one of the allies, Metropolitan Sergii Voskresenky wrote in 1940 that a vigorous underground Church had functioned in Russia in the 1930s. This was the Church with priests and monks, episcopal ordinations, places of prayer and religious services, icons and liturgical vestments. It was thus important for the Soviet regime to uphold metropolitan authority. If the latter were to be destroyed, the underground Church would have become even more significant.61 4.6 Finale: the Great Terror In 1937, the Soviet authorities came to the realization that their atheist campaigns had been ineffective in eliminating religion. In the census to which we referred above, 37

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two-thirds of the rural population together with one-third of the urban population had registered as Orthodox. The decision to renew efforts to eradicate the Church went hand in hand with the Stalinist resolution to wipe out every trace and supporter of counterrevolutionary persuasion in a single large-scale purge. The period between 1937 and 1939 thus became known as the Great Terror or the Great Purge. ‘Generals, engineers and other personages instrumental in the establishment of Soviet power were joined in the dock by churchmen who had contributed little beyond extorted oaths of fealty. When Old Bolsheviks in high government posts, and tsarist officers for decades the backbone of the Red Army, went the way of all counterrevolutionary flesh, the purge of the priests came as no great surprise.’62 As a consequence, in 1939, on the eve of the Second World War, only four Orthodox bishops were left in service in homeland Russia: Sergii, Aleksii Simansky (Leningrad), Nikolai Iarusevic (Kiev) and Sergii Voskresensky. The names of their fellow bishops were prominent among the lists of the arrested. Fifty-two bishops died during the Great Purge, forty of them by execution. The latter included two archbishops and a metropolitan who co-signed Sergii’s declaration of loyalty in 1927. In the 1930s, the majority of churches were shut down, such that the only religious institution still functioning in the cities was the cemetery church. When this too was forced to close, requiem masses were celebrated at the graveside and nowhere else. Unashamed terror and destruction were in evidence throughout the country. In the spring of 1937, no fewer than nineteen churches – one of them being the cathedral – were razed to the ground with dynamite in the Ukrainian city of Odessa. The situation in which the Church found itself was so desperate ‘that a city of a half million residents like Odessa had only one church representing Stalin’s concession to the great oculist, the practicing believer Academician Vladimir Petrovic Filatov, who had treated Stalin’s eyes and, in return, had asked to have at least one church preserved in the city. The church stayed open and, each Sunday at first, and later just on Easter, a priest would show up from the crowd of believers and celebrate the liturgy, only to disappear in the NKVD dungeons the following day. After all the priests who dared martyrdom had disappeared, there remained a few deacons who could perform the whole rite except for the Eucharist, until they likewise disappeared. These were replaced by psalmists, who would also be liquidated. In the last few months before the German attack there remained only laymen, who prayed the best they could in the church.’63

5 The Church of Constantinople and the Balkans 5.1 Dissolution of a patriarchate After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, to quote the renowned historian Steven Runciman, the Church of Eastern Christianity became ‘the Great Church in captivity’. The new rulers, the Ottoman sultans, had decided to tolerate the Orthodox Church in line with Islamic tradition and to permit its leaders a degree of administrative 38

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responsibility for the faithful under the Rūm millet (‘Roman nation’) principle. This principle did not abolish discrimination against Christians (and other groups) vis-à-vis Islam, the prevailing religion of the empire, rather it became the focus of an additional tax that was not applicable to the Muslim majority. It allowed the patriarch to unite his ecclesial provinces under one authority and be the uncontested head of Orthodox Christianity. ‘But it was his duty, both as a religious leader and as an official of the Ottoman Empire, to discourage political activity in his flock.’64 This administrative system ultimately encouraged the intermingling of religion and ethnic awareness and contributed as the instance par excellence to the nationalization of Orthodoxy. The Byzantine Church, from 1453 an institution of the Ottoman Empire, retained its supranational character and ‘by virtue of its own doctrinal principles a nonnational one’.65 Nevertheless, its hierarchy used the Greek language and this became a source of ‘ethnic antagonism’, long before the latter was to be accentuated in the century of national awakening. The dominance of the Greek ecclesial elite was reinforced by the successes of Greek merchants and ship owners, the Phanariotes – named after the Greek urban district Phanar in Istanbul – who acquired and maintained prominence at the court of the Ottoman Porte and in the cities of the Balkans. In the nineteenth-century Balkans, a similar generation of Orthodox clergy emerged that was inspired by the idea of the nation state in revolutionary and romantic Europe. And it was likewise from the presbytery that the teachers, lawyers and theologians emerged who gave expression to this national consciousness. The new entrepreneurs were later to be added to their ranks. The majority did not deny their ecclesial origins and remained culturally bound to the Church that had often provided them with a religious education. But the gulf between the two (Church and nation) gradually widened. The emancipation of an intellectual elite went hand in hand with the increasing influence of Western liberalism and a growing preference for the separation of Church and state. While the Orthodox bishops continued to be the ‘self-evident representatives of the people’, the poets, thinkers and politicians for whom the ‘native’ language and ‘self-governance’ had become the priority of a secular order, gradually outran them.66 Orthodoxy only became national after the nation state had already been born; the nation state nationalized the Church. When the Metropolitan of Patras raised the standard of revolt of the Greek people against the Ottoman rulers in 1821, the Patriarch of Constantinople, Gregorios V, was arrested and hanged at the gate of his palace. ‘The most powerful, wealthiest and successful Christian institution of the Ottoman Empire was virtually destroyed by the rise of Christian nation-states.’67 The patriarchate was also obliged to arrange its affairs in line with the political consequences of the First World War, i.e. the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of the Turkish Republic. The latter became visible in the person chosen to be patriarch and in the way in which his office had to be construed in the new situation. During the war, the patriarchal throne was occupied by Germanos V, from a Turkish-speaking Orthodox community in Anatolia. In 1918, when the Ottoman Empire was in retreat, he was replaced under pressure from the government in Athens by 39

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the Metropolitan of Bursa, who was known to share the ambitions of expansionary Hellenism. During the years of Greek–Turkish hostility and – after 1923 – of political rivalry, the patriarchs alternated between support for the government in Athens and allegiance to Ankara. Veniamin (Christodoulos), the Metropolitan of Nicea (Iznik) who was elected patriarch in 1936 and continued in office for ten years, left his mark as a man of personal modesty and political reserve. The new Turkish Republic had been granted the seal of international approval by the Lausanne Treaty of 1923. The government of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk wished to follow the example of the French and banish communautarisme, the relative autonomy of the cultural minorities. Such was considered evidence of an Ottoman, and thus outmoded, past. Efforts were directed towards persuading the minorities in the one and indivisible republic to renounce the special rights that article 42 of the treaty allowed them to claim. Commissions were established in the various communities: Jews, Armenians and Greeks. The Jewish community was the first to acquiesce (early 1925), the Greek community the last. As a result, the Patriarch of Constantinople lost his jurisdiction over the Orthodox Greek minority. His flock could look to him for moral guidance and spiritual comfort, but that was all that he could give them. The abolition was part of the religious policy of the Turkish government, which also witnessed the disappearance of the institution of the caliphate – the Cheik-ul-Islamat – in 1924. The constitution of the secular republic contained no reference to religion. In his turn, the Archbishop of Athens felt supported by the political consequences of the First World War. After all, the Patriarch of Constantinople had lost his jurisdiction over a number of formerly Ottoman provinces, and his authority had been undermined by political developments in Turkey. As a result, the archbishop was granted the title ‘Exarch of All Greece’ in 1922 and a year later he was styled ‘Archbishop of Athens and All Greece’. In 1928, the so-called ‘national territories’ – Macedonia, Thrace and the Aegean Islands – were added to the Greek Church. The regions in question had been captured by Greece from the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria during the Balkan wars, a situation that was allowed to continue after 1918. Only the semi-autonomous Church of Crete – captured by Greece in 1913 – and the metropolitan sees of the (Italian) Dodecanese Islands – which were to fall under Greek sovereignty for the first time in 1947 – remained under the jurisdiction of the patriarch. The latter also retained his canonical supervision of the monasteries on Mount Athos. 5.2 The ‘Glorious Middle Ages’ In 1926, in the Greek city of Thessaloniki, a cemetery was established that was intended as a resting place for the soldiers who had died in the Balkan wars, which Serbia had waged between 1912 and 1918, including, therefore, those of the First World War. The military cemetery commemorated the contribution of Serbians to the said wars of liberation. The centre of the cemetery was graced in 1933 with a Byzantine-style mausoleum. ‘Decorated by a Greek mosaic artist, the mausoleum clearly represented the Orthodox faith. The site refashioned the deaths of these soldiers into a sacred experience 40

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that elevated Serbian national sentiment to religious heights built upon the sacrifices of saints and heroes.’68 The place of Orthodoxy in Serbian national awareness is not disputed, as is likewise the case with respect to Bulgaria. In the Balkans, Eastern Christianity represented the established religion and constituted a guiding principle in the formation of national awareness. The Orthodox churches in Serbia and Bulgaria, moreover, are frontier churches. Both of them extracted themselves from Byzantine domination and became the guardians of a certain Slavic culture during the long years of Ottoman occupation. This culture was to be distinguished from that of the Greeks and Albanians in the south and the Croats in the north. Bulgaria – in the eyes of the Patriarch of Constantinople – was a Slavic border region. Up to the nineteenth century, the border itself was a relative one on account of the influence and expansion of Greek trade and culture, which also asserted itself in Thrace and Macedonia and the territories to the north. In the Middle Ages – a period considered to be the heyday of Bulgarian history – the Orthodox Church, rooted in the Episcopal See of Tarnovo, acquired a degree of autonomy and was recognized as a patriarchate in 1235. In Ohrid, a metropolitan had been appointed as early as 1019, with jurisdiction over Macedonia. The said episcopal see acquired political significance in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and was used as an argument in support of Bulgarian political claims in linguistically related Macedonia. The patriarchate was abolished after the Ottoman armies captured the territory for their empire. In similar fashion to the Bulgarian Church, the Serbian Orthodox Church cherished the collective memory of the glorious Middle Ages in its teaching and liturgy. The process of idealization started with the reign of Stefan I Nemanjić, under whose royal leadership a Serbian Empire was consolidated between the Adriatic and the Danube, in which his independence with respect to a weakened Byzantium was confirmed. In the following century, the Serbian monarch Dušan elevated the Archdiocese of Peć in Metohia (Greek for ‘church property’ and a region of Kosovo) to the status of patriarchate (1346). The more than two-centuries-long reign of the House of Nemanjić served as the period of power and glory in Serbia’s national self-understanding. The end of the dynasty was dramatized in the Battle of Kosovo (Kosovo Polje or ‘field of the blackbirds’) on 15 June 1389 (according to the Julian calendar), at which a Serbian army was defeated by the forces of the Ottomans. The Serbian king Lazar perished during the battle (as did the Ottoman sultan Murad I). In the words of a renowned heroic poem, Lazar chose the ‘heavenly’ kingdom above the ‘worldly’. Since then, the feast of Saint Vitus (Vidovdan) or Svetovid is celebrated in Serbia as a moment of national reflection. Peć lost its patriarch on no less than two occasions. The last occasion took place in 1690, when Arsenije III crossed the Sava and the Danube rivers from Ottoman Serbia into the Habsburg Empire with thousands of believers in his wake. The territory they left behind fell prey to Albanian colonization. The land that was to become the goal of their journey was the so-called Confin assigned by Emperor Leopold I on the exterior boundary of his empire. It consisted of a series of military settlements that had been used in the seventeenth century as a sort of cordon sanitaire against recurrent plague epidemics. 41

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This Vojna Krajina (Military Border) provided an opportunity to redevelop lands that had been destroyed in the wars against the Ottoman Empire. The farmers were granted freedom of religion as the only way to guarantee their loyalty to the court in Vienna. A metropolitan was appointed in Karlovci (Karlowitz) in the Srem region, charged with the pastoral care of the Serbian faithful under Habsburg rule. A frontier population thus evolved (in Serbian precani, meaning ‘those from the other side’) that saw itself as an integral part of the Habsburg Empire, that developed a military tradition, and that cherished its own national Church and culture. In the nineteenth century, two uprisings brought about the separation of Serbia ‘proper’ from the Ottoman Empire. Bulgaria followed in 1878. Under the Treaty of San Stefano, the Bulgarian boundaries extended into Macedonia and Thrace. The millet, the national community, which was established within the Ottoman Empire according to religious criteria, now served more and more as a nursery for national independence. The Orthodox Church became a factor of encouragement and offered a space in which the martyrs who had offered their lives for national liberation could be honoured. In doing so, it broke the cord that had bound it to the Ottoman sultan for centuries. In Bulgaria, independence was less of a breach with the Ottomans and more of a (poisoned) gift from their former masters. By command of the sultan, who had recognized the Bulgarian national community – the so-called Bulgar millet – in his own residence in Istanbul in an effort to sow division within the structure of the Orthodox Church, an exarchate was established in Sofia. The Patriarch of Constantinople objected to the ambition to establish an independent Orthodox Church in territory he considered to be under his jurisdiction. A Council summoned by the patriarch criticized the Bulgarian bishops for their nationalistic policy or phyletism as the council members styled it. From that point onwards, a schism was established between Constantinople and Sofia. The rupture also became visible in Macedonia and Thrace, which were part of the Ottoman Empire prior to the Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913. Two Orthodox churches challenged one another for the loyalties of the faithful: the Church obedient to the patriarch (the partiarchists) and the Church of the exarch (the exarchists). The latter was dominated by Bulgarian clergy, while the former consisted for the most part of Greek communities. After the two Balkan wars, however, Macedonia was placed under Greek and Serbian administration. As a result, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church lost its jurisdiction over the Church of Ohrid. Bulgarian bishops and priests were expelled, since the canonical territory continued to coincide with the national boundary. The Third Balkan War, better known as the First World War, left this situation unchanged. In 1918, Bulgaria found itself on the losing side as an ally of Germany and the Ottoman Empire. For the nations of what was then collectively referred to as ‘South Slavia’, however, the First World War was a victory. The declaration of an independent state of Yugoslavia in November 1918 united Serbs, Croats and Slovenes together with a number of officially unnamed minorities into a single political entity. The Serbian Orthodox Church lost its position as national Church, although its representation within the population continued to be considerable with 48.7 per cent acknowledging their adherence to Orthodoxy. Prior to 1918, Serbian Orthodoxy was divided over several ecclesial jurisdictions, in 42

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Serbia ‘proper’, in the Habsburg countries and in Montenegro. Soon Slavic Orthodoxy in Macedonia was added to the list. The Serbian Church had difficulty integrating these communities, which had separated themselves from one another at the cultural and administrative level. In the Habsburg countries, Orthodoxy was characterized by more or less democratic forms of Church administration, by relatively influential faithful, by considerable material wealth and land ownership. In Serbia ‘proper’, which had liberated itself from Ottoman domination by its own efforts in the nineteenth century and had long been ruled by the Radical Party, the significance of the Church outside the immediately religious domain was smaller, in spite of the fact that Orthodoxy had been the most important source of inspiration in the struggle for independence. In the new state, it quickly became clear that the culture of Serbia ‘proper’ had prevailed in the ecclesial unification. The episcopal administration became more authoritarian, even ‘monarchic’. ‘The former highly successful forms of congregational participation in church life withered.’69 In September 1920, unification was solemnly confirmed in a Serbian Patriarchate, to be recognized by the Patriarch of Constantinople and established in the capital Belgrade. The city’s Metropolitan Dimitrije Pavlović was nominated – with a wink of approval from the state – by a Church assembly and was appointed patriarch by King Alexander. He took official possession of his ecclesial throne in 1924, in Peć, the seat of the medieval Serbian Patriarchate. The Serbian Church also witnessed an increase in membership. During and after the civil war in the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia had been the destination of numerous Orthodox refugees. Eight Russian bishops, fifty priests and monks together with 40,000 lay faithful were included among the immigrants. The number of intellectuals was extraordinarily high. At first, they were welcomed in Serbia with open arms. As a sister-nation, Russia had, after all, made the foundation of Yugoslavia possible in the wake of the First World War. The Metropolitan of Kiev mentioned earlier, Antony (Haprovitsky), as well as renowned theologians, were among the refugees. The former was granted jurisdiction over the immigrants by the Serbian Patriarchate. On 21 November 1921, he opened a council of the Russian immigrant Church in Sremski Karlovci, in the former buildings of the patriarchate, once furnished for the Serbian Patriarch Arsenije IV. The council formed an ecclesial administration in Yugoslavia intended for a ‘liberated and reborn Russia’.70 The Russian influence on Serbian monasteries was particularly important. Since the Middle Ages, the monasteries in Serbia had experienced an exodus of monks and nuns. Two monasteries were designated as the new residences for the arriving Russians, Hopovo monastery for women in Vojvodina, and a monastery for men in Miljkovo, in eastern Serbia. Its Russian abbot Amvrosii tried to re-establish the spirit of the renowned Russian monastery Optina Pustyn. His supporters compared him with the famous starets (‘elder’) who had played an important role in Dostoyevski’s book The Brothers Karamazov. Allusions were made to the relationship between the monastic ideal and the collective aversion to Western civilization. Russian theologians were also of considerable importance in the foundation of the (first) Theological Faculty in Belgrade in 1920. Broadly speaking, their influence on theology in Belgrade was conservative. The anti-Semitism of the 43

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Russian Orthodox immigrants also extended itself into Serbia, nourished by the antiBolshevik images the refugees had brought with them from the Soviet Union. 5.3 Multicoloured Yugoslavia Yugoslavia was not only an ethnic kaleidoscope, it was also a religious one, each of its national subdivisions being nourished by its own religion and culture. The Serbs, who considered themselves to be the advance guard of the new state after their military exertions during the First World War, contributed their Orthodox Church as the foremost bearer of national awareness. The traditional antithesis between the churches of Rome and Constantinople acquired ethnic connotations in the relationship between the Serbs and Croats because of the demarcation of religious borders in the eighteenth century. The Church of the Serbian colonists and frontier guards had become increasingly aware of its Orthodox culture in the countries of the Habsburg monarchy when confronted with the prevailing and dynamic Roman Catholicism of the Counter Reformation. It is here that we can locate a growing and ultimately deadly opposition between the Catholic Croats and their Orthodox Balkan neighbours. Such a degree of opposition had never existed in Southeast Europe in the past. Religious rivalry thus became a source of ethnic awareness among the Serbs and other nations in the southern part of the Habsburg Empire.71 In 1918, the political and intellectual elite of Croatia was committed to the ideology of ‘Yugoslavism’. The Croatian people, however, especially the peasants, did not share this ideology. The politician Stjepan Radić articulated their dispositions and led them into a large Croat movement. He and other nationalists adopted a framework of historical state right. Religious affiliation was in the beginning not a dominant argument; political or cultural or historical factors prevailed.72 Radić was shot in 1928 in the Belgrade Parliament. In a reaction, Ante Pavelić, another Croatian nationalist who later founded the Ustaša (‘Rising’) organization, decided to emigrate to Italy, determined to radicalize the Croatian struggle for independence in which terrorism would not be excluded. In 1934, the Yugslavian King Alexander was assassinated in Marseille by a BulgarianMacedonian nationalist with the help of members of the Ustaša. Croats made up less than 24 per cent of the Yugoslav population, but the Roman Catholic Church represented a larger percentage, since the majority of Slovenes and Italians, as well as a substantial number of Germans and Hungarians, considered themselves to be Catholic. Antun Bauer, Archbishop of Zagreb, the administrative and cultural centre of Croatian Catholicism, openly and sincerely welcomed the new Yugoslav state.73 He had been exposed in his archdiocese to traces of the pan-Slavic ideal that was given expression in 1919 in the united kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. The Church’s endorsement of this ideal was the cultural legacy of the by then renowned nineteenth-century Bishop of Djakovo, Josip Jurai Strossmayer, who was the ecclestiastical proponent of cultural Yugoslavism. His supporters ‘petitioned the Pope for the right to use the glagolitic (Old Slavonic) liturgy, where it was not already authorized and hoped 44

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that this might encourage Slav solidarity and bring the Catholic and Orthodox churches closer to one another’.74 By the 1930s, however, the said ideal had largely lost its appeal in Catholic Croatia, then a region of Serb-dominated Yugoslavia. The older generation of priests, however, continued to believe in it. In 1937, Alojzjje Stepinac succeeded Antun Bauer as Archbishop of Zagreb. The new archbishop was 39 years old, one of the youngest prelates of the Church, inexperienced in political dealings but a strong personality. In August 1939, the Yugoslavian government accommodated Croatian nationalism by organizing Croatia as a whole into its own banovina with a population of 4.2 million. This population consisted of 75 per cent Roman Catholic, 20 per cent Serbian Orthodox, 4 per cent Muslim, and 1 per cent Protestant or Jewish. Stimulated by the example of the independence of Slovakia in 1939, the goal of this administrative reorganization was to grant the Croats a greater degree of self-governance, but it was late in coming and was ultimately to be overtaken by the events of the Second World War.75 The religious roots of the mounting ethnic tension between Serbs and Bosnians have a shorter prehistory. Bosnia and Herzegovina were the most kaleidoscopic of the new Yugoslavia’s component parts. Catholic, Orthodox and Muslim believers lived side by side, but in the mind of an Orthodox Serb, Islam was the religion of the Ottomans, and the Muslim Bosnians were little more than ‘Turks’ in disguise. The Serbs, on the other hand, gradually discovered their ethnic identity in the process of Serbia’s self-liberation from Ottoman domination. Religious tensions were nourished by rural inequalities. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, for example, the richer farmers were generally Muslim while the poorer were Christian. In 1878, when the Habsburg monarchy acquired sovereignty over Bosnia, there were between 6,000 and 7,000 beys and agas, Muslim landowners who were in charge of roughly 85,000 kmets, leaseholders, of whom 60,000 were Orthodox, 23,000 Roman Catholic and 2,000 Muslim. Of the 77,000 independent farmers almost all were devotees of Islam.76 The Habsburg monarchy did nothing to disturb this feudal status quo, although its construction of railways and schools nevertheless facilitated the spread of Serbian nationalism.77 Yugoslavia’s first constitution was referred to as the Vidovdan because it came into effect on 28 June 1921 (according to the Gregorian calendar), the Serbian feast of Saint Vitus (see above). Subsequent governments endeavoured to establish official relationships with the three major religious affiliations. In 1929 the public position of the Serbian Orthodox Church was established by law, and in 1936 official contacts were legalized between the new Yugoslavia and its Muslim population. All that remained was to negotiate a concordat with the Vatican outlining the position of the Roman Catholic Church in public law. During negotiations between Belgrade and the Holy See, two controversial elements came to the fore: the influence of the Catholic Church on schools and school books, and the stipulation that the clergy should forego political office. Priests of the Serbian 45

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Orthodox Church, however, already fulfilled such functions. One of the concordat’s draft stipulations stated that Catholic children should not be obliged to take part in religious feasts of a non-Catholic signature. This meant, for example, that the Archbishop of Zagreb was free to instruct his priests in 1935 to keep Catholic schoolchildren away from the festivities surrounding the 700th anniversary celebration of the death of Saint Sava, the patron of Serbian Orthodoxy. An additional point of importance was that Catholic bishops should be expected to swear an oath of allegiance to the king after their appointment. The Orthodox Church declared its opposition to the concordat, and traditional differences intermingled with the fear of losing privileges. A declaration proposed by the then Serbian Patriarch Varnava (Rosić) was endorsed by the Church assembly or sabor of November 1936, stating that the Serbian Church was not only a religious institution but also a national one, ‘which because of its great services in creating the state, had the right to protect its centuries old historical position’.78 The patriarch prohibited Serbian ministers and members of parliament from supporting a concordat. On 19 July 1937, the Lower House in Belgrade discussed and accepted the draft in a turbulent debate. In the afternoon of the same day, a crowd gathered in front of the cathedral of the patriarchate to pray for the patriarch who had, in the meantime, become seriously ill. The procession of bishops and clergy in full regalia that followed ended in a riot in which Bishop Simeon (Sabać) was wounded. The ambulance that was supposed to bring him to the hospital was forced to drive through the streets of Belgrade at the hour of the daily parade (corso) and found it almost possible to make any progress. This was a new source of public agitation. The ratification process was finally abandoned and the concordat never came into being. This was a defeat for the largest Church in Croatia and Slovenia. 5.4 Churches in the new Romania The boundary shifts that took place after the First World War transformed the Romanian Orthodox Church into the largest one in South-east Europe. The ancient kingdom of Romania (formerly the principalities of Walachia and Moldavia) was doubled in size by the Paris Peace Conference via the annexation of four neighbouring regions: the Hungarian provinces of Transylvania and Banat, Austria’s Bucovina, Russia’s Bessarabia, and southern Dobruja of Bulgaria. This expansion was due in part to the defeat of the Habsburg Empire and its Bulgarian ally, and in part to the consequence of the Bolshevik revolution. Territorial doubling also had religious consequences. Although the expansion granted Orthodoxy considerable numerical advantage, Romania thereby lost its Orthodox monoculture, and from the religious perspective it became a pluralistic society, particularly on account of the annexation of Transylvania. In the new Romania, Orthodoxy remained the Church of the state and of the majority of the population. It also considered the new territories to be part of its ‘canonical territory’. But the necessary amalgamation of the Orthodox churches from the old and new regions of the country was a slow and difficult process, the canonical completion of 46

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which was to take until 1923. Each Church had developed its own organization structure and culture in its land of origin. Orthodoxy in the principalities of Walachia and Moldavia was closely related to the state and subjected to it, and the episcopal authorities were characteristically hierarchical. It was in the first instance a Church of impoverished farmers who had been submitted to a powerfully feudal structure in this part of the Ottoman Empire. Newly acquired Transylvania had an altogether different past. Its large Hungarian and ‘magyarized’ Szekler population made it culturally Central European. Under both the Ottomans and the Habsburgs, Transylvanian landowners had managed to acquire and maintain a large degree of autonomy. It was also the cradle of the Reformation. Some princes had accepted Calvinism and their subjects had followed suit. German colonists had introduced the Lutheran Church. In competition with these Reformation Churches, the (Romanian) Orthodox Church had become acquainted with a democratic decisionmaking process, the legacy of a powerful leader, the first Metropolitan of Sibiu, Andrei Şaguna under whom the Orthodox Church was able to separate itself from the Serbian Patriarchate of Karlovci. In formerly Russian Bessarabia, the Church had been organized according to the autocratic norms of the Russian Tsar. The comparatively high intellectual standard among the clergy was also evident in Austrian Bucovina, thanks to the theological college in Czernowitz. When the Habsburg monarch acquired this region in 1775, Emperor Joseph II had its educational system reorganized. He established the basis for what was to become an Orthodox and non-Russian theological college in 1827, the core of the later University of Czernowitz and the source of the exceptional intellectual formation of the region’s clergy. The college ultimately became an inter-Orthodox meeting place, and its graduates were employed as seminary professors in countless schools in South-east Europe. The university served as the example for the foundation or renewal of theology faculties in Bucharest (1884), Belgrade (1921) and Sofia (1924), and for the theological academies in Bosnia and Macedonia. After the First World War, the German-language university was transformed into a fully Romanian-language institution and was renamed the ‘King Carol I University of Chernivtsi’. The primate of the post-war Romanian Orthodox Church came from Transylvania: Miron Cristea, Archbishop of Bucharest in 1920. It now had 14 million members and had become the second largest Eastern Orthodox Church next to the Russian Church. The Patriarch of Constantinople was no longer able to prevent the completion of an independent authority in Bucharest. The elevation of the Metropolitan of Bucharest to patriarch sealed the process. His accession to office was adjoined to the (sixteenth) centenary celebrations of the First Council of Nicea in 325. He was installed as patriarch in Bucharest, on 1 November 1925, first in a liturgy in his cathedral and then at the royal palace, where King Ferdinand (himself not Orthodox) handed him the patriarchal staff, thus demonstrating that the Romanian Orthodox Church was closely related to the state. The new constitution ascribed it the position of ‘ruling Church’. ‘The country, which had won its political independence, was now master of its own Church and a dream of centuries had been realized.’79 47

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The new Romania also had its religious minorities, however, numbering together as much as 28 per cent of the population. In pluralistic Transylvania, the Protestant communities of the (Hungarian) Reformed Church were the largest with their 710,706 members. The (German) Evangelical Lutheran and (Hungarian) Unitarian churches were roughly equal in size with their 70,000 members. Within the new national borders, moreover, there were more than 600,000 Roman Catholics, most of them being of Hungarian origin, and a similar number of Jewish citizens, mostly from Bucovina.80 The most important Transylvanian addition, however, was the Greek Catholic Church. In the Romanian constitution of 1923, the latter was actually granted a position of precedence, as political recognition for the Church’s historical merits in preserving Romanian culture. In Transylvania, the Romanian people were largely undervalued rural peasants. The same was the case for their Orthodox Church. Around the year 1700, the Habsburg Emperor together with the Archbishop of Esztergom in Hungary succeeded in persuading a portion of the Orthodox clergy in Transylvania – and in Hungarian Transcarpathia – to recognize the primacy of the Pope in Rome and to align a number of doctrines with those of the Roman Catholic Church. This represented the Habsburg policy of introducing and exercizing Roman and thereby imperial influence within Eastern Orthodoxy. It was acceptable for the Romanians because the Romanian language was permitted in the liturgy and the parish priests retained their right to marry. Moreover, this accord with Rome did not appear out of place in an Orthodoxy that claimed to be a Latin church with Greek doctrines and rituals. Pope Pius IX had established the diocese of Alba Iulia and Fãgãraş in 1853, whereby the Greek Catholic Church in Transylvania was placed directly under the authority of the Holy See and no longer of the Hungarian Archbishop of Esztergom. Bishops and priests of this Uniate Church were thus enabled to teach the local children in their own schools as well as monasteries, and to promote Romanian liturgy and culture. This minority was to spearhead the modernization of Transylvania, while seeking inspiration in Romania’s past: the Latin roots of the Romanian civilization. The Romanian Orthodox Church continued to be critical of the emergence and existence of the Greek Catholic Church, which represented the Byzantine rite while recognizing the primacy of the Pope. An Orthodox diocese was established in Alba Julia, the former capital of Transylvania, in 1923, thus breaking a historical agreement that the Romanian Orthodox Church and the Uniates would not locate their bishoprics in the same city. Already tense relationships were further aggravated by negotiations between the state and the Vatican on the establishment of a concordat with the new Romania. When the draft was proposed in 1927, it provoked an uninterrupted torrent of critique from the Orthodox bishops. Their opposition was directed more against the Greek Catholic Church than against the Roman Catholic Church. Nonetheless, the concordat was finally ratified in 1929. Both Orthodox churches served as the cradle of Romanian culture in Transylvania, and this was recognized by the state. From 1926 onwards, Greek Catholic bishops were granted the right to participate in the parliament in line with their Orthodox counterparts, who had enjoyed a similar right since 1864. 48

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5.5 After the ‘Catastrophe’ The beginning of the Interbellum in Greece was marked by the so-called ‘Great Idea’, an attempt in 1919 to re-establish the Byzantine civilization after the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War. This national ambition ended in defeat against the Turks in Asia Minor known as the ‘Catastrophe’. In 1923, Greece and Atatürk’s new Turkey agreed to an exchange of population. More than one million Greeks, who had lived – sometimes for centuries – as Orthodox believers in Asia Minor, were forced to leave their homes. In the meantime, 380,000 Muslims – mainly from Macedonia – were relocated to Turkey. The Greek motherland also became a port of refuge for thousands of Greeks living along the Black Sea coast, determined to escape the consequences of the Bolshevik revolution. As a result of these mass migrations, Greece and to a certain degree the new Turkey became ethnically homogenous states. From 1923 onwards, the Greek part of Macedonia was 89 per cent Greek (in contrast to 43 per cent in 1912), while Anatolia became almost entirely Muslim. The multi-ethnic city of Smyrna became the Turkish port city of Izmir.81 The capture of Smyrna by the Turkish army in 1922 is associated with the name of a martyr, the urban Metropolitan Chrysostomos, whose canonization by the Greek Orthodox Church gave a religious dimension to the ‘Catastrophe’. The only place in which a substantial Greek community was (allowed) to continue was Istanbul. The ten years of war between 1912 and 1922 were turbulent years in the political history of Greece. A gulf established itself between the liberals and their leader, the Cretan Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos, on the one hand, and the supporters of King Constantine on the other. It became known as the national schism (ethnikos dichasmos) and it also had a role to play in the political debate surrounding the economic crisis of the 1930s. Archbishops of Athens came and went with relative frequency in the duel and were often forced to change their political persuasion. In 1923, the Church’s administration achieved a degree of stability under Chrysostomos Papadopoulos, who brought authority to his office by the quality of his leadership and his academic credentials. One of his first administrative deeds was to obtain the Holy Synod’s approval to replace the Julian calendar with the (Western) Gregorian calendar (with the exception of the date of Easter). This led to the separation of the ‘true orthodox Christians’ headed by the monks of Mount Athos who continued to adhere to the ‘old calendar’. The Church struggled with the state to maintain its autonomy, the boundaries of which were expanded and reduced with clock-like regularity in the 1920s and 1930s. During the dictatorial regime of Prime Minister Iannis Metaxas beginning in 1936, state supervision of the Church was reinforced once again. But the Church was also prepared to play its part in promoting ‘national unity’ and establishing an anti-communist front. After the death of Chrysostomos in 1938, however, the state intervened in the election of the new Archbishop of Athens. It appeared that thirty-one bishops had voted for Damaskinos (Papandreou), the Bishop of Corinth, in the first round and thirty for Chrysanthos (Phillipidis), the Bishop of Trebizond. The prime minister, who also acted as minister of religious affairs, stepped in with a change of procedure. The Holy Synod

49

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was ordered to supply the king with a list of three names. Metaxas, who had difficulties with Damaskinos, ultimately made the decision himself and Chrysanthos became Archbishop of Athens. After the First World War, the ancient multi-ethnic ideal of the Byzantine Church in South-east Europe atrophied and its patriarch demoted in reality to archbishop of the Orthodox minority. In the new Turkish republic the name of Constantinople was forbidden. But from the Orthodox perspective, Constantinople also became Istanbul. Just as the Balkan states had struggled to free themselves from the power of the Ottoman sultan, so the churches had extricated themselves from the authority of the patriarch.82 They proved themselves to be the guardians of a cultural nationalism. In the states that emerged, continued or were enlarged after the First World War, they assigned themselves a position akin to that of a state-church. The same was also true for countries such as Romania and Yugoslavia with their pluralistic religious contours. From the political perspective, the said churches shared a common support in the Interbellum for the emergence of royal dictatorships in the economic (and political) crisis of the thirties. This support was sometimes direct – the Patriarch of Bucharest, for example, became prime minister in an authoritarian government – and sometimes indirect. This political option cannot be separated from the reality of Orthodox persecution in the Soviet Union. The expansion of communism was seen as a danger that had become a reality for the Church in Russia, the largest Orthodox Church in the world.

6 Ecumenism on the move In January 1919, the Synod of the Orthodox Churches in Constantinople took the initiative of extending an invitation to all Christian churches to form a league after the example of the League of Nations, which was to be discussed during peace negotiations in Paris. The Synod was under the leadership of the locum tenens, Metropolitan Dorotheos (Mammelis) of Bursa. The proposed league’s most important advocate was Germanos (Strenopoulos), Metropolitan of Seleukia and dean of the theological academy on the island of Halki opposite Istanbul. Germanos had studied in Western Europe and participated in the Conference of the World Union of Christian students in 1911 in Istanbul where he met the Methodist minister John R. Mott and Nathan Söderblom, later Archbishop of Uppsala. The Synod’s encyclical was dispatched in January 1920. It called for a koinonia ton ekklesion (League of Churches) and argued that it was possible to establish a fraternity of churches without first having to reach agreement on doctrinal issues. While reactions to this Orthodox initiative were far from overwhelming, Metropolitan Germanos had nevertheless established connections by this time with other pioneers of the ecumenical movement. Bearing in mind that such personal connections were of considerable importance at this stage, Orthodoxy thus acquired a role in the formation of the new collaborative entity. 50

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The initiative that ultimately established the ecumenical movement in the twentieth century was likewise related to the international political situation: the World Missionary Conference held in Edinburgh in 1910. The conference was the continuation of earlier meetings of this type, which could be understood as the religious dimension of European colonialism. Protestant missionary societies gathered in Edinburgh, thus giving the conference a clear degree of representativity. Another important factor in the international assembly was the emergence of a number of capable individuals who could be recruited into the new organization’s as yet to-be-created executive functions; individuals competent enough to keep up the tempo in the often tough process of ecumenical accommodation. In 1910, this clearly applied to the aforementioned Methodist minister John R. Mott and to Joseph H. Oldham of the Union of Christian students. The former became the first chairman of the so-called Continuation Committee; the latter became its executive secretary. The International Missionary Council, the substantial result of the conference, was set up in Edinburgh House, in London. Its permanent status allowed it to serve as the base of operations for a great many ecumenical initiatives. Ecumenical aspirations in the Interbellum were represented by two distinct movements. The first took shape in a desire among the (Protestant) churches to cooperate at the practical level and led to the formation of the ‘Universal Christian Conference on Life and Work’. The latter emerged from an international peace initiative that had led to the ‘World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches’ shortly before the outbreak of the First World War. The ‘Conference on Life and Work’ was the particular initiative of the Lutheran theologian Nathan Söderblom, who had been appointed Archbishop of Uppsala in 1914. Its first meeting took place in Stockholm in August 1925. The Swedish archbishop’s personality and sense of vocation turned out to be decisive factors in the process of bringing together leading figures from the mainly Protestant churches. Söderblom had been a member of the Union of Christian students – a spawning ground for ecumenical initiatives in the twentieth century – and had acquired international experience as a pastor in France and a theologian in Germany. With his support, neutral Sweden not only became the location of an international peace conference organized by social democrats during the First World War, but also provided the opportunity – in Uppsala in December 1917 – for a meeting of prominent leaders from the (Protestant) churches of neutral countries. The second movement was dominated by a desire to achieve theological agreement, an evidently more difficult endeavour. It took concrete form in the World Conference on Faith and Order initiated within the Anglican Communion, and in particular the Episcopalian churches of North America. The first conference was held in Lausanne in August 1927. In contrast to the organizers of the Conference on Life and Work, the initiators of the Conference on Faith and Order made more effort to involve the Catholic and Orthodox churches in their aspiration. In 1919, a delegation was received in the Vatican by Pope Benedict XV, but the response was negative. The Pope’s personal amity towards the members of the delegation, however, contrasted with the rigid character of the official rejection.83 A further ecumenical initiative, likewise of Anglican origin, took shape in the form of an endeavour to seek areas of agreement with the Roman Catholic 51

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Church. In December 1920, this led to the so-called Malines Conversations, a series of discussions held in the palace of the Archbishop of Mechelen, Cardinal Mercier. The fifth of these conversations – and as it transpired the last – took place in 1926, with Mercier’s successor Archbishop Van Roey heading the Catholic delegation. In January 1928, Pope Pius XI promulgated an encyclical entitled Mortalium Animos, which made it clear that any hope of ecumenical concessions on the part of the Roman Catholic Church was an illusion. Two weeks after the appearance of the encyclical, Rome announced that the Malines Conversations were not to be continued. Archbishop Söderblom took the encyclical as a sign that new measures were necessary. In 1929, he proposed that the Universal Christian Conference on Life and Work should be renamed a Universal Christian Council for Life and Work, a difference that was more explicit in the French translation: Conseil Oecumenique du Christianisme Pratique. The ‘Ecumenical Council’ appeared to have been given an opportunity for success now that the Anglicans and Eastern Orthodox churches could no longer count on accommodation on the part of Rome. The degree of solidarity evident between these two important conferences – ‘Faith and Order’ and ‘Life and Work’ – was of crucial importance. It had to be a solidarity that would reflect levels of theological agreement and practical cooperation while embracing both liberal Protestants and ‘High Church’ representatives, such as the Patriarch of Constantinople or the Archbishop of Canterbury. A first concrete step was taken when the Secretariat of the International Missionary Conference was extended to include the Organization for Practical Christianity. Oldham, the secretary of the former, now functioned on behalf of both institutions. In 1937, both ‘Faith and Order’ and ‘Life and Work’ organized major conferences, one in Edinburgh and the other in Oxford. Thanks to the presence of Church leaders such as William Temple (the Archbishop of York), Marc Boegner (the Chairman of the Federation of Reformed Churches of France), Oldham and Metropolitan Germanos, an actual commission of fourteen representatives was established and charged with the drafting of a common ecumenical organ: an Ecumenical Council of Churches. At the end of 1938, the said draft was sent for evaluation to the 196 churches that had been represented at Edinburgh and Oxford. The commission chose August 1941 for the Council’s first plenary meeting. The outbreak of the Second World War, however, put an end to these plans and the Ecumenical Council of Churches acquired provisional status for the foreseeable future. Its realization had ultimately been the work of the Anglo-Saxon churches and their official representatives. Representatives of the German Evangelical Church, who considered themselves ‘German Christians’, rejected this ecumenical organization. Their opponents, the Confessing Churches, were prevented by the National Socialist government from attending the conferences in Edinburgh and Oxford as a repudiation of AngloSaxon dominance. Significantly, the offices of the Provisional Council were established in Geneva, the city of Calvin and the League of Nations. Oldham was succeeded as secretary in 1938 by the Dutch pastor Willem Visser ’t Hooft, who had also played an active role in the Christian student movement.

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CHAPTER 2 RELIGION AND TOTALITARIAN IDEOLOGY

1 Christianity inside the Nazi movement 1.1 The religion of Hitler On 1 February 1933, the day after he took office as the new Reich Chancellor, Adolf Hitler addressed the German nation via the radio. He started his address with a promise to God and ended with a prayer of entreaty. ‘May the almighty God accept our work in His grace, steer our will in the right direction, bless our insight and make us happy with the trust of our people.’ The politician’s use of words could not have been improved by a pastor or a priest.1 At the end of the same month, the Reichstag burned to the ground in an incident ascribed by National Socialist propaganda to be a communist plot. The government, which took the form of a ‘Präsidialkabinett’ – i.e. appointed on the initiative of President Hindenburg – exploited the opportunity to curry favour with voters in new elections and thereby establish a parliamentary basis. The German people were told that it would only be able to avoid a communist dictatorship by supporting the Nazis. Hitler himself delivered a speech on 4 March 1933 in the East Prussian city of Koningsbergen that was intended to be the climax of his election campaign. After the event, the radio broadcast the so-called Dutch thanksgiving hymn ‘Wilt heden nu treden – We Gather Together’, which must have sounded very familiar to the empire’s Evangelical listeners. Church bells rang out, but none of those listening could have suspected that the consistory of the Dom in Koningsbergen had refused church bells and choir music and that the radio broadcast had used gramophone records on the orders of the Minister for Propaganda, Josef Goebbels.2 The new Reichstag was solemnly opened on 23 March 1933 in the Protestant garrison church in Potsdam. At this historical moment, the symbols of Prussian religion and Prussian military might were prominent. Although objections had been expressed within Evangelical Church circles against combining Christianity and Nazi politics, Generalsuperintendent Otto Dibelius, the highest Church authority in Potsdam, gave permission for the order of service. The bells of the garrison church tolled for fifteen minutes. Photos and film footage of Hitler delivering his opening speech from the pulpit further reinforced the impression of a religious solemnity.3 The Evangelical Church and the Catholic Church appeared thereafter to be prepared to give Hitler the benefit of the doubt. The Catholic bishops made this clear in a manifestation on 28 March 1933 in which they expressed cautious confidence and stated that prohibitions and warnings already issued against the National Socialist no longer had to be considered necessary. The ‘Oberkirchenrat’, the highest authority of the United 53

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Protestant Church in Prussia, announced to the faithful in an Easter message on 16 April 1933 that it felt itself one with them in their joy at the ‘Aufbruch’, the emergence of the German nation’s deeper powers that were focused on patriotic awareness, on authentic national community, and on religious renewal.4 1.2 The belief of the National Socialists The overtures made by the new Reich Chancellor to both Christian denominations were clear and unequivocal. For Hitler himself, baptized Roman Catholic in Braunau in Austria and schooled in church music in a monastery in Lambach – ‘he was intoxicated by the ecclesiastical splendour’ – Christian concepts and expressions served an instrumental purpose.5 His personal convictions were also unequivocal, concisely summarized in a quotation from Tischgespräche (table conversations): ‘When I was younger I was on the side of dynamite! It was only later that I realised one cannot break it off by oneself. It has to rot like a fevered limb. The young and healthy are on our side.’ In 1937, he declared in an unpublished speech: ‘Let us be completely clear on one matter: the churches may have the right to decide when it comes to Germans in the hereafter, but when it comes to Germans in the here and now the German nation decides through its Führer. Life in a period of upheaval can only be bearable with such a clear and pure separation.’6 Hitler placed his hopes in young people who would be raised in a heroic and racist mysticism and would be untainted by Christian notions of humility and forgiveness. Elsewhere in one of his Tischgespräche he observes: ‘I know that my unchristian German SS units can better fulfil their duty to the people than other soldiers made stupid by (Christian) catechism.’7 In the formal sense, Hitler never left the Catholic Church. For tactical reasons, he continued to pay his church tax until the moment he became head of state (15 March 1935), and was no longer liable to pay tax. He also encouraged other party members to remain members of the church. ‘The Führer is the keenest opponent of all the hocuspocus, but he forbade me to leave the church for tactical reasons’, Goebbels wrote in his diary.8 Interestingly, when reports came through that Hitler had committed suicide, the chairman of the episcopal conference of Fulda, the 86-year-old Cardinal Bertram, wanted to announce that a solemn requiem mass would be offered in his archdiocese – Breslau – for the Führer and for all the fallen of the Wehrmacht on 1 May 1945. The announcement was never sent.9 In his function as party leader, Hitler was intent on opening up the Movement to believing Christians whatever their denomination. The party’s task, according to Mein Kampf, was not to bring about religious reform but a reorganization of politics. He saw both Christian confessions as a valuable support for the continued existence of the German people and thus considered himself in conflict with those parties that set out to degrade (‘herabwürdigen’) this foundation. ‘The staunchest Protestant can stand shoulder to shoulder in our Movement with the most devout Catholic, without either experiencing the least conflict of conscience with his religious convictions.’10 54

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Leading National Socialists tended to have either Protestant or Catholic roots. Towards the end of 1936, they started to leave their respective churches in a Kirchenaustritt that was seen as evidence of a deterioration in relations between Church and state. It was induced by a measure introduced by the Minister of the Interior, which stated that a third option was possible in the religious administration of the German Reich in addition to ‘churchgoing’ and ‘without confession’, namely ‘Gottgläubige’ (‘believer in god’), and meaning, more or less, believer without a church. A transition to this religious identity had fiscal consequences in Germany: the cessation of the church tax levy. Catholic Nazis – many of whom were nominal church members – left the Church in 1936, Himmler, Heydrich and a string of Gauleiter among them. In 1937, it was the time of Protestant Nazis to turn their back on the Evangelical Church. Alfred Rosenberg, the party ideologue with Lutheran roots, had already left the Church in November 1933. In 1943, Erich Koch, Hitler’s governor in the Ukraine who held a senior position in the Evangelical Church in East Prussia, declared himself to be ‘Gottgläubiger’. Martin Bormann, the most important leader in the NSDAP, was a sworn enemy of Christianity and the Christian churches.11 Himmler always maintained that SS officers who wished to remain Christian had the right to do so. Nevertheless, the same SS had the largest percentage when it came to the Kirchenaustritte. A secret report from 1939 states that SS members in 1937 were 60 per cent Protestant, 21.1 per cent Catholic and 18.7 per cent ‘Gottgläubig’. In the following year, 1938, the said percentages had changed to 51.4 Protestant, 22.7 Catholic and 25.7 ‘Gottgläubigen’. The slight increase in the Catholic percentage is due to the annexation of Austria in 1938. The same report observed that the percentage of Protestants in the SS was also the highest in 1938 and that one could thus conclude that the Protestant part of the population was more understanding of the struggle faced by the SS than the Catholic part.12 The official programme of the NSDAP called for a ‘positive Christianity’. Leaders such as Hitler, Himmler and Goebbels, who had all been raised as Christians, used Christian metaphors in their speeches and writings. Two comparisons stand out in this regard. The first is the National Socialist interpretation of Christian teaching on Redemption, which was employed to give the political ‘revolution’ of 1933 – the Nationale Erhebung or the Aufbruch – a sacred dimension. The second was the emphasis on an anti-Semitic interpretation of the Bible, in which the Old Testament took second place to the New, Jesus was to be stripped of his Jewish origins, and Paul considered an evil (Jewish) genius. All these elements were intended to reinforce the experience of the National Socialist ideology as a political religion. From the Christian perspective, however, a boundary was quickly drawn, namely the so-called ‘paganism’ professed by Reichsleiter Alfred Rosenberg in his treaties entitled Mythos des 20. Jahrhunderts. Rosenberg was driven by an absolutization of the German race, the consequence of which was a rejection of the Christian doctrine of original sin and of the universal character of teaching above the peoples and races. Historian Christopher Dawson, a British Catholic and a contemporary of Rosenberg, observed ‘the racial and naturalist idealism, which is characteristic of the movement as a whole and which, if not religious in the strict sense, tends to develop a 55

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mythology and ethic of its own that may easily take the place of Christian theology and Christian ethics’.13 Rosenberg’s Mythos was understood by both Churches in Germany as a settling of accounts with Christianity. The Vatican placed it on the index of forbidden books in 1934, followed in 1935 by An die Dunkelmänner unserer Zeit, Rosenberg’s response to his critics.14 Rosenberg had an ambiguous position in Nazi Germany. His book was printed and distributed in large quantities, but it never acquired the status of a charter of National Socialist ideology.15 Hitler himself determined the boundaries within which this Nazi religion was acceptable. This had already taken place in written form when he dismissed the ‘völkische Wanderscholaren’ (the ‘popular’ travelling missionaries) and the ‘völkische Johannessen des 20. Jahrhunderts’ (the ‘popular’ version of John the Baptist) in the first part of Mein Kampf. He openly severed contacts with this trend in 1928. Artur Dinter, chair of the NSDAP in Thüringen, who had propagated popular religion in many different ways, was dismissed from the party at that juncture. The ‘Führer’ was consistent and rigid in his conviction that such an ideology should not have such an influence on the thoughts and deeds of the party that it would become an alternative to Christianity.16 Distantiation from popular religion made it possible, in fact, for Protestants and (to a lesser extent) Catholics to join the NSDAP and – more importantly – vote for the party in the 1930s. In the process of coming to power, it was important that Hitler managed to erase three images associated with the NSDAP : that of a coup d’état and insurgence party, that of a regional formation from Bavaria and Austria, and that of a group with its roots in ‘the religious ghetto of a popular sect’.17 The NSDAP enjoyed a spectacular rise in popularity during the Reichstag elections in September 1930 (from 2.6 per cent to 18.3 per cent), since then referred to as the Katastrophewahlen. Research has revealed that the party had managed to win more than the average number of votes in the nineteen electoral districts in which Protestants formed the majority. In the six electoral districts in which Catholics were in the majority, the NSDAP remained below the national average. In relative terms, social democracy also acquired more votes in Protestant electoral districts than in Catholic electoral districts. The real reason for these results was the attraction of the (Catholic) Zentrum among German Catholics. Their Evangelical counterparts had no comparable political party to vote for.18

2 The question The new authorities quickly exhibited positive interest in both Christian denominations. They were explicitly invited to legitimate the new political setup and to contribute to the ‘Aufbruch’, the Awakening of the German Nation. Hitler wanted to bind the Roman Catholic Church to the state by establishing a concordat with Germany as a whole. The Evangelical churches, which were organized per Land, were invited to support the National Socialist revolution in a new church order that would be valid for the entire 56

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country, the so-called Reichskirche. Both Churches were expected to form a pillar of support for the totalitarian state. Fascism, like communism, is a lay-based ideology. But when it came to the relationship with (the Christian) religion there was a clear difference. In the Soviet Union, the Russian Orthodox Church was given little room for survival, at least in the twenty years following the October Revolution. Many of its clergy and active faithful disappeared in the camps. In Nazi Germany – and in fascist Italy – room for survival was clearly more evident. Social organization with a confessional character may have been contested and forbidden, and church opponents silenced and imprisoned, but the Church and the consistory or rectory remained intact as the centre of pastoral care. In the present chapter we explore the Protestant and Catholic Churches in relation to their responses to three ‘related’ challenges from the Interbellum. The first is the social success of a secular ideology. The second is the struggle for freedom and social influence on the part of the churches in the totalitarian state that Italy became after the fascist election victory in 1924 and Nazi Germany from 1933 onwards. The third is a Christian reaction to the racism of the day, which was cultivated in particular in Nazi Germany and directed for the most part towards the Jews. The international context of this chapter will be expanded to embrace one additional topic: Christian fascism in Romania in the Interbellum. Here we examine how an Orthodox Church faced this challenge.

3 The road to a unified Reichskirche 3.1 ‘Popular religion’ in German Protestantism During the Interbellum, the principles of the ‘Volkstum’ found favour with the young generation of Protestant theologians. In short, the old formula of ‘throne and altar’ that had formed the basis of a Protestant church order in imperial Germany came to be replaced by a new guiding principle, that of the alliance between ‘God and People’.19 At the same time a real need emerged to anchor the German Evangelical Church in administrative terms in what was experience in 1933 as the ‘new Germany’. A milestone in this regard was the ‘Kirchentag’, the congress of German Protestantism held in 1929 in Koningsbergen that acquired the reputation – as discussed in Chapter 1 – of being a ‘patriotic manifestation’. The young theologian Paul Althaus gave a lecture at the congress on Church and ‘Volkstum’, a uniquely German and difficult to translate term. ‘Volkstum’, however, is determined in the first instance by a biological factor, namely socalled‘unity of blood’. Once this aspect was established then the mind became a determinative factor.20 Althaus was in the first instance a theologian. The Christian church was obliged in its turn to recognize that God did not only sanctify individuals, but also peoples as a whole. This implied that the church had to be aware of the Jewish ‘threat’ to that whole.21 Althaus introduced – albeit in polished terms – a political theology that quickly gained significant influence within German Protestantism. The concluding declaration of the 57

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Kirchentag contained a compromise: on the one hand a confession of faith in the God of all peoples and in a Christian community of faith and love that binds all peoples and races, and on the other the observation that ‘cosmopolitism’ should be rejected and that the close connection between Christianity and ‘Deutschtum’ should be promoted. A bond was thus made manifest between this ‘political theology’ and the ideology of National Socialism. At the same time, and unquestionably, anti-Semitism was introduced into church teaching.22 The electoral success of the NSDAP in September 1930 occasioned a concrete association between the two. Pastors and elders formed groups with national conservative or national socialist leanings, which served as an assembly point for the right wing with the Evangelical church. One of its core groups was a German Christian cluster located in the east of Thüringen, which had acquired seats in the church council of Alternberg in 1931. An additional core group was located in Berlin. Both groups combined on 6 June 1932 to form the so-called Glaubensbewegung Deutsche Christen. They had no official permission to call themselves national socialist (because Hitler refused to tolerate confessional division in his party), but participated nonetheless via the concept of ‘positive Christianity’ in the Nazi campaign against ‘Marxism, the Jews, cosmopolitism and freemasonry’. Its manifesto clearly exhibited its desire for a ‘wahrhaft deutsche Kirche’, a truly German church as a reflection of an arrangement of nation and race introduced into creation by God.23 Church historian Klaus Scholder has been able to distinguish three ‘schools’ among German Protestants with nationalist inclinations. The first consisted of those ‘Nationalist Protestants’ who sought to associate themselves with National Socialism on the basis of their conservative patriotism without being fully aware of who or what they were supporting. A second group was made up of modern political theologians (including the aforementioned Paul Althaus), who discerned an expression of the will of God in the Nazi movement and its role in the evolution of the German people: the result of divine revelation in German history that legitimated their obedience to the new authorities in 1933. It was from this sector that the theological core of the German Christian movement emerged. The third group was made up of those who supported a ‘popular religion’ that adopted Christian teaching but extended their faith with non-Christian ideas and injunctions that went beyond the dogmatic boundaries of the Evangelical Church.24 Ecclesial elections in Prussia in November 1932 offer an indication of the size of the ‘German Christian’ movement. One-third of the administrative chairs for Prussia as a whole were acquired by the ‘German Christians’. The said result corresponds with the fact that a third of the pastors tended towards National Socialism during the final phase of the Weimar Republic, fascinated as they were by the new synthesis of ‘people and altar’ instead of the imperial ‘throne and altar’.25 This led to a renewal in terms of iconography. A bust of Adolf Hitler was located in the Berlin district of Tempelhof, where German Christians were in power, in addition to swastikas and images of Hitler together with Luther. The other side of German Protestantism also made itself manifest, however. On Sunday 17 July 1932, two weeks before the Reichstag elections, the Nazis organized a demonstration in the Altona district of Hamburg. The demonstration resulted in street 58

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battles between national socialists and communists in which seventeen people lost their lives. The fighting took place in front of Altona’s main church in which a service had been held that same afternoon. Six months later, on 11 January 1933, the local pastor put together a critical confession that was read out in the presence of the (social democrat) mayor of Altona, Max Brauer. The latter had taken his seat in the area set aside for the city council, which had not been used in several years. On the recommendation of Hans Asmussen, one of the church’s pastors, the confession articulated a purified understanding of the church: the church had to be free to speak, and as such it was subservient to none although it was the servant of all. Those who expected their pastor to justify a specific political or economic order, or praise death in battle for the fatherland as a blessed deed, tempted him thus to deny Christ and his redemption. The confession concluded with a statement of the right to resist. The pastors of Altona declared that they were called to be obedient to the authorities, but if the latter should act against the welfare of the city then everyone had the right to determine for themselves whether the time had come to be more obedient to God than to man.26 In hindsight, the decision to make this statement in the form of a confession was an exemplary decision with far-reaching significance. 3.2 The Reichskirche The keyword that was to preoccupy many Protestants in the 1930s was the Reichskirche. It was launched by Wilhelm Kube, the leader of the Nazi faction in the Prussian Landtag and a church elder in Berlin (Gethsemane congregation). His goal was to win the Protestant church of Prussia for National Socialism, but he also wanted the Evangelical Landeskirchen in Germany – which were organized for historical reasons at the level of the federal state – to be subsumed into a single church for the entire Reich. This was a direct consequence of the establishment of a concordat between the Roman Catholic Church and the Prussian state (1929) and of the discussion that followed on the necessity of a Kirchenvertrag between the same state and the Protestant Prussian Unionskirche. Kube was supported in Berlin by Joachim Hossenfelder, a young pastor associated with the Christus congregation in the city who had been a member of the NSDAP since 1929. Pastor Hossenfelder considered himself part of a generation that had its roots in the youth movement and had served at the front during the First World War. He sensed a kinship with those who had learned that ‘combat’ was the source of all life, including disdain for civil and Christian conventions.27 The pastor came to prominence in the Glaubensbewegung deutsche Christen and became its leader. The desire for a Reichskirche – the German Evangelical Church under a single national structure (see Chapter 1) – became a topical question in 1918, when the German Kaiser and the princes of the various states were forced to give up their thrones and thereby their leading positions in the Church. In the four centuries of its existence, the Evangelical Church had evolved close ties with the states and their rulers. The Weimar Republic put an end to this independence. In article 137 of the republic’s constitution, Church and state were separated for the first time in German history. This introduced the necessity 59

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of providing a statutory arrangement for the Evangelical Church. Vigorous debate on the new state structure likewise occasioned an appeal for Church unity, especially when Hitler’s government introduced a draft law placing the German federal states on an equal footing. An additional stimulus was the attractiveness of so-called ‘popular religion’, which favoured the ideal of a German church embracing all the Protestant denominations that would, moreover, be ‘free of Rome’. But the decisive factor was Hitler’s offer to the Holy See to establish a Reichskonkordat for the Catholic Church in Germany as a whole. This called in turn for the establishment of a Reichskirchenvertrag that would structure relations with the Evangelical Church.28 The start of negotiations for a Reichskonkordat in April 1933 found an echo in initiatives taken in the same month towards the establishment of a Reichskirche. The latter had to be led – and symbolized by – a Reich bishop. The office of bishop, which was introduced in the Lutheran Landeskirchen but rejected by the Reform churches, thus acquired a new meaning. On 26 May 1933, the representatives of all the Landeskirchen met in Berlin on the question of church unification. They were already expected at this juncture to elect a Reichsbischof, and two candidates had emerged in the meantime: Ludwig Müller, a Wehrkreispfarrer (army chaplain), and Pastor Friedrich von Bodelschwingh, the director of ‘Bethel’ near Bielefeld, an evangelical care institution that was renowned throughout Germany. Müller was born on 23 June 1883 in Gütersloh (Westphalia) and was raised in a culture of Pietism. His rectory in Königsberg became the location for secret meetings between officers and National Socialists. It is believed that Hitler also visited in April 1932. Müller had joined the NSDAP on 1 August 1931 and his star quickly ascended in the NSDAP firmament. He became Hitler’s ‘personal representative’ for the Evangelical Church and later the official chief of the ‘Movement of German Christians’, albeit not without protest from its ousted leader Hossenfelder during a stormy meeting on 23 May 1933. He also acquired the support of a significant number of German theology professors, who by tradition had an important voice in the Evangelical Church. An opposition had formed within the Evangelical world in the meantime, namely the Jungreformatoren; young Protestants (in their forties) who wanted to respond in a positive manner – in line with the German Christians – to the ‘Nationale Erhebung’ (‘national rising’) of 1933, but preferred to make ‘pure decisions’ on a new Church order without the interference of NSDAP standpoints or ‘popular religion’. Their leaders were Hanns Lilje, the general secretary of the German Christian student movement, and Martin Niemöller, a former First World War submarine captain who had become a pastor in Dahlem, a church congregation in the western suburbs of Berlin. The Jungreformatoren preferred the other candidate, Von Bodelschwingh. It was clear after the initial vote (on 26 May 1933) that Von Bodelschwingh enjoyed the preference of the representatives: thirteen churches with 55 votes as opposed to eleven churches with 31 votes for Müller. The final vote was 91 to 8. In his proclamation, the elected candidate made it clear that the German Evangelical Church considered itself the ‘free partner of the state’ and thanked God for the new government, but that there 60

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was no question of a secret or public political ‘Mitherrschaft’ (‘shared stewardship’) of the Church with any ideology whatsoever.29 3.3 The beginning of the Kirchenkampf The election of Von Bodelschwingh was a disappointment for both the ‘German Christians’ and the National Socialist government alike. The counter-offensive was launched in the evening of 27 May, the day of his election. The National Socialist government campaigned openly on behalf of the rejected candidate, Ludwig Müller. Moreover, a ‘Staatskommisar’ was appointed in the Prussian Church, Von Bodelschwingh’s primary source of support. August Jäger, the son of a pastor in Nassau, was charged with establishing stronger links between the Church and the state. Both these factors contributed to what was now developing into a ‘church struggle’, in German Kirchenkampf. Questions not only arose concerning the national formation of the German Evangelical Church, but also about the extent to which it would be linked to the National Socialist state. Remarkably, Hitler now gave orders to National Socialist groups to promote the election of Müller in public meetings and in a press campaign, in spite of his politics of non-interference in church affairs. This served as a signal to attack the independence of the Church, if necessary with the help of the Sturmabteilung (S.A.), the NSDAP ’s internal police. The propaganda campaign constituted one prong of the attack, Jäger the other. The latter was given authority to remove church officials from their state-appointed positions and, given his rancour and temperament, he wasted little time in making use of it. He had to ensure that the German Evangelical Church was forced into line. A Synod was assembled in Eisenach on 23 June 1933 to make a decision on the organization of dioceses. The bishops of the Lutheran Landeskirchen were pressured into rejecting Von Bodelschwingh and they yielded, in part on account of their traditional understanding of the ruler, who had a historical role in the leadership of the Church, and in part on account of a provincial aversion to Prussians. The leadership of the Prussian Church continued to insist on its independence and in preference for Von Bodelschwingh. The Synod met again a day later. Jäger caused an unpleasant surprise by taking over the leadership of the Prussian Church and forcing it to accept a number of bishops. Von Bodelschwingh now felt compelled to resign and the Nazi candidate Müller was made the new Bishop of Prussia. Pastor Hossenfelder, the ‘Reichsleiter’ of the ‘German Christians’ was made Bishop of Brandenburg and Müller’s deputy. The Generalsuperintendent, Prussia’s senior church officials, and the sacked members of the ‘Obenkrichenrat’, the highest church council in Prussia, joined forces in resistance. Otto Dibelius, the Generalsuperintendent for the ‘Kurmark’, took the lead. He argued in a leaflet that the state may have been able to relieve him and his colleagues of their civil administrative functions, but not for their church function. A day of penitence was announced for Sunday 2 July 1933. The ‘Obenkirchenrat’, which was now made up of German Christians, announced in its turn a Sunday thanksgiving service of celebration and flags, including the swastika flag. Other churches followed the penitential option. In the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche in Berlin, Pastor Hossenfelder preached that 61

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morning on Romans 13: ‘Let every person be subject to the governing authorities’. The church was packed to the doors and S.A. flag carriers were posted on either side of the altar. In the evening, Pastor Gerhard Jacobi preached in the same church on Matthew 21, 12–16: the expulsion of the merchants from the temple – ‘my house shall be called a house of prayer’.30 In Dahlem, the congregation’s three pastors – among them Martin Niemöller, presided over a service of penance and prayer. This was the first attempt to express resistance in a liturgical form: the confession of faith was recited in common. The Evangelical Church had discovered its own form of resistance. The articulation of the (reformatory) confession was to be a characteristic feature of a lengthy inner-church opposition.31 3.4 Totalitarian Church in a totalitarian state 1 The government in Berlin kept up the momentum and pressed for juridical measures designed to hedge in the Church within the state. On 11 July 1933 the representatives of all 28 Landeskirchen met in Berlin to discuss the constitution of the Evangelical Church for Germany as a whole. The constitution was accepted three days later as Reichsverfassung during the same cabinet meeting (14 July) at which the concordat with the Holy See was approved. The law undid the separation of Church and state of the Weimar Republic. Pastors, in principle, became civil servants and were financed by the state. At the same time, they could also be obliged to uphold the ideology of the state. On the same 14 July, the government announced church elections that were to be held on 23 July (i.e. nine days later). The various organs of the NSDAP were expected to contribute in their own way to ensuring victory for the ‘German Christians’. The hard core of the latter identified itself with National Socialism and in some congregations even used the name ‘S.A. Jesu Christi’. The opposition quickly formed an electoral list under the title ‘Evangelium und Kirche’. Those responsible, among them the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Pastor Gerhard Jacobi, put together a manifesto in which they called for a ‘state free’ Church that was bound to the Word of God alone. The Jungreformatoren then attached the demand for a free Church to the question of loyalty to the state. Hitler took an unusual step during the election campaign. While attending the opening of the Festspiele in Bayreuth on 21 July 1933 – a performance of Wagner’s opera Parsifal with Richard Strauss conducting – he gave a radio address on the request of future Reich bishop Ludwig Müller in which he declared his support for the ‘German Christians’. Its effects were remarkable to say the least. Large numbers of church congregations waived elections and accepted the unified electoral list of the ‘German Christians’. Some Landeskirchen did the same as a whole. In the majority, the bishops and senior pastors were then replaced. Only three retained their bishop: Hans Meiser in Bavaria, Theophil Wurm in Württemberg and August Marahrens in Hannover. Three exceptions marked the results of the elections. The congregation of Berlin-Dahlem (Niemöller) opted – in majority – for the list ‘Evangelium und Kirche’. The reformed congregation of Barmen-Gemarke with its six pastors did the same. The provincial Synod 62

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of Westphalia also returned an unexpected result: the Protestant voters opted – likewise in majority – for the list of ‘Evangelium und Kirche’. The General Synod of what was now a ‘Nazified’ Prussian Church held in September 1933 – in the wake of the NSDAP party congress in Nuremberg – later became known as the ‘brown synod’. The German Christians appeared at the meeting in brown uniforms. In great haste and without much discussion, a law was approved in which the office of superintendent was abolished and episcopal sees introduced, ten of them in Prussia. An additional regulation stipulated that church appointments were henceforth restricted to those who accepted the National Socialist state without objection and were of ‘Aryan origin’. Protestant Germany finally acquired its ‘Führer’. During the National Synod, which was held in Luther’s birthplace Wittenberg on 27 September 1933, Ludwig Müller was elected Reich bishop. Neither Hitler nor any of his ministers or secretaries of state was present for the occasion. On the initiative of Saxony bishop Friedrich Coch, a so-called ‘Theologensturm’ was arrayed in the choir of the church, a company of young theology students dressed in ‘Feldgrau’ with a lilac cross and SS emblems, ready for the front. After the ceremony, Reich bishop Müller returned to Berlin where, according to estimates, he was welcomed by 22,000 people, among them 16,000 boys and girls. The manifestation was a Protestant counterpart to the ‘Konkordatsfeier’ held in the same month in the Catholic Sankt Hedwig Cathedral in Berlin. A further effect became evident after Hitler expressed his support for the German Christians: the number of people who registered as members of the Evangelical Church increased from 6,300 in the first half of 1933 to 11,700 in the second half of the year. A commensurate number of ‘Kirchenaustritte’ (those leaving the church) was also observed. Large numbers of couples in the Berlin suburbs also opted for a church wedding. The Old Church in Pankow, for example, celebrated no fewer than 147 weddings in a single day (26 August 1933).32 3.5 Totalitarian Church in a totalitarian state 2 Ludwig Müller’s election as Reich bishop in Wittenberg legitimized the intended goal of establishing a Reichskirche, but his work to this end was more impulsive than anything else, and his policies the opposite of resolute and clear-cut. He leaned for support on August Jäger, the ever dynamic church jurist whose vindictive diligence led him on two occasions to cross the boundaries of what was permissible Reich policy, and on Heinrich Oberheid, the new German Christian Bishop of Cologne and Aachen who was likewise unable to implement his radical ideas for reform. Both ‘perished’ in organizational terms and thereby contributed to the ultimate bankruptcy of administrative centralization in the Reichskirche. The Reich bishop appeared to slip up time after time, in the first instance when he came to Hitler’s support. Although the latter had set aside his reticence with respect to inner-church debate, this was only intended as a one-off intervention. During a meeting with the Gauleiter in Obersalzberg, he announced his withdrawal from the Church’s internal struggles and a return to religious neutrality. On 17 October 1933, a declaration 63

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Figure 4 Ludwig Müller during his confirmation as ‘Reich Bishop’ in front of the Dom in Berlin (23 September 1934). Photo: Süddeutsche Zeitung, Munich.

was published in the newspapers penned by Rudolf Heß, the deputy of the Führer: no one in the NSDAP would experience disadvantage if he did not belong to a specific religious denomination, or had no religious affiliation at all. Faith was a matter of individual conscience. The German Christians were being mobilized in the meantime in the Sportpalast, the Palace of Sport in Berlin with room for 20,000 people and a favourite location of National Socialist mass demonstrations. Reinhold Krause, the Gauobmann of the ‘German Christians’ in Berlin, gave a speech there in which he turned his back on the ‘Pastorenkirche’, which he claimed had become a ‘Prälatenkirche’ with well-paid managers at the helm. His goal was a national German church, free of the Old Testament and its ‘Jewish, sheep-dealer, debt morality’ and ‘pimp stories’. The New Testament was to be at the core of this national church, but without the theology of the scapegoat and inferiority, both themes introduced by ‘Rabbi Paul’. A pure ‘doctrine of Jesus’ could serve as its dogmatic foundation, but then it would be important to distance oneself from exaggerated and over-prominent depictions of the crucified Jesus. This would spell the completion of Martin Luther’s Reformation in a definitive victory of the Nordic race over ‘oriental materialism’. The applause was deafening.33 The meeting immediately resulted in a vigorous polarization within the Evangelical Church: approval on one side, yet even stronger repugnance on the other. Ludwig Müller 64

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endeavoured to turn things around by sacrificing Krause in order to spare Hossenfelder – who had been present in the Sportpalast and had visibly applauded Krause. Public distantiation from Krause was occasion enough for Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg to resign his membership of the Evangelical Church. At the same time, opponents began to amass. The Lutherans in Bavaria, for example, forgot their scepticism towards the Prussian Church’s opposition and formed a common Bekenntnisfront together with Pastor Niemöller. The three Landeskirchen bishops who had remained in office – Meiser (Bavaria), Wurm (Württemberg) and Marahrens (Hannover) – also participated together with Karl Koch, the president of the Westphalia Synod. They decided that Hossenfelder had to be dismissed from the administration of the Reichskirche. If not, the bishops would not attend the investiture of Ludwig Müller as Reich bishop, which was planned for 3 December 1933. The Reich bishop tried to attract support from Hitler but to no avail: the state had to remain neutral on disputes and discord within the Evangelical Church. He thus felt obliged to dismiss Hossenfelder and did so on 29 November 1933. But the Reich bishop then made a decision that was to unite ecclesial opposition once and for all: he offered to subsume the Evangelical youth organizations under the ‘Hitler Jugend’ as part of a state requirement to bring the youth movements onto an equal footing. This act and the more or less clandestine way he went about it, moreover, was for Bishop Wurm ‘sheer villainy’.34 Hitler intervened and summoned the church leaders to the Reich Chancellery. In the meantime, Hermann Göring, minister president in Prussia, had waded into the dispute. He had the telephones of the main opponents tapped and was ready to deliver a file on the Evangelical pastors to Hitler on 24 January. When Hitler received the church representatives the following day he was already aware of what had been said during a telephone discussion between Niemöller and Hindenburg. It sounded like a conspiratorial attempt to play off the Reich President against the Reich Chancellor. The church opposition (including Niemöller) was immediately forced on the defensive. They had expected support from Hitler – or at least his mediation – but were forced to admit that he had outfoxed them. Without having to openly support the contentious Reich bishop, he had succeeded in isolating the only real opponent, Martin Niemöller. The latter was first banned from preaching and then dismissed as pastor in Dahlem. The Reich bishop seized the opportunity (once again) to instigate internal reorganization. August Jäger was appointed ‘Rechtswalter’, the most senior legal position within the Evangelical Church. He and Bishop were charged with establishing rules for restoring order within the German Evangelical Church (4 January 1934), also known as the Maulkorberlaß (gagging order). Church officials were forbidden to criticize the Kirchenregiment in public on pain of dismissal, a reduction in pay or another disciplinary measure. This procedure encountered further resistance, particularly on account of the radical manner with which it was implemented. Bishop Wurm and Bishop Meiser had expressed their opposition to farreaching centralization and for this reason they were both arrested. A wave of protest followed, especially in Bavaria. Even the Nazi authorities in the region registered protest against the imprisonment of its Lutheran bishop. 65

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This unfortunate endeavour to force the opposition into line led to the fall of August Jäger. But there was a new factor at work, an appeal for restraint from abroad. Hitler’s government needed to establish a positive image abroad at this juncture, especially in Great Britain. George Bell, the Bishop of Chichester and chairman of the Ecumenical Council for Practical Christianity entered the fray. This was experienced in Berlin as an unpleasant fact. More important, however, was an event that took place in the context of the forthcoming Saarland referendum (see Chapter 3). In September 1934, Reich bishop Müller had called once again for a so-called ‘Rome free’ German National Church. The German representative in Saarland, Joseph Bürckel, the Gauleiter in the Palatinate, asked Hitler to publicly distance himself from Müller’s speech because such statements were likely to upset the Catholic majority in Saarland. The high point of the crisis was the legal action brought before the Reichsgericht against the dismissal of Pastor Niemöller. The Minister of Justice mentioned in an official report to Hitler that Niemöller was expected to win the case and that a number of measures designed to bring the Evangelical Church into line would likely be repealed. On 30 October, the ‘Führer’ received bishops Meiser and Wurm, who had been released from prison, together with Bishop Marahrens. He appeared to have come to the conclusion that the process that had been so successful when it came to bringing the

Figure 5 Reich Bishop Müller presides over the wedding of Reich Marshal Hermann Göring and the actress Emmy Sonnemann in the Dom in Berlin (10 April 1935). Photo: Süddeutsche Zeitung, Munich. 66

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unions and the political parties into line within the totalitarian state had apparently proven too complicated for the Evangelical Church. Müller was forced to carry the can. The Reich bishop was allowed to retain his title, his ‘Talar’ (toga) and his pectoral cross, but he lost his powers. Within the Church he was referred to from then on as the ‘Reibi’ instead of the ‘Reichsbischof ’. He tried to maintain a degree of spiritual authority in his travels and preaching. On 10 April 1935, he appeared in public to preside at the wedding of actress Emmy Sonnemann and the Prussian minister Hermann Göring in the Dom in Berlin at which Hitler was one of the witnesses. The Reich bishop was allowed to preach for no more than five minutes. On 4 November 1938, he baptized the couple’s daughter Edda with Hitler as godfather. It was clear that the Führer had more or less abandoned the Reich bishop, but equally clear that Göring still supported him.35 3.6 The oppositional power of a confession When Ludwig Müller was installed as Reich bishop, theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was standing outside the door of the church in Wittenberg handing out pamphlets on behalf of the Pfarrernotbund, a new covenant of pastors set up to meet the needs of the time. The Pfarrernotbund was established on 11 September 1933 in the rectory of Pastor Gerhard Jacobi of the Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtniskirche in Berlin. It brought together pastors who felt themselves under pressure in their congregations from ‘German Christians’ and sought support in their union. The rules for membership demanded an exclusive bond with the Sacred Scriptures and the confession of the Reformation. Members were thus expected to resist any ideological or political erosion of the said bond with all their might. The ‘fraternal leadership’ of the Covenant was entrusted to Von Bodelschwingh. On his invitation, oppositional theologians and pastors had assembled in Bethel to formulate a response to the ‘German Christians’ and their attempt to seize power within the Evangelical Church. The result was a series of dogmatic statements that came to be known as the Betheler Bekenntnis or the Bethel Confession. The hand of Dietrich Bonhoeffer is evident in the first version thereof: the Church’s task is to remind the civil authorities through sound preaching that they must remain within the boundaries of God’s order should they wish to avoid becoming an instrument of the Devil. The statement on the ‘Aryan Declaration’ – which had been included in the meantime in the constitution of the new Reichskirche – was particularly pointed. ‘ “Gentile” Christians should be ready to expose themselves to persecution before they are ready to betray in even a single case, voluntarily or under compulsion, the church’s fellowship with Jewish Christians that is instituted in Word and sacrament.’36 Only a week after its establishment, the Notbund had 2,000 members (out of a total of 15,000 pastors in Germany). Four months later that number had increased to more than 7,000. This church opposition was consciously ‘above ground’, intent on influencing the formation of the Reichskirche. Its central figure was the pastor of Dahlem, Martin Niemöller.37 Niemöller had a proud military past, having served with success as captain 67

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of a German submarine during the First World War. Two military characteristics came in handy in his new role: his dauntlessness and his authoritarian style of leadership. In political terms he had national conservative inclinations, like many of his fellow pastors. In 1920 he headed a parliamentary student organization that had been forced to suppress a left-wing socialist revolt. He had welcomed Hitler’s Machtergreifung and the arrival of the ‘New Germany’, but he started to distance himself from the Nazi regime in the course of 1933 and from its ecclesial variant the ‘German Christians’. Niemöller rounded against the implementation of the ‘Aryan Declaration’ in the Evangelical Church, in spite of the fact that he had exhibited a degree of political antiSemitism in the past on occasion, against secularized Jews who had supported socialism and communism in the Weimar Republic. In January 1934 he became the first (and most important) victim of Gestapo phone tapping ordered by Göring. He was forced to resign his post (only to win it back later after a court case). His capitulation at that moment not only paralysed church opposition, it also created a division within the Pfarrernotbund. In the weeks following the turbulent audience with Hitler, around 1,500 pastors left the covenant. The oppositional strategy intent on peacefully influencing the leadership of the church had failed for the time being. From 1933, German Protestantism was provided with an alternative opposition, likewise intent on a purification of the confession (and thereby a purification of the church) without wishing to make a positive contribution to the process of centralization in a Reichskirche. In the Rhineland, reformed pastors started to assemble around Karl Immer, the incumbent at the church in Barmen-Gemarke in Wuppertal. Together with a number of like-minded pastors, he devised the idea that they could support one another in times of Gleichschaltung or ‘forced coordination’ in a so-called Coetus (union). The core idea behind such a cluster was the (Calvinist) belief in the centrality of the local community in the organization of the church. The Rhinelanders thus rejected the establishment of an Evangelical diocese in Aachen-Cologne – an authoritarian administration – insisting on the maintenance of a synodal church order. Karl Barth, reformed professor of theology at the University of Bonn, emerged into the picture within the framework of this Calvinist opposition. On Reformation Day, 31 October 1933, Barth gave a speech in Berlin in which he explained fidelity to the Reformation as fidelity to a pure faith to which no other categories could be added: ‘culture’, ‘humanity’ or the then topical ‘Volkstum’. He harked back to a historical experience associated with the (Calvinist) Reformation: resistance during the period in France after the repeal of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 when the Huguenots were subject to persecution. The word ‘Résistez’ (Resist!) was scratched at that time on the wall of the ‘Tower of Perseverance’ in Aigues-Mortes, where Marie Durand, a follower of Calvin, was imprisoned for 38 years.38 ‘Fortified by what the Reformation has to say to us at this moment, you must resist. In the name of the true Evangelical Church and against the false Evangelical Church dominated by this movement [of German Christians].’ Resistance, according to Barth, was to take the form of siding with the elected opposition to counter this dominant movement once and for all and joyfully, mirroring the events four hundred years ago. The applause that followed lasted several minutes.39 68

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Of greater importance were the three lectures Barth gave on the content of this resistance for 150 pastors of the Pfarrernotbund. He distinguished four so-called norms of control in the legitimation of ‘Widerstand’ (resistance). The first was related to the ‘Aryan Declaration’, the implementation of which within the Evangelical Church was to be resisted without compromise. The second question focused on the boundaries of church loyalty to the state. Given the freedom of the Gospel and the independence of the Church, resistance could be seen as a necessity. Barth spoke in this regard about justice and injustice in Germany in the summer of 1933, about the concentration camps and about the discrimination against the Jews. Could Germany, and indeed the German Church, justify the profusion of suicides among Jewish citizens in 1933? Was the Church not partly to blame on account of its silence? The two remaining norms concerned the issue of loyalty within the Evangelical Church. The consequence of such loyalty was a return to a pure confession and a free synod that would oppose heresy. According to church historian Klaus Scholder, it is probable that no further meeting of this size and public nature took place in the latter part of 1933 in which participants were free to speak and express their opposition to such a degree.40 3.7 The significance of Karl Barth Karl Barth was born in Basel on 10 May 1886. His father Fritz Barth was a theologian and pastor, his mother Anna Sartorius from a family of theologians and literary historians. Karl studied theology in the Swiss capital and in Germany.41 In 1911 he returned to Switzerland and served as pastor in Safenwil, a congregation in the Aargau. The First World War was a turning point in his life. He was shocked by the fact that his theology professors in Germany – among them Adolf (von) Harnack – could identify themselves in a manifesto with the war politics of Wilhelm II to such a degree. The positive attitude of the (German) social democrats in 1914 was for him akin to ‘the fall’, but this did not prevent him from joining the Social Democratic Party in Switzerland in January 1915. Barth’s theological and social positions were guided by two principles. The first: people should never be allowed to make ‘God’s standpoint their own party standpoint’. God is the wholly Other. This implied the relativization of every (human) distinction between religious and non-religious, between moral and amoral. ‘The difference between the mountain and the valley becomes meaningless when the sun is at its height and fills both with its light.’ His second principle was the conviction that the kingdom of God was not to be understood as a development within the existing kingdom, but as an entirely new potential for life. The revelation acquired through Christ is not the communication of some global formula, the possession of which should satisfy us, but the power of God that sets us in motion, the creation of a new cosmos.42 For Barth, the Church was a human community in which the word of God was preached and heard. Beyond the word of God, there was no further criterium to be preached. The consequence of his reasoning here is that he explicitly distanced himself from those in 1930s Germany who defined race and nation as factors of divine revelation 69

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that the Church should take into account.43 In his radical theology, Barth had thus also taken his leave of a religious socialism championed in Switzerland by his friend Leopold Ragaz. He warned in fact against endeavours to ‘secularise’ Christ, whether by the Nazis and the ‘German Christians’ or by socialism or pacifism or as in the past by the liberalism of the bourgeois elite. ‘The new Jerusalem has not the least to do with the new Switzerland and the revolutionary state of the future; it comes to earth in God’s greater freedom, when the time has arrived.’44 In 1919, Barth collected his theological ideas together in a commentary on Paul’s ‘Letter to the Romans’ (the ‘Römerbrief ’). A second version appeared in 1921 in which he included his discoveries of Kierkegaard and Plato. In the same year, the Swiss pastor was appointed extraordinary professor in reformed theology at the university in Göttingen. In 1922, ‘dialectic theology’ became a popular term of description for his positions. Three years later it was completely integrated into the theological endeavour. People also spoke in those days of a ‘Barth Kreis’ and of ‘Barthianer’. His influence was amplified by the fact that his ideas were particularly well-received outside the traditional world of university theology.45 Up to 1930, Barth – by this time professor of theology at Münster – had concentrated on the development of his own ideas. This changed when he published a pamphlet in the said year in which he criticized the ‘self-satisfaction’ of the German Evangelical Church without mincing his words. In the same year he transferred to the University of Bonn where he was appointed professor of systematic theology. Here he was free to develop and speak out on political matters. In January 1931 he gave a lecture on the ‘affliction of the Evangelical Church’, in which he distinguished between a salutary affliction – ‘the Church is a church under the cross’ – and a sinful affliction in which the Church is ashamed of the Gospel and does not recognize or accept the affliction that is its essence. Under the second category he included the adaptation of the Church to ideas on the principle of leadership and totalitarian order and the link between Christianity and ‘Volkstum’.46 3.8 ‘Theological Existence Today’ On 1 July 1933, Barth published his pamphlet Theologische Existenz heute! (Theological Existence Today), which had to be reprinted three times in the first two weeks.47 Up to the moment that the Bavarian State Police confiscated the remaining copies from the publisher – Chr. Kaiser in Munich – in July 1934, no fewer than 37,000 had been printed. Barth argued that the initiative to establish a new order in the Evangelical Church was a lost cause. Church reform had to be rooted in inner necessity in the life of the Church itself and in obedience to the Word of God. Otherwise it is not church reform. In 1918, the German Evangelical Church had rightly refrained from making a political statement about the victory of the democratic revolution in November of that year. But did not the fact that it did so on this occasion (in 1933) discredit it?48 Barth also criticised the introduction of new bishops in the Evangelical Church, especially the so-called Reich bishop, introduced on the basis of the Führerprinzip or 70

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‘leader principle’. ‘Apparently, the bishop of 1933 was not and is not an innocent titular bishop.’ He resembled the Roman Catholic titular, including his unique spiritual mandate and doctrinal authority; a genuine bishop with a genuine crosier. He mimicked, moreover, a specific political transformation. Authority in the Evangelical Church is an event not an office. Luther and Calvin were leading personalities in their church, but then as pastor or professor in Wittenberg or Genève.49 Barth rejected the ‘Glaubensbewegung der Deutschen Christen’ and said ‘no’ to both the spirit and letter of this teaching. For him, so-called natural theology – his description of the post-Enlightenment entanglement of Church and culture – was the Church’s downfall. The German Christians did not represent a new heresy, therefore, but an old enemy.50 The Church believes in the state as upholder of the legal order among the people. It does not believe, however, in a particular nation state – including the German state – or in a particular form of government – including National Socialism. The community of those who belong to the Church is not defined by blood or race, but by the Holy Spirit and baptism. If the German Evangelical Church were to exclude Jewish Christians or treat them as second-class Christians, then it would cease to be a church.51 Barth’s publication also distanced itself from the Jungreformatoren, who wanted to react in a positive way to the ‘Elevation of the Nation’ – like the German Christians – but preferred to construct a new church order without the involvement of ‘popular religion’. His critique also targeted the domestic ‘Burgfrieden’ they proclaimed, together with the fact that they had said an ‘eager Yes to the new German state’ and were among the most zealous when it came to the office of Reich bishop as a ‘symbolic act of a new ecclesial unity’.52 It goes without saying that Barth’s oppositional activities did not go unnoticed. When he was appointed professor in Münster he had acquired – as a Prussian official – the German nationality. This led in 1934 to a conflict of conscience. After the death of Reichspräsident Hindenburg (2 August 1934), Hitler had taken the office of head of state upon himself. Thereafter, every civil servant was required to swear an oath of fidelity to the Führer. On 7 November 1934, Barth himself was asked to swear this oath as a Prussian civil servant. Barth replied that he could only swear the oath with the addition ‘in so far as I can justify it as an Evangelical Christian’. The condition was not accepted and Barth was suspended from his post. On 20 December 1934, the ‘Dienststrafkammer’ in Cologne decided that Barth had to be dismissed. He appealed the decision. On 1 March 1935 he was informed in the train station in Bonn that he was forbidden to speak in public. During the (second) reformed synod in the Nicolaikirche in Leipzig he preached a sermon on the prohibition against images (idolatry) – a topical theme in light of the new ideology – but this was to be his last public appearance in Germany. The administrative tribunal in Berlin determined on 14 June 1935 that the decision of the court in Cologne had been wrong and that he was to be fined – a fifth of his annual salary – for refusing the ‘Nazi salute’ and for critical statements he had made in October 1933. On 22 June 1935, however, the Prussian Minister of Education dismissed him from his post on the basis of the new civil service regulations. Immediately thereafter he received news of an offer of a post as professor in 71

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Basel. A return to his native Switzerland required Barth to participate in the Swiss national defence, but he appears to have been prepared to accept the obligation. 3.9 The Synod of Barmen The most important legacy Barth left to his host nation Germany was his theological contribution to the establishment of a Confessional Church. On 22 December 1933, the pastors who had earlier formed a Coetus came together in Barmen (Wuppertal) intent on organizing a free synod rooted in a Calvinist awareness of church. After the Christmas period was over, 320 pastors and elders from 167 Reformed congregations and from the United Prussian Church assembled in Wuppertal. Karl Barth had been invited to present seventeen theses for approval and this took place on 5 January 1934 without emendation. The Synod’s concluding Declaration emphasized the unity of the Church of Jesus Christ regardless of times, races, peoples, states and cultures, thereby implicitly rejecting the discrimination of Jewish pastors. The statement went on to underline freedom of confession and reject every form of totalitarianism. In language typical of Barth, he stated the people should be free ‘to walk around in the so necessary “space of the church” with a determined face, but certainly not with a bitter face. The church was present wherever people believed: “credo in unam sanctam catholicam et apostolicam ecclesiam”, and that was reason enough to be cheerful.’53 Barth had articulated the theses in such a way that Lutherans would not be offended. He was also particularly determined to have the Lutheran majority in the German Evangelical Church support the Declaration. On the initiative of the Calvinists, a new synod was organized at which the Lutherans were willing and able to participate. This ‘Bekenntnissynode der Deutschen Evangelischen Kirche’ opened on 29 May 1934 with a service in the reformed church in Barmen-Gemarke. Participants were free to speak and make decisions since Himmler had been informed by his officials that the church assembly was not to be disturbed under any circumstances. They expected a theological conflict to evolve between the participants and were convinced that police intervention would then be able to enforce unity.54 One hundred and thirty-eight representatives from 18 Landeskirchen took part in the Synod: 83 pastors and 55 lay people. Stephanie von Mackensen, a member of the Council of Elders in Pomerania, was the only woman present. The average age was 45. Over 200 additional guests attended the meetings. Karl Barth was invited as auditor. He had prepared a concept together with the aforementioned Pastor Hans Asmussen from Altona and Pastor Thomas Breit. During the lunch break, the two Lutheran pastors decided to take a nap and it is said that Barth put together the six theses with the help of some strong coffee and a couple of Brazilian cigars. Barth’s renowned statement: ‘While the Lutheran Church slept, the Reformed Church stood guard’ is said to have been based on this meeting.55 After an evening of discussion, the topic was ready for presentation to the Synod on 30 May. Pastor Hans Asmussen read it aloud in what was to become for many auditors 72

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an hour of breath-holding tension.56 One of the participants suggested afterwards that there should be no discussion, but the Lutheran representatives insisted, arguing that it gave authenticity to the Synod. The theologians present had their objections, but the lay participants urged them not to make an issue of it. A small commission was established to prepare the definitive draft in the evening of 30 May. One Lutheran theologian – Herman Sasse – left the meeting, convinced that a synodal statement on true and false doctrine would only be the result of a separate Lutheran and Reform synod. For Sasse, an avowed opponent of the Third Reich, theological issues were clearly more important than political ones. For the majority of the Synod participants – and the outside world – the opposite was the case. The theses were cast in a ‘Theological Declaration Concerning the Present Situation of the German Evangelical Church’.57 The Synod did not envisage a schism; it aligned itself in so many words with the foundations of the Church and made explicit reference to Article  1 (Gospel and reformational confession) and Article  2 (division into Landeskirchen) of the Church ‘constitution’ that had also been approved by the Nazi government. The confession consisted of six propositions or theses, each of which opened with a quotation from the New Testament and was followed by a word of clarification, a paragraph beginning with the sentence ‘We reject the false doctrine’, and an explanation. The repetitive cadence underscored the dramatic effect. The tenor of the collected theses was the need to preach the Word of God in the gospel with purity. The ‘false doctrine’ was the result of the idea that the Church was at liberty to proclaim other truths, serve or recognize another ‘Führer’ with special powers, appropriate other political tasks or use the Word of the Lord for political goals chosen by one’s own authority. In addition to the ‘Theological Declaration’, the Synod also drafted a canonical document, which stated that the bishops of the Reichskirche no longer had the right to claim the title of legitimate church leadership. The Synod of Barmen did not want to present itself as an alternative to a National Synod. For the time being, however, it gave form to the mutual solidarity it had experienced by appointing a twelve-member Reichsbruderrat. In October 1934, a second Bekenntnissynode was organized in the church of Pastor Niemöller in Dahlem at which a ‘Notkirchenregiment’ or ‘emergency church law’ was established. With respect to church councils in the German Evangelical Church that were dominated by German Christians, the Synod decided to set up a parallel administrative structure, the so-called Fraternal Council, which was to be structured on a regional basis and held together under the aforementioned Reichsbruderrat. At the same time a Provisional Church Council was set up as a counterpart to the Reich bishop.58 Contradictions within the German Evangelical Church thus took on institutional form in 1934. The Reich bishop had been confirmed in his office, but he had not been able to confirm his personal authority throughout the Church and without protest. The majority of the bishops of the various Landeskirchen belonged to the ‘German Christian’ movement that had been broadly victorious in the ecclesial elections of 1933. They differed in the extent to which they subscribed to the National Socialist ideology, but their political religion unified them: the rise of National Socialism and of Hitler as Führer was interpreted in terms borrowed from the Christian theology of redemption. 73

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The Bekennende Kirche was its opposite in every respect, a shared project of pure confession, stripped of the content and rhetoric of political religion. Lutherans, reformed Protestants and members of the Prussian United Church found common ground in the endeavour to maintain their distance from the totalitarian state. While the Gleichschaltung of the Landeskirchen continued, the Bekennende Kirche tried to offer an administrative counterbalance. 3.10 Reichsminister of church affairs Two years of debate and conflict within the German Evangelical Church had resulted in the opposite of the intended centralization. Three Lutheran Landeskirchen had remained ‘intact’: Hannover, Württemberg and Bavaria. In addition there were the so-called ‘ruined’ churches in which German Christians had administrative authority but had to share space with the Fraternal Councils of the Bekennende Kirche, which also exercised important administrative functions. Contradictions were most apparent in the United Prussian Church, the largest in Protestant Germany. In a few Landeskirchen, moreover, the German Christians were in complete control. Unanimity and mutual harmony were constantly put to the test, with differences of opinion between pastors serving the German Christians and between officials of the Bekennende Kirche. As a result, there was little evidence of unity within German Protestantism in the years preceding the war and certainly not during the war itself.59 A new phase in the centralization of German Protestantism was heralded by the establishment of the Reich Ministry for Church Affairs in July 1935. After the failure of the Reich bishop, the Nazi state set its sights on bringing the Evangelical Church and the Catholic Church closer together. The ministry was an ad hoc construction with moderate administrative influence. This meant that it did not have much in the way of authority vis-à-vis the other governmental departments or ‘Reich giants’ such as Himmler or Rosenberg. It quickly became the ‘wailing wall’ for aggrieved parties in church circles who turned from then on to Hitler himself.60 Hanns Kerrl – National Socialist and German Christian sympathizer – was appointed Minister of Church Affairs. His affinity with the German Christians became apparent, for example, from his 1936 Christmas address during which he spoke of the feast of Christmas as a feast of the German national community. The narrative of the man (Hitler) who had stood up and given direction and stability to the lives of Germans was central to the feast: ‘because he had returned us to the divine order’.61 Kerrl’s tone was initially conciliatory. A law dealing with state recognition of the German Evangelical Church and with its financial competence was announced on 24 September 1935. With this document in hand, the new minister set up a Church Committee (Kirchenausschuß) at the beginning of October 1935 that was charged with making the administrative unity of the German Evangelical Church official. Its chairman was Wilhelm Zöllner, 75 years of age and former Generalsuperintendent in Westphalia, a post from which he had retired in 1931. A theologian, Zöllner was widely respected and trusted within German Protestantism. He was not favourably disposed to the German 74

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Christians, but he was also not beyond compromise in their regard. He considered the Bekennende Kirche as an important movement without sharing its organizational ambitions.62 The community Zöllner was expected to unify was complex to say the least. A Lutheran renaissance was visible and important therein, an aspiration among prominent Lutherans to regain the initiative within Germany’s largest Protestant movement. In October 1935, Bishop Marahrens (Hannover) was elected chairman of the Lutheran World Federation and Hanns Lilje became its secretary-general. Both appointments could be interpreted as evidence of renewed international trust in the Lutheran Church leaders and in the German Evangelical Church. The appointment of Bishop Marahrens was also a step towards the achievement of his domestic ambition, namely to establish a ‘Lutheran Church of the German nation’. The bishop was supported in this by those ‘Fraternal Councils’ of the Lutheran congregations within the Bekennende Kirche, who considered the link with reformed Protestants as a problem; the latter were sometimes seen as ‘wolves in sheep’s clothing’. Minister Kerrl’s tactics also changed in the meantime. To avoid being accused of laxity, he introduced a policy of subjection that could even compete with the repressive activities of the Gestapo.63 Opponents in the theological faculties were called to order or dismissed. The colleges in which the Bekennende Kirche organized its own training programmes were closed. The various Landeskirchen were provided with a so-called Landeskirchenausschuß, a committee modelled on Kerrl’s new ‘Reich Church Committee’. As an authoritarian National Socialist, Kerrl rounded against ‘democratic stalling tactics’ within the Church. His goal was to have his committees recognized as the only legitimate administrative instance in the Church.64 The Fraternal Councils of the Bekennende Kirche were also expected to bow to this new administrative system. They were not abolished, but they were robbed of their authority to interfere in the administration of the German Evangelical Church. The Bekennende Kirche was thus confronted with growing state interference and this created problems. It had not set itself up as a Free Church independent of the state, but saw itself rather as the legitimate core and representation of the German Evangelical Church and expected to be recognized as such. Its members needed the state to be able to liberate themselves and their Church from the state. Even the most determined representatives of the Bekennende Kirche were unable to resolve this dilemma in the years that followed 1935.65 In June 1935, the Bekennende Kirche came together in Augsburg for its third Synod. The date of the meeting had been postponed several times because the unified statement that had emerged from Barmen had, in the meantime, encountered opposition and objections. Karl Barth was not invited, in a move that could have been interpreted as a distantiation from the theologian who was responsible more than any other for the foundation of the Bekennende Kirche.66 During the fourth Bekenntnisssynode in Bad Oeynhausen in February 1936, the question was raised as to whether the members and the Fraternal Council of the church were at liberty to cooperate with the Church Committees set up by Reich Minister Kerrl. Serious differences of opinion emerged 75

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during the discussions. After lengthy debate, the Synod’s resolution did not contain a stipulation warranting such cooperation. The members who wished to cooperate with Kerrl’s committees were invited nevertheless to examine their own conscience on the issue and ask themselves if it could be reconciled with the theological principles of the Bekennende Kirche. What had succeeded in 1934 – a union, in spite of differences on church order, of Lutherans, reformed Protestants and members of the United Prussian Church – was breached in 1936. The Reichsbruderrat – Reich Fraternal Council – was reconstituted but the purely Lutheran churches were no longer represented. A second Provisional Church Leadership was established, an exclusively synodal administrative organ in which the Bekennende Kirche of Prussia had the final word. An example of the evolving internal disunity was the letter written in January 1937 by Gerhard Jacobi, pastor and chairman of the Prussian Fraternal Council, to bishops Meiser, Marahrens and Wurm. He accused the three of having broken de facto with the declaration of Barmen and of increasingly favouring the Reichskirchenausschuß. Bishop Meiser and Bishop Wurm refused to take receipt of the letter and severed communications. Bishop Wurm, who was quickly to become the most authoritative church leader among the Lutherans, was guided in his attitude towards people and state by a patriotic religious awareness. He was a genuine Lutheran, saw the state as a God-given structure, and respected the organs of the Nazi regime as its government. This did not mean, however, that he was prepared to approve of public injustice. He considered part of the responsibility of his office to admonish the government, warn it against ignoring divine laws, and steering it back to the right path. But if this meant that he would find himself in conflict with the state he preferred the way of suffering. He appears to have considered active political resistance unjustified.67 In 1936, the Bekennende Kirche addressed a so-called Denkschrift (memorandum) to Hitler in which it expressed critique concerning the ‘Entchristlichung’ of the people, the de-confessionalization and devaluation of Christian education and social organizations, the inflated wording of oaths, the concentration camps, and the activities of the Gestapo, which were an insult to the constitutional state. ‘The new world view imposes an antiSemitism on the people that obliges them to hate the Jews, a reality parents must counter in raising their children.’68 Hitler did not respond. The memorandum was not a public document, but the newspapers in London and Basel managed to publish it nonetheless. This resulted in the Lutheran Council openly distancing itself from the memorandum and to the arrest and imprisonment in Sachsenhausen concentration camp of the three individuals who had drafted it, among them the theologian Ernst Tillich. The Movement of German Christians was also faced with internal division, occasioned still by the ‘Sportpalastskandal’, a manifestation in Berlin on 13 November 1933 that some considered too similar to the celebrations of the National Socialists. A number of bishops and Landeskirchen had opted to follow an independent path. Christian Kinder, the bishop in Kiel, had succeeded the dismissed Bishop Hossenfelder in the ‘Reichsleitung’ of the German Christians. He toned down his predecessor’s radicalism and kept a low profile in theological matters and in church politics. 76

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Reich Minister Kerrl’s insistence on endorsement and participation in the regional church committees had led in the meantime to the departure of the radical German Christians from the centre ground. On 26 October 1936, the ‘German Christian’ churches of Anhalt, Bremen, Lübeck, Mecklenburg and Thüringen – and other congregations of German Christians – announced their plan to form a Bund für Deutsches Christentum on the Wartburg, Luther’s castle in Eisenach, in an endeavour to establish the Nationalkirche in concreto. Zöllner and his committee lost their way completely and Hitler refused to receive him. His efforts to achieve conciliation, moreover, were hampered by what he saw as increasing anti-Christian propaganda within the Nazi regime. The immediate occasion of the failure of his committee was a conflict with the Landeskirche in Lübeck at the beginning of 1937 in which nine pastors of the Bekennende Kirche had been dismissed without reduced pay. The hand of Lübeck’s German Christian bishop Erwin Balzer was evident in the dismissal and Zöllner wanted to travel to Lübeck and conciliate. The mayor advised him against the journey and Minister Kerrl even forbad it, but Zöllner insisted. On 5 February he awoke in the early morning to find a Gestapo official at his hotel bed who informed him that he was not permitted to stay in Lübeck. This was the beginning of a dismissal procedure for Zöllner and for his Church Committee. The travel ban was for him the deciding argument behind his letter of resignation.69 3.11 Repression and war The response of the National Socialist regime was in the first instance one of increased repression. On 13 February 1937, Minister Kerrl announced that the church was to be purified of ‘subjects’ who had turned against the state. The law governing state officials was also binding on the church’s office holders. Dozens of pastors of the Bekennende Kirche were arrested and Jews were no longer allowed to function as clergy. Superintendent Dibelius responded to the announcement, observing that the veils that had shrouded reality thus far had been torn and that the contradictions were now clear.70 Moreover, thanks to contacts with the British churches that had become involved within the framework of the ecumenical movement, a successful effort was made to allow Jewish pastors and Jewish church officials to emigrate from Germany to Great Britain where they were welcomed both inside and outside the churches. Dibelius was arrested in August 1937. He had written an open letter – and had it distributed in pamphlet form – in which he stated, among other things, that Jesus Christ was a descendant of the house of David, and in which he declared that the Letters of Paul were an undeniable part of the New Testament, even if their author was a Jew. ‘If the State wants to be a church and appropriate power over the souls of the people and over the preaching of the Church, then we are bound according to the word of Luther to resist.’71 Dibelius was forced to appear before a court in Berlin-Moabit, but he was acquitted on 6 August 1937. Minister Kerrl, who had called for the arrest, had suffered defeat. On 2 July 1937, the Fraternal Council of the Prussian Church announced that Pastor Niemöller had been arrested. He was accused of launching into ‘Hetzreden’ or ‘diatribes’ 77

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during religious services and of criticizing leading state and movement personalities. The case against him came to court in March 1938 and he was sentenced to seven months in prison and a fine of 2,000 Reichsmarks. Since he had been remanded in custody for longer than his sentence he could have been set free at this juncture. But instead Niemöller was transferred to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. On 2 June 1939, the Evangelical Consistory of the Mark Brandenburg sent him into retirement and thereby excluded him from further preaching activities. His family was obliged to leave the rectory in Dahlem. In April 1938 – under the influence of the enthusiasm initiated by the Anschluß – it was decided that active pastors had to take an oath of fidelity to the Führer. The initial reaction within the Bekennende Kirche was one of refusal. In the second instance, however, it appeared that a large majority of its pastors were prepared to take the oath if conditions formulated by the Prussian Bekenntnissynode in June of the same year were met. At the end of July, a second Synod gave the remaining pastors the freedom to take the oath. A small minority continued to refuse. In the middle of August, Martin Bormann, head of the NSDAP chancellery, wrote that the oath was a matter for the churches and that its significance was an inner-church affair. Neither the state nor the party were allowed to distinguish between clergy who had taken the oath and clergy who had not.72 On 4 April 1939, the German Evangelical Church issued the Godesberg Declaration, which stated that National Socialism was a continuation of the work of Martin Luther in terms of Weltanschauung and politics, whereby a genuine understanding of the Christian faith had been acquired once more. Christianity was an unbridgeable opposition to Judaism. ‘The Roman Catholic and global Protestant state transcending and international understanding of church is a political perversion of Christianity. Pure Christian faith only develops productively within the given order of creation.’73 The threat of war in 1938 and the fact of war in 1939 removed the priority of establishing a central church order from the agenda. The engagement of the conflicting parties was paralysed by national and international tensions. Even the consistories that were dominated by German Christians did their best to establish peace on the ecclesial front. From this point onwards, the German Christians were no longer given preferential treatment by the state. With a European war on the horizon, a renewed effort was made to establish internal peace. On 29 August 1939, Friedrich Werner, the state-appointed leader of the chancellery of the German Evangelical Church, convened the Conference of Church Leaders (Kirchenführer). The meeting proposed the establishment of a so-called Geistliche Vertrauensrat, which, together with the chancellor (a state official), would be able to meet ‘the Church’s obligations towards Führer, People and State’. The Council consisted of August Marahrens, the ever present Bishop of Hannover, Walther Schultz, Bishop of Schwerin (and associated with the German Christians), and Johannes Hymmen, ‘Oberkonsistorialrat’ in Berlin and the Prussian representative. The Geistliche Vertrauensrat was received by Reich Minister Kerrl. Thereby assured of political recognition, the Council was able to set about its task.74 78

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A few days later, the Wehrmacht invaded Poland. In the midst of war, an ecclesial call for national solidarity could count on approval. The Geistliche Vertrauensrat issued a message to the congregations stating that ‘our German nation’ is called to take arms in support of the land of its fathers and for its freedom and honour. The members of the German Evangelical Church experienced a sense of solidarity with one another in a prayer of intercession for nation and fatherland, for the Führer and for the entire Wehrmacht. ‘As Evangelical Christians, let us walk the path of obedience set out for us with courage and calm.’75 A year later, on 28 October 1940, the same Geistliche Vertrauensrat of the German Evangelical Church together with Friedrich Werner, the ‘leader’ of the church chancellery, turned to Hitler to assure him of the Church’s support in the war effort. Appeals were quoted making it apparent that German Protestantism was prepared to make sacrifices without condition and to reinforce the German nation soul’s power of resistance. Of the 16,903 tenured pastors and ordained assistants, 5,313 had been called to arms (32 per cent). Of this number 148 served as chaplains and the rest as soldiers in the field.76 The war had brought about an armistice within the church.

4 Rome, German Catholicism and the ‘Reich’ 4.1 Confrontation with fascism Where the emphasis must be placed on national developments in the history of German Protestantism during the Interbellum, Catholicism, although rooted in German history, maintained its international character. The German Evangelical Church may have been open to the influence of the nascent ecumenical World Council, but its own choices were not dictated thereby. According to Catholic canon law, the church’s bishops were independent heads of their own dioceses, but papal authority overshadowed them, influenced their policies and often determined them. The said authority became particularly dynamic after the dogmatic declaration of papal infallibility during the First Vatican Council in 1870. On 24 January 1922, Cardinal Achille Ratti, Archbishop of Milan for only six months, travelled to Rome to participate in the conclave that was to elect a successor to the deceased Pope Benedict XV. On 6 February 1922 – after the 14th vote – he himself was elected pope and took the name Pius XI . His appearance on the loggia of Saint Peter’s Basilica to bless the assembled masses was an exceptional gesture and a break with the recent past. After Italian forces invaded the Church State in 1870, its supreme pastors had consistently ensconced themselves inside the Vatican and delivered the traditional Urbi et Orbi blessing from an inner courtyard. Pius XI ’s open gesture was seen in hindsight as a sign of imminent reconciliation with laicized Italy. The concretization thereof was to be the most important event in the first half of the new pontificate. The legacy of the First World War – the collective experience of solidarity in the trenches and elsewhere – was still very much alive at this juncture.77 This awareness of 79

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solidarity had made it possible for Catholics (as outlined in Chapter 1) to participate in the fundamentally liberal and anti-clerical Italian state. Established in December 1918, the Partito Populare was a People’s Party with Christian Democratic inclinations led by the Sicilian priest Luigi Sturzo. In November 1919, the papal Non expedit was repealed, thus allowing Catholics to participate openly in the elections being organized in the same month. The People’s Party won 20 per cent of the vote and entered a governing coalition with the liberals. It would appear, however, that democracy in Italy was unable to withstand the political and economic crisis that resulted from the war. In October 1922, Benito Mussolini and his Blackshirts set out on a march towards Rome in a political takeover that was concluded with success. King Victor Emmanuel III appointed him Prime Minister in a government coalition. From this position he was able to ensure a fascist majority in parliament and transform Italy into a police state. In the series of violent actions that followed neither church officials nor church institutions were spared. In the past Mussolini had called for seizing the property of religious congregations and ending state subsidies for the Church. In a November 1919 article in his own newspaper Il Popolo d’Italia, he had invited the Pope to leave Rome, and a month later he expressed his hatred for all forms of Christianity.78 In his political determination to establish a totalitarian state, Mussolini also found himself face to face with a Catholic fortress. He thus decided to pursue a gradual policy of rapprochement towards the Church, although he consciously gave free reign to his violent Blackshirts on occasion. ‘Mussolini cast himself as the only person able to control these overzealous Fascists. At the same time, he showered the Church with cash and privileges.’79 A settlement on the ‘Roman Question’ – the conflict between the Pope and the united Italy on the sovereignty of the Holy See – might serve as a binding agent. ‘Never under any illusions that Mussolini personally embraced Catholic values or cared for anything other than his own aggrandizement’, Pius XI proved to be willing to consider a pragmatic deal if he could be convinced that Mussolini would deliver on his promises.80 In 1923, Mussolini had his wife Rachele and their three children – Edda and two sons, Vittorio and Bruno – baptized. Rachele, more principled in her anti-clerical faith than her husband, went only reluctantly.81 Four years later, he himself was baptized. In 1926, he tried to moderate the influence of the laicist wing of his movement in favour of those who considered a reconciliation between fascism and the Church to be within the realms of possibility. Secret discussions were held with the Vatican on Mussolini’s initiative. An external setback followed in 1926. In an address to the cardinals on 20 December of that year, Pius XI condemned Action Française, an extreme right-wing movement in France akin to fascism. The movement was established in 1899 at the height of the juridical and political conflict surrounding the Jewish military officer Alfred Dreyfus. In the Third Republic, Action Française became a reservoir for royalists, nationalists and anti-Semites. Its ideological leader was Charles Maurras, an intellectual with a classical education and an anarchist who had evolved into a right-wing nationalist and from a Catholic to an agnostic. But his movement had attracted Catholic followers who wanted to distance themselves from the laicist Republic and its separation of Church and state (1905). 80

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The attraction of Action Française became even greater during the First World War. The conflict was experienced as a confrontation between two civilizations: Latin and Catholic on one hand, and Germanic and Protestant on the other. It is otherwise difficult to explain why Charles Maurras and his Action Française exercised such an influence in the post-war years on the intellectual vanguard in France as well as French-speaking Belgium and Switzerland.82 Why Pius XI banned Action Française in 1926 is a much debated question. He was well disposed to a (second) ralliement or rallying of Catholics in support of the French Republic, but he would certainly not have approved of its laicist ideas. In 1925 and 1926 he canonized almost 200 priests and religious people who had lost their lives to the guillotine during the French Revolution. It is thus suggested that Maurras’ integral nationalism and its resonance among Catholics during the First World War led him to implement the said ban. The Church had a duty to reject the glorification of the state and considered it to be ‘state idolatry’. It goes without saying that the Pope’s words also resonated in Italy. According to Emilio Gentile, for Pius XI , the phenomenon of sacralization of politics had become alarming, as it manifested itself in fascist religiosity, with the divinization of the nation and the state, and with the cult of the leader, the duce.83 Mussolini understood the ban as an indirect personal warning. The Pope had opted for ‘the poison rather than the remedy that he [Mussolini] had offered him’.84 The ecclesial ban on Action Française was not welcomed by all the bishops of France. As a result, the Vatican’s appointment policy focused on a political renewal of the episcopate in the years following 1926. Pius XI, moreover, invited the philosopher Jacques Maritain to explain the ‘meaning of the condemnation’ of Maurras and thanked him after the publication of his brochure on the issue. At the beginning of 1927, Maritain – himself more a supporter of the movement – published an article on ‘Pius XI and Christ the King’, in which he outlined the Pope’s ‘grand vision’ of a spiritual revival of Christianity without preference for particular regimes or political systems, but recognizing the variety of races and cultures.85 Negotiations in Italy on a solution for the ‘Roman Question’ had been ongoing since 1926. On 11 February 1929, almost three years later, Mussolini and Cardinal Pietro Gasparri, the Vatican Secretary of State, signed three agreements – with a golden pen. The first, the so-called Lateran Treaty, recognized the sovereignty of the Vatican City and outlined its sovereign territory. A concordat was added to this political document in which the Catholic faith was specified as Italy’s official religion and the statutory rights of the Catholic Church were defined. One of the stipulations – that was to be a source of conflict in the fascist race law of 1938 – stated that Catholic marriages were on a par with civil marriages. The right to exist of Catholic Action and Catholic schools was officially recognized. The third agreement was related to the financial indemnification of the Vatican for loss of property. The Vatican had to pay a price for the recognition of its sovereignty. Article 24 obliged the Holy See to neutrality in international affairs and reserve when it came to alliances, especially when they might be aligned against Italy. The Pope was permitted to act as arbiter in international conflicts when both parties requested it. The concordat stipulated 81

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that Catholic Action could only function in fascist Italy without attachment to a political party and independent of episcopal control. In the renowned Article  43, this church concession was followed by a ban on priests and religious ‘registering with or participating in any political party whatsoever’. This was not open to misinterpretation: the Vatican distanced itself from Christian democracy. The acceptance of this stipulation turned out to be less problematic than it appeared. The Italian version of Catholic Action had been a religious organization from the outset, without political views or objectives. It avoided contact with the Partito Populare. In Catholic circles, moreover, but also in the Vatican, there was a degree of dissatisfaction concerning the Christian democratic course followed by the Populari during the first years of fascist rule. While Don Sturzo recognized the fact that Mussolini had managed to temper the supporters of anti-clericalism in his movement, he wished to maintain the autonomy of his party and a freedom to express critique. Sturzo was applauded for this at the party congress in Turin in 1923. Conservative Catholics who supported rapprochement towards Mussolini resigned from the party for this reason and established their own Unione nazionale. The situation was put to the test in 1923. The Italian parliament had to vote on an electoral law that would give Mussolini and his fascists a strong majority in the (probable) case of an electoral victory. Conservative Catholics supported the law and found a willing ear in the Vatican. In October 1923, Pius XI ordered Sturzo – a priest – to resign as party secretary. As a result, the faction’s vote was divided and this appeared to help the fascists achieve the majority they sought. ‘Clerico-Fascists’ – as Don Sturzo called them – acquired prominent places on electoral lists and helped Mussolini to achieve the expected victory. Under Sturzo’s successor, Alcide de Gasperi, the Populari’s results were unexpectedly favourable (9 per cent of the votes). Six months later, Italy came face to face with a political crisis occasioned by the fascistattempted murder of Giacomo Matteotti, a socialist member of parliament. The Partito Populare withdrew from the parliament together with other democratic parties and prepared a new coalition together with the socialists in what was called the ‘Aventine Secession’. King Victor Emmanuel III rejected their proposal, however, and the Pope wrote to the Italian bishops that they should warn their priests to stay out of party politics. ‘The intervention of Pius XI did not destroy the Partito Populare, whose doom was already sealed by the consolidation of Fascist power, but it certainly gave it the coup de grâce.’86 The party was disbanded in November 1926 and with it the Catholic union movement and various Catholic agragrian organizations disappeared from the scene. The clearest sign of the special place of the Catholic Church in the Italian State was Mussolini’s decision to abolish the 20 September holiday, which had commemorated the capture of papal Rome by Italian Bersaglieri in 1870. But the first groups in Italian society to feel the positive effects of the Lateran Treaty were not the Catholics, but the Protestants and Jews. Mussolini introduced two pieces of legislation to protect and regulate the position of the religious minorities in Italy. This legislation was ‘a pragmatic move to assert the State’s independence of the Catholic Church’ and to enforce fascist totalitarianism on all religious entities.87 82

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A couple of years after treaties and concordat were ratified, Mussolini had a broad street constructed through an old Roman neighbourhood leading from the Tiber to Saint Peter’s Square; he called it Via della Conciliazione, Conciliation Street. The plans dated from 1931, but at that moment in time, the said Conciliazione appeared to be in danger. Fascist Italy was alarmed at opposition stemming from the Vatican, particularly in relation to the 40th anniversary of Pope Leo XIII ’s encyclical Rerum Novarum (1891), upon which Christian democrats based their political programme. The leadership of Catholic Action had used the anniversary to plan ambitious demonstrations. In response to the global economic crisis, the encyclical Quadragesimo Anno (‘in the fortieth year’) praised the corporative model, but rejected a state monopoly of power in social matters. The social organizations based on Catholic principles borrowed their ideology from the papal encyclicals and the philosophy of neo-Thomism, which flourished more than ever in the Interbellum period. The encyclical Quadragesimo Anno deserves particular mention in this regard. The Pope used it to outline corporatism ‘as a middle way between the class warfare of communism and the “state-God” of fascism which also bypassed the atomic individualism of liberal democracy’.88 Its themes were discussed during the socalled semaines sociales (social weeks), a form of reflection on and concretization of social goals viewed from a Catholic perspective. The Pope’s statement on corporatism was to serve as a support for Catholic politicians like Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, who introduced an authoritarian regime in Portugal in 1933 – the Estado Novo – following the corporative model. A coup d’état followed in Austria in 1934 led by the Catholic politician Engelbert Dolfuß, who likewise introduced an authoritarian regime in a so-called Ständestaat or Corporate State. In Italy, however, the Pope’s opposition to the deification of the state was a source of displeasure among fascist politicians and the media. They organized a campaign against the Catholic youth movement and against the ‘Sezioni Professionali’, the professional factions within Catholic Action. Pius XI responded in July 1931 with an encyclical in Italian – Non abbiamo besogno – in which the condemnation of a ‘pagan deification of the state’ was the primary theme. The encyclical declared this fascist principle to be irreconcilable with Catholic doctrine.89 Commotion within the Church and on the international horizon forced Mussolini to back down. Talks between himself and Jesuit Pietro Tacchi Venturi – the unofficial liaison between the Vatican and Italy’s most senior political leader – led to the so-called ‘September Agreements’ in 1931. Catholic Action’s right to exist was reconfirmed, although its strictly religious character was to be given greater emphasis than had hitherto been the case, and Populari, the executives of the (former) People’s Party were mistrusted more than ever before. On 11 February 1932 – the Vatican’s feast day – Mussolini paid a state visit to the Vatican and the Pope. A ‘mutual understanding’ followed. In 1938, on Sunday morning, 9 January, two thousand priests and sixty bishops marched in solemn procession through Rome’s streets. The bishops deposited their laurel wreaths at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier (and of the heroes of the Fascist Revolution). The procession then re-formed for 83

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the short march into Palazzo Venezia, passing by the balcony outside Mussolini’s office, where a beaming Duce responded to their Fascist salutes.90 Francis D’Arcy Osborne, the British envoy to the Holy See, reported on this spectacular church demonstration. Archbishop Nogara of Udine made a fulsome speech and Mussolini reaffirmed solidarity with the Church. Osborne wrote to London of Mussolini’s ‘nailing the Catholic flag to the Fascist flagstaff ’.91 4.2 Rome and Moscow On 19 March 1937 Pope Pius XI published his opposition to and condemnation of communism in the encyclical Divini Redemptoris. The year and the day in question have both ecclesial and global significance. The day the encyclical was published was the feast of Saint Joseph, presented in the papal document as a worker and as a protector of the Church. The encyclical appeared at a time when the Soviet Union was advising communist parties to cooperate with social democrats and other progressive factions. A concrete result thereof was the Popular Front government in France in 1936. The encyclical itself made reference to church persecution in Russia, Mexico and Spain, the latter torn by civil war. Hundreds of church officials had lost their lives in such persecutions together with ‘hosts’ of lay people on account of their faith. The tone of the encyclical was thus uncompromising. Communism is ‘a system full of errors and sophisms. It is in opposition both to reason and Divine Revelation. It subverts the social order because it means the destruction of its foundations.’92 From the Catholic perspective, compromise was impossible. Nevertheless, Pius XI encouraged his bishops to promote Catholic social politics of the type proposed in Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo Anno, thereby offering a counterweight to the communist ideals of equality and fraternity among the workers. Divini Redemptoris initially contained a passage about the Jews, accusing them of being communism’s agitators (‘fauteurs’), but the text was scrapped from the initial draft by one of the authors, the Jesuit Gustave Desbuquois.93 The papal document was (further) evidence of the ideological gulf that separated the Catholic Church and communism. During the Interbellum, however, the said gulf was not always sufficiently wide that it made contacts with the Soviet government impossible. There were two ‘mitigating circumstances’: the Holy See’s consciously neutral concordat policy during and after the First World War, and the Vatican’s desire to see an improvement in relations with the secular state that had emerged from the revolution against the (Orthodox) Tsar. The pursuance of concordats was a centuries-old practice. The question was if the possibility existed to establish an international agreement between the Holy See and a national government in which the rights (and obligations) of the Catholic Church in a given country were defined and established. In the period that followed the First World War, in which a number of new nations came into existence in Europe, the desire to establish such concordats was more intense than had hitherto been the case. Vetoed by the Italian government, the Holy See had been excluded from the peace conference in 84

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Paris in 1919 and the resulting League of Nations. This also gave urgency and priority to the need to establish bilateral agreements. Between 1922 and 1958, covering the papacies of Pius XI and Pius XII , thirteen concordats and twenty-six agreements were signed and ratified by the Roman Curia.94 The Vatican position led to a situation in which the February Revolution in Russia in 1917 and the fall of the Tsar were not only interpreted as the (unfortunate) end of the monarchy, but also as an opening towards other religions in a state that had hitherto been a bulwark of Orthodoxy on account of the Tsars. The Bolshevik October Revolution did not change this perspective in any significant way. Initially, moreover, it appeared that the revolution would likely be undone in the civil war that followed it. As a result, there was no immediate official condemnation of the October Revolution and its consequences.95 Pius XI had always maintained the neutrality of the Vatican with respect to the political options of the secular states as a matter of principle. According to one of the popes, this even made it possible for the Vatican to establish a concordat with the Devil. At the beginning of 1922, a Vatican prelate by the name of Giuseppe Pizzardo met in Rome with Vaclav Voronski, a Soviet diplomat and leader of a trade mission in Italy. The goal was the provision of humanitarian assistance to the Soviet population, which was suffering from famine.96 Contacts were also sought during the international economic conference in Genoa (1922) and later – as a result of the Treaty of Rapallo (1922) that normalized relations between Germany and the Soviet Union. Meetings were arranged in Berlin. In the first instance, nuncio Eugenio Pacelli engaged in secret conversations in February 1925 with Nikolaj Krestinski, the Soviet Union’s envoy to Germany. He later met with Georgy Chicherin, the People’s Commissioner of Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union, who was visiting Germany for health reasons. Two conversations between Chicherin and the nuncio have been recorded, one in September 1925 and another in June 1927.97 In the last analysis, however, the said conversations were unproductive. The Soviet dialogue partners insisted that the Holy See should recognize the Soviet Union and that the Catholic Church should accept the Soviet model of religious organizations. The chairmen of such organizations – namely the pastors and bishops – had to be elected by the members (parishioners). The Vatican was unable to accede to this demand.98 After the death of Lenin in 1924, the Soviet Union fell by degrees under the control of Stalinism. For the Vatican, the persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church in the 1930s was proof of irreconcilability between the authorities in Moscow and Christianity. Personal experiences from the period after the First World War further reinforced this vision. Achille Ratti and Eugenio Pacelli had both observed the advance of the Bolsheviks with their own eyes and each formed his own initial impressions, the former in Poland, the latter in Bavaria. In August 1920 the Red Army was standing at the gates of Warsaw. Ratti was nuncio at the time and he experienced the siege of the city at first hand. When the attack was decisively repelled on 15 August – the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary – he sang a Te Deum in the cathedral and initiated the idea that the Bolsheviks had been defeated with the help of Mary, the patroness of Poland. As observed in 85

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Chapter 1, Pacelli was nuncio in Munich at the time and was thus an eyewitness to the proclamation of the so-called Munich Soviet Republic (Münchner Räterepublik) in the winter of 1918/19. 4.3 The Spanish Republic From the Vatican perspective, the Soviet Union was an atheistic state and a bastion of Orthodoxy. Spain, on the other hand, was familiar and close-by. In 1937, the year in which the encyclical Divini Redemptoris was published, Spain was in the grip of a civil war, the culmination of a struggle for political and social modernization in a hitherto largely agricultural society. The civil war could also be understood as a concrete confrontation between belief and unbelief, and between a contemporary laicist Republic and a traditional Catholic Church that was determined to fight tooth and nail to preserve its historically acquired position of power. At the same time, it reflected the extremes of a modern labour movement, in which both communists and anarchists held dominant positions, and the fascist Falange Espaňola or Spanish Phalanx, which was determined to restore the existing order and did not eschew violence in the pursuit of this goal. From a broader perspective, the Spanish Civil War can be seen as a prelude to the Second World War, at least in its European dimension. Via the powerful Spanish communist party, the Republic acquired the support of the Soviet Union in both political and military terms. Moreover, the conflict also attracted young revolution-minded men and women from Europe and America who wanted to defend the achievements of the Republic in an International Brigade. The nationalists enjoyed the support of fascist Italy and Nazi Germany in the form of ‘volunteers’, ordnance material and bombings. The democratic superpowers in Western Europe – France and Great Britain – chose for a variety of reasons not to get involved. Church and state in Spain were closely linked for historical reasons: the Reconquista, the result of a fifteenth-century struggle to establish the primacy of Catholicism and to convert or expel the Islamic ‘Moors’ and the Jews. Four centuries later, in May 1919, King Alfonso XIII reconfirmed this connection when he dedicated Spain to the ‘Sacred Heart of Jesus’ in an act of public piety, thus solemnly underlining the Catholic character of the kingdom. The Catholic bishops in their turn had identified themselves with the monarchy and with its pursuit of unity and indivisibility in the country. All this meant that a radical opposition was able to assault the Church (both property and personnel) as had been the case in 1909. Catholics were also active in the Basque country and Catalonia, supporting campaigns for regional awareness. The Benedictine Abbey of Montserrat, for example, became a centre for Catalan culture. The government in Madrid refused to cooperate. According to a concordat dating back to 1851 it had the right to present candidates for episcopal appointments to the Holy See, but it had an aversion to proposing Catalan clergy for appointments in Catalonia.99 In the 1920s, the dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera threatened to sever ties with the Holy See and establish a National Church if Rome were to support the Basques and the Catalans in their pursuit of autonomy. 86

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In the decade that followed, the Republic was the political ideal of democratic and social modernization in Spain and it quickly became a reality. Municipal elections on 12 April 1931 resulted in exceptional gains for the republican parties, especially in the cities. The following day King Alfonso XIII abdicated and the (Second) Republic was proclaimed; the beginning of a democratic and also laicist government. The Spanish episcopate reacted on 9 May 1931 with a collective pastoral letter in which the new political regime assessed in terms of ‘respect for constitutional power’ and ‘the fear of the Church’. Cardinal Pedro Segura, Archbishop of Toledo and Primate of the Catholic Church in Spain, added a letter of his own in which he praised the ‘thoroughly Christian and thoroughly Spanish’ King Alfonso XIII because his government had protected the ‘old tradition of faith and piety’.100 The archbishop found himself in difficulties when it was discovered that he had urged his fellow bishops to sell church property and transfer the income outside of the country. His position had thus become untenable and he offered his resignation to the Pope in September 1931. The Pope accepted.101 Conflict also intensified on the political side. On 11 May 1931, a number of monasteries in several Spanish cities – including Madrid and Valencia – were burned to the ground. These acts of violence served to reinforce the idea among middle-class Catholics that the Republic had turned against the Church. ‘Little distinction was made between the ferocious iconoclasm of the anarchists and the Republican-Socialist coalition’s ambition to limit the Church’s influence to the strictly religious sphere.’102 The Republic’s new constitution included a number of stipulations that were the consequence of the separation of Church and state. Every confession was to be treated as an organization and subject to the laws of the land. The state and lower administration, for instance, were prohibited from offering protection or financial assistance to religious institutions. On the other hand, monasteries were required to relinquish land and property that was not necessary for the fulfilment of their private goals. Finally, religious orders and congregations whose members were obliged to swear an oath of obedience to an authority other than the state were not permitted to establish themselves on Spanish territory. On the basis of the latter article, the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) was banned on 23 January 1932 and its properties confiscated. The political struggle intensified even further in 1933. A law was enforced in May of that year in which the constitutional regulations governing religious organizations were concretized. In a reaction thereto, the Spanish episcopate published a critical pastoral letter addressing political developments in the Republic. Shortly thereafter, on 3 June 1933, Pius XI published Dilectissima nobis, an encyclical on Spain in which he underlined the neutrality of the Holy See with respect to the form of government. At the same time, the Pope was critical of the law governing the congregations, which he considered counter to the civil freedom the new Spanish government claimed to support. He called upon Catholic Action to resist attacks on the Church in whatever form they took.103 Isidoro Gomà y Tomá, the new Archbishop of Toledo, published his now renowned letter Horas graves on 12 June in which he called the Spanish government to task: ‘without God [there can be] no justice, no harmony between the classes and no social charity’.104 87

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Bishops in Catalonia and the Basque country sometimes followed an alternative path, seeking a modus vivendi with politicians who demanded a significant degree of autonomy for their particular region of the country. Cardinal Francesco Vidal y Barraquer, Archbishop of Tarragona, for example, paid a visit to the Generalidad of Catalonia intent on convincing the president of the positive disposition of the church authorities. The Catalonian bishops decided not to issue pastoral letters that were critical of the Republic. In November 1933, Spain’s right-wing parties won the parliamentary elections. This was the first time women had been allowed to vote, a fact that clearly contributed to the victory of the centre-right.105 The public symbols of Catholicism – e.g. crucifixes – were reinstated, the Jesuits reappeared in public wearing their black cassocks, and traditional processions filled the streets during Holy Week.106 A Catholic party – Confederación Espanola de Derechas Autónomas (CEDA) – and its leader, José María Gil Robles, occupied a central position in the Republican government. The CEDA also had landowners among its members and, once in power, the party thus used its influence to slow land reform. This in turn became a new feature of the left-wing parties’ anticlericalism. Spanish Catholics were politically divided. One group sided with the monarchists and in part also with the Carlists, a rival movement supporting a different pretender to the throne. A second group aligned itself with a conservative movement that recognized the Republic. A third group – although not really a group – consisted of Catholics who approved of the democratic and social goals of the republican parties. One such Catholic was the president of the Republic, Niceto Alcalá-Zamora. Their Church remained aloof to the social transformation engulfing the country. ‘To the Church, the greatest gift it could offer was that of salvation; to the Republic, superstition merely obscured the secular task of ensuring that all citizens were fed, clothed, and schooled.’ Although the Church worked to improve the fate of the poor and underprivileged, ‘the offer of salvation that went with its efforts made virtually no impression on the souls of those it cared for’.107 According to historian Mary Scant, one of the tragedies of the Republic was that its leaders in Madrid were incapable of understanding the extent to which their legislation affected the devotions of ‘ordinary Catholics’. In their efforts to drive back the Church’s influence, ‘they rode roughshod over the beliefs of many people, who would otherwise have had little reason to suppose ill of the Republic’.108 4.4 The Spanish Civil War The February 1936 elections were won by the Frente Popular (Popular Front) and social transformation was once again part of the government’s programme. In this political climate, Catholic and republican Spain appeared to exclude one another; Catholics were seen by definition as monarchist and reactionary, republicans as agnostic, atheist and anti-clerical. An answer emerged from the right on 18 July 1936: an Alzamiento Nacional, a ‘National Uprising’, in reality a military coup d’état that started with the Spanish Foreign Legion in Africa, spread to the mother country and heralded the civil war. The legitimacy 88

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of the Republic was at stake, and while some were determined to maintain the legitimacy of the Republic in spite of the country’s political and social problems, others saw its demise as more urgent than ever. ‘Despite the determined efforts of some key individuals, as well as some small parties, by July 1936, neither side was prepared to accommodate the other.’109 General Francisco Franco y Bahamonde quickly emerged as the actual leader from the military trio that initiated the uprising. Franco had put down an armed mineworkers revolt in Asturias in October 1934, was then ‘exiled’ to the Canary Islands and later triumphed in Spanish Morocco. The international dimension of the civil war was evident from the outset. Insurgent army divisions acquired support from Nazi Germany in the form of warships and fighter planes (Junkers), which helped facilitate the decisive crossing from Spanish Morocco to the motherland in July 1936. From 18 July onwards, Catholicism in republican territory was identified with the insurgents. This led to a ban on public religious practices, the closure of churches and the persecution and sometimes even murder of priests and bishops. Catholic officials and prominent Catholic social figures were forced to practise their faith in secret. The opposite was the case in territory controlled by the insurgents: republican officials and union leaders were prosecuted and put to death. Catholics who defended the legitimacy of the Republic were also under threat. The Red Terror suddenly emerged in republican controlled territory, although it was relatively short-lived. The White Terror against ‘reds and atheists’ in parts of the country controlled by the nationalists, on the other hand, was to last much longer.110 The beginning of the civil war was marked by a number of high-profile destructive attacks on religious property. On 8 August 1936, republican planes bombed the cathedral in Zaragoza, which housed the chapel of ‘Our Lady of the Pillar’, the patroness of Spain, who was said to have appeared to lead Christian combatants to victory against the Moors during the Reconquista. The shrine took a direct hit, but three bombs did not explode. They had fallen at the foot of the statue of Our Lady ‘as an offering of lighted candles’. ‘The assault on one of Spain’s most sacred symbols, however, demanded expiation and acts of reparation for the sacrilege of the “anti-Spaniards” were held in the cathedrals of Salamanca and Ciudad Rodrigo.’111 Later in the same month, republican fighters peppered the statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus on the Cerro de los Angeles (Hill of the Angels) in Madrid with bullets simulating an ‘execution’. It was here that King Alfonso XIII had dedicated his kingdom to the Sacred Heart, and the words at the foot of the statue read: ‘I shall reign in Spain’. The ‘execution of Christ’ caused an outcry in Spanish nationalist circles. It was seen as the culmination of a ‘satanic hatred’ of the Catholic Church and its faithful; the culmination, moreover, of a month of church burning and anti-clerical carnage.112 The insurgents referred to themselves as ‘nationalists’ and appointed General Franco as their leader on 1 October 1936. A government set itself up in Burgos and insisted that the Catholic Church publicly endorse its ideology of a national and Catholic crusade. In July 1937, a year after the beginning of the civil war, the majority of church leaders – with Cardinal Gomá as their head – officially sided with the Alzamiento Nacional. The pastoral 89

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letter that followed focused on the necessity of ‘resurrection’ combined with a sketch of the communion of martyrs. The roots of the conflict were ascribed to Spanish society’s spectacular abandonment of the faith. A return to respect for religion was presented as the only way to restore the patriotic spirit. In contrast to the ‘destructive revolution’, the bishops opted for the nationalist idea of a ‘crusade’. ‘We hope to rediscover our true paternal spirit when the great sacrifice is accomplished with all its force.’113 In March 1939, the Catholic Church was ready to welcome the victory of Franco and his nationalists. They had emerged as the strongest party, fuelled by political division in the republican camp and their own superior (foreign) airpower. In its turn, the Caudillo’s regime had need of support from the Catholic world. This need became even more pressing in the period following 1945, after the Allied victory in the Second World War, a war in which Franco used his shrewd diplomacy to support his ally Nazi Germany by sending Spanish volunteers to the Eastern Front, yet chose to exhibit neutrality at the crucial moment. Different estimates are in circulation with respect to the number of victims of the civil war. According to some, 300,000 people lost their lives as a direct result of the conflict (death on the battlefield, executions, etc.). This figure is doubled if we include those who died because of hardship and famine. A figure of 6,832 has been attached to the number of ‘clerical’ deaths. This included 12 bishops, 4,184 secular priests and seminarians, 2,365 monks and religious priests, and 283 religious women. The majority died immediately after the military coup d’état on 17 and 18 July 1936. Three-quarters of the total number of victims had already lost their lives in the first two months of the civil war.114 In the midst of the rage and bloodthirstiness, the killing of clergy and religious people exhibited a certain cultural pattern. On 25 July, the feast of Saint James (San Iago, patron of Spain), for example, 95 were killed. The feast in question was traditionally the starting signal for a jacquerie, an opportunity for the landless and uneducated to take revenge on the instruments of their oppression. The destruction of church interiors and the profanation of sacred statues demonstrated that the perpetrators had now adopted certain religious patterns. ‘The assault on the priests’ cadavers in Huercal de Almeria, for example, parodied sacred forms: in parading the corpses around the pueblo in a trajectory that ended at the river, the perpetrators were re-enacting a religious procession.’115 The number of religious women who lost their lives is also remarkably low when compared with their male counterparts. Nuns were accused of torture, of kidnapping and imprisoning young women, and the so-called ‘revolutionary exhumations’ were intended to prove this. ‘But, in a culture which tolerated wife-beating but severely disapproved of other forms of violence towards women, the taboos against killing nuns were very strong.’116 When Cardinal Gomá was able to return to his archiepiscopal palace and found his crosses smashed, his wine cellar under water, and his bed ‘defiled’ by ‘milicianos’, he reported nevertheless that the latter had at least spared the nuns who took care of his housekeeping.117 By contrast, the sexually charged torture of priests was as spectacular as it was symbolic. ‘Respect for female virginity was apparently counterbalanced by contempt for male virginity, as the genitals of priests became a main focus for assault. Just as images were stripped, so were priests, whose genitalia were 90

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already an object of fascination, with numerous proverbs and sayings referring to their inordinate size.’118 In Catalonia, where the desire for autonomy was nourished by an idealistic if sometimes cruel anarchism, Cardinal Vidal i Barraquer, the most senior church official, refrained from issuing an ecclesial condemnation of the movement for autonomy. On 20 July 1936, a delegation from the Generalidad in Tarragona tried to persuade him to leave the country, but he rejected their good advice. When churches were being burned down he agreed to take refuge in the seminary, which had been transformed in the meantime into a military hospital. A group of anarchists arrived in the city, set the prisoners free, and set fire to a monastery. The Cardinal finally agreed to leave for the Cistercian monastery in Poblet and then for Hospitalet south of Barcelona where he was taken into exile in Italy by ship. He was not able to return to Spain after the civil war.119 In the Basque country – where the town of Guernica was bombed by German aircraft on 26 April 1937 – the civil war took on different proportions. Some Catholic clergy sided with the Republic because – unlike the nationalists – it offered the prospect of relative autonomy. Republican and socialist administrators made an effort to curb the violence. ‘Churches were not attacked and religious practices continued without interruption.’120 In 1936, nationalist combatants executed a number of priests, considered by the Archbishop of Burgos as ‘the dross of the Spanish clergy’ and ‘in the pay of the reds’. There is no evidence, however, that the priests in question actually used weapons. Franco later spoke of ‘these Christian democrats’ as ‘less Christian than democrat’. Infected by a ‘destructive liberalism’, they had not understood ‘the sublime page of religious persecution in Spain that, with its thousand of martyrs, was the most glorious the Church had undergone’.121 As early as December 1936, the Holy See designated Cardinal Gomá as its unofficial representative to the Nationalist government. An official prelate was only to present his credentials a year later. This procedure was not only prompted by traditional Vatican prudence. Differences of opinion existed within the curia on the speed with which the Nationalist regime deserved to be recognized. But when Pius XI issued an encyclical in 1937 criticizing National Socialism, he was unable to escape the thought that his critique also applied to Germany’s Spanish ally, General Franco.122 4.5 The Reich concordat The Spanish Civil War serves as an example of a political conflict that had its roots in the international economic crisis following the stock market crash of October 1929. In a number of nations this also evolved into a political crisis that became a source of extreme and authoritarian solutions. It was in this climate that Pius XI – himself far from a convinced (Christian) democrat – was expected to speak out on the Machtergreifung of Hitler. In a speech to the College of Cardinals on 13 March 1933, the Pope praised Hitler as the first statesman to raise his voice against Bolshevism. Cardinal Faulhaber – Archbishop of Munich and also present at the meeting – noted that Rome judged National Socialism in the same way as it did fascism: the only possible deliverance from communism. ‘The Holy Father looks on from a distance, is aware of the primary goal 91

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but unaware of the accompanying phenomena.’123 At that moment, and against the background of the Pope’s perspective, the complex of Catholic organizations in Germany – including the Catholic Zentrum party – still formed a relatively closed front with respect to National Socialism. Hitler’s proposed Reich concordat went down well in the Vatican, which had long considered Germany a prize worth winning. Eugenio Pacelli, the nuncio in Bavaria, considered it the most important aspect of his diplomatic activities in the 1920s. He had worked hard to maintain a Catholic presence in the educational system and to establish an agreement on the appointment of bishops whereby the Holy See was to be granted primacy over the defunct post-1918 monarchies. For the government of the Weimar Republic, a concordat was not only a necessary support to its own self-esteem, it also provided the possibility of winning Curia support when it came to defending German interests in the territories that had been relinquished after the Treaty of Versailles. Drafts of a Reich Concordat had already been exchanged between Berlin and Rome in the 1920s. Before the said drafts could be debated in the Reichstag, however, two obstacles had to be removed. The Social Democratic governing partner in the Weimar Republic was against any form of religious influence in the education system – a demand of the Vatican – and the federal states feared a violation of their authority in matters related to school and church (‘Kulturhoheit’).124 As a result, the only initiative that would stand a chance of success had to come from the federal level. Pacelli was able to sign a concordat

Figure 6 Cardinal Faulhaber, Archbishop of Munich, sprinkles holy water with an aspersory during an open-air liturgy. Photo: SOMA , Brussels. 92

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with the Bavarian government in 1924. A similar agreement followed with Prussia in 1929, which was also of importance as a church confirmation of the new boundary with Poland. A concordat was also signed with the federal state of Baden in 1932. The example of Italy is of importance for the process leading up to the agreement between Nazi Germany and the Holy See. When the concordat with Italy was signed in February 1929, party leader Hitler made reference to the fact in a speech delivered in a beer cellar in Munich. He observed that the Catholic Church had reached an agreement with fascist Italy and that such an agreement would have been impossible with a ‘liberal democratic’ Italy. For Hitler this was clear evidence that the fascist ideology was more akin to Christianity than to the ‘Jewish-liberal’ or even the ‘Atheist-Marxist’ ideology.125 It took a while for the impact of this statement to be recognized. After the Katastrophenwahl – the federal elections of 1930 in which the Nazis acquired one in five of the seats in the Reichstag – church leaders were expected once again to state their position. Several bishops, including the entire Bavarian episcopate, pointed to a ‘fundamental irreconcilability’ between National Socialism and the Christian faith. Rome shared this perspective at the time. In May 1931, for example, Cardinal Pacelli refused to receive Hermann Göring – Hitler’s emissary – who had travelled to Rome to complain about the German episcopate’s open rejection of National Socialism. Cardinal Pacelli must have been shocked to see Hitler appointed as Reich Chancellor in January 1933. According to his secretary, the Jesuit Robert Leiber, he is said to have exclaimed that it was a dreadful affair, worse than a ‘victory for the socialist left’.126 He pictured a new Kulturkampf. Cardinal Faulhaber contributed a memorandum to the debate in which he endeavoured to distinguish between National Socialism’s positive dimensions (respect for Christianity, anti-Bolshevism) and its preponderantly negative features (propagation of hate and violence, cult of race). He warned that ‘Nazi Christianity’ was not of Christ, but a new ideology that shared nothing with Christianity beyond the name.127 From the Vatican perspective, the danger of communism in Germany was considered greater than that of National Socialism.128 Cardinal Pacelli was partly reassured, moreover, with the reconciliation Hitler had announced with the churches in the Reichstag in Potsdam on 23 March 1933. Two facts are simultaneously important at this juncture. First, Zentrum and the Bavarian People’s Party voted that day for a law that gave Hitler’s government the authority to govern without the parliament. In a dramatic parliamentary party meeting, the chairman – priest and prelate Ludwig Kaas – more or less imposed this support for Hitler’s government on his colleagues. Second, the German bishops lifted their ban on the Nazi Party on 26 March after a lengthy debate. The combination of these two facts occasioned a historic controversy. Was Hitler’s offer of a concordat directly related to the fact that Zentrum and the Bavarian People’s Party had endorsed the mandate given to the National Socialists and disbanded three months later? In other words, was there evidence of cause and event (the so-called Junktim Thesis)? Did the Catholic Church thus help improve the Nazi regime’s national and international standing? 93

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Alternatively, did events take place without there being a direct link? Was the leader of Zentrum – the prelate Ludwig Kaas – genuinely surprised when he met conservative Catholic Franz von Papen, pioneer of the Machtergreifung, on a train to Rome two weeks after the Reichstag vote and learned the reason for his trip? Von Papen had been sent to negotiate a concordat with Cardinal Pacelli on behalf of the German state. From the perspective of the Catholic side in the negotiations, the Reich concordat was not a means of recognition, but rather ‘a form of non-adaptation [to the power of the totalitarian Nazi state] on the part of the Catholic Church that was supported by international law’.129 The controversy was not resolved. Sources do not provide definitive evidence to support either perspective, although it remains a fact that the Reich concordat afforded the new Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler both national and international respect and guaranteed the continued existence of the Roman Catholic Church in Germany together with a certain number of its social activities. The nature of this guarantee – that it was primarily ‘on paper’ – was soon to be exposed, but only after the agreement had been sealed. The concordat was open ended, its Article 31 still incomplete. The said article was supposed to contain a list of Catholic organizations that maintained social or corporative goals, were not involved with a political party, and were thus permitted to continue their work. The chicaneries of Nazi bureaucracy quickly limited the possibilities for inclusion. The most important consequence of the concordat was the disbandment of the Catholic parties, Zentrum and the Bavarian People’s Party. The German bishops looked on with sadness as the party that had defended the interests of the Catholic Church in the Kulturkampf was sacrificed. But from the moment of his appointment as nuncio in 1917, Pacelli was clearly intent on ‘clericalizing’ German Catholicism. This ultimately implied the replacement of the laity, whose autonomy was such a characteristic feature of Catholic organizations in Germany, with clerical leaders. Political representation, the crowning glory of lay emancipation, had not been abolished. Three days before the concordat was initialled – 8 July 1933 – Zentrum and its Bavarian sister party (BVP ) decided to disband. As a result, the stipulation in the concordat whereby it was agreed that the clergy would not engage in political activities basically lost its relevance. On the other hand, the agreement also made it impossible for large numbers of priests to sign up with the NSDAP. Konrad Gröber, Archbishop of Freiburg, also made a point of additional relevance when he observed that hundreds of Catholic leaders in schools and associations who ran the risk of being arrested in one or another Nazi police action after the Reichstag fire would be grateful to the Holy See because the concordat had saved them from imprisonment.130 4.6 The application of the concordat For bishops and Catholic institutions, the concordat immediately became an (internationally recognized) line of defence behind which they were able to contest the totalitarian ambitions of National Socialism. The NSDAP made it clear, moreover, that it was the state and not the party that had signed the agreement and that it thus did not consider itself bound to its stipulations. The Nazis remained resolved to bring 94

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Catholic organizations in society at large and in the education system into line wherever possible.131 Continued pressure in this regard was an unmistakable sign, as was the fact that individual members of the clergy were arrested on a regular basis. We now know that one-third of the secular clergy were confronted with punitive legal proceedings, imprisonment or concentration camps. During the Röhm putsch or the so-called Night of the Long Knives (30 June–2 July 1934), the infamous series of political killings within the Nazi regime, leading Catholics who had been critical of the new regime also lost their lives. One such critic was Erich Klausener, a senior civil servant and Catholic Action leader in Berlin who had delivered a critical speech at the Katholikentag shortly before the putsch. His death was initially put down to suicide and he was buried without public attention. The German episcopate did not challenge Klausener’s death. A new phase in the confrontation was heralded by the creation of the Ministry of Church Affairs in the middle of 1935. Shortly after his appointment and in a period still marked by reconciliation, Minister Hanns Kerrl met with Cardinal Bertram, the chairman of the episcopal conference in Fulda. This is presumed to have been the only official contact between the Nazi minister and the cardinal. The latter described the meetings as ‘not unfriendly’, although it was impossible to ignore the fundamental differences of opinion between the two. He foresaw, nevertheless, a potential turn for the better in church politics.132 In September 1935, however, Kerrl announced that he intended to be critical in his assessment of the list of Catholic organizations the bishops were expected to provide him. The episcopal conference reacted in line with its earlier options: negotiation in order to limit the damage wherever possible. In 1936, the National Socialist state introduced two new challenges to the Catholic Church: legal proceedings for violations of the law on foreign currency exchange and indecency proceedings (for homosexuality and child abuse) against clergy. They were the result of warrant searches in monasteries. The number of lay brothers charged was spectacular: 170 in one single indictment. One hundred and eight were still in active service and 62 had left their congregation. The indictments focused on a single community of Franciscan lay brothers in Waldbreitbach in the Rhineland.133 Admission criteria to the lay congregation were not clearly defined. During the crisis, large numbers of unemployed men offered themselves as candidates driven by material need. Some had unstable personalities. They were put to work as nurses and carers in hospitals and institutions for the mentally handicapped and it was in the latter that abuse was registered. The superior general was replaced and 31 lay brothers were dismissed.134 The indecency proceedings were stopped in the middle of July on Hitler’s orders, partly because of the negative international publicity they generated in relation to the Olympic Games, which Germany was to host in the summer of 1936, and partly because of the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. The latter was seen as a new communist threat against which the National Socialist state and the Catholic Church had to work in tandem.135 Cardinal Faulhaber initiated a final – in hindsight – attempt at reconciliation in 1936. In August of the preceding year he had put together a ‘Denkschrift’ on behalf of the 95

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German episcopate in which he consciously distinguished between (positive) statements made by Hitler on Christianity and the churches and the ‘policy of constriction’ deployed by party and state, which he considered to be inspired by the ‘church-hostile’ ideologist of National Socialism, Rosenberg. Hitler apparently agreed to discuss the ‘Denkschrift’ with Faulhaber and a date was set for a meeting on 4 November 1936 at Hitler’s mountain residence in Berchtesgaden. The discussion lasted three hours and the cardinal spoke plainly, criticizing the influence of ‘German Christians’, the dismantlement of Catholic schools, and the ban on combining membership of Nazi organizations and Catholic associations. But Faulhaber was personally impressed by Hitler’s pose as the god-fearing statesman to whom Providence had entrusted a historical mission. ‘There can be no doubt that the Reich Chancellor is a man of faith in God. He sees Christianity as the architect of the culture of the Occident.’136 Hitler looked back at what he believed to be a successful meeting, although he is also said to have had a moment of doubt in which he feared that a conflict with Christianity and the Church would unleash a force of opposition that even he would be unable to control. Albert Speer met Hitler after the audience in Berchtesgaden and noted in his memoires that the Reich Chancellor stared through the window in silence for a long time before saying: ‘There are two possibilities: either my plans will be a complete success or a failure. If I succeed, then I will become one of the great figures of history; if I fail, however, I will be judged, despised and cursed.’137 At the end of December 1936, Cardinal Faulhaber set about fulfilling his promise to Hitler with a pastoral letter against Bolshevism. But the text did not only condemn communism as ‘a gate to hell, the advance guard of the Antichrist’, it was also critical of what was going on in Germany. The German bishops, he stated, ‘were obliged to state such concerns in their pastoral letters if they were to remain genuine and not lapse into the un-German role of Byzantine yes-men’. ‘We bishops’, the cardinal stated, ‘should insist that young people and the rest of the nation should no longer be told that the Catholic Church is next in line as enemy of the state after the defeat of Bolshevism.’ The letter was hushed up in the German media because it did not comply with the image of a crusade being propagated by the Nazis. The Gestapo confiscated copies of the letter in a number of places.138 4.7 The encyclical Mit brennender Sorge As noted above, Pius XI promulgated his encyclical Divini Redemptoris, a condemnation of ‘atheistic communism’, on 19 March 1937. Five days earlier, on Passion Sunday, he had signed another encyclical, Mit brennender Sorge, a document critical of National Socialism. This was a twofold response from the Church of Rome to two totalitarian systems, but the differences between the two are remarkable. The first encyclical was written in Latin, the language of the Church, was addressed to the entire episcopate and was an absolute condemnation of (atheistic) communism. The second encyclical was written in German, addressed to the German episcopate, and expressed critique with respect to the implementation of the concordat, but it was not uncompromising. 96

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The earliest idea of an encyclical focusing on the National Socialist state dates back to August 1936, when the episcopal conference in Fulda openly called for a papal statement addressed to German Catholics. Cardinal Faulhaber’s meeting with Hitler in Berchtesgaden led to a postponement, but in January 1937 the bishops in Fulda met in an extraordinary sitting to discuss the matter. A critical memorandum was drafted. Five bishops made their way to Rome on the Pope’s invitation: Cardinals Bertram, Faulhaber and Schulte (Cologne), together with Konrad von Preysing, the Bishop of Berlin, and Clemens von Galen, the Bishop of Münster. The choice of the latter two bishops was not based on hierarchical priority. Both men had acquired a reputation for their critical stance towards the Nazi regime. Bishop Berning, on the other hand, the most important intermediary between the government and the episcopate, was not invited. One can conclude that the more outspoken wing of the episcopate, i.e. those close to Faulhaber, was welcome in Rome.139 Pius XI had taken ill and the German delegation was invited to visit him in his sickbed. The men discussed whether the concordat should be repealed, but there did not appear to be a readiness to do so. Any papal announcement would have to be dogmatic in terms of content and not polemic. The National Socialist Party would not be mentioned under any circumstances. On Cardinal Pacelli’s request, Cardinal Faulhaber put together an initial draft, which he completed in the early morning of 21 January 1937. After his recent meeting with Hitler in Berchtesgaden, he was still convinced that the Führer should not be identified with the anti-clerical line of his party. Faulhaber’s draft was left more or less intact in the final text. The primary theme of Mit brennender Sorge is disappointment concerning the results of the Reich concordat, the intimidation and restriction of the Catholic Church in Nazi Germany. The tone was critical but not uncompromising. Pius XI condemned the neopagan Germanic-Christian religion together with the distortion of words such as ‘revelation, faith, immortality and grace’. He criticized ideas and statements concerning the superiority of the Germanic race and the German state, which were in contradiction with the Christian principle of universality and the equality of all peoples. While antiSemitism in the doctrine of the Nazis was not explicitly condemned, the document did address ‘the deification of race, nation or state’.140 The perspective of Cardinal Pacelli was still evident in the encyclical, namely that an internationally recognized legal agreement obliged the state to grant the Church its freedoms. The German government may not have been identified with the more aggressive tendencies within the National Socialist Party, but it was called upon nevertheless to abide by the stipulations of the concordat as party to the agreement.141 The encyclical was distributed via the dioceses and was to be read out in churches on Palm Sunday (21 March 1937). Printing and distribution remained secret until the Gestapo in Munich managed to get hold of a number of copies on the Saturday evening before it was scheduled to go public. The Nazi authorities decided not to forbid its public reading, but to limit its distribution outside the church. The reading of the encyclical served as a drum roll: Minister Kerrl criticized the bishops and prohibited further distribution of the document; the twelve printers responsible for the publication were expropriated without damages. 97

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The Nazi government gave orders for the indecency proceedings to recommence, intent on undermining the respect enjoyed by the Catholic clergy. ‘A thousand cases for a single encyclical’, the propaganda claimed.142 The Bishop of Berlin calculated the number of priests against whom legal proceedings were announced or implemented. 57 secular priests and seven religious priests were taken to court. The fact that seven of were acquitted and in twelve instances the case was dismissed suggests that the court did not approach the matter in the same manner as the Gestapo who had initiated the campaign. The bishop also pointed out that the number of convicted and investigated priests was less than half of 1 per cent of the total number of Catholic clergy in the country.143 Nevertheless, this legal campaign seriously damaged the reputation of the Church and the clergy. The effect of such anti-Church agitation could also be observed in numerical terms. In 1935 a little more than 34,000 people left the Catholic Church. In 1936 the number was 46,000. But in 1937 the number had more than doubled to 108,000 departures.144 The authorities in Berlin conferred on an appropriate response to the Pope. The Ministry for Church Affairs favoured the annulment of the concordat, but enthusiasm for this solution had waned by the summer of 1937. Hitler ordered an end to the indecency cases in July. He met with Kerrl during the Wagner festival in Bayreuth and discussed a new relationship between the churches and the Nazi state, an idea that he was to elaborate upon during a speech on Reform Day. On that occasion, he would also be able to solemnly terminate the concordat. The party congress in Nuremberg in September 1937, however, was not the appropriate moment to end the concordat. The occasion was used rather to honour the notorious anti-Christian Rosenberg – author of ‘Mythos des 20. Jahrhunderts’ – with a brand new national prize for literature. The government declared its solidarity with his literary output and thus also with his aggressive stance towards ecclesial Christianity. It is possible that Hitler had become more and more engrossed in the meantime by his foreign policy initiatives. It may also have been the case that the priority ascribed to foreign policy might have tipped the balance in favour of not putting an end to the concordat or risking a rupture in relations with the Curia. Instead, the less compromising process of undermining the stipulations of the agreement continued to be the order of the day.145 When war broke out in September 1939, the bishops in Fulda wrote a pastoral letter in which they endeavoured ‘to encourage and exhort our Catholic soldiers to do their duty in obedience to the Führer, ready for sacrifice and with the commitment of their whole being’.146 4.8 Cardinal Bertram Catholic Germany had two episcopal conferences, Fulda and Munich. The latter conference – a Bavarian concern – was also represented in the Fulda conference, and it is for this reason that its chairman, Cardinal Adolf Bertram – the last prince-bishop of Breslau as a German city – became the Nazi regime’s most important dialogue partner. He was 73 years of age at the moment of Hitler’s Machtergreifung. He was assisted in 98

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his negotiations with the German government by Bishop Wilhelm Berning (Osnabrück), who became a member of the Prussian Council of State after the ratification of the Reich concordat, and by Bishop Heinrich Wienken. Both men were relatively flexible, a characteristic that certainly played a role in Cardinal Bertram’s choice of assistants.147 Bertram consistently reminded his opponents that he had lived through the Kulturkampf and that he was intent on avoiding a new situation in which ‘believers had to die without priests’.148 Out of respect to Germany’s highest authorities, it became his custom to send a telegram to the Führer, wishing him well on his birthday. When Hitler turned 50 in 1939, a vote among the bishops approved of the telegram. He also sent a telegram in 1940, but this time without acquiring the approval of his fellow bishops. Konrad von Preysing, Bishop of Berlin and a long-time opponent – was so upset by the cardinal’s action that he resigned his post as spokesman of the episcopal conference. Cardinal Bertram continued to congratulate Hitler on his birthday until 1944, but from this point on he did so as Archbishop of Breslau. Early in 1945, shortly before ‘fortress Breslau’ was besieged by the Red Army, he fled to the archiepiscopal summer residence in Ves Javornik (Jauernig in the Sudetenland), where he died in July 1945 at the age of 86. Cardinal Bertram chose to respond to the hostile policies of the government and the party using memoranda as a form of written protest. His writing skills were second to none, objective and without evidence of personal displeasure. He rejected requests to confront the Nazi authorities with the unvarnished truth because he was convinced that there could be nothing worse than a radical break. The fact that his memoranda were not published created the impression that the episcopate was passive, incomprehensibly compliant, and even afraid. Press and radio were also under complete Nazi control at this juncture, making the pulpit the only place in which it was possible to speak freely (and to criticize). But as far as the bishops were concerned, such instances were few and far between. An additional quality of the cardinal chairman was his ability to keep the Catholic Church in Germany together in the midst of conflict and to protect it. The bishops managed to maintain a sense of unity when they met in conference at Fulda. On the other hand, they did not succeed in transforming this unity into public critique. The step from unanimity to common action, which Pius XI had advised on occasion, was rarely if ever taken. In the last analysis, the chairman of the Fulda conference prevented it from being taken. At the same time, however, the conference also seemed reluctant to offer the elderly president a successor. As a result, the bishops’ conference was confronted with an escalating crisis of leadership. From 1941 onwards, the West German bishops’ conference went its own way. The latter was responsible for a number of statements, including the drafting of a critical memorandum in December 1941, the publication of a pastoral letter on Passion Sunday 1942, and an episcopal letter in 1943, at the height of Nazi terror and persecution, in which the concrete situation was confronted with the Ten Commandments. The latter insisted on the basis of the first commandment that a government that no longer recognized the authority of God also ceased to be a government with authority or one obliging obedience.149 99

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5 Christianity and race 5.1 Churches in Germany and the issue of race According to historian Klaus Scholder, Hitler probably thought that he could convince the Christian Churches in Germany of the necessity of forming a common front against the Jews until 1938. And as long as he continued to cherish this idea, his policy towards the Churches focused more on the limitation of their social role than on their complete elimination.150 In his obsessive struggle agains the Jews, Hitler also made use of the ancient ‘Christkiller motif ’. He explained in a speech in 1922 what it meant for a Christian to be an anti-Semite. Jesus waged a ‘mighty struggle for his world against the Jewish poison. This I acknowledge even today, after two thousand years; and my deepest conviction is made even more forceful by the fact that he was made to die bleeding on the Cross for it.’151 In his Mein Kampf, however, he refocused this perspective. He was still convinced that the struggle against the Jews was in accord with the will of God, but he wanted to prevent the National Socialist Party from adopting a religious dimension. ‘The maintenance of the view that Jesus was the greatest antisemite, and that antisemitism was a basic part of Christianity, would lead to conflicts within and without the Party, which could not be resolved or controlled politically simply by the authority of the Führer.’152 Hitler remained convinced nonetheless that Christianity – especially the Catholic Church – had seen the Jews as tainted for 1,500 years, but the period of liberalism had led to a failure to appreciate this danger. In his first interview with a church leader – Bishop Berning – in April 1933, the new Reich Chancellor said that he expected the Church to support his administrative measures against the Jews. And in a meeting with the Evangelical bishops of Wurm and Meiser in 1934 – at the height of the Protestant Kirchenkampf – he stated that the Churches should make the new doctrine of blood and race their own if they wanted to avoid being overtaken by new developments. Hitler used the same words at his meeting in Berchtesgaden with Cardinal Faulhaber in November 1936 at which he called upon the Catholic Church to quit its resistance to the race laws. ‘And since for Hitler (as well for the Cardinal) Bolshevism and Judaism were practically synonymous, the warning was clear: If National Socialism does not overcome Bolshevism, then Christianity and the Church in Europe would also be lost.’153 Cardinal Faulhaber clearly sensed some degree of affinity with this perspective. Indeed, a couple of weeks before the meeting with Hitler he wrote to Cardinal Bertram that the state had the right to intervene against the expansion of Judaism, ‘especially when Jews as Bolsheviks and communists are a threat to the constitutional order’. The cardinal’s critique was not based on racial arguments, however, but on religious and political arguments. ‘For Faulhaber, a Jew who had become a Catholic was a Catholic and nothing more.’154 In the first part of the present chapter we turned our attention to the ‘Movement of German Christians’: a collection of pastors and church members who affirmed their affiliation with National Socialism within their church and even within their personal faith. The same group was responsible for implementing the so-called Aryan paragraph

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in the Landeskirchen. Jewish pastors were no longer allowed to exercise their function. The Catholic Church in Germany also exhibited a well-disposed interest in – and even affiliation with – National Socialism and a small number of priests made no secret of the fact that they were sympathizers of members of the NSDAP. ‘Their allegiance also went far beyond the traditional mode of German nationalism that the majority of Catholic priests continued to profess throughout the Third Reich.’155 An extraordinary figure in the search for rapprochement with National Socialism was Ildefons Herwegen, the Benedictine abbot of Maria Laach. Herwegen was an adherent of the ‘Reich theology’ – unity of the Christian nations under the dominion of the priest-king, developed in his monastery – and welcomed National Socialism in 1933 as a potential means to liberate Germany from the Weimar Republic and restore the authoritarian monarchy.156 The abbot also offered hospitality to Konrad Adenauer, a prominent Zentrum politician who had been forced by the Nazi regime to resign as Mayor of Cologne in 1933. From 1935 onwards, Ildefons started to distance himself from National Socialism. Albanus Schachleiter, likewise a monk and abbot of the Benedictine Emmaus Monastery in Prague, remained faithful to National Socialism and was happy to be seen in public with Hitler. He had been forced to leave his monastery and the New Czechoslovakia in 1920 on account of his professed German nationalism and he met and came to respect Hitler while in exile in Munich. He was suspended by the Vatican in 1933 as a result of his public political options, but the suspension was lifted after the former monk appeared to repent his position. But his repentance was short-lived. In 1934 and 1935 he attended the party congresses in Nuremburg as guest of honour in his Benedictine habit. An additional step in the endorsement of National Socialism was taken by priests and pastors who cooperated with the Sicherheitsdienst, Himmler’s political police. They turned in their membership of the ‘the hosts of heaven (Himmel)’ for membership in the ‘hosts of Himmler’ and passed on information about the sentiments prevailing within Church administration. Of greater importance, however, was the fact that they reported their fellow priests and pastors to the police: ‘80 per cent of political criminal actions were the result of denunciation.’157 Pastors affiliated with the Movement of German Christians were also active as informers within the German Evangelical Church. Lutheran bishops were likewise among those who provided information, among them – naturally – Reich bishop Müller, together with Bishop Walter Schultz (Mecklenburg) and Heinz Weidemann (Bremen). Occasioned by the attack on Hitler’s life on 20 July 1940 – which involved the conservative aristocracy – former pastor Karl Neuhaus was charged with investigating the role of the clergy in the lead-up to the attack.158 Anton Scharnagl, the Catholic auxiliary bishop of Munich, became embroiled in criminal activities and offered himself as an informant. Similarly, Paul Graf Huyn, the prince-bishop of Prague exiled to Rome in 1919, likewise offered his assistance. Ordained to the priesthood by Cardinal Faulhaber in 1929, Albert Hartl became an important SD informant. He had shown a keen interest in psychology during his seminary studies and wrote in his memoirs that he tried in the first instance to see the person in priests and bishops, with their ‘human characteristics’ and their various vices. He passed on reports of 101

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Figure 7 The abbot Albanus Schachleiter, clerical supporter of Hitler and the Nazi regime, lies in state in the Church of All Saints in Munich (21 June 1937). Photo: NIOD, Amsterdam.

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his observations to Himmler. Hartl was associated with the German mission to the Vatican and wrote that Montini, the Vatican’s assistant secretary of state, once confessed to him that he was ‘often cast into the deepest abyss of doubt, and was even inclined to atheism’.159 The development of the theme of race in the theology of the Evangelical Church is also relevant here, whereby Protestant theologians sought to establish a bond between Christianity and ‘Volkstum’. The same theme was also of relevance to Catholic theologians. The historian John Connelly locates this not only in academic curiosity, but also associates it with history. After years of discrimination (‘Kulturkampf ’) and in the traumatic awareness of the defeat of the First World War, German Catholics wanted to be seen as true Germans. They did not question the general notion of Volksgemeinschaft. On the contrary, they realized that they were united with other Germans in a race that was worthy of protection and thus also of study.160 Bishops and theologians addressed their questions on anthropology – a prominent science in the Interbellum – with an emphasis on questions related to the races, to two important scholars: the Jesuit biologist Hermann Muckermann and the Redemptorist anthropologist Wilhelm Schmidt. The former was head of the department of eugenics at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology in Berlin. Schmidt was a professor at the University of Vienna. Both men were frequent visitors to Rome and were consulted regularly by the Pope and by the bishops in their respective countries. Muckermann was dismissed from his post by the Nazis in 1933 because they did not consider him to be radical enough. Nevertheless, he believed in the notion of the ‘Nordic race’ having a creative capacity superior to other races that was given expression in the creation of states, in the mastery of nature, in the sciences and in the arts. The German race would only be able to maintain its qualities by keeping its heredity pure and unsullied. For this reason, Muckermann feared the growing number of people with Jewish roots in German society.161 The Jesuit was not considered racist in his day. He even had connections with the Catholic opposition to the Nazi regime: his brother and fellow Jesuit Friedrich Muckermann became editor of a resistance newspaper in 1934 and had been forced into exile in the Netherlands. A linguist and anthropologist – and confessor to Karl I, the last of the Habsburg emperors – Wilhelm Schmidt was also interested in race. He strongly resisted racial mingling and argued that the German race was that of Herrenvolk or master race, while the Jews were an alien race that bore the traces of a historical crime: the crucifixion of Christ. He also believed that almost 2,000 years of exile had had an effect on their appearance. Jews who became Christians were thus doomed to struggle with themselves. They may be ‘one of us’, but not in the same way as ‘our German racial comrades’.162 Schmidt, like Muckermann, was not a Nazi. He was arrested in Austria in 1938 after the Anschluß but managed to flee to Switzerland. It is striking to observe that Karl Adam, the renowned German theologian of the Interbellum, also maintained such ideas. His ecumenical vision led him to see Protestants and Catholics together as the ‘People of God’. This perspective was part of his endeavour to extend the boundaries of the Church as was his emphasis on the humanity of Christ. In this regard he was at the roots of the New Theology that was to enjoy its heyday in the 103

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years after the war. But the same theologian also defended the idea that the Jews as Semites represented an alien race and thus constituted a danger to the purity and vivacity of German blood. ‘This demand springs from our well-ordered love of self; the love of self that for a Christian morality is the natural prerequisite for love of neighbor.’163 A further church author who favoured National Socialism was titular bishop Alois Hudal, rector of the German college Santa Maria dell’ Anima in Rome. Born in the Austrian border region of Stiermarken, Hudal published his Foundations of National Socialism in 1937, in which he attempted to establish a bridge to the Nazi ideology using Thomas Aquinas. Hudal recognized the issue of race, but he criticized the Nazi explanation of the moral defects of race as given at birth. Some Nazis, he argued, would be led astray because they too regard race to be the only criteria of judgement. In his opinion, race and mind interact. ‘In the case of the Jews, a historical act of will left a deep print upon a people who were racially much closer to the Germans than were the Finns or the Hungarians, thereby creating the special “Jewish problem”.’164 The German bishops approached the issue of race in the spirit of the time. Excessive racism was to be rejected and the glorification of race was an error. But according to Cardinal Bertram – in 1930 – Catholic teaching also considered love for one’s own race, people and fatherland – expressions of original and healthy patriotism – not only admissible, but also a moral obligation.165 An argument that was gaining ground among Nazi-minded theologians in both Churches was the separation between the ‘Jewish Old Testament’ and the New Testament in the biblical canon. This theme was explained in a series of five sermons by the Archbishop of Munich. In 1933, Cardinal Faulhaber chose ‘Judaism, Christianity and Germanness’ as the theme of his Advent homilies. Public interest was such that the sermons had to be broadcast via radio in two other churches in addition to the church of Saint Michael in which he delivered them.166 When German Christians organized their noisy demonstrations in the sports stadium in Berlin, Faulhaber defended the books of the Old Testament and extended an invitation to the ‘separated brethren’ to read them together. According to the cardinal, the Old Testament was based on relationships of blood, the New Testament on those of faith. The question was not whether Christ was born a Jew or an Aryan, but rather: are we united with Christ through baptism and faith? The Cardinal addressed the question of ‘Christianity and Germanness’ in his sermon on New Year’s Eve 1933. At the crib on Bethlehem, Jews and gentiles, shepherds from Jewish territory and wise men from the East encountered one another. According to Paul, there is no distinction between Jew and Greek in the kingdom of the infant Jesus; the Lord is for all.167 Faulhaber’s sermons offer a useful insight into the way in which senior officials in the Catholic Church contested arguments concerning the ‘Judaizing’ of the Bible. In line with Paul, they emphasised the universal perspective. 5.2 The Vatican and the issue of race Two remarkable initiatives mark the Vatican’s attitude with respect to the Jews during the Interbellum: an extraordinary moment of rapprochement between Jews and 104

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Catholics in the so-called Amici Israel and the preparation of an encyclical against racism that was never officially published. They are important here because the very history of the short-lived Amici Israel initiative and the very incompleteness of the encyclical offer an insight into the thoughts and actions of the Catholic Church with respect to the Jews. In its essence, Amici Israel was an association of priests who sought reconciliation between the Jews and the Catholic Church. The initiative was taken by a Dutch Jewish woman by the name of Sophie van Leer, a visual artist and passionate idealist. She found herself in Munich in 1900 in the circle of artists known as Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Horsemen). In her creative mind she identified herself with women in Wagner’s operas such as Senta and Kundry, both burdened with a curse from which a man (a priest) could redeem them. When the Bavarian Soviet Republic was proclaimed in 1919 she fell under suspicion on account of her anarchism, was imprisoned and threatened with execution. She promised to convert to Catholicism if the execution was not carried out. The execution was indeed called off and Sophie was baptized, taking the name Francisca van Leer. Back in the Netherlands, she entered a contemporary Dutch congregation – the Vrouwen van Bethanië or Women of Bethany – in Bloemendaal. Her orthodox Jewish mother severed ties with her for this reason, but did not lose interest in her fate. Her secular Jewish father had already passed away at this juncture. Her brother, Bernard van Leer, made a fortune in the manufacture of oil drums. In her eagerness to overcome oppositions between Judaism and the Catholic Church, Francisca focused initially on the theme of Zionism. This had flourished anew after the First World War because the British government’s so-called Balfour Declaration had promised a ‘national home’ for the Jews in Palestine in 1917. In the peace negotiations that followed the First World War, this segment of the Ottoman Empire became the British Mandate of Palestine. It was opened up to Jewish pioneers who were intent on realizing the promise of a Jewish state. Francisca van Leer moved to Palestine at the end of 1924, where she set up home in kibbutz Beit Alpha with the knowledge of Cardinal Willem Van Rossum, since 1918 head of the Vatican Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith. While in the kibbutz, she set about trying win over the ‘chalutzim’ or pioneers for the Catholic faith. In her eyes, this ideal was only possible after the Zionist dream had been realized. The chalutzim were not impressed by her zeal for their conversion and they asked her to leave the kibbutz the following year. The Vatican by this time had also turned against Zionism. In a note dated 15 May 1922, Cardinal Gasparri, the Vatican Secretary of State, stated that while Jewish immigrants to Palestine ought to enjoy civil rights, they should not be allowed to acquire political privileges or outnumber the other peoples in the Mandate. The Holy See was afraid that ‘the Jewish element’ would gain economic, administrative and political superiority at the cost of other nationalities.168 The Zionist pioneers were not religious, and in the eyes of the Vatican they thus had nothing to do with the biblical promise of the Holy Land. In 1937, the Secretary of State complained to the British emissary that the Christian minorities were being subjected to ‘the influence and preponderance of adversaries of the Catholic religion’.169 Zionist pioneers with socialist 105

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ideals could be expected to modernize society, thereby undermining the traditional norms and values of Palestinian Christians.170 Francesca returned to the Netherlands and focused her attention on a new project. In a letter to Cardinal Van Rossum (dated 2 February 1925) she wrote that the Catholic Church would do good to scrap the prayer ‘pro perfidis Judaeis’ (‘for the perfidious Jews’ from the Good Friday liturgy. This was the first time that the anti-Jewish prayer (‘ex sensu antisemitico’) was called into question at the Vatican level.171 Francisca came into contact with Anton van Asseldonk, a Crosier priest and procurator general for his order in Rome. Together with van Asseldonk and the priest who had baptized her in Munich, the Franciscan Laetus Himmelreich, she established the Amici Israel movement in February 1926; a union of priests (‘opus sacerdotale amicorum Israel’) devoted to prayer and love for Israel and for its conversion. The initiative was well received, such that by the end of the movement’s first year its membership included 19 cardinals, 278 bishops and roughly 3,000 priests. Amici Israel did not only encourage support for Zionism and a new theology with respect to the Jews, it also insisted that the Good Friday prayer should be changed. The Holy Office intervened, however, after two years, banning the association in March 1928. In the eyes of the conservative Cardinal Merry del Val, the Holy Office secretary, it had become a ‘church-political movement’ that had gone too far in its support for Zionism and had also become a factor in inner-church modernism. ‘The acceptance of a new vision on Judaism would lead to interconfessionalism and indifferentism.’172 There were also personal objections to the presumably close relationship between Francisca and van Asseldonk. He and the Franciscan Himmelreich ultimately submitted to the authority of the Church. Francisca married a German in 1930, the man with whom she had tried to establish a Catholic kibbutz in Palestine. She survived the persecution of the Jews and died in 1963.173 Ten years later, the themes that inspired Amici Israel attracted renewed attention under the influence of growing anti-Semitism in both Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. On 14 July 1938, Mussolini had started the fascist campaign against Italy’s Jews with a statement on race, published in Giornale d’Italia, one of Italy’s leading newspapers. The ‘Manifesto of Racial Scientists’, prepared at Mussolini’s direction, was a set of propositions drafted by a young and unknown anthropologist, Guido Landra, and signed by a mix of prominent and obscure Italian academics.174 It was followed by the introduction of the Racial Laws, that implied a juridical degradation for Jewish citizens. Pius XI declared to a group of Belgian pilgrims that it was impossible for Christians to participate in anti-Semitism. ‘We recognize everyone’s good right to defend themselves and to provide themselves with the means necessary to protect themselves against every threat to the legitimate interests. But anti-Semitism is impermissible. Spiritually we are all Semites.’ These words are often quoted to protest discrimination against the Jews, but in the context of the Pope’s address a correction followed. ‘Some historians now project the words of Pius XI as an important statement in defence of the Jews, but at the time they were deliberately not published in the Vatican press, nor read on Vatican Radio.’175 106

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In the final year of his pontificate, Pius XI ’s statements about the evil of ‘excessive nationalism’ and National Socialist policy on race became more and more unequivocal. Feeling his final days approaching, it appears that he no longer succumbed to the restraints of his office and became a complete autocrat. In his summer residence in Castel Gandolfo, he spoke of governments ‘not far from here’ whose behaviour reminded him of the traitor Judas Iscariot. He distanced himself anew from fascist Italy and criticized Mussolini’s ‘bad habit’ of copying Nazi Germany’s excessive nationalism and racism and recasting it in his own legislation. It is possible that the Pope intended to issue an unequivocal statement condemning racial policies at this juncture. In 1972, a hitherto undiscovered draft of an encyclical against racism was discovered, commissioned by Pius XI in 1938. The American Jesuit John LaFarge, who had fought in his home country for the abolishment of racial separation, worked on the document together with two German confreres, Gustav Grundlach and Heinricht Bacht, and the Frenchman Gustave Desbuquois. The draft bore the title Humani Generis Unitas (‘The Unity of the Human Races’). When the three submitted their texts to the Jesuit superior general, the Polish aristocrat Włodimierz Ledóchowski, they assumed he would send it immediately to the Pope.176 It appears in hindsight that the Polish general had his doubts about the timeliness of the encyclical because he was obsessed with the struggle against communism and even held on to the possibility of reaching a compromise between the Church and National Socialism. The draft was only forwarded when Pius XI was on his deathbed. The encyclical, which has since been published, is a good example of Catholic social teaching of the day, placing the emphasis on the rejection of an atomistic society and on the balanced relationship between individual and community. The totalitarian state is rejected. The Church was obliged to reject racism – and its anti-Semitic variant, in this instance actually mentioned – on the basis of its principle of universalism. The draft lacks the usual references to texts in the Old and New Testaments found in papal documents, probably because they were to have been added in the final version. Pius XI never saw the draft. He died after three heart attacks in succession on 10 February 1939. Cardinal Pacelli (soon his successor) did not have it published. On 15 February he ordered the Pope’s secretary to gather up all written material Pius XI had produced in preparing his address. He also told the Vatican printing office to destroy all copies of the speech it had printed, copies that Pius had intended to give the bishops.177 In this speech, the Pope has looked forward to the day when ‘all peoples, all nations, all the races, all joined together and all of the same blood in the common link of the great human family’ would unite in one ‘true Faith’.178 6 Othodoxy and fascism 6.1 Romania as Casus Fascism in Europe was a secular movement both in principle and in implementation. In Romania, however, it had religious roots: The Legion of the Archangel Michael. The Legion 107

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offered its members a mix of nationalistic obsession with notions of fascism in combination with radical Orthodoxy. Compared with fascist configurations in the other Balkan states – such as Yugoslavia – this ideology was not unique, but the religious dimension of the Romanian variant was striking to say the least. The Ustaše, for example, which fought for a Catholic Croatia, ‘was basically a secular movement’.179 While the Romanian Orthodox Church, which represented the national religion of Romania, had some difficulty with the violent character of the Legion, it nevertheless continued to support its development from its highest to its lowest levels, and especially its lowest. In addition to religion, the cradle of Romanian fascism was culture, and literature in particular. Intellectuals and artists in 1920s and 1930s Bucharest discussed the necessity of cultural nationalism and its lines of demarcation towards ‘outsiders’, especially, but not exclusively, the Jews. An explicit common denominator was the critique of modernization in a country that was still for the most part agrarian, together with the fear that this would lead to the loss of cultural values and traditions. Critique was also addressed to the liberal-minded intellectual elite who had sought their inspiration in a so-called artistic internationalism symbolized by the expansion of Bucharest along Parisian lines. The spokespersons of the new generation turned to popular culture, both real and imagined. In their preference for the pastoral life, its writers were a Romanian variant of the so-called Narodniki in Russia. In the eyes of its nationally inclined citizens, Romania’s patriotic history could be traced back to the Dacians and Roman rule. This had acquired concrete expression in the Romanian language, a residue of Latin surrounded by linguistically Slavic and Hungarian neighbours. ‘Notions of cultural narcissism were entertained, locating Romania between the centre of Europe and the Russian steppe, the sombre lands of the north and the sunny Balkan peninsula in the south.’180 Romania considered itself ‘fully grown’ as a result of the acquisition of territory following the First World War, although the said acquisitions made the country more pluralistic in both ethnic and religious terms. The situation also gave rise to questions concerning the definition of the ‘Romanian idea’, which became a theme of post-war debate. This was pursued with vigour after 1918 in the journal Gîndirea (1921–1944) run by Nichifor Crainics, a theologian and. He portrayed the Romanian people as a youthful and as yet unconscious power who, like Parsifal, emerged from the forested wilderness to engage in battle with the wizard (Klingsor), the symbol of Western civilization. The religious dimension was a determining feature of the specificity of Romanian culture. The Romanian nation belonged to Orthodoxy, the eyes through which the Romanian people looked up to the light of heaven and arranged their affairs on earth under its leadership. The Romanians had never been converted. They did not have a pagan prehistory, but had been born into Orthodoxy, introduced by Andrew, one of the twelve apostles. Christianization and ‘ethnogenesis’ went hand in hand.181 The Latin component in the Romanian phenomenon was unique, at least in the experience of the intellectuals in question. It provided the nation in the south-east of Europe a level of isolation that could also be interpreted as a form of election. At the same time, however, they distanced themselves from ‘Latin’ nations in Western Europe. 108

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France and the Third Republic were seen as a collective of Jews, freemasons, atheists and so-called uprooted democrats. Other authors denigrated Roman Catholicism in countries such as Spain and Italy as a Catholicism that appeared to have fossilized into positive rationalism that was governed by a ‘juridical institutionalism’ and had thus lost its sense of the transcendent. Western European Protestantism, on the other hand, was dominated by individualism and urban culture. The radius of the debate extended as far as the Romanian Orthodox Church. Dumitru Stãniloae, a theologian who had been rector of the Theological Academy in Sibiu in the 1930s, constructed a national ethos that was not open to contamination by the individualistic tendencies of the (Western) Renaissance and of (Western) humanism: the Romanian as the ideal of the communityoriented citizen.182 The flipside of this cultural nationalism was an insidious and ever spreading antiSemitism. Patrick Leigh Fermor, a renowned British travel journalist, writes of a ‘deeprooted and almost universal anti-Semitism of the Romanians; the sentiment had a nearly mystical intensity’.183 Before 1918, the Jewish population of Romania was 240,000; 3.3 per cent of the general population. Legislation had limited the rights of Jewish citizens and provided newcomers among them with the opportunity to settle. The majority, however, were not recognized as Romanian citizens. During the Interbellum, Romania had the third largest Jewish population in Europe (750,000) after the Soviet Union and Poland.184 The peace agreements negotiated in Paris in 1919, however, had obliged the Romanian government to protect its minorities and to grant citizen’s rights to the Jews in the newly acquired territories. These were guaranteed by the constitution of 1923 in the face of an anti-Semitic opposition that protested in both word and deed.185 According to historian Tony Judt in his interview with Timothy Snyder, the intellectuals with nationalist inclinations – such as the later historian of religion Mircea Eliade – considered the distance between cultural conversation and ‘rhetorical murder’ to be very narrow. They spoke with a degree of ease about the necessary use of violence in a ‘purification’ of Romanian politics, of a ‘slaughter’ of Hungarian fellow citizens, and of an expulsion of the Jews. The borders of Romania were like a skin, as it were, that had to be protected against all sorts of potential infections. ‘This is a language of anger, even though the people themselves don’t seem to be individually particularly angry. It is as though they are permeated by an extreme rhetoric, even when they wish to say something not obviously or necessarily extreme.’186 6.2 The Legion of the Archangel Michael The religious-national ideas that emerged from the aforementioned intellectual debates put down political roots in two organizations: the (anti-Semitic) National Agrarian Party of Octavian Goga, a poet from Transylvania who propagated Romanian national renewal, and the ‘National Christian Union’, which was established in 1922 by the economist Alexandru Cuza, professor at the university in Iaşi and one of the most important defendants of anti-Semitism in Romania. The Union was a conservative movement, which changed its name a year later to the ‘National Christian Defence 109

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League’, a word combination representing a militant Christianity. In 1927, it became the cradle of an activist variant: The Legion of the Archangel Michael, a Romanian version of fascism in Europe. In 1931, it was transformed into a military elite corps named the Iron Guard (‘garda de fier’). In that same year it took its place in parliament. The Legion’s name alluded to the Archangel Michael who, according to the Christian tradition, had conquered the rebellious Archangel Lucifer. But it also referred indirectly to an Orthodox hero and saint from medieval Romanian history: Prince Michael the Brave. It was established by Corneliu Zela-Codreanu, born in the periphery of Bukovina. He made a name for himself as a student on account of his Christian nationalist views, his raving anti-Semitism, and his violence. His mother had Bavarian roots, while his father had a presumably Polish background (Zelinski). ‘The foreign resonance of his name recalls the frequent phenomenon of nationalist leaders stemming from border regions, like Hitler and Degrelle, or from assimilated national groups, like Szalasi, Gömbös, and Iorga.’187 Corneliu Zela-Codreanu was named by his father after Saint Cornelius, a Roman centurion who had converted to Christianity and was venerated as a martyr. He himself believed that the Romanian people had strayed from the path God had shown them. Only a new generation of young people would be able to guide it towards its true goal. He was completely convinced that the Romanian people had reached a turning point. Traditional institutions like the monarchy, the Church and the family had been called into question, and if moral certainties appeared to have lost their appeal there had to be a reason, there had to be someone to blame. For Codreanu this was always the Jews!188 Codreanu’s followers knew him as Căpitanul or the Captain. His most important companion was Ion Moţa, a student at the University of Cluj. He was described as a ‘hero’ in violent campaigns, a ‘saint’ in religious practice, and a ‘child’ in daily life.189 Moţa was the son of an Orthodox priest, unashamedly violent and a fanatical antiSemite. ‘Moţa’s Jews were everything Romanians should have been – united, powerful, and dangerous to cross – a sort of transferred wish-fulfilment fantasy, and devious besides.’190 He and Codreanu believed in the redemptive value of sacrifice, a doctrine borrowed from Orthodoxy but applied in political practice. According to psychologist Zeev Barbu, Codreanu and Moţa served as the model for a delicate balance between two contradictory extremes of behaviour, one determined by militancy, the other by faith and contemplation. ‘The Christ of Theologia Gloriae and the Christ of the Theologia Crucis, the mystique of life (Codreanu), and the mystique of death (Moţa) were brought together in the symbolic world of the Iron Guard.’191 Romanian fascism distinguished itself from comparable fascist movements elsewhere in Europe in three ways. Its origins were in the universities and in all the years of its existence it continued to be a youth organization. It won seats in parliamentary elections held between 1927 and 1937, but it never became an established political party. It continued to be a movement that combined fascist features with an explicit ‘religiously nativist’ character. While it was not immune to foreign influence, it was a textbook example of autochthonous obsessions: concentration on the nation of which it was a product and which it also had to protect. ‘The village and the peasant became symbols of 110

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honesty, sanity and primeval purity, the strongholds of national life. Christianity itself became a Romanian virtue.’192 Codreanu describes how he travelled through the villages of Moldavia in the course of 1929 spreading propaganda. He would announce his presence in the village square, deliver a speech about the rebirth and redemption of Romania, sing songs with his audience and then move on by horse to the next village. His political comrades followed him, also on horseback. By the end, a group of 50 horsemen had assembled around their charismatic leader, who were welcomed by the (Christian) villagers in a traditional manner.193 But Codreanu’s crusade was not only a verbal one. The rebirth of the nation had an explicitly violent side. In 1923, Codreanu shot and killed the prefect of police in the Moldavian city of Iaşi, although he was later acquitted of murder. His Legion was responsible for eleven murders in the period between 1924 and 1940, for the most part of prominent politicians. In the same period, more than 500 legionaries lost their lives, the majority felled by police bullets. Between 1938 and 1939, the ‘year of martyrdom’, a further 1,200 legionaries were arrested and killed, among them Codreanu himself.194 The Iron Guard, the Legion’s military wing, came into existence on Palm Sunday (13 April) 1930 and represented a new contribution to the struggle for domination of the public domain. On 24 January 1933, Romania’s national day, a procession of members of the Legion of the Archangel Michael passed through the streets of Bucharest in the direction of Carol Park, where a cross was erected next to the monument to the Unknown Soldier. The government had forbidden the procession and the erection of the cross, and skirmishes followed when the police intervened. Priests of the Roman Orthodox Church were outraged, and Patriarch Miron Cristea declared his solidarity with the Legion. Solidarity protests were organized in a few university cities. A few days later, a second procession set off through the streets of Bucharest, this time with between seven and eight thousand participants. The liberal government declared martial law in February 1933 and the Iron Guard was disbanded. In December 1933, Prime Minister Ion Duca was murdered by members of the (now defunct) guard. When the Spanish Civil War broke out, eight of the most renowned legionaries travelled to Spain to hand over a sabre to one of Franco’s generals and take part in the struggle for a month. In that period – January 1937 – two of the Legion’s prominent members died, one of whom was Ion Moţa. Their funeral train passed through the entire country, reaching Bucharest on 11 February 1937 where legionaries were waiting to carry the coffins to the cathedral. The funeral was attended by no fewer than 200 Orthodox priests. The patriarch also spoke of the two fallen fascists as heroes of the faith and martyrs. The ban on wearing uniforms was lifted for the duration of the funeral. Diplomats from Germany, Italy, Franco’s Spain, Portugal and Japan were also present in the Cathedral. Eliade commented, that ‘if Nazism is founded on the nation and Fascism on the State, as they say, then the Legionary Movement has the right to claim itself as the only Christian mystic capable of leading human societies’. He considered the Legion to be ‘a Christian revolution, ascetic and virile’ and unique in European history.195 In 1937, Codreanu and his followers won 16 per cent of the vote in parliamentary elections under the banner ‘Totul Pentru Ţară – Everything for the Country’. Their 111

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unmistakeable advance was blocked by King Carol II , who gave preference to Octavian Goga of the National Agrarian Party above the Iron Guard. The resulting government, which lasted a mere 44 days, made overtures to Nazi Germany and introduced antiSemitic legislation on its own initiative, whereby half of Romania’s Jews lost their citizenship. In February 1938, however, the king dismissed the government and set up a royal and so-called ‘advisory government’ on his own authority. The king appointed Patriarch Miron Cristea as – nominal – leader of his cabinet of ‘National Rebirth’. The appointment had its roots in the Orthodox tradition of granting an administrative role to bishops (and the patriarch) in the nation and was intended to serve as evidence that the royal government was above party politics. The patriarch held the office until his death in March 1939. His government proclaimed a state of emergency. Codreanu was arrested and accused of plotting against the state. He was killed together with two other legionaries in November 1938 while being transferred to another prison. The patriarch was still Prime Minister at the time. In their turn, Codreanu’s supporters murdered a number of prominent politicians in November 1940, among them Nicolae Iorga, a former Prime Minister, alluded to above as a representative of cultural nationalism. 6.3 Church and fascism The Romanian Orthodox Church maintained a consistently ambivalent attitude towards this religiously oriented fascism. This was inspired by the obligation to keep its distance from the political domain, although it shared some of the latter’s norms and values. While the Church was invited by a succession of governments to distance itself from the violence of the legionaries, its priests were sometimes very impressed by the religious idealism of Codreanu. After the assassination of Prime Minister Duca in December 1933, the Synod published a pastoral letter in which it warned nationalist students against taking the law into their own hands and seeking violent solutions to the political crisis. At the same time, however, it expressed understanding for what motivated them. The Synod urged them to redouble their efforts in the spirit of order and discipline so that the Romanian nation might find a solution to its crisis without foreign interference.196 It is possible to interpret the synodal reference to ‘foreign interference’ as a certain acquiescence to the anti-Semitism of the Legion. In communication with the Israelite World Alliance, Patriarch Miron Cristea expressed his opinion that many of Romania’s Jewish citizens ‘lived in easy circumstances, monopolizing all the riches of the country, commerce, industry, houses, towns etc. With the acme of refinement they instigated and cultivated the germ of social corruption and other ills; and had acquired the monopoly of the press which, with obviously foreign aid carried out a sinister campaign against the very soul of Romania.’197 The second Orthodox institution in Romania, the Greek Catholic Church, kept clear of the Legion. The Greek-Catholic press saw the Legionaries as ‘wandering youngsters’ and condemned their doctrine of heroic death and their reliance upon political violence.198 112

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Codreanu and his legionaries also did their best to serve the Romanian Orthodox Church. Their response to the Synod’s statement in 1934 was an offer to build churches. The Legion’s members would travel through the country as ‘crusaders’ in the service of the church. Orthodox relics and rituals inspired Romanian fascism, as did the visual proximity between saints and heroes in Romanian history whose icons were venerated in the churches. And the magic of religious fraternity and its rites of initiation also added its weight. Codreanu claimed that the archangel Michael appeared to him when he was first imprisoned in 1923. The archangel is said to have called him to dedicate his life to the divine task of Romania’s re-Christianization. Both Codreanu and – especially – Moţa grounded their violent interventions in the Christian idea of death and resurrection. Dying for a worthy cause and killing evil were the conditions of a national redemption.199 Neither the Legion of the Archangel Michael nor the Iron Guard were to play a role of significance when Romania became an ally of Nazi Germany. Both, nevertheless, had made a powerful contribution to the passion and hatred with which the Jews of Romania were persecuted and murdered from the middle of 1940 onward.

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Map 1 Religion in Europe.

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CHAPTER 3 CHURCHES IN OCCUPIED TERRITORIES 1

1 Introduction The present chapter focuses its attention on occupying regimes and has two points of departure: the nature of the occupation and the position of the Christian churches therein. Territorial conquest was the order of the day during the Second World War, and it gave rise to different types of administration, ruler and repression. The subjugated territories were administered in a variety of ways, depending on the place they occupied in the geo-political agenda of the prevailing ideology. On some occasions, however, mere opportunism on the part of the invading forces was the decisive factor. National Socialist Germany annexed a state (Austria) and a number of regions on its western and eastern borders, thus rescinding on the stipulations of the Peace of Versailles (1919). The annexed territories were governed ‘führerunmittelbar’, i.e. directly by Hitler himself and by a Gauleiter or regional official under his authority who exercised dictatorial powers. In other territories that did not fall within the boundaries of the Reich, a supervising administration was established, a so-called ‘Aufsichtsverwaltung’, using a model borrowed from European colonialism. German military and civil authorities were expected to give orders to and keep an eye on the local administrative elite. Models of this kind were established in protectorates or in ‘occupied countries’ and took the form of both military and civilian administrations. Other regions or countries acquired or maintained a degree of independence and were understood as German satellite states. In comparison with Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union’s policy of occupation was an example of uniformity, at least at first sight. The Bolshevik concept of a party-driven communist revolution also made a contribution in this regard. After the arrival of the Red Army, an assembly of the people or a referendum was organized, a plebiscite form of decision-making intended to lead to the institution of a Soviet Republic and the inclusion thereof in the Union. On its western borders – from Finland to Rumania – regions and countries were recaptured, which Russia believed it had lost at the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (1918) and the Peace of Riga (1921). A number of these nations regained their independence at the end of the twentieth century. Among the Baltic States, this process of Russification was thus seen as an occupation. In every occupied territory – including those of fascist Italy and Albania, of Hungary and of Bulgaria – the Christian churches were obliged to respond to the reality and policies of a new regime. They constituted a factor of numerical significance in a society in which the majority still confessed the Christian faith, both passively and actively, in spite of the emerging secularization of the first half of the twentieth century. Furthermore,

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they had assumed the role of cultural guardian of the nation and their presence in the domain of education and in various social organizations granted them considerable social influence in addition to their constitutional position. Church leaders were free to accept the new balance of power, but some were also forced to do so using both reward and repression. The question of loyalty applied in the first instance to the highest ecclesial authorities and the way in which they aligned themselves with respect to the new rulers. Leading figures holding the rank of archbishop or patriarch served as spokespersons for an institutional Christianity. In the Reformed churches of France and the Netherlands, which did not recognize Episcopal ordination, prominent pastors developed into similarly recognized authorities. All played a part whether they wanted to or not in a process of legitimating the regime of the occupiers: assent or rejection.1 The flipside of this legitimation was the relationship between the churches and their leaders on the one hand, and the head of state/government that had been expelled by the German or Russian invader on the other. Indeed, obedience to the legal authorities was a core issue in Christian doctrine. In some instances, duplicity in relations with the old and the new rulers led to serious debate and even conflict. Where a state had been occupied by force, such debate was quickly suppressed. Where the occupation could be considered ‘correct’, the dilemma continued. As discussed in Chapter 1, the Christian churches had identified themselves with the nation state before and after the First World War. In the Second World War, however, they were forced to pay the price for this identification. Where the nation faced repression, the national church was likewise menaced and threatened. Where the church had supported a suppressed minority, by contrast, or had identified itself with the latter, it was free to flourish and even be seduced into collaboration with the occupier, now that the balance of power had been reversed under the constraints of the occupation. A third development was related to the confrontation between totalitarian ideology and religion. Christian churches in Europe often enjoyed civil status and had expanded in the course of the centuries in terms of property, monasteries, schools, etc. In places, a network of organizations had evolved around the church. In a considerable number of countries, the rights and freedoms of the Roman Catholic Church had been ratified in a concordat with the Holy See. Occupying regimes with totalitarian goals were confronted with these facts and were obliged either to win the church over or break its power. In each instance, choices had to be made with respect to the intensity of their religious politics. Repression sometimes reached as far as parishes and communities, the pulpit and the confessional. All these factors emerged into view after the new regimes made their presence felt. In this third and fourth chapter, we will focus on developments in this regard in the late 1930s and in the first phase of the Second World War in Europe. We will take 22 June 1941 as our temporal boundary: the day Germany invaded the Soviet Union. The character of the war changed at that moment and this had enormous repercussions for the churches and religion in Europe. 116

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2 The first victories: Saarland and Austria 2.1 Reunification with Saarland A single theme united the Germans in the Interbellum period: the awareness that the First World War had been concluded with an unjust peace. Hitler and his National Socialist movement gave expression to the general state of dissatisfaction in their campaign against the ‘Diktat of Versailles’, although the malaise was also present in the other political families. The fate of the German minorities in the new states evolved into an impassioned political theme in the Weimar Republic. In 1935, the opportunity arose to peacefully emend the Treaty of Versailles: the end of the League of Nations mandate in Saarland in January of that year. The people were to decide by vote whether they wanted to remain under the protection of the League of Nations (the status quo), become part of French sovereignty, or return to the German Reich. A referendum was held on 13 January 1935. The turnout was massive – close to 98 per cent – and the result unequivocal: 90 per cent of the voters wanted reunification with Germany. In the debate that preceded the reunification, both Christian churches – Roman Catholic and Evangelical – played an important role. The Saarland region was 72 per cent Catholic and 25 per cent Evangelical. The Catholic Church was divided administratively into the diocese of Trier and the diocese of Speyer; the Evangelical communion into the Old-Prussian Church and the Church of the Palts. In 1920, the churches successfully resisted an attempt on the part of the French to place the Catholics under the jurisdiction of the French diocese of Metz and to detach the Evangelical Church in Saarland from any German ecclesial structure. The nuncio in Bavaria, Eugenio Pacelli, had supported their resistance. It was known that the most important bishops in the Rhineland, those of Cologne and Trier, rejected any form of Rhineland ‘separatism’ among their faithful. The largest party in the mandated territory was the Catholic Zentrum party, the representatives of which continued to cherish their love for the German fatherland. As a result of its independence, Saarland became a place of refuge from 1933 onwards for opponents of the Nazi regime. The German Christian movement within the Evangelical Church was clearly in the minority; its ministers tended to exhibit a degree of sympathy for the Bekennende Kirche. On 1 July 1934, in the baroque monastic church of Saarbrücken, a considerable number had accepted the Theses of the Barmen Synod. Those who preferred to extend the mandate of the League of Nations and were (as yet) unwilling to reunite with Hitler’s Germany adhered to the Volksbund, which numbered no fewer than 70 Catholic clergymen among its members. The latter were obliged to leave the union in November 1934, however, forbidden by their bishops to be politically active. The propagandistic effect of pilgrim devotion to the ‘Holy Tunic of Trier’, which had been exhibited for veneration in the summer of 1933, the first time since 1891, was much stronger. Saarland’s Catholics were steered in large numbers to Trier. The church propagated the pilgrimage as an expression of popular piety and of the so-called ‘Volkstum’, a religious adhesion to the Germanic nation. No matter how substantial their doubts about the freedom and rights of their church in Nazi Germany may have been, the Bishops of Trier and Speyer endeavoured 117

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nevertheless to nip nascent opposition within their own circles in the bud and to make their adhesion to the German Reich as unequivocal as possible. During a mass demonstration in Saarbrücken stadium, the former, Franz Rudolf Bornewasser, unexpectedly took the stand in order to despatch a message of unqualified fidelity from ‘German Westmark’ on behalf of ‘50,000 young Catholics’.2 The monitoring commission appointed by the League of Nations was forced to declare that the neutrality promised by Germany at the time had been violated by the bishop. The declaration of Cardinal Karl Joseph Schulte, Archbishop of Cologne, was equally firm and unforeseen. Shortly before the referendum, he made it clear to the faithful of the ecclesial province of Cologne (to which a portion of Saarland belonged) that no genuine German could remain indifferent to the division that had been imposed by the ‘violent Treaty of Versailles’. He appealed to his flock to pray for a favourable result in the plebiscite. The declaration was Schulte’s own initiative, and ran counter to the agreement made at the Episcopal Conference of Fulda not to engage in such appeals.3 The leadership of the Christian churches did not conceal their support in the opening phase of the National Socialist regime. It was German, was made up of German believers, and shared in Germany’s exultation at the dismantlement of ‘Versailles’ and in reunification with Saarland. This formed a contrast with the deteriorating relationship between the church and the National Socialist state, but when it came to patriotism, the church’s leaders were evidently not inclined to let the situation stand in their way. 2.2 The first annexation: Austria in 1938 A second boundary was transgressed on 12 March 1938 when the German Wehrmacht invaded neighbouring Austria on the invitation of the recently appointed chancellor, the National Socialist Arthur Seyss-Inquart. His predecessor, Kurt Schuschnigg, had been obliged to resign the evening before under threat of a civil war. Hitler, who had made the incorporation of Austria into the German Reich the first goal of his policy of expansion, planned a hostile intervention at the moment Schuschnigg announced his intention to hold a referendum on Austrian independence. For the National Socialists, Anschluß or affiliation with Germany was the only ambition. As part of the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1919, the victors had forbidden the new republic of ‘German Austria’, heir to the Habsburg monarchy, to associate itself with Germany. In the years following the First World War, however, the call for an Anschluß resounded repeatedly, even in social democratic circles in which it was believed an affiliation with the Weimar Republic would lead to the reinforcement of socialism. Nevertheless, the 1938 referendum was to have the opposite effect. It represented an attempt on behalf of the authorities in Vienna to protect the republic from the power and violence of the Nazis. The attempt failed. After a month of National Socialist violence and pogroms, 99.37 per cent of the Austrian people – minus the communists and the Jews who had been deprived of their voting rights – voted in favour of affiliation on 10 April. A referendum held in Germany around the same time achieved a similar percentage: 99.01. Austria became the Ostmark of what was thenceforth to be referred to 118

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as the Greater German Reich. Linz, Hitler’s favourite city, and not the capital Vienna, was chosen as one of the five so-called ‘Führer Cities’. Josef Bürckel, the Gauleiter who had organized the incorporation of Saarland as a ‘Westmark’ into the German Reich, was invited to repeat his performance. The Christian Social Party, the political representation of Catholicism, had continued to maintain a strong position in the Republic after the fall of the Habsburg monarchy. Led by a group of reformist priests – particularly in Vienna – the party had focused itself on the middle class in the cities and on the farmers. In the 1920s, its leader Ignaz Seipel, himself a priest, served twice as chancellor. Seipel, the most important and controversial Catholic politician of the First Republic, was responsible for distancing his organization, with its predominantly corporative ambitions, from social democracy.4 In the 1930s, under Chancellor Engelbert Dolfuß, Austria became a laboratory for a Christian corporative state. He dissolved parliament in favour of an authoritarian regime. His party was incorporated in a National Front whereby he gave form to a so-called ‘Austrofascism’ in line with Mussolini, who also became his protector. In 1934, the Christian corporative state struck out violently in response to a social democratic revolt. The Social Democratic Party was dissolved and the seats of the 71 Social Democrats in parliament were taken away. A rump parliament was recalled to ratify, among other things, a concordat between corporative Austria and the Holy See. This treaty was ‘anchored in its Constitution (which opened with the words: “In the name of God, from whom all right emanates”)’.5 When Dolfuß was murdered in a Nazi plot later that same year, Schuschnigg continued his authoritarian and corporative politics. Dolfuß had been able to count on the support of the Austrian bishops, especially that of Theodor Innitzer, Archbishop of Vienna. The latter came from a poor and parochial background in Weipert-Neugeschrei; ‘an anima candida, an apolitical nature, filled with the best intentions to follow the right path. Born, moreover, with a childlike love of Germany.’6 He had acquired the post of Minister of Social Security (1929–1930) and had been appointed Archbishop of Vienna in 1932. In 1933, and by this time a cardinal, Innitzer offered Dolfuß public support for the authoritarian and corporative state he envisaged. Under his leadership, the Austrian episcopate expressed its opposition, in accordance with Dolfuß, to the further participation of the clergy in active politics, which resulted in serious personnel problems for the existing Christian Social Party. In 1933, five deputies to the Nationalrat, three to the Bundesrat and more than a dozen to the Landtagen (Regional Parliaments) and Gemeinderaten (Local Councils) were priests.7 After Dolfuß was murdered (on 25 July 1934), Cardinal Innitzer delivered a moving eulogy during the funeral requiem in the Stefansdom. He referred to the chancellor as a martyr, a hero, a true Christian, and ‘unser Führer’. His ‘Heldentod’ was a sacrifice offered for a better future. The Austrian bishops – a few of them adorned with regal titles stemming from the Habsburg monarchy – also supported Dolfuß’ successor, Chancellor Schuschnigg. One of the bishops gave his support a political twist. In January 1933, shortly before Hitler took office as German chancellor, Johannes Gföllner, Bishop of Linz, issued a pastoral letter on the question of ‘true and false nationalism’ in which he declared National 119

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Figure 8 Cardinal Innitzer, Archbishop of Vienna (second on the left), pays a visit to the Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dolfuß (furthest left). Photo: SOMA , Brussels.

Socialism ‘completely irreconcilable’ with Christianity on account of its moral stance and its racial doctrine. At the same time, he proposed a ‘spiritual’ and ‘moral’ anti-Semitism, intended to create a dam via legislation and state rule against the ‘spiritual degeneration’ and ‘flood of immoral shamelessness’ that stemmed for the most part from Judaism and threatened to engulf the world. The bishop did not want to have the Jews expelled from the country – he recognized a number of noble figures among the Jews – but he wanted to stem their influence.8 The episcopal missive attracted both national and international attention, but the other members of the Austrian episcopate did not agree with the text. It can be affirmed, nevertheless, that insofar as it had a religious motivation or was expressed against the economic might of the Jewish bourgeoisie, large numbers of clergy and lay people in the Austrian church supported anti-Semitism. In the wake of the Wehrmacht, Hitler entered Austria via the border city of Braunau, his birthplace. During his visit to Linz, he let it be known that he would like to see the cathedral. Critical of the Nazis, Bishop Johannes Gföllner refused to attend the visit and designated one of his canons to receive him. Cardinal Innitzer’s response was completely different. On the morning of 15 March 1938, he visited Hitler in his hotel, the Imperial in Vienna. Hitler approached him, presumed he was in the presence of a self-assured prelate, bowed and expected to have to kiss the man’s ring. The cardinal archbishop blessed himself with his pectoral cross and informed the Führer that the Catholics of Austria were ready to welcome the new state as loyal citizens. Hitler declared in turn that 120

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the church would not regret such loyalty. The cardinal’s visit had given Hitler to believe that the Catholic Church in Austria was going to be less problematic than its sister church in the ‘Altreich’. Confessional parity had seen to it that Catholicism in Germany was and remained politically combative; in Austria, Catholicism was the state church and thus had a more mature relationship with the state.9 On 18 March 1938, the Austrian bishops assembled in the archiepiscopal palace in Vienna and deliberated on the preparation of a public declaration in favour of the Anschluß. In the last analysis, the text was formulated in consultation with – and under pressure from – the Gauleiter, Josef Bürckel, whose influence was decisive. All of the bishops – including Gföllner – signed a document on 18 March in which they ascribed a constructive contribution to the National Socialist movement in the domain of national and economic politics, especially with respect to the poorest segments of the population. The threat of a devastating and godless Bolshevism had thus been averted and the Austrian bishops were determined to favour this constructive politics with their blessing in the future. ‘On the day of the referendum, it is for us, the bishops, an evident national duty to align ourselves as Germans with the German Reich and we expect all Christian believers to be aware of what they owe to their nation.’10 The nuncio in Austria, Gaetano Cicognani, managed to pressure the bishops into providing the document with a ‘preface’, in which a condition was attached to endorsement of the Anschluß: namely ‘with full respect for the rights of God and of the Church’. The appeal was read out in every Roman Catholic cathedral and church on Sunday 27 March 1938. Cardinal Innitzer informed Gauleiter Bürckel in writing that the bishops had willingly fulfilled their national duty. The fact that he included ‘Heil Hitler’ next to his signature caused a considerable stir.11 This was a significant gesture that went further than the cardinal’s determination to establish a modus vivendi between church and regime by endeavouring to accommodate the new authorities. He was not the only one to cause a stir. His adhesion to the Anschluß was shared by the first president of the Austrian Republic, the renowned social democrat Karl Renner, using much the same arguments. After the publication of the episcopal declaration and the despatch of the cardinal’s letter, the nuncio intervened, informing Innitzer that he was expected in Rome. He and Cesare Orsenigo, the nuncio in Berlin, did not find it easy to convince the cardinal to make the journey. For his part, Gauleiter Bürckel made every effort to keep the cardinal in Vienna. Innitzer finally conceded, however, arriving in Rome on 5 April. In the Vatican, the Pope and the secretary of state, Cardinal Pacelli, had him sign a new declaration nuancing the episcopal document. The bishops had ‘obviously’ not intended to attach their approval to whatever was irreconcilable with the laws of God and the rights and freedoms of the Catholic Church. Furthermore, the episcopal declaration was not to be explained by state and party as a matter of moral obligation or used for propaganda purposes.12 After his return, the cardinal was received by Hitler for a second time, although on this occasion the reception was somewhat reserved. Hitler informed Innitzer that he had originally planned to issue a ‘binding declaration’ concerning the Catholic Church in Austria but had changed his mind in response to Rome’s intervention. 121

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Many Austrian Catholics, of varied prominence and authority, not only listened to and followed the episcopal declaration of 18 March 1938, they also welcomed it with gratitude. But other believers were unpleasantly surprised and even angered. The story is told that a National Socialist prison warder – or a group of them – tossed newspapers into the cells of known Catholic prisoners and said: ‘take a look, fatheads, that’s why you’re here’. Many people carried that memory until the day they died.13 Adhesion to the Anschluß did not appear to be limited to Catholic leaders. The Evangelical Church, the religious home of a minority of 330,000, welcomed Austria’s entrance into the German Reich, the motherland of the Lutheran Reformation. On 9 April 1938, Hitler received a Lutheran delegation. After the meeting, one of the participating preachers made a public vow of fidelity to the German chancellor. On the Sunday before the referendum, a declaration was read from the pulpit in which the church recommended ‘without reservation’ that its members vote in the affirmative in gratitude for the salvation of the fatherland.14 Lutheran adhesion was influenced by ‘German Christians’ for two reasons: the overwhelming presence of corporative Catholicism forced the Evangelical Church onto the defence; Lutheran believers shared an ancient affinity with Germany and with the great German mother church. 2.3 The Altreich and the new Reich The return of Saarland into the German Reich and the annexation of Austria created a new administrative category: ‘füherunmittelbares Territorium’, a territory that was placed under the immediate authority of the Führer, passing over the traditional organs of authority. Saarland was the first to succumb. After a transitional period in which the reunification was completed at the administrative level, it became a region in the new ‘Westmark’. The Gauleiter, a National Socialist administrator, held the reins. Jozef Bürckel, a former Catholic teacher appreciated by Hitler as a war veteran and for his recklessness, was first appointed Reich Commissioner for re-unification and then Gauleiter. The so-called ‘Führerprinzip’ resulted in the appointment of administrators to important positions by Hitler in person. Authority was thus based on personal loyalty; administrative competence was a ‘personal gift’ and not a qualification defined as part of the office itself. The leadership principle can be understood as a National Socialist rejection of government based on legal and rational principles. It meant that ‘loyalty’ on the part of subordinates to the personal ‘responsibility’ of those in charge became the only legitimate manner of exercising political power.15 In the divide and conquer politics that followed, competition between party politics and administrative institutions was immense. Historiography has opted to describe this situation as a polycracy. Rivalry between the various centres of administration was thus a conscious goal. To the surprise of the bishops, Saarland was considered ‘konkordatsfrei’, as extraterritorial with respect to the concordat established between Germany and the Holy See. Hitler had personally instructed Reich Commissioner Bürckel in this regard.16 It was important for ecclesial relations in this mainly Catholic region that it did not fall under the Altreich, the (old) Reich that was bound by the legal provisions and obligations of a 122

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concordat. This meant that the religious policies of the Nazis could be implemented with greater freedom and caprice, both of which characterized the personal regime of the Gauleiter. The Gauleiter received orders and supervision from the National Socialist Party Central, in casu Martin Bormann, and from the leaders of the SS , in particular Heinrich Himmler and Reinhardt Heydrich. In the midst of such a diversity of leaders and circumstances, National Socialist policy towards the churches had three fixed dimensions. In the first instance, religious institutions lost their public status and were reduced to private associations. As a result, the churches could thus be run by councils and administrations made up of lay people. The state stopped paying salaries to the clergy and ceased honouring its other financial obligations, some of which had a lengthy prehistory. The National Socialist Party created its own institutions and thus had to find buildings to house them. These included properties that had been placed in mortmain. Church buildings such as boarding schools and monasteries could therefore be requisitioned by the occupiers. Reference was made in some instance to a Klostersturm, the ‘attack’ and expropriation of the monasteries similar to that which took place under Joseph II and Napoleon. The second dimension turned around education. The National Socialist totalitarian state wanted to use the schools for the purposes of ideological formation and refused to tolerate the presence of a competing religious programme. This had its initial expression in the campaign to remove crucifixes from prominent places in every classroom, re-hang them elsewhere, and replace them with a portrait of Hitler. Clergy were excluded from the schools and religious education was either considerably reduced or abolished. Schools that had been founded by the churches and/or were administered by them – such as the ‘Bekenntnisschule’ in Saarland – were obliged to exchange their religious foundations for civil/state foundations. This ‘deconfessionalisation’ of the educational system was a radical measure that was not applied in every occupied territory. The third dimension was the equalization (‘Gleichschaltung’) of social organizations. The churches were to be deprived of their influence in confessional associations to prevent boundaries being set on the advance of the National Socialist ideology. In particular, the continued existence of both Protestant and Catholic youth associations came under threat or was impeded. Only associations with strictly religious goals were allowed to continue. The same restrictions applied to evangelical and Catholic press instances. Only the church newsletters could be distributed with any degree of freedom, although the said freedom was continually and often unexpectedly curtailed. The churches were also to be monitored in terms of preaching and limited in the exercise of their core religious tasks. They were allowed to fulfil their function, but on a considerably smaller scale and under the constant supervision of the political authorities. The ultimate goal of National Socialist religious politics was the forced withdrawal of the Protestant and Catholic Churches from public life and the controlled secularization of the party members, in the first instance, followed by the rest of the population. Vigilance, restrictive policies and repression were to ensure the isolation of the churches, but not in catacombs where they would be impossible to control.17 Such goals were not always proclaimed in public. Hitler and his associates wanted to steer clear of open 123

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conflict for the duration of the war in order to avoid unnecessarily undermining the population’s collective war efforts. The consequences of this approach soon became apparent in Saarland. In April 1935, Bürckel tried to gain the commitment of the churches in a separate accord. The Lutheran bishop (Palts) and the Lutheran ‘superintendent’ (Prussian church) agreed. The Catholic bishops held their ground, insisting on the rights and freedoms of the Catholic Church inscribed in the concordat. Negotiations were interrupted in October 1935, after which all the churches in Saarland were subjected to the same restrictions and repression. The religious policies of the National Socialists were even more evident in Austria. The prevailing concordat between Austria and the Holy See dating from 1934 was declared defunct and the ‘Reichsconcordat’ established with Nazi Germany was not considered applicable. For the first time in its history, the Catholic Church in (former) Austria found itself in a juridical vacuum. The new rulers took the initiative to drive Catholicism, which for centuries had enjoyed numerous privileges under the Habsburgs and had developed considerable social influence in the Interbellum corporative state, into the private domain. In its policy of ‘Entkonfessionalisierung’, the secularization of religious institutions and organizations, the Nazi regime was able to rely on a vigorous anti-clericalism that had developed here and there in Austria; adhesion among the working-class populations of Vienna, Styria and Carinthia, for example, was self-evident. In the autumn of 1938, private Catholic schools were closed down, the daily obligation to visit the church was done away with, and 900 Catholic youth associations and 400 associations for men and women were disbanded. The theology faculties of Innsbruck (Jesuits), Graz and Salzburg were abolished, and those in Vienna privatized. Several monasteries were placed under the control of a commissioner, some were closed, and others had their buildings confiscated. The (wealthy) abbey of Augustinian Canons Regular at Klosterneuburg near Vienna – a model of baroque architecture and of the Counter Reformation – serves as a case in point. In total, 26 major abbeys and 188 smaller monasteries were confiscated. Two beer cellars in Salzburg that were the property of a religious congregation were also confiscated, much to the satisfaction of the local population.18 By their adhesion to the Anschluß, the Austrian bishops had set out to create an opening towards a modus vivendi between the church and the German authorities. The church continued negotiations with the Nazi regime until the winter of 1938, although the latter had started to arrest Catholic clergy and lay people. Fourteen priests were deported to the concentration camp at Dachau, where a prison barrack for clergy was in the making. At the beginning of September 1938, the bishops published a pastoral letter on marriage and schools in which they implicitly turned their back on the state and its insistence on civil marriage. At the same time, the church forbade its priests from becoming members of the so-called ‘Arbeitsgemeinschaft für den religiösen Frieden’, a ‘cooperative for religious peace’. This association was established by a group of priests after the Anschluß to promote mutual trust between the church and the National Socialist state. A prominent member was the Roman prelate Aloys Hudal, who endeavoured to overcome the differences between Catholicism and National Socialism at the intellectual level.19 124

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Negotiations came to an end after the publication of the episcopal letter. This became visible in the form of a religious manifestation in and in front of the Stefansdom in Vienna on 7 October 1938. The meeting, attended by between 6,000 and 8,000 young people, had exclusively religious intentions, namely the celebration of the Feast of the Holy Rosary, in commemoration of the Spanish naval victory over the Turks at Lepanto in 1571. The occasion turned into a demonstration of opposition on the part of those who had refused to become part of the Nazi youth organizations. This became evident when one of the speakers referred to the rosary as a source of victory against the Turks. Even the songs had special overtones. Cardinal Innitzer delivered a sermon in which he alluded to the words of the prophet Ezra ‘Kraft durch Freude – Strength through Joy’ as a characteristic of the Catholic Church. ‘This very parallel with the National Socialist controlled leisure organisation made the cardinal’s concealed appeal to remain faithful to the church and resist the authorities of the day crystal clear.’ After the manifestation, the cardinal was welcomed on the square in front of the Stefansdom with loud cheers, in the midst of which the rallying cry ‘Bischof, befehl, wir folgen Dich!’ (‘Command, bishop, and we will follow you!’) could be heard: the Catholic version of the then popular Führerprinzip.20 The Nazi regime took its revenge the next day. Fifty members of the Hitler Jugend and SA stormed the archbishop’s palace, smashed its windows and destroyed its furniture. A priest was thrown from the window of the archbishop’s office opposite the palace. Vienna’s commissioner of police, a committed National Socialist, watched the disturbance from a nearby coffee house with his watch in his hand, only allowing his men to intervene after an hour. In the days that followed, the party in Vienna organized a total of 241 protest meetings against the ‘blacks’, the Austrian word for clericalism. The said ‘blacks’ were placed on a par with the ‘Czechs’ and the ‘Jews’. A mass meeting was organized on Heldenplatz on 13 October 1938 at which Bürckel delivered a speech against ‘politicising Catholicism’ and against the clergy whom he described as ‘imperious, power hungry, and tarnished with blood-guilt’.21

3 The dismantlement of Czechoslovakia 3.1 The Munich Agreement The Anschluß of German Austria stimulated the political appetite of the Nazi regime. In another part of the former Habsburg Empire, Bohemia, a German minority had been left ‘orphaned’ after 1918. The government in Berlin exploited ethnic discrepancies of this sort in Czechoslovakia. In the summer of 1938, they became the theme of a political crisis that, in spite of the military show of strength that accompanied it, could still be mastered within the context of an international conference. The Munich Agreement, which was signed on 30 September 1938 by the heads of government of Germany, Italy, France and Great Britain, represented the climax of the said international tensions. The European leaders put an end to the Czechoslovak Republic in the form and dimensions 125

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in which it had been declared in 1918. Nazi Germany was granted international permission to annexe border regions in Bohemia and Moravia with a large German population and a substantial industrial infrastructure. Urged on by the Nazi government in Berlin, the political crisis in the late summer of 1938 can be characterized according to its result: an international agreement (‘Peace for our time!’), for which Czechoslovakia paid the price of dismantlement. While dissenting voices were barely audible in the euphoria surrounding the Munich Agreement, one such a voice nevertheless struck a particularly sympathetic note at the time. In the middle of September, a letter written by the now renowned theologian Karl Barth appeared in which he called for resistance in militant Christian terms to Nazi Germany’s demands with respect to Czechoslovakia. The appeal was sent in a personal letter to theologian Josef L. Hromádka, professor at the Jan Hus Theology College in Prague, the seat of Czechoslovak Protestantism. Barth launched his appeal in person at an earlier summer conference for Christian students in Czechoslovakia: ‘Résistez!’ On 19 September 1938, Barth wrote to Hromádka that he hoped the sons of the ancient Hussites would be able to show faint-hearted Europe that there were still men in this part of the world: ‘Every Czech soldier who fights and suffers will do the same for the church of Jesus Christ, which, in the society created by Hitler and Mussolini, must inevitably lapse into absurdity or be eradicated.’ Striking times, Barth continued, ‘in which one is obliged to conclude in all awareness that the faith compels us to relegate fear of violence as well as the desire for peace to a decidedly second place, and grant equally decided precedence to the fear of injustice and the desire for freedom’.22 The letter caused something of a stir when Hromádka published it with Barth’s permission. In Germany, the National Socialist newspapers and the periodicals associated with the ‘German Christians’ tried to unmask the theologian as a ‘war monger’. But the leadership of the Confessing Church and the Lutheran bishops also distanced themselves in no uncertain terms from their Swiss co-religionist. Three protest letters emerged from Hungary – which had taken the opportunity in the 1938 crisis to recover territory lost in 1920 – one of which was signed by 60 students of Calvinist theology from Budapest. Barth responded to this Hungarian critique by observing that he had not realized when he wrote his letter on 19 September that Hungary was planning to turn on Czechoslovakia like a shark, and that the Czech soldiers should also perhaps have turned their guns towards the south-eastern neighbour. There were issues of greater importance than those related to territory. ‘I warn you! Your fathers defended themselves and Europe against the Turks. It would prove fatal if the very sons of these fathers were not to realise that we are facing a greater threat today than the Turks.’23 The German example indeed served as an inspiration to others. As a multi-ethnic partitioned state, Czechoslovakia was not only the result of the First World War, but also of a variant of pan-Slavism, an idea of fraternity that aimed at the unification of the various Slavic nations. But the idea was subject to wear and tear. Over time, the increasing political and cultural opposition between Czechs and Slovaks eroded their national unity. The movement for Slovak independence considered itself to have been recognized by the Munich Agreement and even insisted that the final goal of an independent state 126

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was in view. From that point on, both nations introduced a hyphen to the official designation of the country: Czecho-Slovakia.24 Six months later, in March 1939, the double name was also to disappear. With German encouragement – and pressure – Slovakia became an independent state, bound to the Greater German Reich by a protection treaty. Priest and politician Josef Tiso became its president. In the wake of an ultimatum from Berlin, Czechia lost its independence and started its existence as a ‘Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia’, an administrative construction borrowed from the European colonies. Former Minister for Foreign Affairs Konstantin von Neurath became its Reichsprotektor.With Hitler’s permission, neighbouring Poland and especially Hungary appropriated a number of Czech and Slovak regions for themselves. The boundaries established by Masaryk in Paris in 1919 had been completely dissolved. 3.2 Sudetenland In Germany, the Archbishop of Munich ordered the bells to be rung in his city on behalf of all the dioceses in his province on the Sunday following the Agreement. In Austria, a Te Deum was sung in every church on the occasion of the ‘liberation’ of the Sudetenland. In the Sudetenland itself, priests and laity alike demonstrated their satisfaction at the outcome of the Munich conference. An SS functionary reported that the agreement enjoyed considerable favour in church circles as the result of the prayers of the faithful. It was possible to gauge the political support offered by ecclesial officials on the basis of police research. In 1939, a total of 1,137 files were examined. The so-called ‘Volkstumskampf ’ (struggle on behalf of the German people) enjoyed strong support among the ministers of the German Evangelical Church and the Old Catholic Church. Of the 62 Lutheran ministers, 57 were members of the Sudeten German People’s Party, the driving force behind Germanification, and four had given their support in a different way. Only one Lutheran minister insisted on neutrality. Among the Roman Catholic clergy, the majority being of German descent, the proportions were somewhat contradictory. Of the German-speaking priests, 472 (43.9 per cent) – a considerable number – had been members of the Sudeten German People’s Party and 182 (19 per cent) had actively supported the ‘Volkstumskampf ’ in a different way. Of the Catholic clergymen, 266 claimed neutrality (27.8 per cent) while 37 (3.9 per cent) had been actively involved against the ‘Volkstumskampf ’. Among the Czech clergy, 56 of a total of 109 had ‘opposed the German nation’ and 53 had claimed neutrality.25 Following the arrival of the Wehrmacht in October 1938, the Sudetenland was annexed and given the name ‘Sudetengau’. The former subjects of the Habsburg monarchy, the German Bohemians, had turned their backs on Czechoslovakia with their motto Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer. Konrad Henlein, the leader of the Sudeten German People’s Party, was appointed governor and Gauleiter. Adhesion to National Socialism was proportionally very considerable. Of something more than three million inhabitants, more than half a million were party members. Their support continued to be substantial until the end of the war. 127

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Religious policies in the ‘Sudetengau’ were a repetition of what had been realized in the ‘Ostmark’. Three million Roman Catholics lived in the region, with the German Lutherans numbering 130,000 and the Old Catholics 22,000. The new authorities decided that the concordat with the German Reich did not apply in Sudetengau. The social and educational influence of the Catholic Church was reduced and church property was occasionally confiscated; another example of so-called ‘Entkonfessionalisierung’. The Evangelical Church appeared to anticipate the religious policies of the Nazi regime, accepting the incorporation of Lutheran schools into the state school system and the introduction of a church tax. The regime exerted pressure on the church with a view to adapting its administrative structure to the new balance of power. The Czech episcopate had opposed an ecclesial application of the Munich Agreement. The Vatican appointed a number of vicars general over the German segments of the originally Bohemian and Moravian dioceses. On the other hand, Anton Alois Weber, the Bishop of Leimteritz (Litoměřice), whose diocese had been completely annexed, took his place in the German episcopal conference. He was welcomed in Fulda in July 1939 as the representative of the Catholic Sudeten Germans. Czech priests suffered considerably under the Germanification process and dozens were forced to leave their parishes. On occasion they were turned in to the German police by parishioners and taken into ‘Schutzhaft’ or protective custody. Juridical reports suggest that the Czech minority in the region distinguished itself on account of its ‘vigorous church attendance’, its services marked by an ‘unchecked exchange of views’. Roughly 288,000 Czechs had ‘remained’. For a number of them, the churches became a centre for mutual solidarity and encouragement. It would appear from police reports that the bond between them was intense and that church festivals were sometimes celebrated as (disguised) Czech feasts. The initial endorsement of the annexation of the Sudetenland by the German clergy changed in the course of time into resistance to the Nazi regime, at least among certain segments of the clergy. Bishop Weber, for example, gradually evolved into an avid opponent of the Nazis. Other members of the clergy who dared to express their opposition were subject to extra police attention, and were threatened with the withdrawal of their right to teach religion in state schools or to preach, banishment from the Sudetenland and ‘Schutzhaft’ in prison or a concentration camp. During the war years, these police measures were applied to no fewer than 491 priests, a third of their total number in the region. 3.3 The Second Czechoslovak Republic The Munich Agreement occasioned a state crisis in Czechoslovakia itself, resulting in the resignation of the president Edvard Beneš, the right hand of Masaryk (who had resigned in 1935) and guardian of the latter’s political legacy. Beneš was succeeded by Emil Hácha, the president of the Supreme Court, who added a religious ceremony to his accession to office. Where the character of the First Republic of Czechoslovakia had been 128

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unequivocally lay in 1918, the Second Republic, twenty years later, was inaugurated with a mass in the cathedral of Saint Vitus inside Prague Castle. After the ceremony, Hácha paid a visit to the tomb of Wenceslas, the country’s (Catholic) patron saint. The Archbishop of Prague explained this as a positive gesture on the part of the president, implying that he would govern in the spirit of this national and Catholic hero.26 The religious pendulum swung in Czechoslovakia from Protestantism to Catholicism, and in the national imagination, King Wenceslas acquired new prominence at the cost of reformer Jan Hus. On the day the Munich Agreement was signed – 1 October 1938 – the Archbishop of Prague, Cardinal Karel Kašpar, read a declaration for radio audiences in which he called the Agreement an act of ‘injustice to the Czechoslovak people’. The ‘Nation of Saint Wenceslas’ made the sacrifice against its will, but on the command of friendly nations France and Great Britain. In a pastoral letter published ten days later, the cardinal sought an internal reason for the national catastrophe: the laicist inception of the First Republic in 1918. ‘See how God was offended, beginning with the removal of the commemorative pillar to the Virgin Mary in the middle of the capital Prague.’ The leading politicians had abused the authority entrusted to them, with the result that, after the Soviet Union, the most organized atheists were to be found precisely in Czechoslovakia.27 The ‘Saint Wenceslas tradition’ became a Catholic theme in both politics and education. Wenceslas, in Czech Svety Václav, was Duke of Bohemia from circa 925 to 935 and was murdered on the command of his brother. In the national imagination he was not only a prominent convert and martyr, he was also the ruler who had been obliged to submit to the Holy Roman Empire and had become a Czech symbol for rapprochement with the West. His statue on the square in Prague that bears his name thus presents him as a more warlike figure than he actually was. The Archbishop of Prague underlined Wenceslas’ Christian conduct in his pastoral letter, distancing himself at the same time from the legacy of Jan Hus and from the ‘current catastrophe’, which had been caused by modern atheism.28 One negative side of this veneration of Wenceslas was the definition of Czech national identity in religious terms to the exclusion – whether intentional or unintentional – of non-Catholic and particularly Jewish citizens and freethinkers. The veneration was also associated with political appeals for the establishment of a corporative state. 3.4 Independent Slovakia The Munich Agreement set other states and nations in motion. Days after the secession of the Sudetenland, the Slovak People’s Party organized a congress in the city of Žilina. The participants were in a national frame of mind and put together a manifesto demanding the independence of Slovakia and its territorial integrity. In addition, a ‘Christian ideology’ was announced, a struggle against ‘Jewish Marxism’, and a peaceful solution to Czecho-Slovakia’s ethnic conflicts in the spirit of the Munich Agreement.29 The government in Prague accepted some of the manifesto’s demands, such as more autonomy but not ‘independence’. A Slovak government was formed under the leadership of Jozef Tiso, a parish priest who had become chair of the People’s Party after the death 129

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of fellow priest and party founder Andrej Hlinka in August 1938. The government took office on 1 December 1938 and stayed in power for almost two months until 20 January 1939. The Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party were banned in Slovakia, as were the freemasons and Jewish political factions. The organization of militarized youth within the party acquired an official status and became the so-called Hlinka Guard, under the spiritual guidance of a canon of the diocese of Bratislava, Karol Körper. Boundary adjustments stemming from the agreement nourished a desire for revenge among neighbouring nations, especially Hungary, which was particularly keen to free itself from the 1920 Treaty of Trianon. Under pressure from Germany and Italy, a forced solution was imposed in Vienna. According to the so-called First Vienna Award (November 1938), Hungary re-appropriated a region bordering on the right bank of the Danube, including the city of Košice (Kassa in Hungarian). In the meantime, the movement for independence was gathering force in Slovakia. In March 1939, the government in Prague sent army units to Bratislava in an attempt to temper Slovak political inclinations. This served as a signal for Nazi Germany to intervene. Hitler exploited the Czech and Hungarian threat to dismantle the partitioned CzechoSlovak state once and for all: the proclamation of Slovak independence. Tiso, since October 1938 prime minister of a Slovak government, organized an invitation to Berlin where he was received by the Führer on 13 March 1939. ‘Onlookers gleefully enjoyed the incongruous sight of an SS detachment providing the guard of honour for a Catholic priest, as Slovakia’s veteran autonomist, Father Jozef Tiso, touched down at Berlin’s Tempelhof airport for the negotiations that led to his country’s independence.’30 Hitler agreed with the proposed independence, but Tiso refused to proclaim it in the German capital. On 14 March, the representative new parliament assembled in Bratislava and gave its unanimous support to the Republic of Slovakia. The independence acquired in Berlin was hailed by public opinion for two reasons. It represented the realization of a desire for self-determination that dated back to 1918, and it offered a certain guarantee against the looming threat of Slovakia being carved up and shared between Poland and Hungary. Tiso was forced to ask Germany for military protection (‘Schutz’). This was granted by decree on 23 March and German troops took position along Slovakia’s borders. In the meantime, however, Hungarian units had already crossed the said borders. Under German pressure, Slovakia agreed at the beginning of April to cede more territory along the Danube and in the eastern part of the country (Subcarpathian Rus) to Hungary and a district in the north to Poland. Slovak independence was recognized by France, Great Britain and the Soviet Union. Within the boundaries of German supervision, the republic had a relatively unimpeded playing field. This gave the political elite the possibility to transform Slovakia into an authoritarian corporative state. The leading People’s Party had set its sights on such a state for Slovakia, a Catholic model republic in the spirit of the encyclicals Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo Anno. The (Slovak) nation was seen as an organic community ‘that should, by its very nature, live in unity’. A second principle of this ideology was the mutual entanglement of religious and civil authority and their reinforcement. On this basis, it was possible for a divinely legitimated elite to govern the 130

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state and preserve the unity of the nation. The autonomy of individual and political diversity was to be sacrificed in the name of national solidarity and the creation of ‘a new Slovak man’.31 In Slovak society, such ‘clerico-nationalism’ was stronger than National Socialism. The Church insisted on maintaining its own youth organizations, although the state founded Hlinka Youth (Hlinkova Mládez) was also based on Christian principles and was described by German intelligence as an organization that seemed to be closer to a congregation than to a revolutionary youth movement. The theologians at the University of Bratislava, the new Catholic Academy and intellectual religious orders such as the Jesuits and the Dominicans, organized lectures in which National Socialism was criticized. The clergy insisted in their sermons that the Slovak dual cross, which was reminiscent of the cross of Christ, was not to be associated with the swastika. This clerical nationalism was supported by a People’s Party in which Catholic clergymen played a prominent role. They formed an intellectual vanguard in a state that had all the characteristics of an agrarian and patriarchal society and in which the selfassertive middle class was in the minority. Intellectually formed in the seminaries, priests acquired evident authority in both moral and social terms. Their ranks supplied the ‘Council of Priests’ or the ‘Altar Brothers’ set up by Hlinka in 1918 and the source from which ‘clerico-nationalism’ had evolved.32 Their political zeal was nourished by critique of the laicist policy of the Czechoslovak Republic of President Masaryk. From the middle of the 1920s onwards, the remarkable number of clerical representatives became a debating point in the People’s Party, at which point parliamentary seats were intentionally set aside for lay people. Even the bishops were aware of the dangers of a clericalization of civil life, but they accepted the political priests nevertheless, aware that they enjoyed the confidence of the population. In Slovakia, the transition from a priestly dominated political movement to a lay-led party turned out to be a ‘long and painful process’.33 Priest and first president of Slovakia, Jozef Gašpar Tiso, was in essence a jovial village pastor who suffered from moments of melancholy. He was born in 1887 into a farming family and his common sense made him popular among the farmers in his parish.34 He had studied theology in the Hungarian Pázmáneum in Vienna and had been a student of the Austrian chancellor Ignaz Seipel. He was appointed parish priest of Bánovce nad Bebravou in the valley of the river Nitra, a position he was to maintain until the end of his life. In 1918, he left Hungary behind and opted for the new Czechoslovakia. In the first part of his political career he was a militant supporter of an autonomous Slovakia, although he also exhibited an active anti-Semitism in his political rejection of socialists and of Bela Kun’s Hungarian Republic of Councils. He later became a career politician with a readiness to compromise.35 He became Minister of Health in 1927 when the People’s Party joined the Czechoslovakian coalition government. He was elected to parliament in Prague in 1929, accepted by Hlinka as substitute party chairman in 1930, and as chairman in 1938. As a priest, Tiso was trained in neo-Thomistic philosophy and a romantic nationalism borrowed from the German philosopher and clergyman Johann Gottfried Herder. The former filled him with a longing to return to the order of the Middle Ages, the latter with 131

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the conviction that the Slovak nation had an important role to fulfil: to take responsibility for a revival of pure Slavism in national politics and social morality. A synthesis of both – Catholicism and romantic nationalism – would signify that old values had been preserved in a tried and tested religion and that modern nationalism was free to grow with the preservation of peaceful coexistence with different nationalities.36 The Vatican consistently maintained a certain distance from priest and State President Tiso, perturbed as it was about the political and moral consequences of a clerical regime in a satellite state of Nazi Germany. When he took office as president, he was called to account for himself to his bishop, Karol Kmet’ko, and he received a somewhat lukewarm word of congratulations from the Holy See. In 1921, Pope Benedict XV made Tiso an honorary papal chamberlain, a position that gave him the right to be addressed as Monsignor. After the Pope’s death, however, the position was not continued and the editorial board of Osservatore Romano was instructed not to use the title Monsignor in its references to Tiso.37 Concern may also have been nourished by the critical if not hostile attitude of the church leadership in Poland and Hungary towards the Slovak clergy. The Slovak Republic had endeavoured to negotiate a concordat with the Holy See. The draft had to be submitted to the German supervisors who in their turn were critical of the far-reaching freedom the Catholic Church had permitted itself. Nevertheless, a representative was able to present a draft concordat to the Holy See in December 1943. The Vatican hesitated, however, to enter into an agreement with a state that in the event of an Allied victory would be unlikely to remain intact. Pius XII likewise did not meet Catholic Slovakia’s request to be recognized as an independent ecclesial province. In fact, he went no further than the appointment of the broadly appreciated Bishop of Nitra, Karol Kmet’ko, as archbishop ad personam. Tiso’s political leadership was challenged by a group surrounding Prime Minister Vojtech Tuka and the later Minister of the Interior, Alexander Mach. Tiso represented the clerical and moderate wing of the People’s Party, his counterpart Tuka the aggressive nationalist wing. The latter’s goal was a totalitarian state, but he remained a devout Catholic and thereby unassailable within the Party. While the ministers in question wanted to allow National Socialism to have a greater say in determining Slovak state and society, Tiso and his followers did their best to keep German influence at bay to a certain extent. Around New Year 1940–1941, the group attempted a coup d’état against the president. Tiso resisted and prevailed in what was also a victory for the moderate conservative wing within the government. For the German supervisors, therefore, Slovakia was and remained a bulwark of much loathed ‘political Catholicism’.38 In 1942, the victorious Tiso had himself proclaimed ‘vodca’, or Leader. He also succeeded in containing the social-revolutionary ambitions of the Hlinka Guard by deploying his own agents. It would be impossible to form a historical opinion on the moral significance of the clerical Republic of Slovakia without facing the (painful) chapter of the persecution of the Jews. The present study will focus on this issue in more detail in a later chapter. But for Emilia Hrabovec and other Slovak historians, the period between 1939 and 1945 is 132

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Figure 9 The priest and State President of Slovakia, Jozef Tiso, takes the salute in Bratislava. In the centre, his opponent, the prime minister Vojtech Tuka. Photo: SOMA , Brussels.

significant for the history of Catholicism in Slovakia for different reasons. Catholic corporative teaching acquired the opportunity to develop in Slovakia as it had done in Portugal under the dictator Salazar. Catholic culture and Catholic education were given the freedom to expand. Institutes of formation were established side by side with academies and boarding schools such as the Svodarov, a cradle of Catholic intelligentsia. For a generation of writers – known as the ‘Katholische Moderne’ (Catholic Modernists) – the years in question were considered to be a golden age of creativity. The majority of the faithful remained attached to traditional devotions and ‘popular Catholicism’, but an intellectual elite formed at their side that was also able to carry and propagate Catholic culture in the post-war People’s Republic of Czechoslovakia.39 3.5 The end of the Republic: Protectorate The primary purpose of the crisis, which led to the independence of Slovakia, was the dismantlement of the Second Czech Republic. Hitler summoned President Hácha to Berlin, where he was placed under enormous pressure to accept German ‘protection’ of Czechia. The Wehrmacht invaded on 14 March 1939. Hitler followed his troops, and during a visit to Prague castle he had his people devise the ‘Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia’. The name Czechia was to be scrapped from international dictionaries. The imposed administration was based on European colonial practices: the Czech 133

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government remained intact, including the presidency, but its policies had to be chosen in accord with the political and economic interests of the German Reich. The first Reichsprotektor, former Minister for Foreign Affairs Konstantin von Neurath, was to ensure compliance. Von Neurath was known to the outside world as a moderate politician and a diplomat. Hitler had needed him at the beginning of his administration to dispel international concerns. In the history of Nazi Germany, this was the first occupation of a Slavic state and the first adherence of a ‘foreign’ nation to the Reich. It also constituted a racial problem since the Slavic peoples were considered ‘Untermenschen’. At this juncture, however, the Nazi authorities had sufficient reason to propose the establishment of a protectorate as a form of German supervision over an independent state. The success of this policy was likely to facilitate the spread of German influence in the Danube basin without the need for violence.40 A new government made its appearance in the protectorate under the leadership of General Alois Eliás who stood at the head of the so-called National Community, a movement that sought to establish an authoritarian state and a corporative constitution, although it did not identify itself as a National Socialist faction. It represented the Czech version of a national and authoritarian government, similar to those that had taken root elsewhere in Europe during the Interbellum period. While political parties were forbidden and disbanded, the Czech government managed nevertheless to account for previous party-based representation in its administrative appointments. As far as Catholics were concerned, however, there was one major difference: the Catholic aristocracy came to replace the clergy as persons of authority. In 1939, on the feast of Czechoslovak independence (28 October), demonstrations broke out in Prague against the country’s National Socialist patrons. The German police shot a student by the name of Jan Opletal, who later succumbed to his injuries. His funeral on 15 November 1939 occasioned a further demonstration against the regime. As a result, nine students were executed and twelve hundred were deported to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. The universities were closed and the theological faculties in Prague – Roman Catholic and Protestant (named after Jan Hus) – met with the same fate. Those responsible for the formation of priests and ministers were forced to improvise and their activities were spread throughout the country. The confrontation evolved into a campaign of sheer terror, introduced in September 1941 when Reinhardt Heydrich,‘the violin-playing architect’ of the build up and expansion of the SS in Eastern Europe, was appointed substitute protector in Bohemia and Moravia. He was determined to break the Czech resistance that had been able to emerge under the diplomat Von Neurath. It would not prevent Heydrich from participating in the festival of the Wenceslas’ Crown, ‘during which the Nazi leader symbolically handed the seven keys of the Wenceslas Shrine in Saint-Vitus Cathedral to President Hácha’. He and other Catholic leaders hoped to preserve some vestige of Czech patriotism, but Heydrich considered the act to be ‘a convenant of acceptance of the Wenceslas tradition in its loyalty to the Reich’.41 At the same time, summary justice was proclaimed and a period of unmitigated terror followed, with four hundred individuals executed in two months. 134

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Prime Minister Alois Eliás was arrested in Berlin in September 1941 and sentenced to death for maintaining contact with the migrant government in London. The atrocities were repeated and intensified after the assassination attempt on Heydrich in Prague on 27 May 1942. He died on 4 June. ‘Hitler and Himmler were annoyed with him for travelling without a security detail, which Heydrich believed he did not need because of his popularity among Czechs.’42 Among the victims was the already condemned Eliás, whose execution was intended as a warning to other government leaders in occupied territories elsewhere in Europe.43 The village of Lidice, which the Nazis presumed to be the home of Heydrich’s assassins, was burned to the ground, its population either murdered or deported to concentration camps. Because two perpetrators of the attack on Heydrich had managed to hide in Prague’s Orthodox cathedral (dedicated to Saints Cyril and Methodius), where they were later betrayed by an accomplice, the (small) Czech Orthodox Church was subjected to violent persecution. Its bishop and priests were executed together with the chairman of the church council. 3,188 Czechs were arrested during the reprisals, of whom close to half, 1,357, were summarily executed.44 The resistance had been dealt a decisive blow, from which it was only to recover in the last months of the war. Christian churches were tolerated in the protectorate, although they were also kept under scrutiny and had their social influence restricted. The SD and the Gestapo organized a network of informers charged with monitoring Sunday sermons and parish/ community communications. The occupying regime’s Church Office had ex-priests among its officials, and active clergy also served as spies. It became clear after the war, for example, that Franz Werner Bobe, one of the most prominent officials in Prague and prior of the Order of Malta, had spied for the Gestapo.45 During the war years, 371 Catholic priests were prosecuted: 260 were placed in concentration camps and 111 were either taken prisoner or interned.46 Churches also associated themselves with the Czech nation under the protectorate. The example of the Czechoslovak Church, however, illustrated the potentially undesired consequences of such an association. The Czechoslovak national church, established in the wake of Czechoslovak independence in 1918, lost ‘its’ state in 1939. After the Second Republic, its members decided to rename it the ‘Církev ceskomoravská’, a BohemianMoravian church. Its alliance with the state made it easy prey for the religious policies of the National Socialist protectors who had to grant their approval for the appointment of bishops. On two occasions, the proposed candidate was rejected and the bishopric remained vacant. In addition, the church was explicitly invited to cooperate with ‘German Christians’, which it deftly managed to circumvent. The Evangelical Church of Bohemian Brethren, the institution that represented the Reformation in Bohemia more than any other, distinguished itself on account of its relatively important contribution to Czech resistance. Under these new circumstances, the history of sixteenth-century Czech confessional conflict appeared to be a source of contemporary inspiration for opposition to the tyrannical Nazi regime. The Roman Catholic Church likewise functioned under the protectorate as a national refuge. During the early days, packed churches still resonated with the hymn in honour 135

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of Saint Wenceslas, as if it was the national anthem. Later, when the hymn was forbidden, organists wove elements of the melodies of traditional folk songs and the Saint Wenceslas chorale into their Sunday improvisations. The officiating priests recited ‘prayers for the fatherland’ and ‘prayers for our absent brothers’. Congregations were aware of what was being said and for who and what they were praying.47 While Saarland was incorporated, Austria annexed and Czechoslovakia dismantled in a combination of military menace and international diplomacy, the following occupation was the result of a war.

4 The ‘New Order’ in Central and Eastern Europe 4.1 The Molotov–Von Ribbentrop Pact In September 1939, Poland was invaded by the armies of its two mighty neighbours, first by Nazi Germany and then by the Soviet Union. The dual conquest led to the complete obliteration of the map of Central and Eastern Europe as it had been arranged after the First World War. Occupying regimes established themselves on either side of the new border. It started with a surprise: the German and Soviet Ministers for Foreign Affairs signed a non-aggression pact on 24 August 1939 in Moscow. It was a treaty between two states, hostile in ideology, yet prepared to cooperate on a pragmatic level, later to become known as the (Vyacheslav) Molotov–(Joachim) Von Ribbentrop Pact. The boundaries of the range of influence of both parties were drawn up in a secret appendix. Poland was to be divided between its powerful eastern and western neighbours. From then on, the Soviet Union was to include Finland, Baltic Estonia and Latvia – later also Lithuania – and parts of eastern Romania under its sovereignty. These were the nations or regions that had separated themselves from the Russian empire after the First World War. The Pact paved the way for the German invasion of Poland (1 September 1939) followed by a Russian invasion (17 September 1939). The partitioning of Poland, the fourth in the country’s history, was also its bloodiest. A period of extreme barbarism dawned in Eastern Europe, with wholesale massacres and mass deportations. The Soviet Union took possession of half of the country, Germany 48.4 per cent. Stalin granted Lithuania the much-desired city of Vilnius/Vilno/Vilna and the formerly Polish territory surrounding it in exchange for a Red Army military base. Lithuania thus acquired 1.6 per cent of Polish territory. Losses in the war were enormous. Out of a pre-war population of 35 million – according to recent estimates – 5 million people lost their lives to wartime hostilities, persecution, murder and forced labour: 2 million Polish non-Jews and 2.9 to 3 million Polish Jews. As a rough estimate, this amounted to between 16 and 18 per cent of the population. If we account for the slaughter of the Slavic population and the persecution and annihilation of Poland’s Jews, Poland clearly suffered – comparatively speaking – more than any other European nation.48 136

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Both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union pursued aggressive ideological strategies. When the two powers extended their sphere of influence in 1939 to include Central and Eastern Europe, this meant that the national culture of the existing states had to be sacrificed to a process of Gleichschaltung. As a result, a violent ‘Germanization’ took place in the west and a violent Sovietization in the east. The Church presented an obstacle to both policies. It was either the cultural core of a hostile and inferior nation or the relic of a capitalistic and bourgeois society, or both. In the following pages we will explore the religious consequences of the annexation and occupation of Poland, with the emphasis on the fate of the national churches, their clergy and faithful. 4.2 The fourth partition of Poland By the autumn of 1939, Nazi Germany had annexed the western part of Poland, one quarter of the (former) Polish state. The Reichsgau Danzig-Westpreußen was established in the north-west (Pomerania), while the region known as Wielkopolska (Greater Poland) was incorporated into the Reichsgau Wartheland. Urban centres were renamed using German equivalents, Posen for Poznań and Litzmannstadt for Łódź. German Upper Silesia was extended to include the Polish district of Katowice – Regierungsbezirk Kattowitz – and German East Prussia was incorporated into the neighbouring Polish region of Ciechanów (Regierungsbezirk Zichenau). The remaining territory in the centre became a colony under the title Generalgouvernement with its administrative capital in Kraków instead of Warsaw. Germany’s conquest had racial goals: the subjection and ultimately the extermination of the Slavic population in what was intended to become a German Lebensraum. Making their advance behind a front line of five German armies, the SS Einsatzgruppen (special SS death squads) were charged with hunting down the Polish elite. ‘The fate of the Polish Jews could wait but the fate of the Polish intelligentsia could not. Even before Hitler’s and Himmler’s vision of vast demographic upheaval emerged in the euphoria of the victory, the Einsatzgruppen had been targeted to carry out immediate genocide elimination of all potential carriers of the Polish national ideal.’49 Conversely, members of the German minority in western Poland had been interned in the first days of the war and an estimated 5,000 had lost their lives. But the National Socialist ‘Liquidierungsbefehl’ went much further. Doctors, teachers, landowners, clergy, merchants and lawyers were murdered on the spot or driven together into camps where the majority succumbed to deprivation. An estimated 20,000 lost their lives in the process. The SS were responsible for the lion’s share of the slaughter, but the rearguard Wehrmacht also participated. Of the 764 executions that took place between 1 September and 26 October 1939, divisions of the regular German army were responsible for 311.50 In a macabre mirror image, Polish officers as well as ordinary citizens were shot dead by divisions of the Soviet Union’s secret police (NKVD – The People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs) in the forests of Katyń, close to the White Russian city of Smolensk. Their mass grave was discovered in 1943 in a former prison camp. The number of dead is estimated at 14,600, although this figure also accounts for those executed in the Russian 137

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cities of Kharkov and Tver.51 Doctors, university professors and lawyers were included among the dead, as were 700 to 900 Jews, proof of a Jewish presence in the Polish officers’ corps. The majority of these executions were kept secret from the outside world. In one single instance – Katyń – the Nazis made their deeds public, later to have them ascribed to the German Einsatzgruppen by the Soviet propaganda machine. ‘In the summer of 1940, the first concentration camps on Polish soil and for Polish prisoners were established in Oświęcim (Auschwitz) and in Danzig Sztutowo (Stutthof).’52 More than one hundred professors of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków were arrested and deported to the concentration camp in Oranienburg near Berlin. While international critique – exceptionally – was to interrupt this German action, several professors died nevertheless after their release from the deprivations they had suffered in the camp. The political subdivision of Poland was followed by a demographic reorganization, an aggressive forced migration that set tens of thousands in motion, often under duress. In the western part of the country, a process of ethnic cleansing was instigated and realized; in the eastern part political persecution and deportation. This was a new, but now relentless phase in the centuries-old struggle to intensify German colonization in the (Polish) lowlands east of Berlin. Polish farmers and townspeople were driven from German regions to the territory controlled by the Generalgouvernement. Their numbers are estimated at 838,000. From eastern Poland, which had been conquered by the Red Army, an estimated 110,000 had been deported to labour camps in the mining region of Donbass or to the Gulag in the Asian part of the Soviet Union.53 Religion was also confronted by this extended bout of racial violence. It had an effect on the Evangelical Church, which had taken root in Poland in spite of its Prussian origins. The effect on the Roman Catholic Church, however, was much more considerable. The age-old identification of Catholicism with the Polish nation was to cost both clergy and laity dearly. During deliberations in 1940 addressing the strategy that was to be followed in Poland, cynicism marked the tone of Hitler’s interventions. ‘Polish priests will receive food from us and will, for that very reason, direct their little sheep along the path we favor’, Martin Bormann noted. ‘If any priest acts differently, we shall make short work of him. The task of the priest is to keep the Poles quiet, stupid, and dull-witted. That is entirely to our interests.’54 But the highest authority of the German occupation held an opposing vision. He compared Polish religion with a national beacon of light. In the words of Governor General Hans Frank, the Roman Catholic Church in Poland represented the silently smouldering core of the Polish spirit and functioned as an ‘everlasting light’. If all the lights in Poland were to be extinguished, church buildings and the image of the Black Madonna of Częstochowa would continue to be a source of light. Catholicism in Poland was not a confession but a necessity of life.55 4.3 German annexations In the territories annexed by Nazi Germany, the larger Roman Catholic Church and the smaller Evangelical Church were confronted with three challenges. The first was the acute administrative problem brought about by the fourth partition of Poland. A number 138

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of Polish dioceses – including that of the primate of the Polish ecclesial province of Gniezno (German: Gnesen) – found themselves in German territory. What did this mean for the Polish bishops who had remained in their dioceses and had not fled or been murdered? The same question can be asked with respect to those regions that had shaped the organization of the Evangelical Church. At the moment of capitulation, the primate of the Catholic Church in Poland was not in his diocese. At the outbreak of hostilities, Cardinal August Hlond had left his bishoprics in Gniezno and Poznań on the advice of the civil authorities. On 5 September he had chaired the conference of Polish bishops in Warsaw. On the insistence of the government and after having consulted the papal nuncio in Poland, Philippo Cortesi, he sought refuge in Rome (via Hungary and Romania). As Primate of Poland, he considered himself to be the representative and spiritual leader of the Polish nation. He arrived in Rome on 19 September 1939 and was able to brief Pius XII and publicize facts about the German occupation via Vatican radio. As far as the German occupiers were concerned, of course, this made him persona non grata and they refused his re-entry into occupied Poland. When Italy entered the war in 1940 as Germany’s ally, Cardinal Hlond was forced to move once again. He found refuge in Lourdes (in what was then in the unoccupied part of France). The Holy See refused to recognize the German annexations, upholding the principles that boundary reorganizations could only lead to a definitive change in diocesan territory when they had been established in a peace treaty, mutually recognized by both parties to the treaty, and not decreed unilaterally.56 In the last analysis, however, the Vatican had a change of mind on the situation in Poland, fearing that the failure to appoint a bishop would orphan the local church. Indeed, it had also been the policy of the German occupier to expel the ecclesial component of the Polish administrative elite. Conflict arose between the Holy See and the Polish government in exile. The customary procedure in such situations was to appoint an apostolic administrator ad nutum Sanctae Sedis for a period of time to be determined by the Holy See itself. Furthermore – and a second challenge – both churches had to defend their place in society in the face of a regime that was clearly determined to reduce the influence and physical presence of the Christian religion, certainly in Poland. The regions of Danzig – West Prussia and Wartheland – were being administered both ‘reichsunmittelbar’ and ‘konkordatsfrei’. This meant that Hitler and his Gauleiter had all the power and were free to set aside existing laws whenever it suited them. The regime did not need to take a concordat into consideration. The third challenge had ideological roots. The churches were expected to align themselves with National Socialist policies of radical Germanization and ethnic purification. For Catholicism, this meant a grave assault on the use of the Polish language and a serious encroachment on the position of the Polish majority. Polish priests were declared outlaw in the annexed territories. The Evangelical Church, which had roughly one million members and had split during the Interbellum into a German half and a Polish half, came under enormous pressure. The Polish segment suffered persecution while the German segment found 139

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itself with greater ties to the regime than it cared to acknowledge. In the regions, the Evangelical Church tended to be predominantly German, especially in the EvangelicalUniate Church in Western Poland (previously a Prussian church), although it also had its own variant of an institution lead by Polish ministers, referred to as the EvangelicalAugsburg Church in the Republic of Poland, with the consistory in Warsaw and centres in Silesia and Masuria. While Lutheranism was ethnically mixed, the vast majority of the Catholic faithful were of Polish nationality and language. Lutheran superintendents and Catholic bishops were forced to try to reconcile the obligatory Germanization of the church with the provision of services to Polish believers with equal standing. In the course of the war, however, this reconciliation did not always succeed. The policy of radical Germanization was applied in different ways in the various annexed regions. In Wartheland, the Polish population was eliminated or deported. In the other regions – West Prussia and Upper Silesia – it was forced to undergo Germanization. In the latter, the Polish language and culture was undermined by the state. In Wartheland, on the other hand, the Polish population was no longer tolerated. The difference was to be traced in part to the person of the Gauleiter. A distinction was also made, moreover, in the mode of Germanization. Wartheland was seen as Polish territory that had still to be Germanized in spite of every effort to do so in the course of history. Upper Silesia and West Prussia were considered by the National Socialists to be originally German regions, which had first come under Polish control and influence in 1918. A further difference can be seen in the application of the administrative measure employed by the National Socialist regulators to determine the German ‘Volkstum’: the socalled Deutsche Volksliste. The latter was a list on which people could register themselves as German. The first of its four ‘departments’ contained the names of those who had actively engaged in promoting the German ‘Volkstum’. The second listed the names of those who had maintained the German language and culture. The third included the so-called ‘Stammdeutsche’, people of German origin who now spoke a different language. The fourth department listed the so-called ‘Renegaten’ who had renounced their German origins. One’s place on the list determined one’s access to food, education and medical care, although it was also used to designate those required to do military service in the Wehrmacht. Those who did not fit into one of the four categories could expect repression and expulsion. In Wartheland, where the Volksliste was ‘invented’, the Gauleiter ordered a selection based on race for the third and fourth departments. In industrial Upper Silesia, where there was a permanent need for labourers to man the factories, only the fourth department was subjected to racial scrutiny. West Prussia did not comply with such a selection. In Wartheland, only 10 per cent of the indigenous population were included on the list, while in West Prussia the figure was 60 per cent. A place on the list offered certain guarantees, including the minimal provision of life’s necessities and freedom from the threat of deportation. The latter, a forced migration to the Generalgouvernement, was implemented on a massive scale until the Nazi regime commenced its preparations to attack the Soviet Union in the middle of 1941. Differences in occupying policy had appreciable consequences for the Catholic Church in the regions. In Wartheland, religion was reduced to a matter of private opinion, 140

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to be organized in equally private associations. Polish believers, moreover, were to be expelled and their churches closed. Pending complete Germanization, however, liturgy in Polish was initially permitted. In West Prussia and Upper Silesia, by contrast, the church was to be immediately Germanized. Religion was not declared anathema, but it had to function as a means to bring the population closer to the German language and culture. This implied a ban on the use of Polish in the liturgy, in the administration of the sacraments and in preaching. Hitler’s satraps, who were charged with the implementation of Nazi policy in Poland, were mostly ‘Alte Kämpfer’, veterans of the volunteer corps who had fought for the preservation of German rule in the east immediately after the First World War. While they may have formulated their strategies in different terms, they all shared the same passion and relentlessness as the Nazis. Church leaders were confronted with the task of formulating a response to a challenge that was in radical conflict with the universality of the Christian religion. 4.4 Bishops in conflict: the German Bishop Splett Of the dioceses located in the annexed territories, only in Katowice, Plock and Łódź were the Polish bishops allowed to remain at their posts. In Danzig, a ‘free city’ until the war, a German bishop had been appointed. He and his fellow bishop in Katowice can serve as an illustration of the dilemmas facing the church authorities in occupied Poland. Roughly two million people lived in the region of Danzig and West Prussia, which was both ethnically and confessionaly mixed. The Poles numbered 61 per cent of the population. The Catholic Church had two dioceses: Danzig and Chełmno (German: Kulm), the latter with its monumental cathedral in Pelplin, a former Cistercian abbey church reminiscent of the German monks who formed the advance guard in the historical process of German colonization. Of the German-speaking population of the diocese of Danzig, 30 per cent were Catholic. The diocese of Chełmno had one million, predominantly Polish Catholics. Ten per cent of the region’s population was Lutheran and a small 3 per cent considered itself ‘non-Christian’.57 The Einsatzgruppen had completed their work in the territory: the eradication of the Polish intelligentsia. Polish priests were harassed and arrested. In the primarily Polish diocese of Chełmno, 46.5 per cent of the clergy – almost half – were murdered. In September and October 1939 alone, no fewer than 202 of a total of 634 priests were put to death. The Bishop of Chełmno, Stanislaw Wojciech Okoniewski, had fled in face of the German invasion. His auxiliary, Konstanty Dominik, was deemed unable to govern on account of illness and was brought by the Nazis to Danzig where he was interned. On 20 October 1939, the members of the chapter of the ‘Cistercian’ cathedral in Pelplin were executed – with the exception of two canons – and the cathedral itself was closed. The bishop’s curial offices were refitted as a police school. The Gauleiter, Albert Forster, set about the task of ethnic cleansing with considerable verve, so much so that the port cities around Danzig were quickly transformed into ghost towns. The Polish port city of Gdynia was Germanized as Gotenhafen (Gothic 141

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Port), but after the deportation of the Polish population it looked more like a Totenhafen (dead port).58 Forster demonstrated similar verve in his reorganization of the church. In September 1939, a week after the invasion, he insisted that the German-speaking Bishop of Danzig, Carl Maria Splett, also be appointed Bishop of the Polish diocese of Chełmno. The Vatican had its doubts about accepting these new administrative circumstances. In the meantime, reports of the dramatic reduction in the diocese of Chełmno’s pastors gradually reached the church’s central authorities. Two months after the invasion, Bishop Splett was thus appointed apostolic administrator of Chełmno ad nutum Sanctae Sedis. The Polish government in exile protested this decision, appealing to the Polish concordat of 1925. The Vatican argued that the extension of the responsibilities of a bishop who had received the placet of the Polish government on his appointment to the diocese of Danzig in 1938 was in line with the concordat.59 The appointment typified the conflict being imposed on the Catholic Church by the National Socialist occupier. The concession made to the regime and its policies was injuring the Polish nation. A German bishop in a predominantly Polish diocese could serve as an involuntary contribution to its policy of Germanization. No matter how German the man appointed to the position, however, the universality of the church also required the bishop to stand up for the rights of his Polish faithful. The shortage of priests in the diocese of Chełmno had reached a dramatic climax as a result of the murder and expulsion of the Polish clergy. Splett tried to redress this situation in his second diocese by recruiting German priests from the bordering dioceses as well as the Altreich, especially the Rhineland. The new recruits were not only deployed in the pastoral care of the Polish population, they were also available to the occupying army. Four of these newcomers were National Socialists. One of them even lived the life of a soldier of sorts, and is reported to have betrayed a number of his Polish fellow priests to the Gestapo. In the meantime, the apparent emergence of sixty Polish priests from hiding or from imprisonment in the concentration camps swelled the ranks of the clergy. By the middle of January 1940, the diocese had no fewer than 140 priests at its disposal. The reactivation of pastoral care, albeit under a German constellation, was actually welcomed by a segment of the Polish population and its clergy. Some young chaplains of German origin presented themselves quite explicitly as non-political pastors and a number of them were exiled by the occupying regime in response. Bishop Splett bore his second appointment ‘as a cross’. In February 1940, the Nazi regime ordered him to forbid the use of Polish in the administration of the sacraments. Priests who heard confessions in Polish were arrested. The bishop protested the order and in response ten priests from Danzig, who had already been arrested on 1 September 1939 (the day of the invasion), were put to death on Good Friday, 21 March 1940. Splett capitulated and had a statement printed in the diocesan newspaper that it was forbidden to use Polish in the liturgy and in religious education. The Gestapo increased the pressure by extending the ban on the use of Polish to the confessional and arresting six priests. The bishop then declared that the use of Polish was also forbidden in the sacrament. He left an opening, however, insisting that general absolution should be given where it was impossible to engage in a mutual exchange of thought in the confessional. 142

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Confessional attendance in the diocese of Chełmno did not appear to suffer from the ban and there was no apparent suspicious reaction. The Polish faithful appeared to understand, especially since the bishop did his best to explain the situation as he travelled throughout his diocese. In the countryside, where checks were less strict and at times even absent, confession in Polish continued. Nevertheless, the sacrament clearly presented a problem for the generation of twenty- to thirty-year-olds who had not learned German at school. Some employed a German ‘sin list’, while others simply indicated with their fingers which of the ten commandments they had sinned against.60 Polish historiography has tended to be ambiguous in its evaluation of Bishop Splett. In September 1939, he celebrated a mass of thanksgiving for the German recapture of Danzig, the city of his first episcopal appointment. He was also known to have declared openly that he was of German stock and culture. He had immediately exhorted his German fellow bishops to pray for the Führer and the fatherland. In October 1942, he wrote a letter to Field Marshal Göring in which he announced himself as a ‘German bishop’ and declared his commitment to the revival and spread of the German culture in all the churches of his diocese. No one had forced Splett to write such a letter. From the Polish perspective, its author did not act per defectum (in error) but per excessum (in excess).61 Explanations of the bishop’s attitude expose both his convictions and his opportunism. His outspoken German persuasion made cooperation with the Polish clergy problematic at times and incidents and conflict were far from absent. Some Polish priests had gone into hiding in the forests or remote villages where they took care of the liturgy in their own way. The bishop endeavoured to help them nevertheless with money (from the German episcopal conference) and other provisions. One Polish historian has defended Splett by pointing out that he was able to speak Polish and that while he represented the interests of the diocese of Danzig, 90 per cent of which was German-speaking, he should not be held responsible as such for the policies of the National Socialists.62 Bishop Splett remained a German. When the fortunes of war turned against Nazi Germany, he tried to impress the Catholics of the region with the example of courage and militancy exhibited by the knights of the crusades. 4.5 Bishops in conflict: the Polish Bishop Adamski The attitude of the Bishop of Katowice, Stanislaw Adamski, can be seen as the mirror image of his German counterpart in Chełmno. As a priest, Adamski had been active in the Catholic union movement and in politics – he had been a member of the Polish parliament – until he was appointed Bishop of the industrial city of Katowice in 1930. His diocese was located in a region that had been subject to more dispute after the First World War than any other on the border between Germany and Poland. During the nationalities crisis in Silesia in June 1939, he had shown himself to be a Polish bishop in the language conflict that was a component part of the confrontation between Nazi Germany and Poland. His German fellow bishop, Cardinal Adolf Bertram, Archbishop of Breslau, had banned the use of the Polish language in the churches of German Upper 143

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Silesia. Bertram had already made a name for himself as a nationalist church leader when he intervened during the referendum in Silesia after the First World War. In 1939, Bishop Adamski followed suit by banning the use of German in the liturgy in his Polish diocese. After the German invasion, however, he was forced to reverse this decision and, under pressure from the Nazi regime, ban the use of Polish. After the conquest of Katowice, the bishop wrote a pastoral letter in which he exhorted the faithful to cooperate with the occupying regime and even to grant it a degree of trust, in so far as cooperation would not be in breach of canon law or their personal conscience. He advised priests to comply with the instructions of the new regime to the extent that they were not morally objectionable. The faithful of Silesia accepted their bishop because of his political realism. They presumed that his knowledge of the politically turbulent history of the region and of the complexity of German–Polish relations had made the bishop a flexible politician, whose decisions would help avoid the political terror that had manifested itself elsewhere in occupied Poland.63 The Gauleiter of Silesia, Fritz Bracht, executed a policy of Germanization, convinced as he was that the Silesians were in principle Germans ‘mit nur einem Hauch von Polentum’ (with just a whiff of ‘Polishness’). In December 1939, the people of the region were invited to collect their new identity papers: the so-called ‘Fingerdruckaktion’ (‘Fingerprint Campaign’). On this occasion they could opt for a place on the Deutsche Volksliste. Admissions policy was not strict and given the economic significance of this industrial region for the Third Reich, the Nazi regime was in many ways dependent on the local labour force. Qualified workers in Silesia were mostly Polish-speaking, and this was the reason why the Polish language was tolerated in the parishes. Numerous Catholics turned to their bishop before registering. Given the wartime circumstances, the bishop advised some – especially his priests – to register as ‘deutschfreundlich’ and thus ‘mask’ themselves against the threat of deportation to the Generalgouvernement. Roughly 90 per cent of the inhabitants of Silesia and half of the diocesan clergy agreed to registration on the Volksliste.64 Designation as ‘ethnic Germans’ had consequences. ‘Some 120,000 men, including 50 diocesan priests and 22 members of religious orders, were conscripted into the Wehrmacht and adolescents were systematically recruited to the Hitler Jugend and Bund deutscher Mädel.’65 The Polish government in exile was disappointed with the bishop’s opportunistic advice and even petitioned the Holy See to send an apostolic visitator to Katowice. Bishop Adamski and his auxiliary Juliusz Bieniek registered themselves as Polish. Polish historiography has tended to be more understanding of Bishop Adamski’s arguments and policies. From November 1939 onwards he was condemned to house arrest and it was made difficult for him to receive visitors. A well-established and efficient decentralization, however, allowed him to maintain the Roman Catholic Church’s system of social services. His decision to accept the lesser of two evils ensured that this form of charitable work continued to be an important factor in the region. ‘After all, Catholicism was not compromised in Upper-Silesia.’66 He also considered it part of his responsibility to arrange for the pastoral care of the Polish men who had been conscripted into the Wehrmacht as a result of their inclusion on the Volksliste. When the Silesian seminary in 144

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Kraków (Generalgouvernement) was closed down, pragmatic considerations inspired him to send ‘his’ 46 seminarians to similar institutions in the Altreich. In February 1941, Bishop Adamski was exiled to the Generalgouvernement together with his auxiliary Bieniek and eleven priests, all of whom had insisted on maintaining their Polish nationality. He continued to serve as a bishop and must have witnessed, if not participated in, the Warsaw Uprising of August 1944 against the German authorities, with the liberation close at hand. His opportunism thus had a solid Polish foundation and was relatively successful. 4.6 Church persecution in Wartheland The Reichsgau Wartheland, abbreviated Warthegau, was the new name for the Polish province that had once been equivalent to the Duchy of Poznań. In the romantic notion of eastern expansion, it was a territory in which the ambitions and numerical reality of nineteenth-century German colonialization and been left stranded in the face of a concrete Polish majority. The city was German, the surrounding region Polish. ‘The town of Posen/Poznań was a heavily fortified German island in a Polish sea: in the surrounding province, 800,000 Poles lived alongside half that number of Germans.’67 On the first day of the war, 4.6 million people lived in Wartheland, the majority Polish, but with a German minority of 340,000, for the most part ‘Volksdeutsche’ with a Polish passport. In the course of the war, Wartheland became the point of departure and destination for a veritable and violent mass migration. The Polish inhabitants were deported in large numbers to the Generalgouvernement while 350,000 Germans from the Baltic states, Volhynia (Ukraine) and Romania took possession of their houses and land. An additional million colonists and refugees from the Altreich joined their number. Many were evangelical, swelling the ranks of the German-speaking Evangelical-Uniate Church of Posen/Poznań, but the number of German Catholics in Wartheland also doubled from 250,000 to 500,000.68 Wartheland had become the ‘Exerzierplatz’ par excellence for the Nazi ideology. Two factors were of importance in this regard. The first was the romantic notion of an incomplete German colonization. The second was the person of the Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter, Arthur Greiser, who wanted to transform the territory under his control into a model of Germanization and ethnic purity in the Third Reich. His perseverance and brutality were second to none. Furthermore, Martin Bormann, the chief of the NSDAP ’s central office, exercised a major and unmistakable influence in precisely this ‘exemplary’ region. Greiser’s right hand, the Prussian official Arthur Jäger, was charged with the ecclesial dimension of the process. He had gained experience – as outlined in Chapter 2 – in the Protestant Kirchenkampf in the Altreich in 1933 and 1934 and had acquired the nickname ‘Kirchen-Jäger’, his surname being the German word for hunter. Greiser understood ‘his’ Wartheland to be a ‘region free of legislation’, in which neither the laws of Poland nor the Polish concordat enjoyed any validity. The laws of the Altreich and the competence of the governmental departments in Berlin were likewise ignored. Demarcation went so far that the Roman Catholic and Evangelical 145

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Churches were ordered to sever their international connections. The former was no longer permitted to consider itself bound to the Holy See, the latter to its sister churches in Germany and the Generalgouvernement. In addition, both churches were to be organized according to national principles. German ministers and priests were no longer to submit to the authority of Polish ecclesial officials and were expected to organize their own administration. Polish churches were doomed to disappear, together with their members. Churches – both Evangelical and Catholic – lost their civil status, countless buildings and monasteries, and even their cemeteries. Religion was to be expelled from public life. In Wartheland, this included the disappearance of crosses and statues of saints that had once graced its streets and squares. It also implied that daily services were only permitted behind closed doors. Sunday services, which remained open to the faithful, were limited to the early hours of the morning. Only one or two churches were allowed to open their doors in each city. The cathedral in Poznań was closed for services and was used as a repository for confiscated church treasures. One Catholic institution was exempt from these restrictions, namely the Franciscan church in Poznań, although it was intended exclusively for German language services. A sign reading ‘Nur für Deutsche’ was hung on the church door.69 The Evangelical churches with German language services likewise acquired a sign on the door: ‘Für Polen verboten’.70 The Nazi regime had a ‘list of 13 stipulations’ drawn up, governing the relationship between the Church and the state. While the list was never made public, it served nevertheless as a guide in questions of ecclesial policy. It opened with a declaration stating that churches no longer existed in the constitutional sense, only church communities in the sense of private associations. Those who desired to join such an association had to be an adult and had to submit a written declaration. It was thus no longer possible to be born into a Christian faith community (in German: ‘hineingeboren’). This measure made infant baptism illegal according to civil law. The associations were obliged to organize their own administrations, since appointed church officials were no longer recognized as such. Charitable activities based on religious conviction were to be discontinued and church collections abolished.71 The Evangelical-Uniate Church in Wartheland was split into three: an Evangelical Church for people of German nationality in Posen (Poznań), a second in Litzmannstadt (Łóź) and a third for the western part of the Warthegau. The obligatory statement of German nationality squared with the actual situation, namely that the Evangelical Church in Poland was to all intents and purposes a German church. The objections raised by Lutheran officials focused in the first instance on the fact that the Gauleiter no longer recognized the existing (Prussian) church order. The consistorium, the church’s administrative organ, had been declared unlawful and the episcopal appointment of superintendent Paul Blau had been ignored. In addition, the church had been markedly impeded in its reception of and service to the colonists who had settled in Wartheland in countless numbers within the framework of German popular migration. The existing financial systems of the church were also abolished, but this apparently led to an even greater readiness among the members of the community to support the 146

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financial needs of their ministers. In 1941, more money was donated to church ministers than ever before. Both the ‘Reichsdeutsche’ and the ‘Volksdeutsche’ population took part in large numbers in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper and evening bible hours. One example typifies the situation: on the request of the members of the congregation, from 1941 onwards, daily morning prayer in the church of Saint Matthew in Poznań was extended to include the winter months, in spite of the lack of heating.72 In September 1941, the Roman Catholic Church was likewise confronted with a choice: submit to a separation of nationalities or continue the fight. The Holy See agreed to the first option after some hesitation, swayed by letters from Eduard van Blericq, the Vicar General of the archdiocese of Gniezno, and Walenty Dymek, Vicar General and auxiliary bishop of the archdiocese of Poznań, and after a memorandum from three German clergymen recommended the acceptance of a separation on the basis of nationality within the Catholic Church for the duration of the war. They also invited the appointment of an apostolic administrator for the German Catholics, to be placed in sole charge of negotiations with the regional authorities. According to the signatories, haste was to be recommended as delay could be expected to result in further repressions. In October 1941, Joseph Paech was appointed apostolic administrator for the German Catholics in Wartheland. He was succeeded in May 1942 by the Franciscan friar Hilarius Breitinger, a man marked in Polish historiography with a pro-German stigma that was said to have interferred with his pastoral care of the Polish Catholics in his charge. Auxiliary bishop Dymek was appointed administrator to the Polish Catholics, but continued internment prevented him from accepting the appointment. Dymek, who had links with the resistance movement in the Generalgouvernement, had been placed under house arrest on 3 October 1939 and had thus been prevented from visiting churches and clergy alike. In the period that followed, his movements were restricted to the island on which the Cathedral in Poznań was built, but he made no use of this freedom and remained at home. In January 1943 he was transferred to a rectory in the city in which a German police officer also resided. Public appearances continued to be forbidden until the end of the war and he was only permitted to say mass behind closed church doors. The majority of the Polish clergy were interned in monasteries taken over by the German police, if they had not already fled the country on the arrival of the German invading forces. A number were then transported to the Generalgouvernement and a further group to Dachau concentration camp. In the diocese of Wloclawek 50.2 per cent of the priests were killed, in the diocese of Łódź 38 per cent, in the archdiocese of Gniezno 36.5 per cent and in the archdiocese of Poznań 35.4 per cent. These percentages are higher than those recorded in the Generalgouvernement, where some dioceses lost less than 20 per cent and others as little as 15 per cent.73 Even in the context of death and destruction, the Nazis maintained their policy of apartheid. Official discrimination on the basis of nationality went so far as to insist that Polish individuals condemned to death for the possession of weapons, for example, were only to be allowed the assistance of a German priest. For a length of time, Franciscan Breitinger was thus obliged to visit 20 to 40 Polish prisoners in the early hours of each day, to assist them in their final moments, before they were removed to the place of execution.74 147

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4.7 Religion in the Generalgouvernement In 1915, during the First World War, the German army conquered the Russian part of Poland and established a Generalgouvernement with Warsaw as its capital, intended as a first step towards Polish independence under German auspices. In 1939, the German army conquered the Republic of Poland and set up a new Generalgouvernement, this time with Kraków and Hans Frank, Hitler’s lawyer, as governor general. While the first had been a means towards independence, the second was an instrument of oppression.75 In August 1941, the colony was expanded to include Galicia, which had been recaptured. The Generalgouvernement was also to acquire a sinister reputation for a different reason. After the Wannsee Conference (January 1942) it was to become the place – outside the boundaries of the Greater German Reich – in which the most important annihilation camps were established to assist in the persecution of the Jews. In Kraków, the occupying administration was not an Aufsichtsverwaltung as was later employed in Western Europe, but an exclusively German Zivilverwaltung. Poles could not be appointed to senior positions in the administrative machinery. They were only allowed to serve as mayor in smaller towns and villages and the Polish population was subject to its own criminal justice system. All this was based on the conviction that there could only be one ruler for the Poles: the Germans.76 The German victors restrained themselves in the early stages, designating this central portion of occupied Poland as a homeland for the Poles. But in the summer of 1940, when Nazi Germany was ‘victorious on every front’, the Generalgouvernement likewise became a place of extermination for the Polish elite, the exploitation of Polish labour, and aggressively enforced Germanization. Around the turn of the year 1940–1941, members of the Polish elite were subjected to two waves of arrests and a number were executed immediately. It was in this period that the army barracks at Auschwitz were transformed into a concentration camp for (initially) prominent Poles. ‘In the freezing winter of 1940–1941 the death toll rose so fast that it took two weeks to get a requiem said for a loved one in the churches of Warsaw.’77 The German occupying regime had the renowned Veit Stoss altarpiece removed from the Church of Our Lady in Kraków and transported to Neurenberg, the artist’s place of birth. This was a symbolic gesture, but at the same time visible evidence of the policy of Germanization. Another Polish monument, Wawel Castle, was requisitioned by the governor Hans Frank for his own use. This meant that Wawel Cathedral and the crypt in which the kings of Poland had been buried were no longer accessible. The basilica of Częstochowa, however, the Polish nation’s most important sanctuary, remained open for religious services, albeit under German supervision. The Lutheran Church, or the so-called Evangelical-Augsburg Church, which – in spite of its German origins – had taken root in Polish culture, was condemned to liquidation. The church’s administrative organ, the Consistory, was dissolved and the bishop, Julius Bursche, was deported to a concentration camp where he lost his life. The Polish institution was split up. Of the hundred plus Evangelical ministers, a quarter joined the German Evangelical Church in the Generalgouvernement while 67 Polish

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fellow ministers were driven from the respective communities. A total of 30 found themselves in concentration camps; half did not survive incarceration.78 The picture of a wartime Roman Catholic Church in the Generalgouvernement is a mixed one. Repression and toleration took turns. While it goes without saying that the racially motivated suppression of the Polish nation also affected Polish Catholicism, the Nazi authorities nevertheless allowed themselves to be guided by rational considerations. ‘For one thing, they inspired the Germans to a certain level of repression, with the intention to unlink the Church from the Polish state, nation and certainly the Polish resistance. On the other hand, however, they behaved also with a certain moderation towards the Church because it had the task of pacifying Polish society.’79 Priests were expected to exhort the people during their Sunday sermons to fulfil the ‘obligations’ established by the German occupying authorities. Indeed, after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June of 1941, the governor even tried to involve the Church in the propaganda campaign against communism. The Nazi regime did its utmost to eliminate Catholicism’s Polish cultural features. To this end, the singing of patriotic hymns was banned and the use of national prayers of intercession scrapped. Historical paintings depicting the struggle for the Polish fatherland were removed from the churches and Catholic feast days with a Polish character, such as that of ‘Our Lady Queen of Poland’ on 3 May or that celebrating victory against the Red Army on the Marian feast of 15 August were forbidden. Permission was generally refused for processions and pilgrimages, with the exception of those related to Częstochowa. Religious education in schools was limited to one hour per week. Priests who preached patriotic Polish sermons from the pulpits could be punished for their efforts, including transportation to a concentration camp. The Poles were also considered second-class citizens in the Generalgouvernement, a reservoir of forced labour for German or Germanized industry. After the winter of 1940–1941, and after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the occupying regime in the Generalgouvernement revealed something of its less irrational side. The provision of cheap labour for the German war industry became a major priority. The local Polish authorities were obliged to ‘deliver’ labourers for work in Germany. Together with the Polish farming corporations, they were also responsible for the provision of agricultural produce. This was particularly difficult for village mayors who found themselves caught more and more between the devil and the deep: the demands of the German occupier and increasing pressure from the resistance movement.80 The arrival of Poles driven out of the western provinces who sought refuge in the Generalgouvernement gave rise to an acute shortage of housing and food. Relief committees were spontaneously formed – run in part by nuns – to collect clothing and organize soup kitchens. Local initiatives resulted in August 1941 in the formation of a Rada Glówna Opiekuncza (Council for Social Services). In order to be effective, however, the Council was forced to cooperate with the German occupying forces.81 Together with other members of the local elite (doctors and teachers), parish priests were forced to become members of committees set up to urge their fellow countrymen to ‘volunteer’ for work in Germany. They were also responsible for delivering quotas in 149

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this regard. This meant that they were expected to read official announcements from the pulpit. Churches and monasteries were likewise expected to deliver food quotas from their farms and often provide accommodation for passing military or police units.82 The exile of Cardinal Hlond meant that the Archbishop of Kraków, Adam Stefan Sapieha, became the church’s highest authority during the Occupation, the informal chairman of the Polish episcopate. His archdiocese was located for the most part in the Generalgouvernement. He belonged to an aristocratic family that had gained respect in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. He missed the cardinal’s hat (until 1946) because he had clashed with the (then) diplomat Achille Ratti (later Pius XI) on Silesia. During the war, the archbishop, who was already advanced in years in 1939 (72) and had thus considered resignation, pursued a middle ground policy between collaboration and open resistance. According to a statement of Pius XII, Sapieha found himself in the eye of the storm. In a message to the Holy See, Bishop Adamski reported that the archbishop had ‘presented himself in person and in wiring to the Leader of the Generalgouvernement and had clearly drawn attention to existing abuses. Everyone greatly appreciated his intervention.’83 Archbishop Sapieha urged his flock to resign themselves to the German occupying regime. But in a letter to Wlodimir Ledóchowski, the Polish superior general of the Jesuits in Rome, he lamented the fact that a few bishops had adopted an exaggeratedly well-disposed attitude towards the Nazi regime. There was no question of unity among the Polish bishops.84 He exhorted his priests to concentrate on the provision of social assistance. He openly supported the Rada Główna Opiekuńcza, but also protested against the economic exploitation that had led to the impoverishment of the Polish population. He had several contacts with the German occupying regime, but he also had links with the Polish government in exile and the Polish underground army, the Armia Krajowa, which was constituted in the course of 1940. He ignored a German request to condemn the resistance just as he refused to participate in the German anti-communist propaganda campaign. Sapieha intervened with Governor Frank in four letters of protest. The first was exclusively religious in content, but the remainder included themes such as forced labour, the persecution of Polish citizens, the concentration camps and the closure of Polish academies and universities. The last letter addressed the need to protect the Polish population of Galicia from the bloodlust of Ukrainian nationalists. On 5 April 1944, when the fortunes of war had started to turn against the Germans, the archbishop agreed to a meeting with Frank. He had already rejected an earlier request to meet (on 20 April 1940) because he did not want to be photographed with the governor general on Hitler’s birthday. After the meeting in 1944, Frank was forced to observe that Sapieha was Polish and his thoughts were Polish and that it was hardly surprising that he had come to embody Polish independence.85 ‘Only’ two bishops were arrested in the Generalgouvernement. One survived imprisonment, the other, one of the auxiliary bishops of Lublin, died in the concentration camp. Among the minor clergy, the number of victims was also smaller when compared with the western annexed regions. Priests were indeed arrested in Warsaw and Lublin in the first months of the German invasion, but their arrests turned out to be temporary 150

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and intended as intimidation. Repression intensified during the Warsaw Rising of 1944, and was extended to include priests who had offered shelter to the insurgents. Accounting for the entire occupation, 11.5 per cent of the clergy were killed in the diocese of Warsaw and 10.9 per cent in the diocese of Lublin. For the archdiocese of Kraków the percentage was 4.2, the diocese of Tarnów 4.3, for Sandomierz 5.6 and for Siedlce 6.8.86 As a matter of fact, the number of priests in the Generalgouvernement actually increased during the war, because hundreds of Polish clergy (and religious sisters) had been expelled or exiled to the region from the annexed territories. The influx of new seminarians came to an end nevertheless, because the German regime had included the seminaries and theological academies when it shut down the universities. Alreadyenrolled student priests were allowed to continue their studies as far as ordination. The problem was circumvented via the establishment of private courses of instruction for priest candidates. Karol Wojtyla, who was to become Pope John Paul II in 1978, was among those who received his priestly training in this way. The Generalgouvernement had a mixed population of almost 12.5 million people, of which 80 per cent were Polish, 13 per cent Jewish, 1 per cent German and 6 per cent Ukrainian. The Ukrainians enjoyed a position of preference together with the Germans, since the German occupying regime was convinced that the various populations had to

Figure 10 Hans Frank, governor general in occupied Poland, receives a mark of honour from the Ukrainian Orthodox Metropolitan. The Nazi regime in Kraków supported the Ukrainian Church. Photo: SOMA , Brussels.

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be treated separately and played off against one another. Moreover, it considered Ukrainian nationalism to be an important factor in both the suppression of the Polish nation and the approaching conflict with the Soviet Union. A Central Ukrainian Committee operated in Kraków, in name a mutual aid organization, in fact a centre of Ukrainian national politics. But up to the German invasion, Ukrainian nationalism was cautiously supported in order to avoid raising suspicions in Moscow. Ukrainian orthodoxy managed to profit from the situation. On 19 April 1940, on the eve of Hitler’s birthday, Governor General Frank organized a celebration to mark the formal return of the cathedral in the city of Chełm (Cholm in Ukrainian) to the Orthodox Church. The said Ukrainian church had been requisitioned by the Polish authorities for Roman Catholic services in 1920. Chełm became a centre of orthodox religious fervour with a newly appointed Orthodox bishop Ilarion and a publicity-seeking exercise of authority and expansion unheard of in the remainder of the Generalgouvernement. It was the most spectacular part of a restoration of the Orthodox Church in Poland under German surveillance.87 5 The western expansion of the Soviet Union 1939–1941 5.1 Sovietization in eastern Poland The Red Army invaded the eastern provinces of Poland on Sunday 17 September 1939, welcomed with loud cheers from many Ukrainian and Belorussian residents. Some came to greet them in their Sunday best, spontaneously singing communist or religious songs; others were mobilized by an advance guard of secret agents. For them, the Russian soldiers were ‘fellow ethnics’, liberators from the discrimination of the Polish state.88 Many Jewish residents also cheerfully embraced the crew of a Soviet tank, driven perhaps by their shared communist inclinations in which there appeared to be no room for discrimination, or by a yearning for protection against the anarchy of the region and its pogroms, and certainly by the fact that reports of massacres at the hands of the SS Einsatzgruppen in the west had trickled through to the east. From the Polish perspective, the Red Army invasion represented an occupation motivated by both nationalism and ideology. In the regions that now constituted the western provinces of the Soviet Union, Polish civil institutions had to be dismantled and the Polish administrative elite – in so far as it still existed – had to be eliminated. The social order also had to be transformed. In the meantime, after the invasion but before the establishment of a proper administration, a revolutionary situation evolved – or was created – as part of which the middle class and the landed upper class became the targets of improvised expropriation and, on occasion, annihilation by spontaneously formed militias and criminal gangs. Even after the establishment of authority, the uncertainty of lawlessness continued to be a threat. The Stalinist order abolished the distinction between those responsible for public order and those subject to it. No one could offer protection, neither the secret police, nor the army, nor the party. ‘Suddenly, under the formula of institutionalized arbitrariness, or lawlessness, or privatization, the paradox of political 152

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theory – quis custodiet ipsos custodes (who supervises the supervisors?) – was transformed: all were custodians and wards simultaneously.’89 According to new estimates, between 316,000 and 325,000 Polish citizens of the annexed territories were deported between September 1939 and the middle of 1941; Poles, Jews and Ukrainians.90 Their journey to the eastern reaches of the Soviet Union (Siberia and Kazakhstan) was often one of hardship and exhaustion. The first and second wave of arrests focused on the local elite in the towns and villages: Polish soldiers, Polish civil servants, Roman Catholic priests, the head teachers and the mayor. ‘The list, though short, is highly symbolic and to the point: the soul, the mind, and the conduct of daily affairs in the community were thus stripped of guidance.’91 This process of elimination was geared towards Roman Catholicism as a preeminently Polish institution. No fewer than 168 Catholic priests were detained and sent to labour camps or sentenced to death. The Orthodox churches were not subject to persecution, at least not in the first instance. In addition to the new communist rule there was also a policy of Russification. Priority was given to convincing the Orthodox priests and bishops of the formerly Polish region to submit to the authority of the Patriarch of Moscow where they had not already done so. At the end of this period, when the German offensive against the Soviet Union commenced on 22 June 1941, some 109,400 Polish citizens were deported by the secret police (NKVD ). More arrests were made in occupied eastern Poland in this period of 21 months than in the entire Soviet Union. ‘The typical sentence was eight years in the Gulag; about 8,513 people were sentenced to death.’92 5.2 Religion and nationalism in Ukraine Poland lost its eastern provinces in September 1939 and eastern Poland was included in the Belorussian and Ukrainian republics. Under the mantle of the Soviet Union, a centuries-old division had been brought to an end. Andrei Sheptytsky, the Metropolitan of the Greek Catholic Church in Lwów/Lviv/Lemberg, rejoiced in the dissolution of a boundary that had separated Ukrainians from one another. ‘We occupied only a few rooms on the ground floor until recently and now we have it all to ourselves.’ But there was another lodger on the ground floor of the house: the Ukrainian minority in the Generalgouvernement.93 At the end of the First World War, a battle for independence was fought in Ukraine. When the new boundaries of the Soviet Union and Poland were established in Riga in 1921, the territory in-between was divided up. Now under Polish sovereignty, Galicia was a breeding ground of both Polish and Ukrainian nationalism. The region in question was simultaneously considered the heartland of the Polish unification movement and the centre of Ukrainian nationalism. The source of the latter was the Ukrainian language, which was spoken primarily among the rural population and the Greek Catholic Church in Galicia. The national idea had two dimensions. The first was secular and was expressed in weighty terms in the poetry of Ivan Franko. He and his sympathizers considered Ukrainian nationalism to be a consequence of their socialism. The people would rise up, 153

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they believed, and create an ethical awareness and a nation state along revolutionary lines. The second dimension was a religious one and was given expression in the twentieth century by the above-mentioned Metropolitan Sheptytsky. While Sheptytsky had been born into the Polish aristocracy, the Greek Catholic Church evolved under his leadership into a community of culture – and, not to forget, education – which was Catholic enough to be able to flourish in a Polish civil context and Orthodox enough to offer a national counterbalance to ‘Roman Catholic’ Poland. Eastern Christianity is the dominant religion in Ukraine, although it is rich in contrasts. The Russian Orthodox Church was founded in medieval Kiev and was influenced by the Ukrainian struggle for independence in the twentieth century. This resulted in an autonomy acquired from the general council (sobor) of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1917–1918, which created the possibility of a Ukrainian Exarchate in full union with the Patriarch of Moscow. In 1922, Patriarch Tikhon confirmed its ecclesial autonomy and appointed an Exarch in Kiev. The same struggle for independence served as the cradle of the so-called Autocephalous (independent) Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Under the influence of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in the west of Ukraine, a substantial Greek Catholic Church in union with Rome also took shape in 1596 (Union of Brest). The Russian Orthodox Church in the Ukraine suffered persecution under the Soviet regime. The renowned cave monastery in Kiev, for example, had a population of 500 monks in 1926. In the same year, the monastery was handed over to the ‘Living Church’, the association of Renovationists described in Chapter 1, and this brought about a crisis leading to the departure of many of the monks. Two years later, the remainder of the community was expelled and the monastery was closed. The Soviet regime in Kiev – as in Moscow – was interested in undermining the patriarchal Russian Orthodox Church by supporting the Renovationists. In 1923, they were able to form their own independent body, the Ukrainian Orthodox (synodal) Church, the ‘Living Church’ in the Ukraine.94 Persecution increased in intensity in the 1930s. In the spring of 1937, for example, nineteen churches in Odessa – including the cathedral – were blown up at one and the same time with dynamite. Schools were built in their place.95 By this time, the Ukrainian Church had lost its bishops and almost all of its clergy. The so-called Autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church did not fare any better. It was a product of the Russian February Revolution of 1917, when democratization and national independence also reigned supreme in Ukraine. A Tsentral’na Rada was formed in Kiev, a central council that had been the expression of independent governance in Ukraine for centuries. Orthodox clergy had likewise participated in this national movement. Priests and laity combined to form a Tserkovna Rada, a church council designed to facilitate the autocephalous character of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine. The synodal structure of the Autocephalous Ukrainian Church was seen as a democratic alternative to the monarchical structure of the Patriarchate of Moscow. The church’s statutes exhibit a ‘Protestant’ slant in the abolishment of the difference between priests and laity. The Tserkovna Rada set about the introduction of a canonically recognized bishop to head the Autocephalous Church, a procedure the Patriarchate of Moscow was not to 154

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recognize. In 1921, a Ukrainian council elected its founder, the archpriest Vasyl Lypkivsky, to the position. He and a second candidate were then ordained bishop in the Cathedral of Saint Sophia in Kiev – which the Church had appropriated – according to a so-called Alexandrian ceremony. All those who had participated in the council assembled in the church and laid their hand on the person standing next to them. The chain ended with twelve deacons.96 An unsubstantiated story claims that both bishops went down into the caves of the monastery, to the sarcophagi of the bishops and ascetics, placed the deceased hands of Saint Ephraim, Metropolitan of Kiev, on their heads, and stated that the dead would ordain them if the living refused. If the story is true, and the ordination took place in the described fashion, then this would square with the Orthodox belief that the saints have not been abandoned and that a sacred energy still radiates from their dead hands.97 In 1927, six years after the episcopal ordination, the Autocephalous Church had 36 bishops and roughly 2,500 priests. A programme of Ukrainization of texts and church music was implemented, a calendar of Ukrainian saints established, a prayer for ‘Ukraine, loved and preserved by God’ introduced, and the River Dnieper was chosen as the church’s symbol. Persecution commenced in the second half of the 1920s. Aware that the synodal structure of the Autocephalous Church left it open to internecine disputes, the secret police exploited this weakness by stimulating differences of opinion. Metropolitan Vasyl was arrested in November 1937 and killed in the same month. The collective memory of the state and population of Ukraine was marked by the Great Famine of 1932 and 1933, the second in the history of the Soviet Union, referred to in 2000 as the Holodomor. The famine was the result of the Stalinist policy of collective farming. According to reasoned estimates, 3.3 million citizens died in the Soviet Republic of Ukraine, the Union’s granary, from ‘starvation and hunger-related disease’. The number of Ukrainians in the entire Soviet Union – thus including those deported to Asia – who died of starvation is also estimated at 3.3 million.98 In their desperate search for food, some villagers resorted to extremes such as cannibalism. Farming families tried to sell their jewellery or icons stolen from the village church to party officials in exchange for food. ‘In this way, too, collectivization robbed the Ukrainian village of its identity, even as it destroyed the Ukrainian peasant morally and then physically. Hunger drove Ukrainians and others to strip themselves and their places of worship before it drove them to their deaths.’99 5.3 Moderation of Church persecution In September 1939, the River San became the boundary between the Soviet Union and Germany. In October of the same year, a People’s Assembly was chosen on the basis of a single list of candidates. The assembly declared that the (western) provinces of Galicia, Volhynia and Podolia had been added to the (eastern) Soviet Republic of Ukraine. An entire population now found itself under communist rule, with a hitherto uninterrupted Orthodox national church tradition and influence, a network of church buildings and monasteries denser than in the east of Ukraine, and religion as a subject in its schools. 155

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The newly installed authorities were ambiguous in their response. On the one hand, the soviet decrees governing the separation of church and state that had their roots in the October Revolution were still in place. This resulted in the nationalization of the monasteries and their property, the confiscation of church assets and the abolishment of special schools. Youth organizations were brought together into a single communist organization. The social influence of the Greek Catholic Church, which had established a network of gymnasia, schools, nurseries and orphanages in Galicia, was particularly undermined by these measures. On the other hand, the Soviet government continued to be selective in its church persecution. The person of the Greek Catholic Metropolitan Sheptytsky was respected and he was not put in prison because of his popularity. The regime endeavoured to win over the population of this newly acquired and not insignificantly large region for the Soviet Union, and Orthodoxy (even in its Greek Catholic form) was considered a useful instrument in achieving this end. The regime’s restraint was something of a novelty. It became evident in a religious statistic from 1941: more than 70 per cent of the churches used for the liturgy and open to the public were located in the western provinces. If the adhesion of the population of these regions was to be ensured, then it appeared to be necessary to moderate Bolshevik church persecution for the time being at least and to tolerate (Orthodox) denominations. The militant atheist movement nevertheless made its presence felt in the newly acquired territory, sending young activists to Volhynia to take issue with the feast of Easter. While Sunday as a day of rest was not abolished in the Soviet Republic of Ukraine, the traditional Christian feast days were treated as ordinary working days. There are indications, however, that this anti-religious campaign in the western regions of the Soviet Union produced the opposite of the intended effect. According to a present day observer, the Galician churches were never so full on Sundays as they had been under the Soviet regime. Believers both young and old sought support and strength in the church and formed lengthy queues outside the confessionals. ‘All suggested that people began to respect and value religious culture as a great treasure precisely at a time when it found itself in mortal danger.’100 There are reports of a striking increase in the number of baptisms in the Russian Orthodox Church in the formerly Polish regions. In 1940, the cathedral of an otherwise identified city registered 400 baptisms, an increase of 30 per cent compared with the preceding year, when the region was still under Polish rule. The cathedral’s priest is also recorded as having conducted a wedding ceremony involving a captain in the Red Army and a local woman. ‘An entire Soviet division was in the city at this time, with the headquarters not far away from the cathedral. Many of the officers’ wives brought their children to be baptized.’101 In 1940 and 1941, the Easter Vigil was not celebrated at midnight in the region but at 4.30 am. The church was packed to the rafters nonetheless with parishioners and Red Army officers. When the priest in charge left the cathedral, two such officers approached him and said that they found the different hour ‘counterproductive’. ‘The night-time service is more majestic; in Moscow, we had the service at night.’102 156

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In spite of the difficult times, Metropolitan Sheptytsky saw the reunification of east and west in the Ukraine as an opportunity to realize what he considered to be the ultimate historical mission of the Greek Catholic Church in the country: ‘to Christianize the Godless in the Soviet Union and bring about the reunification of the orthodox and Catholic churches’. For this reason, he did his best to instil missionary zeal in both priests and laity alike. In a succession of pastoral letters and directives, Sheptytsky reminded the clergy not to leave their parishes without his express authorization. Only 100 priests left their posts, most of them escaping to the German-occupied territories.103 For a Catholic mission into Orthodox Russia he even appointed three new bishops at the end of 1939. His authority to do so, however, was withdrawn by Pius XII in 1940.104 Sheptytsky, who had lost his aristocratic wealth as a result of the confiscation of church property, wrote to the Vatican in 1941 – after the German invasion of the Soviet Union – that the Bolsheviks had made it crystal clear that they were set on destroying the Christian religion and that all the clergy were registered, as it were, on a death list. They had taken their time thus far to avoid inciting too much resistance among the population. The new regime also appeared to be concerned about public opinion in the Anglo-Saxon world. Moreover, ‘they did not feel themselves altogether at home; this is perhaps one of the reasons why they treated us with a caution that was greater than we could have hoped’.105 5.4 Orthodoxy and Russification From September 1939, the Russian Orthodox Church proved just as useful to Stalin’s policy of annexation as it had in the past to the Tsars, a political change of direction that ultimately saved it from annihilation. For the first time, a Communist government used it as an instrument in the incorporation of the western territories. The inhabitants of the new provinces were to witness an extraordinary spectacle: the appearance of a handful of Russian popes in the wake of the Red Army. These spiritual leaders turned out to be primarily interested in subsuming the local church communities under the authority of the Patriarchate of Moscow. After 1939, an entirely new period dawned for the Orthodox Church throughout the Soviet Union, in stark contrast to the persecution it faced during the years of the Great Terror. In secular life, the government decided that the six-day week would replace uninterrupted labour. While the primary reasoning behind the change probably had more to do with industrial efficiency, Sunday church attendance nevertheless became a possibility once again. Icons were repaired by professional restorers and oil for icon lamps became available once more after years of scarcity. Of equal importance was the fact that priests from the annexed provinces were free to travel to the central regions of the Soviet Union that had been blackened by church persecution. ‘These priests had not lived through the grinding restrictions and terror experienced by the Russian priests, and, as Stalin’s policy of population resettlement was implemented, they probably spread into Russia and helped to assuage the desperate need for priests and to encourage those Russian priests who remained.’106 157

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A major role was set aside in the cultural incorporation of the western territories for the Metropolitan (Locum tenens) of Moscow, the highest authority in the Russian Orthodox Church. Indeed, he had to be capable of exercising his authority in the farthest corners of the empire. Of the small group of Orthodox popes surrounding Metropolitan Sergii (Stragorodsky) who had survived the Great Terror and remained loyal to him, two were chosen to implement the process of Russification: Archbishop Sergii (Voskresensky) and Archbishop Nikolai (Jaruševič). The former, named on his birth certificate as Dimitri Voskresensky, had entered the Danilov Monastery near Moscow in 1923, where he took the name Sergii. ‘The Danilov Monastery was known for its stringent discipline, which proved a hardship for the young monk who, although truly religious and brought up strictly, nevertheless enjoyed worldly pleasures, especially drinking and the company of young people.’107 In 1926, Sergii started work at the chancery of the Moscow Patriarchate. The young prelate assisted the Locum tenens Sergii (Stragorodsky) in this difficult phase of taking office and in drafting his declaration of loyalty. In so doing, he became a prominent tactician in the ecclesial process of saving what there was to be saved of orthodoxy under the Stalinist regime. After the annexation of Polish territory in 1939, Archbishop Sergii was delegated to play a leading role in the Russian Orthodox Church in the new provinces. The bishops of Volhynia did not side with him immediately because they saw him as too much of a ‘Muscovite salesman’. In the meantime, the Baltic States had also been incorporated into the Soviet Union in the middle of 1940. Metropolitan Sergii sent his namesake to the Baltic coast and appointed him Metropolitan of Riga as soon as there was a vacancy to fill at the end of 1940. His task was to ensure the Russification of the local churches and the local population. Nikolai, named Boris Dorofejevič Jaruševič on his birth certificate, was originally from Lithuania and had transferred to the theological academy of Saint Petersburg in order to become a monk after completing a degree in mathematics at the city’s university. He became archimandrite, the foremost priest of the Lavra (monastery) of Alexander Nevsky in the city and auxiliary bishop of Leningrad in 1922. Nikolai exhibited two qualities that were to serve him well in his religious career: he was a skilled preacher and an energetic administrator, who was able to align himself with the Locum Tenens Sergii’s attempts at conciliation with the Soviet regime. He was ordained archbishop in 1935, charged with the governance of the eparchy Novgorod and Pskov. At the beginning of 1940 he was despatched to the annexed regions of Belorussia and Ukraine. He became exarch of Belorussia and Western Ukraine and enjoyed freedom of movement in spite of the travel restrictions that had been announced by the Soviet government. In March 1941, he was elevated to the rank of Metropolitan of Volhynia and Lutsk and later, after the German invasion, Metropolitan of Kiev and Galicia. 5.5 The Baltic States After savouring two decades of independence, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania found themselves once again under the Russian sphere of influence as the (undeclared) result 158

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of the non-aggression Pact signed by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Hitler was intent on ending centuries of German colonization along the coast of the Baltic in a spectacular way. The Nazi regime exhorted the colonists to return the empire with the slogan ‘Heim ins Reich’. In October 1939, German cruise ships sailed into the harbours of Tallinn, Riga and Liepaja to repatriate them in large numbers, preferably to the regions captured from (western) Poland. Lutheran ministers joined the German colonists on board. The Nazi campaign to initiate a return to the Reich inspired 11,500 Germans resident in Estonia to actually emigrate. A total of 56 church leaders’ officials travelled with them together with a dozen or so pensioners. The emigrants included a number of kadakas among their ranks, the pejorative name given to Estonian church ministers who had adopted the German language in the exercise of their pastoral duties. The German professors left the university of Tartu (Dorpat). The Evangelical Church in Estonia, which still numbered 213 ministers in 1939, experienced a significant loss of personnel. The same Evangelical Church was already in a state of crisis on account of the decision made by its bishop, Hugo Rahamägi, to divorce his wife and marry Melanie Kukk, the widow of his cantor. The dispute on the permissibility of divorce for a bishop evolved into an open conflict between orthodox and liberal leaders and the Estonian government was forced to intervene. Bishop Rahamägi resigned in October 1939 and was succeeded in December of the same year by Johan Köpp. As administrator, the latter now considered himself to be part of a completely nationalized church.108 At the end of 1939, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia also lost its 52 German communities to German emigration to the Greater German Reich. Here too the tension between Baltic Germans and the local clergy that had continued throughout the Interbellum period disappeared. The exodus was also a painful loss, but this became a relative matter in light of the nationalization of Lutheranism between the wars when the number of Lutheran ministers increased between 1919 and 1936 from 110 to 288. The majority had been formed in terms of their national consciousness at the theological faculty that constituted part of the University of Latvia in Riga, founded in 1920. In the summer of 1940, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania became soviet republics, organized and governed according to the Stalinist model. Soviet law was imposed, which not only implied the separation of church and state, but also meant a reduction of church influence on social life. Church services and individual believers were confronted with the campaign of the so-called atheist brigades, set up to prove that religion was the opium of the people and had no contribution to make to a socialist society. Theological seminaries were closed down. This included the Catholic and Lutheran theological faculties of the University of Latvia and their library, where 18,000 copies of a recently printed hymn-book were destroyed.109 It also included the renowned theological faculty of the University of Tartu in the Estonian Soviet Republic. Teaching ceased there on 31 August 1940 and its library of 70,000 books was lost.110 At the moment of the annexation (summer 1940), the period of the Great Terror had already passed in the Soviet Union. At the beginning of the sovietization process, the new Baltic regimes appeared to be set on avoiding such a campaign. At the end of 1940, 159

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the monthly average of night-time arrests numbered a ‘mere’ 200 to 300. But from June 1941, when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, mass deportations became the order of the day. A list of fourteen categories was drawn up, one of which was clergy. In Estonia, fifteen Lutheran ministers were deported, two murdered, and seven conscripted into the Red Army. Rahamägi, the former bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, was arrested and executed in 1941. His successor Johan Köpp was able to maintain his position. The soviet regime in Latvia arrested six Catholic priests, seventeen Orthodox clergymen and a dozen Lutheran pastors. In the ‘Night of Terror’ (13–14 July 1941) 15,000 members of the Latvian intelligentsia (including the clergy), the political elite and the managers of major companies were deported. The withdrawal of the Red Army was far from orderly and peaceful. The historical church of Saint Peter in Riga was burned to the ground. Orthodoxy in the Baltic States was a different matter. The Russian Orthodox Church had followed in the wake of the Red Army and reconfirmed its administrative authority. The prominently located cathedrals in Tallinn and Riga – stone memorials to former tsarist domination – re-acquired their function as symbols of Russian might. This implied that the independence of the Orthodox churches in Estonia and Latvia had to be dissolved. In the Interbellum, the said process had been an integral part of the formation of the new states. ‘Moreover, this separation signified estonianization and latvianization, which in turn suggested the strengthening of Protestantism’ in Orthodoxy.111 In August 1940, a month after the beginning of the sovietization process, a majority of Orthodox believers in Latvia asked their metropolitan Avgustin (Pētersons) to arrange a reunification with the Patriarchate of Moscow. The Metropolitan of Estonia, Aleksandr (Paulus), came to the same conclusion in the same month. An emissary arrived from Moscow at the end of the year, the aforementioned Archbishop Sergii (Voskresensky). People responded to his arrival with mixed feelings. He must have had the permission of the communist authorities to travel to the Baltic States and he was, after all, a Russian bishop. In March 1941, Avgustin (Latvia) and Aleksandr (Estonia) took the next step under his influence, openly lamenting the bill of separation in their respective cathedrals. They asked for forgiveness and visited the metropolitan in Moscow. In Lithuania, Metropolitan Elevterii (Bogoyavlensky), leader of a church consisting for the most part of Russians, had been appointed in the meantime as Exarch of the three Baltic ecclesial provinces. He had remained faithful to the Patriarch during the Interbellum and had now returned from exile to take possession of his episcopal see in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius. He died on 31 December 1940, and was succeeded by Archbishop Sergii (Voskresensky), who thus acquired the rank of metropolitan. For the first time, moreover, the sovietization of Lithuania meant the incorporation of a state with a large Catholic population (and diplomatic representation at the Vatican) into the Soviet Union. In June 1940, the ‘people’s government’ decided unilaterally to break the concordat with the Vatican, a concordat that had not only guaranteed state support for the Catholic Church but had also protected it from interference by the secular authorities. Here, too, the soviet law separating church and state was implemented. The churches became state property and – where their function did not change – their administration 160

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was given over to a church council. Not wishing to increase society’s antipathy, the soviet authorities avoided other drastic measures directed against the Church. They did not close down places of worship, for example, because such a measure would be a very visible sign of pressure being applied to religious life. Stalin’s lack of trust in the Catholic Church, however, forced him to initiate an extensive anti-Church campaign in the spring of 1941: in May, the Faculty of Theology was abolished at the University of Kaunas and, with one exception, all the seminaries were shut down.112 Moreover, during the last weeks of the Soviet occupation about 18,000 Catholic and other citizens were deported from Lithuania. The Polish city of Wilno had been taken by Lithuanian troops in October 1939 and given the Lithuanian name Vilnius. In late 1939 and early 1940, Zionists and religious Jews saw Vilnius as a place of safety. The writer Benzion Benshalom recalled the mood of Jews seeking an escape from German and Soviet power: Faces were aglow, eyes ablaze, hearts feverish. Vilna!113 In June 1940, the Red Army entered the city to establish it as Vilna, the Belorussian name of the capital of the Soviet Republic of Lithuania. In August 1940, shortly before the government of the Soviet Republic severed diplomatic relations with the Holy See, the nuncio managed to find a solution for the acute problem of the nationality of the highest ecclesial authority in Vilnius. The Lithuanian priest Mečislovas Reinys became co-adjutor to the residing Archbishop of Vilnius, the Pole Romuald Jałbrzykovski, who allowed the public access in 1939 to the ‘Divine Mercy’ image, a Polish devotion that attracted large crowds in Vilnius. In the 1930s, the city was a centre – and textbook example – of ethnic and cultural diversity in this part of Europe. Wilno had been a noted centre of Jewish culture and scholarship. The Polish majority and the Lithuanian minority each claimed the city as the cradle of their cultural and Roman Catholic faith. The Jesuits in Wilno had focused their educational and pastoral activities on the Belorussian community, on the autonomy of neighbouring Belorussia, and on the potential feasibility of a reunification of Belorussian orthodoxy with Rome. The Lithuanian takeover had transformed Wilno into a national capital Vilnius. In 1940, Russian orthodoxy made its way into Vilna. In the sovietization that followed, the once multicultural Vilnius/Wilno/Vilna lost twenty to thirty thousand of its Polish, Lithuanian and Jewish citizens to Stalinist deportations to Siberia and Kazakhstan.114

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1 Occupations in Northern and Western Europe In the spring of 1940, Hitler and his armies turned towards the north and west of the European continent. German marines and commandos invaded Denmark and Norway on 9 April and one month later, on 10 May 1940, a western front was opened against neighbouring Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. The war with France and Great Britain was no longer ‘a phoney war’ but ‘a real war’. By the end of June, Germany had realized its goals on the European continent. Two satellite states had been created and four occupying regimes, each organized differently. They made it clear that the racial superiority of National Socialism in Northern and Western Europe was the driving force behind German rule. The people in the north-western corner of Europe were approached as ‘kinsmen’ and to a certain degree were spared. 1.1 The Danish model of German rule In the early morning of 9 April 1940, German troops invaded neutral Denmark. The battle had been won before the news had penetrated to every part of the country. After two hours, the government of Thorvald Stauning surrendered and Denmark was rewarded with the continuation of its statehood. The government and the parliament continued to function and King Christian X remained on the throne, continuing his daily public horseback ride through the capital and thereby evolving into a symbol of the Danish nation. Parliamentary elections were held in 1943 and the results were interpreted as a mark of support for the government of national unity. The Danish Nazi Party won only 2.1 per cent of the votes. This brought about a change in the relationship between Germany and Denmark, and both German rule and the initially small Danish underground became increasing violent and increasingly open. With special authorizations, the German ambassador took supervisory responsibility for Germany’s new ally in 1940. Denmark thus came under the influence of Germany’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which, faced with the rivalry between administrative organs in Berlin, was not about to let itself be deprived of its newfound competence. The Danish government endeavoured to pursue a policy of cooperation with the German authorities, the so-called Samarbejde. In November 1941, and under pressure from Germany, Denmark joined the Anti-Komintern Pact, a treaty between nations intent of combating and forbidding communism. By opting for Samarbejde (cooperation), the Danish People’s Church was more or less free to fulfil its task in Danish society. Denmark’s independence, after all, served to

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guarantee its traditions and influence. The bishops contributed by exhorting the faithful after the invasion to moderation and patriotism. A consequence of their appeal was the introduction of a degree of censorship with respect to Sunday preaching. Such concessions to the governing authority were to become a problem in the long run and arouse radical criticism within the church, but in 1940 they were generally accepted. Nevertheless, the 1940 invasion stirred latent memories of an earlier German occupation of northern Schleswig in 1864 and of the Danish response thereto. According to Erik Jacobsen, being Danish was not a legal matter of citizenship, it was a spiritual one. The idea of ‘Denmark’ could be kept alive if a national brotherhood could come into being.1 The said memories acquired concrete form. On the initiative of theologian Hal Koch, a youth movement (‘Dansk Ungdomssamvirke’) was established during the occupation intent on making young people aware of their Danish culture and of their responsibilities in this dark hour of their nation’s existence. He argued that the Danish nation was not identical with the Danish state or with its territory. The foreign occupation of the state did not necessarily lead to the dissolution of the nation.2 No one in Denmark would have missed the allusion to the cultural endeavours of the renowned nineteenthcentury church minister N.F.S. Grundtvig. Dividing lines, which were a tradition in the Danish church, became visible once again. The conservative movement – The Home Mission – refused to cooperate with the initiative because the youth movement was focused on understanding concepts such as nation and culture and had not opted for religious guiding principles. This pietistic movement saw the 1940 invasion as God’s punishment of a sinful Denmark. This interpretation also applied elsewhere in orthodox Protestant Europe, especially in France and in the Netherlands. 1.2 Occupation and Church-related conflict in Norway The Blitzkrieg against Norway commenced in what can only be described as a spectacular fashion. The German cruiser Blücher, which was steaming towards Oslo in the early morning of 9 April 1940, came under fire in the Oslo fjord from the fortress of Oskarsborg and coastal batteries and was sunk. This prevented a surprise invasion of the Norwegian capital and gave the king, the government and the parliament time to organize their escape. By the time Oslo fell to the Wehrmacht around noon on the same day, King Haakon VII, his cabinet, and the greater part of the parliament – the Storting – were on their way to the city of Hamar. Norwegian defences, which had not been tested in wartime conditions for centuries, were able to hold their ground in the north of the country with the help of British expeditionary forces. After the German invasion of Western Europe on 10 May, however, the Allied units were recalled. The king and his government left Norway on 7 June and the Norwegian forces surrendered on 10 June 1940. The role of Vidkun Quisling is of particular interest. Quisling was the Fører (leader) of the Nasjonal Samling, the Norwegian variant of the National Socialist movement. On the day of the invasion, he set himself up as leader of a new government. Hitler, who was determined that the king recognize Quisling as prime minister, offered his support. Haakon 164

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refused, however, thereby undermining any possibility of a Norwegian satellite along the lines of the ‘Danish solution’. Quisling turned out not only to be an obstacle to the Norwegian population but also to German diplomacy and the German generals. From this period onwards, his name became synonymous in international terms with political betrayal. Curt Bräuer, the most senior German diplomat in Oslo, had a primary role to play in the search for a ‘Danish solution’. He endeavoured to convince prominent citizens in Oslo to accept a modus vivendi. His main dialogue partner was Paal Berg, president of the highest court of justice in Norway. He met also with Eivind Berggrav, the Lutheran Bishop of Oslo, who insisted in line with Bräuer’s other dialogue partners that Quisling had to be replaced. On the German diplomat’s request, the bishop declared his readiness to call for calm in a radio broadcast to the nation. He announced that the legal foundation for a Norwegian government within territories occupied by the German army was on its way. This was an indirect but nonetheless public declaration that the Quisling government had seen its last days. The Bishop of Oslo played an active role in efforts to encourage political acceptance of the German occupation. When a group of Norwegian youth left for the mountains in the north of Oslo to fight the invading forces in response to Quisling’s treachery, he drove to the border with the permission of the German commandant to exhort the resistance fighters to put an end to their action. His eldest son was among them. The bishop used a megaphone to warn them that they were not regular soldiers, and if they were captured they would not fall under Land War Convention established in The Hague. Berggrav repeated his appeal the following day on the radio. ‘Many people’, he reassured, ‘could say a lot about the “goodness and chivalry” among the Germans.’3 Quisling fought his impending dismissal and attempted to involve Bishop Berggrav but to no avail. The latter had sided with the institution of a (provisional) Administrative Council that was to represent Norwegian interests in the occupied territory. The council was installed on 15 April, with the bishop as one of its respected supporters. The fall of Quisling elicited rage in Berlin, not only from Alfred Rosenberg, who saw Quisling as his protégé, but also from Hitler. In the meantime, a Reich Commissioner had been appointed to administer occupied Norway: Josef Terboven, Gauleiter from the Rhineland, and understood within Nazi circles to be one of Marshal Hermann Göring’s men. He was at the head of a regime that was considered a civil occupying administration and in which National Socialist party functionaries ruled the roost. The new Reich Commissioner negotiated with the Administrative Council and prominent supporters – including Bishop Berggrav – on the establishment of a Council of State to replace the monarch, an instance that would enjoy the support of the Storting, the Norwegian parliament. Those participating in the negotiations came close to an agreement, but on 25 September 1940, the Reich Commissioner appointed a so-called Commissarial Council on his own initiative as the occupier’s Norwegian dialogue partner. The only party represented in the council was the National Socialist Party (Nasjonal Samling) and Quisling was appointed as its chair. On 1 February 1942, he was promoted to Minister President of the government and installed in the Akershus in Oslo, the Norwegian state’s most important historical building. 165

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The civil ceremony had to be followed by a religious one. Ragnar Skancke, the Minister for Religion and Education, wanted to use the Nidaros cathedral in Trondheim for the purpose, the church in which the Norwegian monarchs were crowned. The (National Socialist) ‘Guard of the Leader’ or Førerhird were to add lustre to the ceremony and the church was to be decorated with the flags of the Nasjonal Samling. The dean of the cathedral, Arne Fjellbu, refused to reschedule an already announced service. As a result, the National Socialist ceremony attracted few visitors, while hundreds came to listen to the dean’s sermon. In the bitter cold, they sang national hymns and remained seated when the police tried to remove them from the church square. The bishops of the Norwegian church protested against the police action. On 19 February 1942, minister Skancke dismissed the dean. Eivind Berggrav was appointed Bishop of Oslo in 1937 after spending eight years as bishop of the northernmost diocese of the country. According to the tradition at that time, the Bishop of Oslo was elected president of the conference of bishops. As primate (primus inter pares), he represented the Church and was involved in the daily life of the society. In the first winter of the war (1939–1940), Berggrav endeavoured to realize an ecumenically supported peace between Nazi Germany and the Western European powers. The price to be paid for this peace was his resolution to refrain from being critical of Hitler. At an ecumenical conference in the Netherlands in January 1940, Marc Boegner, the president of the French Reformed Church, made it clear to him that ‘peace’ with Hitler based on justice and truth was an illusion.4 Berggrav had acquired his authority via the ‘peaceful’ introduction of the German occupation. In the winter of 1940, however, cooperation changed into opposition. Once again Quisling was the stumbling block. The son of a Lutheran preacher, Quisling and his Nasjonal Samling were determined to win over the state church to the new ideology and constitution. The movement thus insisted on giving priority to National Socialist ministers at the Sunday services broadcast on Norwegian radio. Bishop Berggrav managed to prevent this from happening. Minister Skancke, who was responsible for selecting those who would preach at the services, conceded. At that moment in time, he did not want to make an issue of relations with the Lutheran Church – a state church. Quisling was also seen in the church as a protégé of Rosenberg. The latter’s reputation as an opponent of the Christian churches and supporter of a pagan racial myth was also a slur against his Norwegian friend. The Bishop of Oslo organized the defence, taking the initiative to assemble representatives of the various – and opposing – movements in the Norwegian church. On 25 October 1940 and in his residence, the Kristent Samråd or Christian Community Council was born and given the task of determining ecclesial policy towards the occupying regime. A triumvirate emerged in the Council: Bishop Berggrav, theologian Ole Hallesby, who represented conservative pietism, and the laypreacher Ludvig Hope, head of the China Mission. ‘Had Berggrav not persuaded Hallesby of their shared faith, and had Hallesby not tolerated some ambiguity in Berggrav’s explanation, a unified church front would have been doomed.’5 On Sunday 9 February 1941, a pastoral letter from the Norwegian bishops against the violation of the social order by the Norwegian Nazis was read out in Lutheran churches throughout the land. This included Quisling’s plan to unite teachers in a Teachers Front, 166

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the members of which were to strive to guide the youth of the country into one National Socialist youth movement along the lines of the Hitler Jugend. The Førerhird was likewise targeted by the bishops on account of its public brawls and violence against citizens. The letter was initially addressed to minister Skancke. A police campaign to keep printed copies out of the churches only enjoyed partial success. In writing the letter, the church placed itself at the forefront of a nationally oriented resistance. ‘The Church succeeded in its effort at unity, preventing Christians from being influenced by Quisling’s ideology. During the occupation the Christian groups in the population, especially the low church piëtists, were the most implacable opponents’ of National Socialism in Norway.6 The confrontation reached a climax in the aforementioned ecclesial installation of Quisling as new Minister President on 1 February 1942. During the ceremony in the Akershus, Reich Commissioner Terboven delivered an address in which he openly attacked the stance of the Bishop of Oslo. The incident in Trondheim cathedral and the dismissal of its dean followed on 19 February. Five days later, the bishops of the Norwegian church caused a sensation. They published a declaration in which they resigned from their civil functions but not their ecclesial ministries. The announcement signified a breach with the state church. Minister Skancke reacted with a decree suspending the bishops and charging the deans (domprosterne) with diocesan administration. The deans refused, however, turning their back on the state church without abandoning their spiritual duties. The Fører (Leader) of Norwegian National Socialism was furious. He accused the bishops of using Christianity as a form of ‘anti-national politics in service of antiChristian capitalism and communism’. In his eyes, Bishop Berggrav was the man who had undermined ‘the freedom and independence of Norway’. He and his fellow bishops were placed under house arrest and stripped of their office in February and March. Their protest was made public to packed churches by the clergy, the vast majority of whom declared their solidarity with the bishops. On Easter Sunday, 5 April 1942, a declaration entitled ‘Foundations of the Church’ (Kirkens Grunn) was read out. In the said document, distributed by the Christian Community Council, the Norwegian Church distanced itself from the government and declared itself independent from the state in matters of faith. The word of God was sovereign over every ideology.7 The document ‘Foundations of the Church’ was the result of a reflection on Lutheran images of obedience to God-given secular authority. Bishop Berggrav, its instigator, had during the Interbellum observed that this teaching had paralysed the Evangelical Church in Germany in positioning itself with respective to the National Socialist ideology and state. Berggrav chose to make a distinction between the just state and the unjust state as his point of departure. The authorities in a just state acted in line with the laws of God and justice, restricted themselves to secular matters and did not interfere in matters of faith and conscience. Violence was kept under control. Berggrav appealed to Paul’s letter to the Romans and argued that every citizen had the obligation to obey the state in the same way as they obeyed God. But where a state held God’s law in contempt it did not represent just authority and could not thus require obedience. ‘All this is good Lutheran teaching, but he goes further and says that where there is no law and order the Christian has a fundamental right to revolt.’8 167

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Lutheran Berggrav based his presentation on the Calvinist theory of resistance. But the Norwegian bishop – and with him the German minister Dietrich Bonhoeffer – formulated his argument in consistently Lutheran theology. The difference between the spiritual and the secular world is a relative one. The National Socialist state could be rejected on the basis of the fact that it went beyond the mandate granted by God to secular authorities. The church had the authority to speak out because, according to the two kingdoms doctrine, it had and ought to maintain an independent position. Bishop Berggrav’s argument based on the conditional understanding of the state made an important contribution to Lutheran political ethics. His innovation was based on a democratic tradition according to which the people had the obligation to judge the legitimacy of the state. After the bishops severed contact with the so-called Church Department, the Nazi government claimed that it represented the continuity of the Norwegian state and the people’s church, the Church of Norway, but the majority of the flock did not follow them. The episcopal declaration of independence led to the establishment of a ‘free church’ in Norway. The latter governed itself through a Provisional Church Authority (Den Midlertidige Kirkeledelse), since it had only been established for the duration of the war. The vast majority of the clergy followed their bishops in resigning civil functions and confirming their ecclesial ministry. Of the 669 ministers leading church communities, 645 resigned. Of the 155 ministers in other church functions, 151 followed the bishops. All of them forfeited their state salary, but the communities provided for their financial needs. A private office was established in Oslo to coordinate the payment of church officials, allowing them to survive the war in material terms.9 About 60 pastors remained loyal to the (Nazi) Church Department. Minister President Quisling, who was at liberty by virtue of his office to function as head of the church, announced a new law – two days after the proclamation of the ‘Foundations of the Church’ – according to which the appointment of bishops was subject to a new procedure. In addition, it became possible to appoint ‘qualified’ laity as ministers without the required theological formation. New bishops were immediately appointed, all of them members of the Nasjonal Samling or sympathetic towards the National Socialist movement. The members of the Christian Community Council responsible for writing the ‘Foundations of the Church’ were arrested. They were later set free, but forbidden to exercise their ministerial functions. On Good Friday 1942, Bishop Berggrav was prevented from participating in the liturgy. He was later taken prisoner and tried. Quisling’s determination to pursue a tough policy with the Norwegian church led observers to expect the death penalty. The bishop’s friends in Germany, Count Helmut von Moltke and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, happened to be in Oslo on 13 April 1942, and while they did not meet Berggrav in person, they managed to send him an edifying letter. They also found themselves in a position to appeal on his behalf to the German authorities, who did not always approve of every aspect of Quisling’s politics. The bishop was set free on 16 April 1942 and placed under house arrest. He was forced to spend the following three years in his summer residence in Asker. 168

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1.3 Upheaval in France If revenge for the outcome of the First World War was the primary goal of Nazi Germany’s expansionist politics, France was clearly the first prize. The victor of 1918 was reduced to a defeated nation in 1940. A new armistice was negotiated in the same train compartment that had been used for the first armistice in November 1918. The defeat of the French did not only have consequences for the country’s international position, it also provided Germany with the image of being Europe’s unconquerable state. This image, together with a public preference for stability instead of a collective readiness to resist to the last, became the condition for what was to be the acceptance of the inevitable. The armistice was a two-sided affair. Philippe Pétain, who had earned battle glory and a marshal’s uniform for his stubborn defence of Verdun in the First World War, became head of a state that detached itself from the Third Republic in June 1940, swerving towards authoritarian and corporative forms of organization. The armistice thus occasioned political changes on a scale France had not known since an earlier conflict with Germany, the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. A climate of political renewal evolved under the custody of the enemy: victory over the core values of the Third Republic, the form of government associated with military defeat. The introduction of an authoritarian constitution in France became a concrete example for political movements throughout Europe. After the armistice of 17 June 1940, France was divided into a number of zones. The Wehrmacht occupied the northern region and the Atlantic coastal region. The southern part remained free of occupying forces, with the exception of the Mediterranean coastal belt, which was placed under Italian authority and even partially annexed (Menton). Mussolini had involved himself in the conflict in June 1940, in the second month of the ‘real’ war. The French government took refuge in a health resort called Vichy where it continued to govern both occupied and unoccupied France. German interference was unobtrusive at first. ‘Vichy’s first hundred days, then, took place without close, direct German political supervision. Long afterward, that influence remained essentially negative – vetoing things rather than imposing things – until the summer of 1941, when the assassination of Germans began, and the summer of 1942, when forced labor and the deportation of Jews to the east started.’10 For historical reasons, the Catholic Church in France was able to accommodate itself to the Vichy regime and its ‘National Revolution’. The new state represented principles with which the church itself was familiar: the authority of the shepherd over his flock. By associating itself with this regime, it followed what sister churches in Germany and Italy had done: acceptance of dictatorship if it respected the church’s rights and freedoms. Ecclesial appeals for obedience encountered little if any observable opposition among the faithful. Some bishops had been marked by their military experience of the First World War and looked back at the solidarity of the trenches with nostalgia. They had little difficulty declaring their obedience to the authority of the victor of Verdun. Their mentality was that of the war veteran: nostalgia for the fraternity of the trenches and a suspicious

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attitude towards politics.11 They had been pastors of relatively large parishes and thus had pastoral experience, and they belonged to the new generation of priests who embraced a social Catholicism, determined to make Pius XI ’s Catholic Action succeed.12 The political alternative, Charles de Gaulle’s call for the establishment of a movement of ‘Free French’, broadcast from London on 18 June 1940, initially fell on deaf ears, at least as far as the bishops were concerned. The establishment of the papal nunciature in Vichy was evidence of the Vatican’s recognition of the État française. The policies of the Vichy regime also surpassed the expectations of the church. God returned to the classroom, denominational schools received state subsidy, the family was supported and public moral order monitored. The Bishop of Dax was to declare in 1941 that the Catholic Church’s year of disaster had not been the year of international defeat against Nazi Germany (1940) but the year of national defeat (1936), when the Popular Front of socialists and communists came to power.13 But the pre-war gulf between church and state was to become extremely wider. In June 1940, the government of the Third Republic granted the Carthusian hermits permission to return to the monastery of Grande Chartreuse. It was Vichy, however, who profited from the propaganda surrounding this move, since it was during Pétain’s regime that the measure was in fact implemented.14 The fact that the number of pupils in Catholic schools had increased from 17.7 per cent in 1939 to 22.6 per cent in 1942 (primary) and from 40 per cent in 1939 to 53 per cent in 1942 (secondary) was taken to be a measure of the desirability of renewal. In 1941, the government revoked the law of July 1904 banning the religious teaching orders. Dominicans, Jesuits and Oratorians reopened their schools, and some prepared their pupils for entry into the grandes écoles.15 In a comment on Pétain, Cardinal Gerlier, Archbishop of Lyon, declared that the marshal’s motto ‘Travail-Famille-Patrie’ (Work, Family, Fatherland) could have been his own. In November 1940, when Pétain was on a visit to Lyon, the cardinal delivered a speech in which he made what was later to become a noted statement: ‘Pétain is France and France, today, is Pétain’ (‘Pétain, c’est la France et la France, aujourd’hui, c’est Pétain.’).16 The celebration of the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary on 15 August 1942 was an apotheosis of regained harmony, its climax the arrival at the ‘Virgin of Puy’ of a national pilgrimage organized by the youth movement. The feast was an ostentatious manifestation of religious zeal and patriotism, in the presence of the highest authorities of church and state. Adhesion to ‘Vichy’ also prevailed in the occupied part of France. An unintended example thereof emerged after the German Sicherheitsdienst raided the offices of the thirteen dioceses in this occupied zone in the autumn of 1940. The documents found revealed that several bishops actually supported the Vichy campaign against the freemasons, the Jews and the communists. The struggle against freemasonry enjoyed particular appreciation. ‘I agree with you in this matter and I thank you from the bottom of my heart’, wrote the Bishop of Verdun. ‘Trust and obedience, without fanfare but nevertheless genuine; the executives of Catholicism side with Pétain.’17 For its part, the German occupying regime appeared to be in no hurry to contest the Catholic Church. Otto Abetz, the German ambassador in Paris and Germany’s highest civil authority in France, observed that there would be time for such matters later, when Europe was free 170

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of Jews, freemasons and Anglo-Saxon influence. For this reason, the activities of Catholic organizations were also permitted (and monitored) in occupied France. Relations between the church and the state were not without their problems, however. A conflict evolved concerning the Vichy regime’s endeavours to combine the various youth organizations into a single national movement, endeavours that met with resistance from both the Catholic and the Protestant churches. In the summer of 1942, the regime tried to draw the youth organizations under its control by insisting that foreign and Jewish members should be expelled. An oath of fidelity to Marshal Pétain was also to be obligatory for all youth leaders. The churches managed, nevertheless, to stem this policy of equalization. A similar point of debate was the oath of fidelity demanded by the Vichy regime of its civil servants. In 1942, Marc Boegner, minister and chair of the synod of the Reformed Church in France, formulated a text in which Christian civil servants declared their obedience to the state, while insisting that this duty of obedience was subordinate in absolute terms to their fidelity to God, and that in swearing the oath they were likewise unable to relinquish their personal freedom of conscience. Boegner, France’s Calvinist authority, was to become a national figure during the war years. He moved to Nîmes in September 1940, to a city in non-occupied France with a considerable Protestant minority. He also became chair of the new Comité inter mouvement d’aide auprès des évacués (Cimade), which was initially set up to organize support for evacuees from Alsace-Lorraine, but later evolved into a Protestant institution providing assistance to prisoners and people in hiding. Boegner was received in audience by Pétain on 13 September 1940. He thanked the marshal for his efforts to reduce alcohol abuse and divorce rates, and for the new regime’s family and youth policies. He also expressed his support for Protestant schools, but lamented the new state’s evident Anglophobia, which had an implicit bearing on Protestantism. Pétain established a Conseil national in 1941 on which Boegner served as representative of one of France’s ecclesial families. The synod chair thus appears to have demonstrated support for the National Renewal (he did not speak of a ‘Révolution nationale’). His reasons for doing so were twofold. In the first instance, he was particularly critical of the Third Republic’s evident ‘political and moral decline’. He was not a supporter of the Popular Front and he lamented the defeat of the French troops. Second, he was intent on promoting Protestant interests in the État française, which was undergoing a vehement Catholic Réveil. An educational brochure had appeared explaining the elevation of Jeanne d’Arc as heroine of the new French state. The brochure stated that had Jeanne d’Arc not been victorious, France would have become Protestant and succumbed to Anglo-Saxon domination, thus spelling the end of the nation’s Christian civilization.18 On the first Sunday of September 1942, Boegner presided over the traditional meeting at the ‘Musée du Désert’ in Mialet, a village in the Cevennes in Southern France, where, faithful to custom, French Protestantism commemorated the martyrs of the religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. After the meeting he addressed the assembled ministers. He seemed pessimistic. He still trusted Pétain, but no longer his government. The emerging persecution of the Jews – to be discussed in more detail in 171

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Chapter 10 – had convinced him that the Vichy regime had become the servant of the occupier.19 The highest authority of the Roman Catholic Church in France was the Assembly of Cardinals and Archbishops (Assemblée des cardinaux et archevêques – ACA ) set up after the First World War and divided in two during the Second. On 28 August 1940, the cardinals and bishops assembled in the northern (occupied) zone with a view to adopting a common standpoint. They declared that they were prepared to cooperate in a loyal manner with the new authorities. Some bishops even urged their faithful to line up behind Marshal Pétain without hesitation. Six months later, on 15 January 1941, the cardinals and archbishops in the northern zone took a step further, declaring a genuine loyalty to the established authority of the French government and a contribution from the clergy to the moral and social restoration of the country. This resolution was adopted by the cardinals and archbishops in the southern zone. On 24 July 1941, the cardinals and archbishops of the northern zone declared that they were genuinely loyal to the regime. ‘We honour the head of state and ask that the unity of all the people of France be realised immediately around him.’20 Cardinal Pierre Gerlier was Archbishop of Lyon and as such the Primate of the Gallican church. He was a lawyer, a ‘late vocation’, had his roots in the world of Catholic Action, and had distinguished himself in the trenches of the First World War. The Archbishop of Lille, Cardinal Achille Liénart, had his residence in the northern occupied zone, which fell in part under the military occupying regime in Brussels. He had likewise served as a chaplain in the trenches and had been decorated by Pétain. He revealed himself to be a prince of the church, but also acquired the name of being a ‘red bishop’, familiar with labour relations in the industrial north. He also revered Pétain as a symbol of the fatherland and as a ‘man of the north’.21 Cardinal Jean Verdier was succeeded in Paris in 1940 by Emmanuel Célestine Suhard, then Archbishop of Reims. He was convinced of the dangers of National Socialism, but his rejection of communism and his critique of the Third Republic were unhidden and he refused to participate in Pétain’s Conseil national. He wrote to the latter in February 1941 that the church would thus be able to maintain a degree of independence, adding nevertheless: ‘Si néanmois le Maréchal ordonne, le Cardinal de France, se souvenant qu’il est Français, obéira’ (‘If the Marshal commands, then the Cardinal of France – aware that he is a Frenchman – will obey’).22 For Suhard, confrontation between the Catholic Church and the Nazi authorities was a question of establishing spiritual and temporal boundaries. Communism, on the other hand, represented a radical denial of the spiritual. The fourth French Cardinal, Henri-Marie-Alphonse Baudrillart, rector of the Institut Catholique, the ‘Catholic University’ in Paris, enjoyed considerable authority in church circles. Baudrillart was a member of the Académie Française. During the First World War he had served as chair of a Catholic committee charged with advocating French interests abroad and drawing attention to German war crimes. He had condemned National Socialism in 1939 as ‘a revival of pagan barbarism’. But his loathing for communism was greater than his distaste for Germany and condemnation of National Socialism. Fear of a new Commune in France inspired him to judge Nazi Germany as a ‘lesser evil’, and after 172

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Figure 11 Marshal Pétain (left) meets Cardinal Baudrillart, member of the French Academy. Photo: SOMA , Brussels.

22 June, the day Germany invaded the Soviet Union, as an evil from which good could be born.23 In 1942, the Archbishop of Paris presented his New Year salutations to Otto Abetz, German’s highest civil authority in France. ‘In a curious reversal, anticlericalism was far more conspicuous among the overtly fascist pro-German circles in occupied-Paris than in the Resistance. German Ambassador Abetz grouped around himself in Paris French Ligue leaders and journalists who shared his view that Fascism was a revolutionary movement, and that Vichy was in the grip of clerical reactionaries.’ 24 Cardinal Suhard expressed his hope that France and Germany would grow in mutual understanding, creating the conditions for full reconciliation.25 The German ambassador made a distinction between Suhard – who in reality favoured collaboration and sought to free pastoral care from political control – and Gerlier, who was considered anti-German, a bishop intent on making the church the foundation of the French State. The location of their respective dioceses is likewise of importance. Suhard led the church in the occupied part of France, Gerlier in the so-called free zone. The same distinction was evident at a lower level within the French Catholic Church. Priests in ‘la France profonde’ had been critical of the clergy in the capital, who appeared to be bowing to the German occupation. In public, Suhard maintained a policy of caution and discretion. This was also the case for his leadership of the Catholic youth organization, which he wanted to steer clear of politics. Episcopal support of the Vichy regime was motivated by a desire to achieve 173

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‘apolitical consensus’, a goal of Marshal Pétain. The bishops felt the need to support France’s recovery from defeat and from the laicism of the Third Republic. The deception was all the more painful when they discovered that old scores were being settled and pre-war clans were asserting themselves anew under the mantle of the paternal marshal. Some of these clans were unfavourably disposed to any resurgence of clericalism and opposed even the most minor concession to the church. The bishops in turn not only defended these new achievements, they also considered themselves obliged to oppose the state’s increasingly totalitarian demands. In the second part of the occupation, they thus sought refuge in political detachment. 1.4 Luxembourg and Alsace-Lorraine In 1940, Luxembourg was a neutral state without an army. For this reason it only offered token resistance when the Wehrmacht invaded on 10 May 1940. Grand Duchess Charlotte fled to France with her family and government, and later to the United States and Canada shortly before the June armistice. The example of her sister Maria Adelheid, who had cooperated with the German occupying regime in the First World War and lost her throne as a result in 1919, determined Charlotte’s hastily chosen exile. Gustav Simon, the Gauleiter of the region of Koblenz-Trier, was appointed in Luxembourg as the highest authority and was given orders to implement a process of ‘Eindeutschung’ and Germanize the territory without delay. The population, which had celebrated the centenary of Luxembourg’s independence a year earlier in 1939, was to be absorbed into the German Reich. It would have to abandon its ‘französierte’ and liberal democratic culture and quench its thirst exclusively at the sources of ‘Volksdeutschtum’. The people of Luxembourg shared the same fate as the people of Alsace, a region that was completely annexed, and of Lorraine, a region that had been partly annexed. Josef Bürckel returned from ‘Ostmark’ and took up his post as Gauleiter of Lorraine. Alsace was merged with the region of Baden and governed by Gauleiter Robert Wagner. In relative terms, the implementation of Nazi policies tended to be less ruthless in western annexed territories than in the east, in the former provinces of Poland. In the western regions it was a question of winning over ‘Volksdeutsche’, but the people in the east were Slavs who could be dealt with without restraint. This did not mean, however, that the new western citizens of the Greater German Reich were spared; on the contrary! A census was organized by the authorities in Luxembourg in October 1941, on which occasion the people were also obliged to declare their native language and nationality. The said census evolved into a political referendum when it transpired that 95 per cent of the people had claimed ‘Luxemburgisch’ and not ‘German’ nationality, in clear opposition to the propaganda that had accompanied the pre-referendum campaign. The Nazi regime decided that ‘oppositional elements’ on the western border of Nazi Germany could no longer be tolerated. Up to 1944, 1,410 families (roughly 4,200 people) were deported to the east, Silesia or the Sudetenland. From the ecclesial perspective, annexed Alsace and Lorraine were considered together with Luxembourg to be ‘ein konkordatsfreies Raum’. The Napoleonic concordat, which 174

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had granted the churches in both French regions an exceptional position within the Third Republic, was suspended. This meant that the Church was forced to surrender to the religious policies of National Socialism without the opportunity of claiming its recognized civil rights. The result was a systematic ‘deconfessionalization’ of public life. The clergy were excluded from the educational system and religious instruction was cut back. In addition, the French language and culture was eliminated from church services. Bürckel lived up to his reputation, distinguishing ‘white Jews’ from clerical ‘black Jews’ in his region. Three hundred French-speaking priests were deported under his authority. Charles Ruch, the (Catholic) Bishop of Strasbourg, who had been evacuated from the city to Périgueux when the war broke out, was not permitted to return to his diocese. The two vicars general were also obliged to leave the city. More than 400 priests were expelled from Lorraine out of a total of 730.26 Joseph-Jean Heintz, the Bishop of Metz, was exiled to the occupied part of France immediately after the annexation. The same fate was intended for Joseph Philippe, the Bishop of Luxembourg, but the plan was vetoed by the German ambassador in Paris, who feared that a Francophile and thus ‘deutschfeindliche’ bishop in exile in occupied France would be treated as a martyr of the Germanization of Luxembourg. Bishop Philippe had been trained for the priesthood in French under the auspices of the Congregation of the Sacred Heart and was known as a Francophile. It is remarkable nevertheless than he did not adopt a critical position against National Socialism in his pastoral letters and sermons in Luxembourg.27 In 1940, he exhorted the clergy of his diocese to keep their distance from every form of politics and concentrate on serving the people, no matter what their political persuasion. His freedom of movement was considerably limited during the war as a result of gout, which forced him to use crutches. In 1941, Gauleiter Simon set about the task of making Luxembourg ‘klosterfrei’. Monasteries were abolished and their buildings used for National Socialist purposes. On 15 January 1941, the Benedictines of the Abbey of Clervaux, dedicated to Saint Maurice and Saint Maur, received orders – on the feast of their second patron – to leave the premises within an hour. Religious sisters of congregations with a social-charitable charism were allowed to continue working in confiscated hospitals as domestic staff. The episcopal seminaries and Strasbourg’s two theological faculties were also closed down. The Protestant minority in Alsace began to see itself anew as a Lutheran majority in a German ‘Land’ and there were ministers who greeted the Wehrmacht with the renowned Lutheran chorale ‘Nun danket alle Gott’. Adhesion to the new Germany had its roots in two sources. The first was the conviction that the Protestant Church had inherited the German Reformation and could thus represent German culture in Alsace. This was exemplified in the influence of minister, doctor and organist Albert Schweitzer, an Alsatian by birth. The second was the belief that the Lutheran two-kingdoms doctrine – the separation of ecclesial and civil authority to both of which the people had a debt of obedience – facilitated adaptation to the given balance of power. On 23 June 1940, the German authorities selected minister Charles Maurer to serve – in line with the Führerprinzip – as the highest authority in the Église de la Confession d’Augsbourg d’Alsace, henceforth to be known as the Evangelisch-lutherische Landeskirche 175

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des Elsaβ. He was officially installed ‘zum Oberhirten’ in the church of St Thomas at the end of September. Maurer had been part of a group of Alsatian ‘autonomists’ interned by the French government in the Vosges in the heat of the battle. The majority of the Protestant clergy supported the appointment because, in contrast to the other political functionaries in this German province, Maurer was an Alsatian. He was known as a ‘Germanophile’ and a competent administrator, but he was not a supporter of National Socialism. The Wehrmacht had taken the city of Strasbourg on 19 June 1940. Shortly after midday, a swastika flag was hoisted over the city’s mighty and historical cathedral, which was decommissioned for Catholic liturgical use on the orders of the Führer. When Hitler later made his triumphant entry into Strasbourg, rumours abounded that the cathedral was going to be handed back to the Lutheran Church. Charles Maurer denied the rumours. He preferred the idea of declaring the cathedral a national sanctuary for all those in the Greater German Reich who endeavoured to live a ‘German national religion’ in the sense intended by Alfred Rosenberg. In the last analysis, the plan for a national sanctuary was not implemented. Maurer and the German mayor of Strasbourg realized that it might sow division within the Alsatian ‘Heimatvolk’, and that the creation of a national sanctuary would rob both the Lutheran Church and the Roman Catholic Church of a historical and symbolic centre of Christian liturgy. Maurer continually underlined the German character of the Lutheran Church in Alsace; ‘the German church is the guardian of the German Volkstum’.28 On occasion, he went so far as to praise National Socialism and express the hope that this ideology would amalgamate church life with national revival. On the other hand, he was persistent in his efforts to free persecuted clergy and to preserve a certain independence for ‘his’ church within the Greater German Reich for as long as he could. In 1941, the Church in the Alsace was incorporated nonetheless into the Vereinigte Evangelisch-lutherische Kirche Deutschlands. From then on, Lutheran seminarians received their formation at the universities of Tübingen, Erlangen or Leipzig. The theology faculty in Heidelberg tended to be avoided, however, since it was considered a bastion of the ‘German Christians’. The Nazi authorities imposed a church tax in the annexed territories on those who continued to refer to themselves as Catholic or Protestant. While the contribution was beyond the means of the average industrial worker, it was honoured en masse by Alsatian Catholics and Protestants, who considered it tantamount to an act of opposition, if not outright hostility, towards the anti-clerical regime that held power at the time.29 Over time, such measures ultimately led to disillusionment among the Lutheran clergy and their parishioners in the nature of the prevailing German regime. 1.5 The invasion of the Netherlands and Belgium The Blitzkrieg against the Netherlands and Belgium on 10 May 1940 was met with genuine military resistance. The neutrality of both nations, no matter how they differed, obliged them to engage in armed defence. With the exception of a rearguard action in the province of Zeeland, the Dutch army capitulated after only five days. Belgian forces 176

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capitulated on 28 May. The Dutch Queen Wilhelmina fled with her cabinet to London. The Belgian king Leopold III followed his father’s example and remained behind with his troops, considering himself a prisoner of war in his palace in Laken. Critical of his decision to remain, his cabinet followed the Dutch example and took refuge in London. In each instance, the options of both monarchs had its influence on the German occupiers. As a result, a civil regime was installed in the Netherlands and a military regime in Belgium. In reality, the civil character of the Dutch model simply implied that National Socialist hardliners were given access to the various administrative functions. Hitler rewarded Austrian Arthus Seyss Inquart by appointing him Reich Commissioner for the occupied Netherlands. Seyss Inquart brought a number of Austrian Nazis with him to The Hague to help him establish his Aufsichtsverwaltung. Occupied Belgium fell under the military administration of General Alexander Freiherr von Falkenhausen, a professional soldier more than a party man. He likewise established an Aufsichtsverwaltung. His territory also included two departments in Northern France, but excluded the Belgian East Cantons around Eupen-Malmedy, which were annexed as part of the Greater German Reich. The German invasion in May 1940 immediately recalled the violence and executions that accompanied the advance of the German army into Belgium in 1914, and this resulted in the flight of masses of refugees to the south. The Wehrmacht did its best to behave as a correct occupying force, or at least to form such an impression in the public imagination. The Einsatzgruppen, which had decimated the Polish intelligentsia in September 1939 and sent untold numbers to their death, were not deployed on the western front. It appeared that the German atrocities of 1914 were to remain a thing of the past. This historical fact not only encouraged refugees to return, it also contributed to the relatively passive reception of the occupation in both countries. An additional reason for the said passivity was the fact that the German victory over France had also been an exceptional moment for France’s neighbours, especially since the French army had stood its ground in the First World War. In West European public opinion, National Socialist Germany appeared unstoppable and its ‘new order’ in Europe was not expected to be short-lived. France, moreover, had introduced a political system that appeared to offer an authoritarian and corporatist response to the political crisis that had been threatening Europe at the time. ‘Vichy’ thus became an example for national movements of popular unity in the similarly occupied northern states. The vast majority of the Belgian population identified itself as Roman Catholic. The leader of the Belgian church in 1940 was Cardinal Jozef Ernest Van Roey, the Archbishop of Mechelen. Van Roey bore burdens from the past in two specific ways. He was expected to adopt a role that had been exemplified during the First World War by his predecessor, Cardinal Desiré Mercier, an ardent defender of the Belgian fatherland. In addition, however, he was obliged to determine a policy with respect to the German occupying regime, which had rekindled the Flemish desire for independence with its divide and conquer politics and thereby endangered – either directly or indirectly – the unity of Belgium. The role of guardian of the fatherland fell into his lap as it were in the very first month of the war. The separation between king and government that had arisen after the 177

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capitulation on 28 May was a source of public conflict. Prime Minister Hubert Pierlot observed in a radio address broadcast from London that King Leopold had broken the bond that united him with his people and that he was thus no longer sovereign in his government. Pierlot also relieved Belgian officers and civil servants of their duty of obedience to the king. Cardinal Van Roey was invited to an audience with the royal prisoner of war in Laken on 31 May. In addition to an explanation of King Leopold’s motives, the pastoral letter that was read out in the churches of his archdiocese on Sunday 2 June also expressed his approval of the king’s decision. The king, according to the cardinal, had been given the opportunity to flee the country, but he had chosen instead to share the fate of his soldiers and the suffering of his people. For Van Roey, this testified to the king’s gallantry and revealed his true nature. It was also possible to read an implicit critique of the Pierlot government in the letter, which, as we know, had sought a safer haven. This critique, however, was probably shared at that moment in time by a significant portion of the faithful, for whom the shock of capitulation made the exile of the Belgian ministers appear tantamount to desertion. Unconditional approval of the king’s decision was not shared by all the members of the Belgian episcopate. Louis Jozef Kerkhofs, Bishop of Liège, had a letter read out in the churches of his diocese the following Sunday in which he described the Wehrmacht as an invading power – Cardinal Van Roey had only spoken of ‘momentous events’ – and

Figure 12 Cardinal Van Roey, Archbishop of Mechelen (Belgium), welcomes the Belgian king Leopold III . Photo: SOMA , Brussels. 178

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praised both the king and the government. The former had been forced to suffer the fact that he was no longer his people’s ‘first servant’ and the government in London deserved ‘our prayers’ because it was serving the fatherland.30 Ecclesial support for the monarchy was repeated in 1941. On 7 December of that year, Cardinal Van Roey addressed a letter to the population announcing that King Leopold III had married Lilian Baels, daughter of the governor of the province of West Flanders. He made no mention of the date of the civil marriage (6 December), only the church celebration that had taken place months earlier in September in contravention of constitutional provisions. The marriage became the central moment in a gradual change of public opinion in relation to the royal prisoner of war. The halo of royal martyrdom had begun to lose its sheen.31 In the summer of 1940, Cardinal Van Roey was briefly involved in a project aimed at the establishment of an authoritarian and royal government in occupied Belgium. The example of Vichy’s ‘revolution’ had attracted followers, and such initiatives were conceived and discussed in both Belgium and the Netherlands. When the plan for an authoritarian and royal regime in Belgium was in discussion, the Archbishop of Mechelen invited the leader of the Walloon fascist movement Rex – Léon Degrelle, one of the instigators of the aforementioned political construction – to an audience. The invitation was all the more remarkable for the fact that the Belgian episcopate had rejected both Rex and the Flemish National Union – Vlaamsch Nationaal Verbond – (and communism) as electoral options for the Catholic population in 1936 and had expressed its support of democracy. The audience did not take place. In October 1940, the Belgian bishops voiced their standpoint on the occupation in a pastoral letter. The letter is an important document because the bishops made a combined effort to capture the significance of the war and to propose a particular attitude towards it by way of example. The initial draft was prepared by the Bishop of Liège, who had already made his critical stance clear. He was intent on encouraging a more passionate love of the fatherland, a harsher condemnation of ‘bad Belgians’ and a less pointed commendation of the monarch.32 In the final text, which was dispatched by Cardinal Van Roey, the Belgian bishops called upon the faithful to cultivate a ‘genuine love of the fatherland’. They also insisted, however, that while Belgium had been taught the ‘terrible lesson’ of an occupation during the First World War, it had not appreciated the ‘fruits of recovery’ thereafter. The country had also played its part in the ‘general disarray’ of the Interbellum and the episcopate ascribed this to the neglect of church duties, ‘public immorality’, ‘assaults on the life of the child, made sadly evident in the declining birth rate in nigh on all of our provinces’, ‘unbridled hedonism’, and ‘the feverish pursuit of wealth’. 33 Christian citizens were to ‘avoid in conscience anything that might harm the wellbeing of the fatherland’ and bore personal responsibility for ensuring that their words and deeds did not inflict injury on the national community. But the Belgian fatherland continued to exist ‘and all its children owed it a debt of fidelity and support’.34 This was a warning aimed at the Flemish nationalists. Cardinal Van Roey and his fellow bishop Cardinal Liénart of Lille had turned their backs on a Flemish movement that was intent 179

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on nullifying the national boundaries of pre-war Europe. The French priest Jean-Marie Gantois, for example, who wanted to see French Flanders incorporated into a Greater Dutch Empire, and had even travelled to Berlin to negotiate terms in this regard, was relieved of his priestly duties by Liénart. By the middle of 1941, the cardinal’s attitude towards the occupying regime had become more offensive. During a meeting of the deans of the archdiocese, he declared that German hegemony was tantamount to domination by the National Socialist regime, which propagated paganism and represented a lethal attack on Christian culture in Europe.35 He continued to account for the need of a modus vivendi with the occupying military regime in order to ensure the continued existence of Catholic education and to support the Catholic youth movement. At the same time, however, lines were drawn with respect to the collaboration movements. He banned Catholic social organizations from cooperating in any way with the occupying regime and forbad the wearing of the insignia of the Flemish National Youth Association –Algemeen Vlaamsch Nationaal Jeugdverbond – in Catholic schools. Those who attended church services in uniform were to be refused communion. Churches were not to be used for political demonstrations, for displaying political flags or for singing political songs. The flight of Dutch Queen Wilhelmina and her government to London confronted the churches in the Netherlands with a different question. After the shock of defeat, their departure was interpreted by a large segment of the Dutch population as desertion. This led to a debate within the various Christian churches in occupied Netherlands on the continuation of the prayer for the monarch that was customarily recited or sung during Sunday services. It even became the most prominent issue the church authorities had to deal with in the first months of the occupation. Intercession for the queen evolved into a ‘fundamental’ debate on the loyalty of the Christian churches to the occupying regime.36 Prior to the war, this had not been an obligation in Calvinism’s largest church, the Dutch Reformed Church. Some ministers had expressed such loyalty during their Sunday services, while others refused to do so or limited themselves to national feast days. Ten days after the capitulation, Kuno Gravemeyer, secretary to the General Synod, reminded ministers of the statutory task of the Dutch Reformed Church to ‘foster love for Queen and Fatherland’. In the middle of June he added a reference to The Hague’s Land War Convention. In the event of occupation, sovereignty continues to be vested in the original state, although its exercise is in the hands of the occupier. The exercise of sovereignty by the Head of State had thus been suspended, but it had not lapsed.37 The exhortation was not uniformly well received. Some ministers opted for silence during services after May 1940, while they had proclaimed ‘God, the Netherlands and Orange’ from the pulpit prior to the war. To support their choice, the prayer of intercession was designated a liturgical formula in January 1941, allowing individual ministers to interpret it in a general sense. The Synod harked back to a prayer from the time of the Reformation – the ‘Prayer for every Christian need’ – which was adapted in such a way that the community could pray ‘for the Queen You have appointed over us and for the occupying forces You permit to govern us’. 180

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This fact is important for two reasons. First, the Dutch Reformed Church took a clear step in the direction of a ‘confessing church’ in the first year of the war. This meant that the recommended neutrality appropriate to a federation of diverse denominations within the Church was no longer accepted. Second, it clearly manifested itself in the first months of the war as a church of the fatherland. In reality, the intercession provision confirmed the link with the House of Orange and allowed the church to present itself more effectively as the guardian of the national heritage. The German occupying regime did not interfere with this process or try to stop it. A number of individual ministers were threatened or prosecuted for reciting the prayer during Sunday services, but there was no general sanction, and no effort was made to force the Synod to retrace its steps. The smaller Reformed Churches in the Netherlands likewise rekindled debate on the tradition of the prayer in the first year of the war. Herman Huber Kuyper, son of the renowned founder of this orthodox branch of Calvinism, Abraham Kuyper, and a prominent member of its Synod, designated the occupying power as a ‘legal regime’. Kuyper referred back to a debate in Calvin’s day and observed that the new regime was not a ‘tyrannus sine titulo’. The Nazi regime had a right to the obedience of the Dutch people because there had been no evidence of a tyrannical assault in the summer of 1940. He also criticized the exiled Queen: ‘The heroic role fulfilled by our Princes of Orange in face of the most terrifying dangers that threatened our people, was not reserved for Her, whom we loved as mother of the nation.’38 Kuyper was opposed by the eloquent Klaas Schilder, professor at the Theological College in Kampen. Schilder argued that the German occupier was subject to the Land War Convention of The Hague and that the laws of the Netherlands were thus to be respected ‘barring total impediment’. He included the prayer of intercession, the oath, and the churches’ right to protest against interference in its own national life.39 The occupying regime banned Schilder from writing in the same year. On 10 December 1941, the General Synod of the Reformed Churches published a document in which it declared the prayer for the needs of the Royal Family was part of the church’s vocation as was the explicit commemoration from the pulpit of imprisoned brothers and sisters. The majority of the reformed ministers continued to recite the prayer. The Germans did not forbid it, although some individuals were threatened and on occasion imprisoned. The Roman Catholic Church also entered into the monarchy debate in the person of Jan de Jong, the Archbishop of Utrecht. In an initial letter, read out in churches eleven days after the capitulation, he exhorted churchgoers to return to the faith, to reject defeatism, and to strive for harmony in promoting the fatherland. He also encouraged them to pray ‘for our sorely tried royal house’. The prayer for the queen sung in Latin at the end of high mass on Sundays was to be maintained. A pastor who had been informed by the German police in 1942 that the prayer was to be dropped, turned to his archbishop and was informed that he should continue singing it.40 The episcopate of the Catholic Church in the Netherlands addressed the faithful on the same day as their Belgian counterparts (7 October 1940). Their pastoral letter was published at the conclusion of the duo-decennial commemoration of the death of 181

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Willibrord, the Anglo-Saxon monk who had established Christianity in the region. Willibrord’s legacy was central to the text, but the bishops also interpreted it in concrete terms, related to their actual context. The Catholic contribution to education and social service had to be preserved and defended. Their motto was ‘Vindicamus haereditatem patrum nostrorum!’ (we uphold the inheritance of our fathers),41 a clear statement of their intention to defend the Catholic social order. In January 1941, the bishops tightened their existing ban on membership of the National Socialist Movement (in Dutch the Nationaal-Socialistische Beweging or NSB ). In so doing, Archbishop de Jong had to overcome opposition from two of his fellow bishops who preferred to adopt a more conciliatory attitude to the Nazi ideology. Boundaries, however, were clearly drawn. Religious pluralism was evident in the Netherlands in the form of a variety of Protestant and Catholic organizations. It was also given expression, however, in a closeknit network of public and confessional schools. While the German occupiers had already initiated their attack on the confessional, trades unions and other social organizations, it had thus far hesitated from attempting to strip Protestant and Roman Catholic schools of their religious foundations. A further consequence of the conflict was thus a striking rapprochement between the Protestant and Catholic Churches in the Netherlands. By the end of 1940, both churches had managed to put the centuries-old dividing line between Reformation and Counter Reformation behind them and enter into an Inter-Church Consultation (Inter Kerkelijk Overleg or IKO ), which took responsibility for defending the Christian inheritance as a whole and initiating ecumenical dialogue. A number of striking similarities can be observed with respect to the churches’ reactions to the occupying regimes in the Netherlands and Belgium. In both countries, the churches were given a degree of leeway that allowed them to maintain their influence and preserve confessional institutions. The same cannot be said for Eastern Europe or the annexed ‘Westmark’. Impressed by the victories of National Socialism, a political movement evolved in both the Netherlands and Belgium with corporative ideals and an authoritarian structure, modelled on the example of Vichy France. The Catholic bishops did not resist the movement, although the chair of the Belgian episcopate, Cardinal Van Roey, gave evidence of a greater readiness to implement the Belgian variant of this moral revolution than his northern episcopal colleagues. In both countries, the Protestant and Catholic churches continued to demonstrate loyalty to the monarchy in their liturgical prayer and pastoral letters. Cardinal Van Roey became the public mouthpiece of such support, but it was also visible in the Dutch context. A number of internal factors are also relevant in the context of comparisons. These include the existence of a politically self-conscious right wing within Belgian Catholicism, which discovered the freedom – in its option for Flemish Nationalism, for example – to defy the Belgian episcopate. In the Netherlands, however, where Catholics were in the minority, the authority of the episcopate was more or less undisputed. In a certain sense, both Catholic archbishops were each other’s opposite. Cardinal Van Roey was intent on diplomacy and his unequivocal rejection of National Socialism remained ‘abstract’. Archbishop de Jong, on the other hand, exhibited an indomitability that reinforced his leadership position and its recognition by the faithful.42 182

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The position of Protestantism in the Netherlands was a different question. Before the German invasion, the synod of the largest Dutch Reformed Church was itself made up of various different movements, which ultimately condemned each other to neutrality. Under the influence of the occupation it became a ‘confessing church’ that was free to openly criticize the occupying power. The same applied to the smaller Reformed Churches in the Netherlands. In both countries, the Christian Churches were able to defy the Nazi dictatorship on occasion from the pulpit. They often had to pay a high price for such defiance, however, including the arrest and execution of their ministers and faithful, but it did not silence them.

2 Invasions in Southern Europe Fascist Italy made its presence felt in the Balkans, in solidarity – and in competition – with Nazi Germany, demanding its share in the establishment of a new order in Southeast Europe. On 7 April 1939, Good Friday in the calendar of a predominantly Roman Catholic Italy, the Regio Esercito, or Royal Italian Army, invaded Albania, occupying the country – which was already politically dependent on the government in Rome – without encountering significant resistance. King Victor Emanuel III was offered the Albanian crown and Mussolini was able to add the kingdom to a new Roman empire, the goal of fascist Italy and his personal ambition. 2.1 Italy’s Mediterranean ambitions In Mussolini’s vision of things, the Italian Fascist revolution of 1922 was a historical watershed: the beginning of a new civilization that would be given expression in a new empire. The imperial challenge was to be sought in the first instance in the establishment of African colonies. The Italian army invaded Ethiopia in 1935 and had completed its mission by 1936. ‘The war in Africa was to provide a new context for Fascism’s scheme of social engineering. It would drive the renewal of Italian society; it would represent the apogee of the Fascist myth of national regeneration; and it would be the crucible for a new civilization which would give Italy leadership of Europe.’43 Mussolini embodied what historian Emilio Gentile referred to as the svolta totalitaria, the transition from an authoritarian understanding of the state to a totalitarian one. In Mussolini’s vision, the twentieth century would see the relationship between the states evolve into a situation in which certain nations took precedence, nations that were to take responsibility for establishing a ‘new order’ and creating the conditions in which a ‘new humanity’ could thrive. This Darwinian vision of international relations was framed in the historical concept of the ‘Romanità’. A contemporary recollection of the Roman Empire determined the conquest strategy. Davide Rodogno describes the empire envisaged by Italian Fascism as a series of hierarchically related concentric circles.44 The inner circle was referred to as the ‘small space’, the core of which was the Italian peninsula and the regions that were considered to be part of the ‘Italianità’: historically speaking, the Venetian colonies on the Adriatic 183

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and Aegean coasts, the province of Nice (Nizza), the island of Corsica and the region of Savoy, but also including – with less substantial historical rights – Slovenia and BosniaHerzegovina. This ‘small space’ was to become the heart of an imperial community, which understood itself to have a mission to civilize what was seen as the ‘larger space’ or the second circle. The latter referred to an empire that was to consist of countries and regions at different stages in the process of economic development and with a variety of political structures. The conquest thereof presupposed the dismantlement of states such as Yugoslavia and Greece. The third circle was to be Italy’s colonial empire, an empire that required enlargement and was to remain subordinate to other regions in the imperial community in terms of governance and administration. This inferior status was based on race and racist distinction. After the incorporation of Ethiopia into the Italian empire, a spazio vitale or ‘living space’ – a translation of the German Lebensraum – was established in and around the Mediterranean with Italy as the leading nation. This resulted in legislation that was to limit relationships between Italians and the local citizens of the spazio vitale. Italian citizenship was only accessible to the inhabitants of territories historically understood to be part of the core of Italy. Inhabitants of other European countries maintained their nationality, but were considered inferior to Italians. It is remarkable that while the Fascist ideology had devised plans for popular migrations, the Italian occupying regimes were never charged with the task of expelling or even annihilating local populations or population groups to allow Italian colonists to take their place. ‘Neither Mussolini nor his hierarchs, nor the intellectuals closest to the regime and with greatest influence over it, ever envisaged the expulsion of the Greeks or the Albanians from their territories so that room could be made for colonists of “pure Italian race”.’45 It is also remarkable, albeit from a different perspective, that the Catholic Church in Italy itself adopted a docile stance to Mussolini’s imperial politics after the successful Lateran Treaty. The high point of ecclesial involvement can be located in the colonial war in Ethiopia, when the support of the population for Mussolini and his policies was at its most intense. On 28 October 1935, in a ceremony in Milan’s cathedral, marking the thirteenth anniversary of the March on Rome, archbishop Cardinal Ildefonso Schuster gave a stirring homily. He thought Western civilization was locked in an epic battle between good and evil, a struggle of the godly against the demonic. He considered Mussolini and the Fascist regime to become crucial Church allies.46 According to historian Renzo De Felice, Catholic adhesion was so complete that any potential distinction between the Catholic position and the Fascist position had become more or less insignificant and invisible to all intents and purposes, at least at the level of public opinion.47 2.2 The new order in South-east Europe Italy’s successful invasion of Albania testified to a change in the balance of power in South-west Europe. Great Britain and – especially – France, the Entente powers that had imposed and guaranteed the peace arrangements of 1919, lost their influence in the 184

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1930s to Nazi Germany. In the wake of a treaty with the Soviet Union, the latter placed itself in a favourable position to establish a new order in South-east Europe. Germany’s ally Italy simultaneously made its presence felt in the Balkans, but in its own unique way. Romania, which had profited in 1919 from the Paris Peace Treaties, was confronted with the new balance of power in 1940. The first ‘correction’ of its borders was imposed by the Soviet Union. In June 1940, Stalin demanded the return of Bessarabia together with a part of Bukovina. The German government had ceded this region of Romania to Moscow in a secret protocol of the Treaty with the Soviet Union (1939). When Stalin demanded the protocol be respected – in the margins of the annexation of Poland and the Baltic states – the government in Bucharest was forced to concede under German pressure. In the meantime, a number of neighbouring countries had laid claim to regions that had been lost in the Balkan wars or in the First World War. The Romanian government was placed under enormous pressure to make concessions. After a new round of arbitration talks in Vienna on 30 August 1940, the so-called Second Vienna Award, Germany and Italy allocated the north-western part of Transylvania (two-fifths of the territory lost in 1918) to Hungary. Bulgaria was granted the southern part of Dobruja (which it was never to relinquish). In less than three months, Romania had thus been forced to relinquish a third of its territory.

Figure 13 The dead body of the Romanian Fascist leader Codreanu is exhumed, while a Orthodox priest says a prayer, November 1940. Photo: SOMA , Brussels. 185

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The situation resulted in a crisis of state. On the night of 5 September 1940, King Carol II was forced to abdicate. He was succeeded by his 19-year-old son Mihail, but the actual Conducător was General Ion Antonescu, who had in fact forced the king’s abdication. Antonescu was a soldier, and his regime was authoritarian and corporatist, based on the example of the Portuguese dictator Salazar. Hitler supported him when the Iron Guard rebelled against him in January 1941. Romania was too important as an oil provider to allow it to fall into the hands of the violent and uncontrollable Iron Guard, in spite of the fact that the latter was politically akin to National Socialism. Bulgaria, on the losing side in the First World War, was the second nation in Southeast Europe to ally itself with Nazi Germany after Romania, seeing the alliance as an opportunity to restore losses incurred as a result of the Treaty of Neuilly (1919). Dobruja was a granary, but it was also home to a Turkish-speaking minority. Bulgaria allied itself with Germany on 1 March 1941 in the hope of being granted a further opportunity to seek revenge against Macedonia and Thrace. Once again, and out of the blue, Italy made its presence felt in the Balkans, attacking Greece from Albania. In so doing, Mussolini took a further step in his policy of expansion, the goal of which was the conquest of the Mediterranean coastal nations. The day of the invasion – 28 October 1940 – is known in Greece as ‘Ochi Day’ or the Day of No! The Greek dictator, General Ioannis Metaxas, refused to accept a ‘peaceful’ Italian occupation of Greece and thereby risked an invasion. Against every expectation, however, the Italians were repelled and Greek troops even managed to occupy segments of northern Epirus in Albania. The Italian defeat was a further reason for Hitler to deploy his forces in the Balkans and compensate for his most prominent ally’s miscalculation. This was necessary because the Greater German Reich had been preparing in the meantime for an attack on the Soviet Union and wanted to ensure that the right flank of its forces in South-east Europe was protected. Yugoslavia was next in line to be absorbed into an alliance with Nazi Germany. This took place on 25 March 1941 when the government of Prince Regent Paul signed a protocol in Vienna, which associated his country with Germany and its allies. Two days later, Serb troops revolted in Belgrade in protest against the alliance. The regent offered no resistance and was relieved by King Petar who was still a minor. Nazi Germany did not waste time in responding. In the early hours of 6 April 1941, the capital Belgrade was subjected to heavy bombardment in an Unternehmen Strafgericht (‘Operation Punishment’). The number of fatalities was greater than that of the earlier bombardments of Warsaw, Rotterdam and Coventry combined.48 It marked the beginning of a German invasion that was to end eleven days later in capitulation, with the king and the government seeking refuge in England. Germany’s allies – Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria, and, via Italy, Albania – also played their part, allowing them to regain in part what they had demanded or been forced to relinquish after the First World War. On the same 6 April 1941, the German army invaded Greece, constituting the leading force of an invasion that also included Italy and Bulgaria. Supported by British units, the Greek defences put up a fight, but German superiority on the ground and in the air 186

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ensured their victory. General Grigorios Tsolakoglu, the commander-in-chief of the Greek army, capitulated in Macedonia on 21 April. Two days later he was forced to do the same for the Italians. The government fled together with King George II . This successful campaign allowed Hitler and his generals to cover the southern flank of an army that was ready and waiting to invade the Soviet Union. Federal Yugoslavia – a variant of the pan-Slavic ideal – was dismantled, the former state divided into a number of occupied zones and an autonomous Croatia. The regimes distinguished themselves either by their racially motivated contempt for Slavic ‘underlings’ or by a radical nationalization of the captured territory. Greece was likewise subdivided into occupied zones. The Bulgarian regime was similarly extreme in its colonial politics, but an Aufsichtsverwaltung prevailed in the territories occupied by Germany and Italy which allowed the Greek interior authorities to continue intact. The German occupying authorities in Greece consciously tried to distinguish themselves as the most benevolent of the three.49 2.3 The Royal Protectorate of Albania In the period between 1939 and 1941, Albania was the first and only country in Europe that was captured by the Regio Esercito without the intervention of German troops. The kingdom was united in a personal union with Italy in April 1939 in which Victor Emmanuel III assumed the throne of Albanian King Zog. The Albanian flag – a twofold black eagle against a red background – had to be adjusted. A fascio (axe) was added on either side, making it look as if the eagle was under threat. The crown of Savoy – with cross on top – was placed on the eagle’s head. In a country in which 70 per cent of the population was Muslim, such an embellishment of the Albanian flag could only be described as pig-headed. The old flag thus had to be reinstated in May 1941, two years after the Italian invasion. Albania was not annexed, nor did it become a possession to which large numbers of Italian colonists were to be directed. It was given the status of a protectorate. After a relatively peaceful start, the Italian regime ultimately lost the support of the people in 1941. There were two primary reasons for this change of allegiance. A significant number of adventurers and failed Italian civil servants had made their way to Albania in search of a position in the protectorate. In addition, disastrous economic policies had forced inflation into an upward spiral and led to measures that were equal to the extortion. In the summer of 1940, the north-western Mirdita clan – Roman Catholic and to some degree privileged under the Italian occupation – revolted against the regime. By the end of 1941, resistance groups and gangs were active throughout Albania. The Italians respected Albania’s religiously mixed population and its religious institutions, following in the footsteps of King Zog, who had established peaceful relations with the three religious communities on behalf of the state in the 1930s. The vast majority of Albanians were Muslim, according to a census organized under Italian supervision in 1942: a total of 1,128,143 or 69.1 per cent of the population. Islam in Albania was and remains divided between Sunnis and an Albanian variant known as the 187

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Bektashi. The latter had its roots in an order of dervishes that had established itself in Ottoman Albania in the seventeenth century and now constituted between 15 and 20 per cent of the population.50 Cooperation between Fascist Italy and Albania’s Muslims was not taken for granted. Mussolini tried to appease them by proposing the construction of a mosque in Rome for which he had received permission from King Victor Emmanuel III . As far as the latter was concerned, any anti-clerical argument was welcome, but the Vatican resisted the idea. The Italian Minister for Foreign Affairs claimed to have found the solution: the Albanian Muslims would not be won over by a mosque, but rather by a wage increase. The Sunnis were prepared to cooperate with the Italian occupiers and a committee was formed in which the muftis of the four religious districts were united and which appeared to function as a coordinative instance in spite of mutual differences. For the occupier, the Bektashi represented an Islamic and a nationalist tradition. Their leader, Nijaz Deda, was murdered on 28 January 1942, the feast day of Albanian independence. The circumstances of his death have never been clarified, but the Italian regime played it safe and organized a state funeral. In addition to the Muslims, 20.6 per cent of the Albanian population was Orthodox, concentrated in the south-west, especially in the Albanian part of Epirus. The Orthodox Church in Albania had gained independence in the Interbellum, although it remained under Greek influence for historical and geographical reasons. Its archbishop and three bishops declared their loyalty to the new regime in 1939 and the Italian occupiers tried in turn to gain influence among the Orthodox population by supporting the Greek Catholic Church. The loyalty of the two Roman Catholic archbishops and four bishops, who were responsible for a minority living in the north-west, in and around the city of Shkodër (Scutari), was more or less taken for granted. Catholicism in the region had been the result of an Italian mission and according to the 1942 census, Catholics constituted 10.3 per cent of the population. Village priests were less inclined to capitulate, however, formed as they had been in an independent Albania where they had acquired a nationalist disposition. The Fascist authorities gave the Albanians the opportunity to make their mark in Metohija in Kosovo and in the western province of Debar (Italian Dibra) in Macedonia, both of which had been transferred to Albania in August 1941 after the dismantlement of Yugoslavia. The authorities in Rome had initially insisted that Ohrid should be included as Albanian territory but this was rejected by the Germans. Ohrid was the birthplace of Clement, a saint and a city sacred to their Bulgarian allies. The Albanian province now extended to the southern shores of Lake Ohrid, while the northern shores were incorporated into the Bulgarian-occupied zone together with the city itself. The incorporation of large parts of Kosovo into a ‘Greater Albania’ implied that the clock of Serb domination during the Interbellum had been turned back. The historical centre of Serbian orthodoxy was located in Kosovo, although the place had been populated by Albanian immigrants since the eighteenth century. For this reason, the country was subjected to a policy of ‘Serbianization’ when it was incorporated into Yugoslavia in 1918. As a result, the population was expected to accept the educational 188

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policies of the new rulers and to speak their language. This cultural development was thrown into reverse in 1941. The Serbian, Montenegrin and Bulgarian minorities in what were now Albanian provinces in Kosovo and Macedonia were soon to be subjected to a radical and sometimes violent ‘Albanization’. ‘Where the Albanian and Italian flags flew side by side, denationalization and ethnic cleansing were the rule: Macedonian, Greek, Serbian and Montenegrin surnames and place names were “Albanized” and a long period of internment, summary executions and resettlements began.’51 An estimated 70,000 Albanian colonists settled in both provinces. Bulgarian and Greek inhabitants were ‘encouraged’ to relocate to the Bulgarian-occupied zone or to occupied Greece. And in spite of the fact that the immigrants came from a religiously pluriform Albanian, colonization in Kosovo took the form of a religious persecution: a primarily Islamic confrontation with (Serbian) orthodoxy. Monasteries and churches were damaged or confiscated and orthodox priests murdered or exiled. Bishop Serafim of Raška-Prizren was arrested by the Albanians and interned in Tirana where he died in January 1945. Serbian estimations claim that roughly 10,000 Serbs lost their lives at the time in one way or another.52 Under explicit orders from Rome, the Italian occupying forces kept a low profile for a considerable length of time. On the one hand, the Regio Esercito was not permitted to interfere in domestic affairs and domestic order. On the other hand, the process of ‘Albanization’ was a copy of the ‘Italianization’ policy deployed in Dalmatia and Slovenia. Many Serbs and other Slavic inhabitants who had played an important role in Kosovo’s economy and administration before the war sought protection nonetheless from the Italian forces. Some tried to hitch a ride in Italian military vehicles and thereby escape to Montenegro or the former Serbia. Others sought refuge in camps in the suburbs of Kosovan cities such as Prizren, Pristina and Peć. An estimated total of 100,000 Serbs either left, were deported or were exiled. The Italian civil servant Carlo Umiltà, who was appointed governor in the Albanian provinces of Kosovo and Debar, observed on his arrival in Prizren – the first city in Kosovo he had scheduled for a visit – that the place was inhabited ‘by Muslim Albanians, the most miserable segment of the population, and a certain number of orthodox Slavs – the former rulers – who make up the so-called bourgeoisie of local officials and local tradesmen together with an extraordinarily large number of orthodox priests’. Umiltà endeavoured to dilute Albanian predominance in both provinces and to grant the Serbs and Macedonians a greater say in local government. His proposals, however, were rejected by the Italian governor. ‘Albanization’ pressed ahead, the Yugoslav dinar was withdrawn from use as Albanian currency, and the Serbian schools were closed. ‘The indiscriminate internment of Orthodox Christians resumed, and with it seizures of their property and the burning of the homes of “criminals” who allegedly absconded.’53 At the end of 1941, the Italian occupying regime considered it necessary to intervene for the first time and to bring the Albanian functionaries under control. Domestic government was reformed and three provinces introduced – Debar, Kosovo and Metohija – governed by Albanian prefects, but with the assistance of Italian supervisors. Battalions of Carabinieri and Blackshirts (fascist paramilitary units) were despatched to Kosovo 189

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and mixed with Albanian Blackshirts. These troops were not only expected to maintain law and order, they also became increasingly involved in the struggle with Yugoslavian partisans. Luca Pietromarchi, a senior official in the department for the occupied territories in Rome, wrote in his diary on 16 February 1943 that immobility had paralysed the occupying authorities and that the Albanians had turned their backs on Italian protection to seek alternative bidders. The ‘glorious Italy’ of Vittorio Veneto (1918) had been transformed in his eyes into an Italy of Franceschiello (the last nineteenth-century Bourbon king of Naples, who lost his kingdom to Garibaldi).54 2.4 Allied Hungary Hungary acquired a (Slovakian) province for the first time in November 1938, a region it had lost under the Treaty of Trianon. This signalled the beginning of an expansion that was rooted in a desire to undo the humiliation inflicted by the victors in 1919. In an alliance with Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, it recovered pre-war territories on its eastern and western borders. The so-called First Vienna Award had granted Hungary the Slovakian region along the banks of the river Danube, including Košice (Kassa). In March 1939, Budapest took possession of Trans-Carpathia with its regional capital Uzhorod (Ungvar). The Second Vienna Award of August 1940 granted Hungary the north-western portion of Romanian Transylvania, including Cluj (Kolozsvár). These recuperations were seen as an essential rectification of an international injustice. After the dismantlement of Yugoslavia in April 1941, a portion of the Serbian Vojvodina with its capital Novi Sad (Újvidék) and the Slovenian district of the river Mur, were incorporated within Hungary’s territorial boundaries. The regent, Admiral Horthy, took possession of the newly acquired regional capitals, repeating the triumphant entry on the back of a white horse with which he had celebrated (Romanian) victory in Hungary’s Bolshevik revolution in 1919. The expansion of the kingdom of Hungary – without a king – was not only the result of revenge for the domestic revolution of 1919 or the international humiliation of Trianon, it also led to a renewed endeavour to realize the idea of a Hungarian empire, in which the Slavic and Romanian communities would be united under the crown of Szent István (Saint Stephen) and combined under a predominantly Hungarian culture. This ‘Magyarization’, which had been powerfully reinforced in the second half of the nineteenth century by the double monarchy, became the guiding principle for the administration of the provinces acquired after 1938. Hungarian rule over the acquired regions was not motivated in the first instance by ideology, rather it was nationalistic and Christian. The latter was made manifest on the Catholic side in the international Eucharistic Congress held in Budapest in 1938 to celebrate the 900th anniversary of the death of the first Christian king, Saint István: ‘a splendid display of the alliance between (Catholic) church and state that had opposed godlessness and unbelief in the past centuries and that would continue to do so in the future’. Both the Hungarian Church and the papal delegate, Cardinal Pacelli, ‘endorsed the notion of Hungary as a thousand-year-old Christian state ever ready to defend Christendom against the infidel, be he pagan, Turk or Bolshevik’.55 190

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The middle-class Calvinist elite followed a similar path. The latter considered itself the cradle of a Christian Hungary, but the Hungarian national identity had to be rediscovered. In the Double Monarchy, Calvinism was associated with democracy and liberalism; against the absolutism of the Habsburg dynasty. In the Interbellum this was no longer the case. Nevertheless, a demographic argument further supported the Calvinist claim: ‘the Hungarian Reformed Church was almost exclusively comprised of ethnic Magyars’. And, ‘Calvinism, one prominent theologian argued, provided a holistic Christian worldview that, like Catholicism, provided individuals with a moral vision to face the disparate challenges of modernity but which also, unlike Catholicism, was wholly national.’56 Hungarian policy in the occupied territories was marked by extremes of cruelty and benevolence. In the city of Novi Sad in occupied Vojvodina, for example, more than 3,000 people were killed in a punitive expedition carried out by soldiers and the police. On the other hand, prominent citizens were chosen from the ‘recovered’ regions to represent the Hungarian and Slavic minorities in the parliament in Budapest, a popular representation ‘which was unquestionably the freest such forum in wartime central Europe’.57 Traditional Hungarian cultural policy, however, continued unhindered. In Transylvania, the violence of the Hungarian forces took second place to that of the paramilitary factions. Romanian citizens were subjected to intense Magyarization. The promotion of Romanian culture that had prevailed in the Interbellum had to be stopped and in some instances even dismantled. This meant, for example, that the Hungarian state only paid the salaries of Romanian priests whose church community had been recognized prior to 1918. Newer Romanian parishes lost their state subsidy. The GreekCatholic Metropolitan Alexandru Nicolescu (Fagăras and Alba Iulia) compared in a pastoral letter the situation of his Romanian flock in Hungarian Transylvania ‘to the torments of Job upon whom fell a violent storm, which fed them the bread of pain’.58 The intended Magyarization was put into practice in a variety of ways. In some towns and cities the Romanian Orthodox churches were demolished or damaged, because they were seen as a symbol of Romanian (or Byzantine) culture. The Orthodox dioceses of Maramures and Oradea were deprived of their bishop, and the theological academy in Oradea was closed down. The priests who remained were sometimes forced to use Hungarian in the liturgy instead of Romanian. A politics of terror was also implemented. Priests were subject to violent abuse or forced to leave their parishes and flee to Romania. The Hungarian occupation of the district of the Mur saw to it that the original Slovenian inhabitants lost their cultural right to exist. In the opinion of the new rulers, the inhabitants of the valley were not Slovenians but Wends. The first publications of the occupying regime were thus written in Wendish (although this is a Slovenian dialect). Magyarization was the next step. Family names and street names were given a Hungarian spelling, Slovenian was forbidden in schools, Slovenian books were destroyed, and the academic library in Murska Sobota, the capital of the region, was burned to the ground. Hungary’s cultural politics also had consequences for ecclesial life. The Bishop of Szombathely, Josef Grösz, contributed to the process by instructing that Slovenian priests should celebrate the liturgy in Wendish and by selecting Hungarians to fill parish vacancies in the predominantly Slovenian region. When Slovenian priests appealed to 191

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the minority guarantees formulated by the Hungarian government in 1919 in the struggle to maintain their original language, Ivan Jerić, the diocese’s Slovenian vicar general was taken to court. Other priests were transferred to exclusively Hungarian parishes in the diocese.59 Serbian farmers and other colonists in the Hungarian part of the Vojvodina were interned in large numbers. The Hungarian authorities tried to exile them to the Serbian heartland but the Germans refused to allow the immigration because the place was already having difficulties coping with Serbian refugees from Croatia. Serbian partisans carried out attacks on the Vojvodina region from occupied Serbia. The Hungarian occupying forces responded with the aforementioned punitive expedition in Novi Sad in January 1942. The city was surrounded and 7,000 of its inhabitants were taken prisoner in a ‘cleansing’ known in Serbian history as the Racija. Half were taken to the banks of the Danube where they were robbed of their clothing and precious possessions and then shot dead. ‘More than two thousand Serbs, several hundred Jews, but also Hungarians, Germans, Slovaks, and Russians were murdered, including many women, children and older persons. The bloodbath became known worldwide damaging Hungary’s reputation more than any other wartime event.’60 Among the victims were seven priests of the Serbian Orthodox Church under the leadership in the Vojvodina region of Irinej (Čirić), Bishop of Bačka. The Hungarian occupying authority refused him permission to leave his diocese, meaning that the other members of the Serbian episcopal synod were obliged where possible to meet with him in Novi Sad. Orthodox believers were initially threatened with persecution. After the Racija, the church was left in comparative peace.61 The conservative government in Budapest intervened, ‘recalling the officers in charge of those massacres and ordering them to stand trial for their actions’.62 The Hungarian government ultimately succumbed to an old habit, namely the endeavour to bring the Orthodox churches in the border territories under a single national authority. This applied to the Greek Catholic Church in the Hungarian part of Transylvania, which was governed – as in the days of the Habsburg monarchy – by the bishop of the Hungarian diocese in Hajdudorog. The same happened in Trans-Carpathia, Eastern Christianity’s border region, classified according to canon law under Serbian Orthodoxy. In April 1941, Vladimir, the resident Serbian Orthodox Bishop of Mukačevo, was exiled and confined to a monastery by the German occupier. His successor was to be the Russian priest Michael Popoff, vicar general for all ‘Eastern Greek’ churches, including those of the Seklers, a Hungarian tribe in Transylvania. Popoff failed to live up to expectations and the Hungarian government started to look for a successor. In the summer of 1944 he was even arrested. To all intents and purposes, therefore, this endeavour to Magyarize the Orthodox churches via an episcopal appointment was not a success. 2.5 Allied Bulgaria A combination of military and cultural oppression characterized the conquest of Bulgaria, the other ally in the German and Italian invasions of the Balkans. Bulgaria’s 192

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troops had taken part in the occupation of Yugoslavia and Greece. The government in Sofia was able to establish a regime in large parts of (formerly Greek) Thrace and (formerly Yugoslavian, and in particular Serbian) Macedonia, regions Bulgaria had lost in previous Balkan wars. But the allocation of occupied zones had its limits. The Wehrmacht retained its control over the border region with (neutral) Turkey and over the province in which the important port city of Thessaloniki was located. The Bulgarian occupation was thus an ambition to recover territory that was considered part of the Bulgarian nation with a view to colonization. This resulted in what might be seen as an early form of ‘ethnic cleansing’. Bulgarian colonists were encouraged to establish themselves in the captured territories. By the spring of 1943, their number had risen to 122,000. ‘For some Balkan states, as indeed for Nazi Germany itself, this was not just about military victory but about permanent demographic change in new territories.’63 The Orthodox Church was a significant factor in this process, leading Bulgaria to implement a policy of cultural conquest. The city of Ohrid, so important for Bulgarian history, was recaptured. A month after the annexation of Macedonia, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church took over the dioceses of Skopje, Zletovo-Strumića and Ohrid. In the Macedonian capital Skopje, Josif (Cvijović), Metropolitan of the Serbian Orthodox Church, was placed under house arrest and cut off from his priests. In 1941, a Bulgarian archimandrite presided at the Easter liturgy – of such importance for the Orthodox churches – in Skopje Cathedral. On 4 May 1941, Metropolitan Josif and Bishop Vikentije Prodanov of Zletovo-Strumića (who also administered the diocese of Ohrid) were exiled to the Serbian heartland together with those Orthodox priests who had not been born in Macedonia or who had married Serbian women or who were taken to be loyal to Serbia. The Bulgarian Orthodox Church reinstated its retired priests, intent on taking responsibility for pastoral care in the parishes of Macedonia and Thrace that had once been Serbian or Greek. Two hundred and eighty of them, together with other ecclesial personnel, were imported and installed in hitherto Serbian churches of Macedonia. Regardless of their age, the priests in question were expected to serve for four months in both regions. The church leadership wanted to make use of this occasion to have a patriarch elected who could unite all the Bulgarian church communities and serve as a symbol of national unity. Tsar Boris feared rivalry and potential erosion of his authority. He and his Prime Minister Bogdan Dimitrov Filov tried to prevent the synod from making a decision, refusing it permission to elect a patriarch or choose bishops for seats in occupied Thrace and Macedonia.64 In Macedonia, the Bulgarian troops were welcomed by those who hoped that they would put an end to the cultural domination of Serbia. Ambitious for Macedonian autonomy, some nationalists believed they would be able to rely on greater support from Sofia than Belgrade. In Greek Thrace, by contrast, the Bulgarian occupying regime was faced with resistance. The ‘Bulgarization’ to which the occupier aspired collided head on with the language, church and educational system of the Greek inhabitants. The Greek Orthodox Church in the region was deprived of its bishops. The Bulgarian regime invited them to leave and they did so without much ado, but its stance towards the lower clergy 193

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was much more ruthless. Reports exist of Greek papades being mistreated and robbed of their livelihood. The Bulgarian Orthodox Church reintroduced the ancient Julian calendar in Greece. Greek priests, moreover, were obliged to recognize the exarch of Sofia as head of their church and thus revoke their obedience – either directly or indirectly – to the Patriarch of Constantinople. The Bulgarian schism thus became a feature of the Bulgarian occupier’s political tactics. Was the sought after Bulgarization of Greek orthodoxy a success? Very few Greek priests obeyed the call to recognize the authority of the Bulgarian exarch. In a study of the wartime experiences of two generations of Macedonian villagers, moreover, we can observe that the faithful were more or less indifferent to ecclesial politics. ‘It seems that the informants’ lives were not affected essentially by the banishment of the Greek priests, by the establishment of Bulgarian clergymen in their place, or by the imposition of Bulgarian, which no one understood as the language of worship.’65 Orthodox fraternity won the day. It remained possible, after all, to bless oneself in front of the icon of a mutually recognized saint and pray in silence for the departure of the occupier. 2.6 The occupation of Greece In April 1941, the German swastika fluttered in the wind above the Parthenon in Athens. This was in the first instance a sign of German victory, but it also symbolized a classicist appropriation of the Nazi Reich, if not an attempt to legitimate that Reich with a classical prehistory. According to National Socialism’s ideological scale of values, Greece’s classical history placed it in a higher order in relation to that of its Slavic neighbours. The Nazis were similarly interested in a particular Byzantine monument. In July 1941, Franz Dölger, a Byzantinist from Munich, led an official expedition of the Einsatzstab Rosenberg and the Wehrmacht to the holy Mount Athos, ‘figuratively, if not literally, at gunpoint’. The Germans were received with courtesy by the ‘Jerá Kinótis’, the monastic community’s sacred council, and in each of the 17 monasteries they visited.66 Dölger reported that the Serbian monastery had flown the swastika flag. The same flag was unfurled in the Dionisiu monastery on the Germans’ departure.67 A monk of the monastery of Kastamonitou had drawn an icon of Adolf Hitler in pencil, which was granted a place of honour in the visitors room. It appeared that the Führer and his Reich were a powerful presence in the thoughts and feelings of the monks on Athos – to the extent that they were not completely detached from the world. ‘Dölger claimed that the monks looked on Hitler as the “High Protector” of the Holy Mountain, although the reality was that the monasteries were an important conduit for the evacuation of Allied escapes and evaders to the Middle East.’68 The expedition did not lead to the plundering of the monasteries’ treasures. The symbolism of modern Greece was likewise the subject of debate. Chrysanthos, the Archbishop of Athens and the most senior official in the Greek national church, was designated in the constitution to receive the oath of the new government of General Georgios Tsolakoglou. The latter had chosen to form a cabinet that was willing to cooperate with the future occupier. Out of loyalty to the exiled king, Chrysanthos refused 194

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to exercise his constitutional role. The Greek government in spe intervened in church affairs and had a new 24-member synod assembled in July 1941, forcing it to unseat Chrysanthos and elect Metropolitan Damaskinos, who had been rejected in 1938, as Archbishop of Athens. Chrysanthos continued to see himself as the king’s substitute. In June 1949, he was granted the title of former archbishop of Athens and of all Greece by way of rehabilitation. Damaskinos commenced his archiepiscopal duties by receiving the government’s oath and favouring the occupying regime. As it had in Yugoslavia, Germany and its two allies divided Greece into distinct occupied zones. The Germans maintained surveillance of the Greek–Turkish border, and established themselves in Piraeus, Crete and the region surrounding the port city of Thessaloniki. The Italian-occupied zone was the largest: the Peloponnesus and the central mainland including Athens. The capital had initially been captured by the Wehrmacht, but they withdrew in June 1941 in favour of the Italian regime. As noted above, the Bulgarian zone consisted of Thrace and Macedonia. This threefold division of national administration was one of the primary causes of the collapse of the Greek economy. The winter of 1941–1942 was a winter of starvation brought about by a chain of, in themselves, relatively minor problems. Land reform in the Interbellum had increased the number of small farmers in Greece, but likewise resulted in less efficient agricultural production. This became evident in 1941 when the food supply faltered and the harvest yields fell by 15 to 30 per cent. Administrative fragmentation also made transport difficult. The occupying armies, moreover, and especially the Germans, took their share of the available food. Plundering appeared to be unstoppable. The winter of starvation created enmity towards the occupier. The Red Cross estimated that 250,000 people died as a direct or indirect result of the shortage of food. The famine also created a problem of religious importance that aggravated the already distressed situation. It gradually became more and more difficult to provide the dead with a decent funeral in accordance with the traditions associated with Greek Orthodoxy. Some even resorted to burying their deceased family members on unhallowed ground. This was nothing short of a nightmare for the Orthodox faithful who believed that the souls of the dearly departed would not find rest and it was even possible that their spirits would continue to pursue the living. The Greek cemetery, hitherto a place of melancholy, had now been transformed into a place of dismay, as the coffins and cloth-draped corpses were often left above ground in the winter. The catastrophe disrupted the order of Greek society. Social inequality, which was made manifest in the way in which rich and poor were able to provide themselves with food, became a source of radicalization among the Greek working classes as well as their middle-class compatriots. As a result, the German and Italian occupying regimes failed to ascribe legitimacy to their ‘new order’. ‘It was to be left to the Greeks themselves to try and recreate the sense of community which would allow them in the first place to survive and then, perhaps, to find a new sense of purpose in resistance, mutual assistance and planning for the future.’69 Once the civil authorities had lost their popular esteem, the Archbishop of Athens was able to establish a podium from which he condemned the black market and those who 195

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had profited from the famine. He tried – without success – to have a transport of food from England, which had been ordered and paid for, shipped to occupied Greece. He later endeavoured to have food shipped from neutral Turkey. His most important achievement was the establishment of the EOHA , the National Organization for Christian Solidarity, which collected clothing and ran soup kitchens. In 1941, the EOHA had 44,000 families under its care, in 1942 twice that number. The organization’s activities were initially restricted to Athens and Piraeus, because Damaskinos respected the episcopal autonomy of the Greek Orthodox Church. Similar initiatives were later undertaken in other dioceses. On the island of Syros, the Italian occupier banned such relief efforts on the part of the Greek Orthodox clergy, determined not to be exposed as indifferent to the famine. By contrast, the Roman Catholic Church on the island was allowed to organize food aid.70 Archbishop Damaskinos’s initiatives reinforced his standing throughout Greece and the history of his election as bishop retreated into the background. In July 1941, the Greek poet Angelos Sikelianos praised him as ‘our national and heroic social fighter’.71 During the funeral of Greece’s most respected poet Kostas Palamas on 28 February 1943 – an occasion of national mourning – Damaskinos delivered a patriotic oration. Following Greek tradition, public opinion considered the archbishop ethnarch, a true leader of a nation under slavery.

3 Religious war in Yugoslavia Defeated Yugoslavia was completely dismantled in 1941 and shared out among the victors. The population was not only subjected to a variety of occupying regimes, it also became embroiled anew in an internal religious war that inflamed divided passions and resulted in almost unimaginable cruelties. 3.1 Threefold division of Slovenia Slovenia, the northernmost region of Yugoslavia, was divided into three by its new masters in April 1941, unintentionally making it representative of three different occupying regimes. Hungary acquired the smallest portion, incorporating the district of the Mur on 16 December 1941. The highlands, bordering on the Greater German Reich (formerly Austria), were administered by a German occupying regime. In economical terms, this was the wealthiest part of the country. The province surrounding the capital Ljubljana and the coastal province came under Italian rule. On 3 May 1941, both the latter provinces were incorporated into the Italian empire, although they were also ascribed an autonomous government on the same day. The Hungarian administration was an example of unadulterated nationalization and the suppression of the local Slovenian culture. The Germans went a step further. The intention was to incorporate the occupied zone into the Greater German Reich, but the date of annexation was continually postponed as an indirect result of protracted partisan 196

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actions. The inhabitants of the Italian-occupied zone were confronted with an ‘Italianization’ campaign, intended to prepare the Slovenian provinces for a – subordinate – place in the Italian empire. The church authorities in this predominantly Catholic land were obviously not prepared for this division. The Bishop of Ljubljana, Gregorij Rožman, witnessed his diocese being split into two civil entities, the larger under German administration, the cathedral city and the coastal provinces under the Italians. The Bishop of Lavant (later Marburg on the river Drava) had to come to terms with the German occupying authorities, except for the district of the Mur, which had been incorporated into the Hungarian urban diocese of Szombathely in June 1941. The policies pursued by the German occupier were nothing short of radical. ‘Untersteiermark’, the Slovenian portion of Styria, was to be Germanized and the Slovenian nation annihilated at every possible level. The priests in Slovenia’s Roman Catholic Church were seen as a source of resistance because they were the bearers of the Slovenian language and culture. The use of Slovenian in the liturgy was thus forbidden. In line with the other annexed territories in the Greater German Reich, Slovenia was taken to be ‘konkordatsfrei’. This meant that the Catholic Church had no right to lay claim to public protection. In April 1941, the seminary and the chapter buildings of the cathedral in Maribor were confiscated. The church’s properties were expropriated, including forestry situated in German territory that had belonged to the diocese of Ljubljana. A further measure intended to suppress the Slovenian nation was forced migration. Slovenians were exiled in relatively large numbers to independent Croatia and occupied Serbia. Priests were included among their ranks. In ‘Untersteiermark’, hundreds of priests were forced to leave. Of the 608 resident in the area in April 1941, only 102 remained by the end of the year, 27 of whom were retired and a further eight no longer active in pastoral ministry. In the Carniolan Highlands, 205 of the 260 priests were expelled. A small number of these priests ended up in Jasenovac concentration camp in Croatia where eight of them were killed. A number of priests also fled to the Italian-occupied zone. As a result, the clerical population of the diocese of Ljubljana expanded in a short period of time to no fewer than 905, so many in fact that the local church had difficulty accommodating them. From the political perspective, the balance of power differed in the Italian provinces. The oldest Slovenian grammar school in Sentvid, the Saint Stanislas Institute, was forced to close its doors under German command and the pupils and teachers were given an hour to prepare for departure. The school was then relocated to the Italian part of the diocese and was able to continue its work until 1945. A policy of Italianization was implemented in the Italian-occupied zone. The campaign was a continuation of pre-war cultural policy in the border regions of the Fascist regime: in the provinces of Trieste and Venezia Giulia, and in the Soca river valley (Isonzo), the location of heavy fighting in the First World War. The Italian minority in Slovenian had to be registered and prepared for Italian citizenship. In their turn, some Slovenian citizens grasped the Italian invasion as a means to acquire greater autonomy 197

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for their country, if not independence. Following the Slovakian model, which had acquired independence in 1939 under German protection, they endeavoured to prize Slovenia free of the – in the meantime dismantled – federal state of Yugoslavia. On 4 May 1941, a number of prominent Slovenian citizens wrote a letter to Mussolini in which they affirmed their obedience to Il Duce in the hope of being granted autonomy. The Bishop of Ljubljana, Rožman, did the same in a separate missive. The Slovenian Union (Slovenska Zavesa) was established in March 1942, an anti-communist organization that could be seen as an attempt to counterbalance the growing effectiveness and prestige of the partisans. At the same time, however, it was also intended as an organ that would promote Slovenian autonomy in relation to Italy. The occupier renamed it Centro Nazionale Sloveno and thus took control of it. Bishop Rožman was included among its leaders. He even received money from the Italian occupying regime for a period of time, which he used for charitable purposes. In practice, the Italianization of Slovenia turned out to be a perilous undertaking. A census in the province of Ljubljana had registered no more than 500 Italians out of a total population of 340,000, a somewhat narrow base for the proposed campaign. What had initially been intended as a ‘benevolent’ rule evolved in the course of the occupation into a regime of oppression. Mussolini’s politics led to arrests and internments, and although the Italian regime did not achieve the heights of repression reached by the Germans and Hungarians, the many metres of barbed wired surrounding Ljubljana served as concrete evidence of a lack of freedom. 3.2 An independent Croatia The establishment of an independent Croatia was not the primary goal of Yugoslavia’s conquerors. When the Wehrmacht invaded Zagreb and was welcomed by the crowds as a liberator, however, independence became an attractive option. It would draw the support of the majority of the population, which no longer believed in the Yugoslavian idea. It would also save on the need for occupying troops. An envoy was despatched to Zagreb from the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Berlin to persuade Croatia’s most important politician, Vladko Maček, to head the nation. Maček was the chair of the Croatian Peasants Party and the Croatian representative to the last Yugoslavian government. But he refused. Next in line was Ante Pavelić, Mussolini’s trump card, whose Ustaša (‘Revolt’) represented the radical wing of Croatian nationalism. He returned from political exile in Italy on 15 April 1941 and appointed himself Poglavnik or ‘Führer’ of the Nezavisna Drzava Hrvatska (NDH ), the Independent State of Croatia. The Independent State of Croatia not only consisted of the administrative region of Croatia itself (Banovina Hrvatska), it also included the eastern part of Srijem (Serbia) and parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Of a population of 6.3 million, roughly 3.3 million were Croats, almost 2 million Serbs and almost 1 million Muslims, the latter also being referred to as Bosniaks. Two of Yugoslavia’s conquerors stood military guard: Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. The Wehrmacht controlled the Croatian region to the northeast, including the capital Zagreb. The Regio Esercito was lord and master of the south198

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western regions, extending as far as the port cities and islands of the Adriatic. The coastal region or Dalmatia was annexed. The enforced surrender of the region to its Italian patron turned out to be an unpleasant surprise for Pavelić and his followers. The region bordering the Adriatic was now referred to as a Governato Dalmazia, and Giuseppe Bastianini, a fascist from the outset, became its governor in May 1941 with his headquarters in Zara (Zadar). He announced to his new subjects that the Lion of Saint Mark had returned to the coastal territory that had been dominated for centuries by Venice, but this time the Venetian patron saint was ‘armed’. Camps were established on offshore islands to accommodate political opponents. The church was subjected to a radical ‘Italianization’. Religious orders and congregations were forced to relocate to their monasteries in Croatia. This was particularly the case with respect to the Franciscans, with the exception of the monastery of Saint Francis in Zara (Zadar). The Friars Minor were well established in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, and had served to spearhead a Croatian nationalism with a Catholic predisposition. Bastianini ‘accused the religious orders of being “ferociously anti-Italian” and announced that he was minded to expel them en masse. He added that the Italian friars, especially the Franciscans, could have taken the place of all those zealots who offended Italy and Christ and disrupted the public order.’72 The Archbishop of Zara was charged with ensuring that Italian was the only language used for preaching, baptisms, weddings and funerals in his diocese. At the end of Sunday services, moreover, prayers were to be said for the king of Italy. ‘The Slav peoples of Dalmatia, reduced to second-class status, greeted their Italian tormentors and their Italianization programs with marked indifference.’73 Fascist Italy thus had an important role to play in the establishment of the Croatian state. The Savoy dynasty provided the agreed monarch in the person of Aimone, Duke of Spoleto, who had himself crowned as Tomislav II in Dunansko Polje in Bosnia, although he never claimed his throne. The conflict surrounding Italian Dalmatia continued to be a bone of contention between Pavelić and his political masters. Italian Fascism was chosen nevertheless for the structure of the state. Nazi Germany continued to have the last word in the decision-making process that led to the independence of Croatia. It also had control of the country’s most important economic assets: its industry was located in the north-east. The process of Croatian independence was enthusiastically welcomed by a considerable segment of the lower clergy of the Catholic Church and by Catholic intellectuals, with varying degrees of enthusiasm.74 Their support was nourished by an indigenous nationalism, which was in turn nourished by a collective belief that the country had been set free of Serbian (and Serbian Orthodox) domination. The Vatican hesitated. In May 1941, the new Croatian head of state Pavelić visited his fascist masters in Rome where he was also received by Pope Pius XII , albeit in what was considered a private visit. ‘Pavelić assured the Pope that the Croatian people wanted all their conduct and legislation to be inspired by Catholicism. In addition, the Croatian leader asked for Vatican recognition of the new State, but the Pope demurred and indicated that the Vatican did not grant such recognition during times of war.’75 199

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3.3 Religious war Before the war, Croatian fascism was directed against the pan-Slavic idea of a united South Slavia. The core theme of this political conflict was ‘anti-Serbianism’; the raison d’être of the Ustaša doctrine. Serbian border farmers, who had come to stand guard over the Habsburg monarchy in the eighteenth century, had become an unwanted minority in twentieth-century nationalist Croatia. The nationalist campaign was divided between ‘exclusionist and [violent] assimilationist tendencies’.76 When independence was granted in 1941, however, the exclusion of Serbian citizens became the primary goal of the Fascist movement. This exclusion took violent form against large segments of a population group that differed in language and in its adhesion to the Orthodox Church. On 22 June 1941, the Croatian Minister of Education, the writer Mile Budak, delivered a speech in which he announced that ‘a third of the Serbs would be exiled to the NDH , one third would be killed, and one third would be converted to Catholicism’.77 This became the guiding principle of a religious war. The historian Mark Biondich distinguishes three periods in the policy of aggression with which the Serbian inhabitants of Croatia were confronted.78 The first phase, from April to August 1941, was the most radical: the new Croatian regime made it clear in word and deed that the state had to be cleansed of Serbs, who were presented in the rhetoric of the state as Croatia’s enemies. In June 1941, Pavelić was to acquire the support of Nazi Germany in this regard, which had been pressing for a migration of Slovenians to Croatia in the wake of its radical Germanization of Slovenia. Hitler received the Poglavnik and informed him that a Croatian state would only be able to achieve stability if the regime continued its intolerant policy towards minorities for half a century. Pavelić thus concluded that the Germans would not intervene if the Croatian government implemented its anti-Serbian campaign. The Croatian state wasted no time in drafting discriminatory legislation. In 1941 the use of Cyrillic script was forbidden on 24 April; on 3 June the schools that fell under the control of the Serbian Orthodox Church were closed under orders from the state and Serbs were obliged to wear a blue armband; and on 18 July the designation ‘Serbian Orthodox’ was forbidden and replaced by ‘Greek Eastern’. In April 1941 there were 577 Orthodox priests in Croatia. By the end of the same year none were left; 200 had been murdered and 334 exiled to Serbia. Three Orthodox bishops who had refused to abandon their dioceses were murdered: Sava Trlajić (Sremski Karlovci), Platon Ivanović (Banja Luka) and Petar Zimonjić (Dabar-Bosna). The Metropolitan of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Zagreb was mistreated, expelled from the country, and as a result admitted shortly thereafter into a sanatorium in Serbia. Nikolaj Jokanović, the Bishop of Mostar, and Nektarije Krulj, the Bishop of Tuzla, likewise arrived in Serbia on 15 May after being expelled from Bosnia by the Croatian authorities. Bishop Irinej Djordević went into exile in Italy. The Ustaša regime then proceeded to implement a more systematic ethnic cleansing. The first mass murders of Serbian inhabitants of Croatia were recorded, the work not only of recognized Ustaša formations, but also of the so-called ‘Divlje’ or ‘wild’ Ustaša

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gangs. Even Catholic priests found themselves involved in this persecution, having signed up as chaplains to the nationalist groups, some without the permission of their bishop. Italian military reports speak of priests serving as truck drivers who transported Ustaša members to villages at night where they set about murdering the population. Indeed, some among the clergy ‘proved themselves to be fanatical murderers’.79 In July 1941, the superior of the Franciscans in Croatia was forced to intervene, forbidding every Croatian-speaking confrere from participating in the persecution of Serbs and Jews or in the confiscation of their property and their expulsion. The core features of Croatian policy in this initial phase were mass murder and deportation. In August 1941, a start was made with the construction of a concentration camp in the city of Jasenovac. This was to evolve and expand into a complex of five camps in which thousands of Orthodox Serbs, Jews, Gypsies and Croatian freedom fighters (partisans) were to lose their lives. One of the camp’s executioners was Miroslav Filipović, known also as ‘the devil’s monk’ or ‘Brother Satan’ because he had originally been a Franciscan. He was expelled from the order in May 1942. An uncontrolled stream of refugees preceded the deportation of Serbs from Croatia. By the end of July, their number was estimated in occupied Serbia to between 130,000 and 200,000.80 Forced expulsions followed. According to German headquarters in Belgrade, a total of 118,110 Serbs had been deported from Croatian territory to Serbia in September 1941.81 For Biondich, the second phase commenced in September 1941. The violent expulsion automatically called for resistance. An armed uprising of communist partisans forced the Second Italian Army to occupy large segments of western Croatia, where it set about neutralizing the policies of Pavelić and his Ustaša leaders. The occupying regime in the Italian zone of Herzegovina also decided to assist the persecuted Serbs and reopen the Orthodox churches for services. In its turn, the German regime ordered a stop to the deportation of Serbs to occupied Serbia and insisted that anti-Serbian policies be tempered. It thus became clear that the new state was ultimately subject to the joint control of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. The Croatian regime moderated its rhetoric of Serbian exclusion and moved on to promote the conversion of Orthodox Serbs to Roman Catholicism, in some cases enforcing it. In the autumn of 1941, the Serbs were described as former Catholics who had turned to Orthodoxy under the Ottomans. For some – if not all – of the Ustaša leaders, the conversion of Serbs to Roman Catholicism simultaneously signified their assimilation, their transition to Croatian nationality. This policy had its roots in pre-war ideas about the link between religion and national awareness in Croatia. The Ustaše motives had little to do with Catholic piety or Catholic proselytism as ends in itself. It was an attempt at forced assimilation. ‘Catholicism for the Ustaše was primarily an instrument for strengthening the state than a goal in itself.’82 The forced conversion campaign was set up in May 1941 by the Office of Religious Affairs, which was then under the leadership of a Franciscan friar by the name of Radoslav Glavas, a former seminary professor in Herzegovina. The auxiliary bishop of Zagreb, Josip Lach, rejected the policy, but the Office persisted and recruited individual priests willing to accept converts without the permission of the Croatian episcopate, 201

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which was evidently aware of the campaign. Historians differ on the number of conversions. According to Biondich, the most recent estimates range from between 97,447 and 99,333.83 Not only Serbs, but also many Gypsies were forced to convert to Catholicism: ‘thus escaping certain death or banishment. There were, however, some cases in which even converted Serbs were massacred after the ritual.’84 People converted for a huge variety of reasons. Often conflicts with the local priest were cited or a mixed marriage that required ‘resolution’ in the Catholic sense. Regional and local research reveals that the number of official conversions registered in Catholic parishes was much lower. In the archdiocese of Zagreb, for example, 35,602 Orthodox believers changed their affiliation, in the diocese of Djakovo 6,147. Jure Krišto quotes from a report written by a Catholic priest in the predominantly Orthodox Knin, where only 54 conversions were registered. His archive research in the diocese of Sibenik has uncovered indications that the Catholic priests in the said diocese did not go to work on their own initiative, but were placed under pressure by Orthodox believers who sought refuge in conversion. At the local level, the enthusiasm decreed from the top down was sometimes absent.85 It is possible nonetheless that such written information is not complete, because certain collective conversions of entire village communities without the explicit support of the local religious authorities were not registered.86 In the third phase of its religious war, beginning in February 1942, the Croatian regime was forced to adjust its policy towards the Serb minority yet again. The revolt of the communist partisans constituted the most significant act of opposition, which had forced the Italian occupier in turn to intervene in an effort to moderate Croatian hostility towards the Serbs. In the meantime, Croatia had lost control of large segments of its territory. It is probable in fact that it could only claim control over a third of the country. The partisans, moreover, had no difficulty in drafting new recruits from among the Serbs. In a counter offensive, Pavelić convened the parliament in Zagreb in February 1942 and informed the assembled representatives on the 28th of the same month that there was room in Croatia for the Orthodox Church; not the Serbian Orthodox Church but a Croatian variant. This was the Ustaša regime’s first step towards the pacification of the Serbs. In April 1942, Pavelić ordered the establishment of the Croatian Orthodox Church. Its creation was made possible when Hermogen (or Germogen) Maksimov, an 81-yearold bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church in exile in Sremski Karlovci, declared his readiness to serve as the church’s head, appointed ‘by the grace of God’ and by the Poglavnik. No single sister institution recognized this new Croatian Orthodox Church, which was immediately rejected by Serbian Orthodoxy. A small number of Serbian Orthodox and Russian priests joined its ranks, principally inspired by the desire to protect their communities. Hermogen and married priest Spiridon Mifka, the Bishop of Sarajevo, were executed after the war. The state even went as far as to recognize Croatian Orthodoxy as one of the official religions of Croatia, together with Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism and Islam (in Bosnia). Orthodox believers were thus free to consider themselves Croatian. In the eyes of the regime, the Croatian Orthodox Church was an instrument for assimilating Serbs into the new state. This vision, however, was not supported by all of the Ustaša leaders. 202

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Their rhetoric repeatedly insisted that the Croatian state was determined by Roman Catholicism and Islam, and that a distinction had to be made between Roman Catholics and Muslims on the one hand, and Orthodox on the other. The solution, in their opinion, was and continued to be, exclusion rather than assimilation. 3.4 Islam in Bosnia (Croatia) Bosnia and Herzegovina were added to independent Croatia in 1941. The victors wanted to compensate the new state for the ‘loss’ of Dalmatia. The Ustaše (members of the Ustaša) in its turn demanded Bosnia-Herzegovina for geo-political, historical, ethnic and linguistic reasons. A large number of Ustaša leaders came from the region. Ante Pavelić was born there, as were Vice Presidents Osman and Džafer-beg Kulenović and the Minister of the Interior, Andrija Artuković. Mile Budak, the same Minister of Education who had predicted a threefold future for the Serbs in both Croatia and Bosnia – death, expulsion or forced conversion – described the new state as a nation of two religions: Roman Catholicism and Islam. In the ideology of the Ustaša, the Bosnian Muslims were Croats and the territory in which they lived was Croatia. ‘The Bosnian Muslims accordingly were to be treated as brothers and allies, the “purest of all Croats”. The 800,000 Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina had to be removed. Islam, by contrast, was honoured for salvaging the spirit of Croatia from the past. Bošnjaštvo (Bosnianism) was “Croatianism” preserved by Islam, but it was an Islam divorced from the Middle East and thus simply another Croatian religion.’87 In Croatian Bosnia, an Islamic elite had opted for – or resigned itself to – cooperation with the Ustaše. The Mufti of Zagreb, Ismet Muftić, was a powerful supporter of the Croatian state, in which space had been made for sharia law in certain Bosnian courts and for Islamic social services. The reis-ul-ulema in Sarajevo, Fehim Spaho, likewise welcomed the new state, hoping that it would make it possible for him to achieve his own goals; in particular a ban on gambling, prostitution and religiously mixed marriages. He also expected a strict implementation of the injunction on women to wear a headscarf or veil.88 In time, however, he lost his initial confidence in Pavelić. The Poglavnik appointed representatives of the said elite to the position of Vice President: first Osman Kulenović and later his brother Džafer-beg Kulenović, who had headed the national organization of Yugoslavian Muslims. The latter had long been a supporter of Bosnian autonomy, but appeared in 1941 to be prepared to accept the Croatian vision of things, namely Bosnia as part of the Croatian nation. During the war, 12 per cent of the officials in the Croatian administrative apparatus were Muslim. Muslim representation in Zagreb was given priority: the art gallery owned by the renowned sculptor Ivan Meštrović was transformed into a mosque with three minarets. Bosnian combat groups made their presence felt by organizing bloodbaths in several Serb villages. They constituted the aforementioned ‘wild Ustaše’ or ‘nastashe’, a Croatian expression for the nationalists who had joined the Ustaša movement for opportunistic reasons. This was the primary reason why the Serb resistance, the so-called Cetniks, who took up – as yet unsurrendered arms – against the occupier shortly after the defeat of 203

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Yugoslavia, turned against the Muslims. Their initial actions were rooted in Serbian history: conflict with the ancient Turkish enemy, ‘thus illustrating continuing resentment of the Orthodox peasants toward the Muslim landlord’.89 Resistance intensified after the German invasion of the Soviet Union (June 1941). Brutal resistance operations in December 1941 and later led to the deaths of thousands of Muslims. The religious war evolved by degrees into a political struggle as a result of partisan involvement. Bosnia, in the meantime, became Yugoslavia’s most important theatre of war. ‘Compared to the conditions of the Jews or to the Serb Orthodox population Bosnian Muslims generally did not face the same amount of persecution or oppression from the Ustaše. What would cause far more bloodshed and destruction among Bosnian Muslims, was the general aspect of World War II in Yugoslavia that “is the story of many wars piled one on top of another”.’ Muslims came under attack from all sides; for the Četnici, they were part of the hated former Ottoman/Islamic rule; for the partisans, they were people who, for various reasons, did not support them with supplies or provide them with shelter.90 In 1943, Himmler made the decision to start recruiting Muslims for an SS division in an effort to involve the Muslim population more in the Croatian state and thus immunize them to a greater degree against the attacks of the Serbian Chetniks and Yugoslavian partisans. Since the SS was seen as a vanguard of the pure Germanic race, this decision was remarkable. But Himmler was renowned for combining a hatred for Christianity – and especially Catholicism, the religion of his youth – and his admiration for Islam. He acquired the support of the Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husayni, who, from his place of exile in Germany, ‘encouraged the Bosnian Muslim clergy to join the pan-Islamic struggle against European colonialism by aiding in the recruitment of the Thirteenth SS Handžar Division’. Muslim SS members were given permission to wear the fez (following the example of the former Habsburg monarchy). Even imams were allowed to join the division, offering an exceptional provision of spiritual care.91 After extensive training outside of Bosnia, the division of 12,000 Muslim volunteers returned in 1943 and participated in bloody anti-Serb actions.92 Pavelić did not welcome the establishment of this SS division because he saw the initiative as an expression of Muslim sympathy for the German occupation. Some Muslim leaders argued that a German protectorate for the Muslim population of Bosnia, following the example of the Habsburg protectorate of 1908, would at least be more salutary than a de facto submission to the Croatian state. ‘However, in the end the Muslim autonomists were rebuffed by Germany, which feared its client, the NDH , would find insupportable the removal of NDH influence over Bosnia and Herzegovina.’93 As said, Nazi Germany had found an ally in Hajj Amin al-Husayni, descendant of a Palestinian family who was chosen as ‘Grand Mufti’ of Jerusalem in 1921 and later as chairman of the Supreme Muslim Council, the administrative organ that governed mosques, Islamic schools and institutions. He used his position to combat Zionism and the political establishment of a Jewish National Home. After an Arab revolt against British authority in Palestine he was forced to flee to Lebanon and later to Iraq. He reached Italy in 1941 where he was welcomed by Mussolini, and then Germany, where he 204

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Figure 14 A member of the Bosnian SS -Division hangs a portrait of the Grand Mufti of Palestine, exiled in Nazi Germany. Photo: NIOD, Amsterdam.

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was received by Hitler and commenced a lengthy stay in Berlin. From his land of exile he continued to struggle against Zionism and for the (Arabian) independence of Palestine.94 3.5 The reaction of the Catholic Church How did the Catholic Church’s senior officials react in the context of Croatia’s religious war? We focus our attention in the first instance on the Archbishop of Zagreb, Alojzije Stepinac, who was to become one of the most controversial ecclesial authorities of the Second World War. Some saw him as a critical bishop, who welcomed his country’s independence as a true Croat, but distanced himself in the religious war from the violence of the Ustaše. His condemnation in post-war Yugoslavia thus transformed him into a martyr. Others accused him of involvement in ecclesial collaboration with the Croatian state, making him at least indirectly responsible for the murder or forced conversion of Orthodox Serbs and the deportation of Croatian Jews. Alojzije Stepinac was born in 1898 and had been young enough to serve during the First World War as an officer in the Hungarian army at the Isonzo front, where he became a prisoner of war under the Italians. In 1918, he served briefly in the Yugoslavian army at the Salonika front. He decided to become a priest in 1924 and studied at the Collegium Germanicum and the Gregorian University in Rome. In 1934, and at a relatively young age, he was appointed coadjutor to the Archbishop of Zagreb, Antun Bauer, succeeding him as archbishop in 1937. After his consecration in 1934, he travelled to Belgrade to take the oath of allegiance to King Alexander. Stepinac was formed in Rome by the ideals of Catholic Action, corporatism, and Catholic critique of communism and National Socialism, which he read about in the papal encyclicals stemming from the period. He integrated this same critique into his own pastoral letters. As archbishop, he worked hard to involve Catholics in Croatia in explicitly apolitical organizations like Catholic Action and in existing (and powerful) youth organizations such as the student union Domagoj and the Catholic Krizari (Crusaders). But he did not succeed in subordinating them directly under his authority.95 ‘Stepinac harboured fears of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, was distrustful of the western democracies and condemned Communism. Freemasonry was a particular obsession’ of the archbishop.96 He was sincere in his desire to keep himself and the rest of the clergy out of politics. ‘Stepinac was essentially a Vatican man, completely independent politically, and master in the church life of Croatian Catholicism but still young and not always conscious of the effect of what he was doing.’97 After the break-up of Yugoslavia Archbishop Stepinac wasted little time in paying his respects to the new authorities, first to the commander-in-chief of the Croatian army on 12 April 1941, and four days later to the head of state, Pavelić. ‘The Archbishop had the impression that Pavelić was a sincere Catholic and that the Church would enjoy freedom.’98 On 29 April 1941, he sent a letter to the priests of his diocese declaring that he and his fellow bishops wanted to contribute to the nation’s joy and enthusiasm for the independent Croatian state. ‘The hand of God was at work. In the shadow of the old cathedral and from this ancient fortress Stepinac spoke not only “as a son of the Croatian 206

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Figure 15 Aloizije Stepinac, Archbishop of Zagreb, during an open-air mass in Croatia. Photo: SOMA , Brussels.

people” but also, and more importantly as a representative of the Holy Church, which was “firmamentum et columna veritatis”.’99 The foundation of the state coincided unexpectedly with a jubilee year proclaimed by the archdiocese in celebration of the thirteenth centenary of relations between Croatia and the Holy See. The celebration used the Latin motto Croatia semper fidelis (‘Croatia always faithful’). Catholicism was a determining factor in the ideology of the new state and the episcopal and priestly expressions of approval were in no way inferior to those of the general population. At the opening of the Croatian parliament – the Sabor – on 23 February 1942, Croatia’s leader was received by the archbishop and his canons in the historical church of Saint Mark. In his address, Stepinac proclaimed a blessing on the government, the parliament of the Croatian state, and the person of the Poglavnik. The first anniversary of the NDH was celebrated with a Te Deum in the cathedral of Zagreb on 10 April 1942. This was repeated annually until April 1945 when the collapse of the state was approaching. Church approval of the state was quickly supplemented by expressions of distance. Within weeks Stepinac began privately to distance himself from the Ustaša regime. In the second month of independence, the archbishop wrote a letter to the Poglavnik in response to the murder of 260 Serbs in Glina, a city to the south-east of Zagreb. He argued in his letter that Catholic moral teaching did not permit the taking of human life without evidence of guilt.100 In another letter, he wrote that ‘the Jasenovac camp itself is a shameful stain on the honour of the NFH ’.101 But he remained naïve about the nature of 207

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the regime. When he asked the famous sculptor Ivan Meštrović ‘whether he thought Pavelić knew anything about the killings of Serbs and Meštrović replied that of course Pavelić knew everything, the archbishop went pale and burst into tears’.102 ‘He was still publicly silent about the misdeeds of the Ustaša bands, although he was already intervening privately in cases of Slovenes who had been expelled to Croatia.’103 In 1941, however, the archbishop’s private protests evidently had no effect. In 1942, therefore, he went public and condemned, in different words, aggression towards the Serbs, the destruction of their Orthodox churches and monasteries, and ‘the injustices and false ideology’ of the Croatian state. He became increasingly frustrated and disillusioned with the Ustaša, but could not bring himself to condemn their policies openly and unequivocally. ‘The most compelling reason to explain his silence appears to be his, as well as other Catholic bishops’ support for an independent Croatia.’104 Archbishop Stepinac instructed his priests to receive the Orthodox faithful and the Jews when they knocked on the door of the church to be converted and thereby save their lives. ‘Do not require any special religious knowledge, for Orthodox are Christians like us and the Jewish faith is the one from which Christianity originated. The role and task of Christians is first of all to save people.’ When these times of violence and affliction have passed, he continued, some of the converts will stay in our church and others will return to their original faith.105 The Vatican followed developments in Croatia with a mixture of approval and scepticism. In June 1941, Stepinac had asked the Holy See to send a representative to the newly independent Croatia. The Vatican appointed the Benedictine monk Joseph Ramon Marcone, abbot of the Abbey of Monte Vergine in Italy, who arrived in Zagreb as apostolic visitator and not as nuncio or permanent representative. For the Croatian authorities the Vatican’s decision did not go far enough in terms of recognition, for Peter II , the Yugoslavian king in exile, it went too far. Pavelić likened the Croatian state to Slovakia and priest-president Tiso, and felt that he had been short-changed.106 Around the middle of 1943, the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Maglione, informed Archbishop Stepinac that the Holy See had received complaints about the church’s support for Pavelić and the Ustaše. Stepinac replied on 24 May 1943 with an apology consisting of three distinct arguments. He recognized that crimes had been and were being committed by ‘irresponsible individuals’ that condemned the Croatian state. His first argument was that the Croatians had a legitimate reason to stand up for their own nation in a Yugoslavia that had been dominated by Serbs prior to the war. By way of example, he made reference to the attempted murder of a Croatian member of parliament in Belgrade (1929). He then expressed his fear – his second argument – of renewed oppression and terror should the ‘cetnici’, the Serbian wartime resistance movement, manage to win control. Stepinac’s third argument consisted of a catalogue of ten points on which the Croatian state had met the requirements of the Catholic Church. He pointed out that a number of ethical measures had been introduced, including a ban on abortion and pornography, together with further measures against freemasonry and blasphemy. Soldiers were given religious formation and religious education was being encouraged in the schools. The 208

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Church, he concluded, had also been able to profit from state donations to the seminaries and the clergy, the official support of church-based charitable work, and the maintenance of church buildings.107 The Archbishop of Zagreb had been informed in Rome of the Catholic social teaching that typified the Interbellum. It appears that he was imprisoned in a dilemma: adhesion to the state, which had explicitly incorporated Catholicism and Catholic social teaching in its Croatian ideology, or the rejection of acts of violence, that had also been committed in the name of Catholic Croatia. His growing pessimism surfaced in the spring of 1942 when he informed a Slovene captain – working for the British secret service – that he was counting on the resurrection of a federal Yugoslavia and was only cooperating with the Ustaše to prevent the situation from getting any worse. In November 1943, the German police murdered his brother on account of his involvement with the (communist) partisans, a resistance movement his mother had in fact been supporting with food aid. The national contradictions and political paradoxes of Yugoslavian society in time of war come together in the person of Alojzije Stepinac. He never threatened to withdraw either his personal approval or that of the Church from a government although it so often ignored the ecclesial interests. ‘He continued to fear the Communist Scylla much more that the Fascist Charybdis. A Soviet victory in the war would mean that “the devil will have authority over both the world and hell”.’108 The other bishops in Croatia adopted their own approach to the political situation and the reign of terror. The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Sarajevo, Ivan Šarić, expressed his open support of the Croatian regime. He had become a strong Croatian nationalist, ‘emotional and triumphalist even by the standards of those times’.109 He visited Pavelić in his exile in Italy and praised him in his 1941 Christmas sermon as a ‘Ustaše miracle worker’. His archdiocese became the centre of the conversion campaign. On the other side of the divide, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Djakovo, Antun Aksamović, made it publicly clear that Serbian Orthodox believers were welcome in his church as a place of refuge and that they would always be free to return to Serbian Orthodoxy after the war. The Franciscan order in Croatia and especially in Herzegovina played a particularly important role. Their conspicuous presence was a legacy from the Habsburg monarchy, which had acquired control of Bosnia-Herzegovina in the nineteenth century. The Catholic Church was thus considered an ally in the establishment of imperial authority. With the approval and support of the Habsburgs, the Franciscans built churches, monasteries and schools. The Holy See intervened, however, and decreed that one-third of the parishes were to remain in the hands of the secular clergy and two-thirds in the hands of the Friars Minor, who were popular among the people and not very amenable to episcopal discipline. During the Interbellum, many of the latter openly sympathized with Croatian nationalism, and during the war with the Ustaše. The British – and Catholic – writer Evelyn Waugh, who took part in a liaison mission to the Partisans in 1944, wrote in a report that these Franciscans were a source of irritation in Rome ‘for their independence and narrow patriotism. They were mainly recruited from the least cultured part of the population and there is abundant evidence that several wholly unworthy men were 209

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attracted to the Franciscan Order by the security and comparative ease which it offered.’110 A considerable number made their political choice manifest by serving as officers in nationalist armed forces or as chaplains. In addition to the aforementioned executioner of Jasenovac, two other Franciscans were expelled from the order on account of their radical behaviour. A secular priest by the name of Ivo Guberina was one of the Ustaše’s leading ideologists. Archbishop Stepinac stripped him of his priesthood in 1943. In April 1942, the Holy See named two bishops without requesting prior permission from the Croatian government. Peter Cule, in contrast to his predecessors a nonFranciscan, was appointed to Mostar, and the Greek Catholic pope Simrak became Bishop of Krizevci, the diocese of the Uniates in Croatia. Archbishop Stepinac was in Rome at the time these decisions were being prepared. The Poglavnik initially refused to recognize the appointments but he later conceded under threat of excommunication. Stepinac planned to consecrate the Bishop of Mostar in person, aware that he was faced with the difficult task of coming to grips with the Franciscans in his diocese. Bishop Simrak was faced with the similarly difficult task of putting an end to the persecution of Greek Catholics, who were considered unwanted citizens on account of their orthodoxy. In Stepinac’s vision of things, Simrak and his Uniate church offered a way out of the dead-end street of Orthodox persecution and expulsion in Croatia. According to estimates, roughly one million people lost their lives in Yugoslavia during the Second World War, 60 per cent in the state of Croatia. Of this number, estimates suggest that roughly 100,000 prisoners died in Jasenovac concentration camp, i.e. a total of 17 per cent. Three-quarters were Serbs, Jews or Gypsies,111 put to death in the name of National Socialism, but also in the name of Catholicism. The church authorities were unable to prevent these atrocities, caught up as they were in the nationalist ideology. The best they could do was to moderate the cruelty. 3.6 Orthodoxy in Serbia Of all the component parts of the former Yugoslavia, Serbia elicited the most aggression from the occupier in April 1941 and for two reasons. The first was the fact that political resistance against the pact between Yugoslavia and Nazi Germany had its roots in a Serb military elite and in the leadership of the Serbian Orthodox Church. The political crisis that resulted brought about the fall of the Yugoslavian regent. During the following German punitive expedition, the Wehrmacht were led by Austrian officers who nurtured feelings of revenge towards the people they believed to have been responsible for the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 and thus indirectly for the fall of the Habsburg monarchy. This explains an undeniable fact: that both the reprisals against civilians by a rapidly spreading resistance, and the National Socialist persecution of the Jews were quick and bloody. In the political crisis of late March 1941, the Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Gavrilo Dožić, took a clear and unashamed stance against the pact with Germany. Some Serbian nationalists distrusted him because of his Montenegrin descent.112 He had openly saluted the coup d’état organized by Serb officers that had 210

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annulled Yugoslavia’s accession to the said alliance. In a radio address, he spoke about the incident ‘in terms of the epic tradition’, with a reference to the tragic story of Serbian defeat against the Ottomans in Kosovo in 1389. The Serbian nation was once again being confronted with the question of its destiny. The answer came in the early morning of 27 March 1941: ‘We chose the heavenly kingdom – the kingdom of truth, justice, national strength, and freedom. That eternal idea is carried in the hearts of all Serbs, preserved in the shrines of our churches and written on our banners.’113 With the inevitable prospect of German revenge, his words came close to an appeal for national self-sacrifice. They directly recalled defeat at the Battle of Kosovo, which had formed Serb national awareness. At a meeting on 29 March, the assembly (Sabor) of the Serbian Orthodox Church decided that, in the certain expectation of war that had followed the coup, all bishops were to remain in their dioceses. On 6 April, Yugoslavia was brutally punished for breaking its alliance with the Axis Powers. The bombing of Belgrade had also badly damaged the buildings of the Patriarchate. The patriarch himself sought refuge in the monastery of Rakovića, on the outskirts of the city. He then made his way south, in the wake of a buckling government, to Užiće and from there to the monastery of Ostrog in Montenegro. The government then decided to leave the country and boarded a plane in Nikšić heading for Greece. The patriarch agreed with the decision but refused to take part, in spite of the pressure being exercised upon him. ‘The patriarch took leave of the king on April 14 and gave him his blessing.’114 Defences collapsed, outnumbered by a superior force of German, Italian, Hungarian and Bulgarian troops. ‘The Yugoslav government fled. Before ending up in London, it passed through Jerusalem, from where, it was pointed out, the grey hawk had once set out with its fateful message for Prince Lazar.’115 The Battle of Kosovo and the Serb prince who suffered defeat were called to mind once again. On 25 April 1941, German soldiers entered the monastery of Ostrog and arrested the patriarch and his nephew Dušan, a young man who functioned as his private secretary. Both men were brought to Sarajevo where they were expected to appear in front of a military court. The court condemned Gavrilo for supporting the coup of 27 March and for encouraging resistance against the German occupying regime. He was badly treated in both prison and in court and his nephew was beaten. The patriarch was brought back to Belgrade where he was imprisoned until 5 May.116 As a result of his failing health, he was then forced to return to the monastery of Rakovica. As already mentioned, the Serbian Orthodox Church was persecuted in independent Croatia. In other regions of the former Yugoslavia, however, it also declined in number. Orthodox believers and priests were among the hordes of refugees from occupied territories who made their way to central Serbia in the summer of 1941. Orthodox bishops were driven from their dioceses in the western and eastern provinces and met one another in the heartland of the Church. The first revolt of any significance was recorded in Montenegro as early as July 1941, three months after the invasion. The Italian regime’s readiness to respond with severity was more a reaction to the early emergence of resistance than a preconceived goal. Montenegro, which had been ascribed to Mussolini, was to become an autonomous 211

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kingdom. After all, King Victor Emanuel III had married Jelena (Helena), a daughter of the Montenegrin Petrović dynasty. On 12 July, the feast of Saints Peter and Paul under the Julian calendar, a ‘national assembly’ agreed to the royal plan. Insurrection fostered by the Serbian part of Montenegro, which considered independence as a rupture with Serbia, followed the day after. The revolt was radically suppressed. The occupying regime intensified its control over church life and church administration. From then on, every announcement and pastoral letter had to be written in both Serbian and Italian, and baptismal names had to be included in both languages in the parish registers. In Montenegro, the diocesan territory of the Serbian Orthodox Church was divided between the strip of land around the Gulf of Kotor – which had been annexed by Italy and added to Dalmatia – and the highlands that were occupied by Italian forces after the rebellion. The church also had to deal with refugees from Croatia and Kosovo. The Italian occupying regime endeavoured to gain the support of the officials of the Orthodox Church and of the Roman Catholic Church. Montenegro’s Orthodox bishop, Joanikije Lipovac, was left out of the process, however, because he was seen as a ‘creature’ of the Patriarch of Belgrade. The regime also encountered resistance from the Serbian church, since many of the faithful could not accept the fact that the ‘sacred province’ of Kosovo had been ‘given away’ to the satellite state of Albania. As a matter of fact, the Serbian Orthodox Church ultimately returned to the administrative relations it remembered from the time of the Ottomans. The leadership of the church was forced to respect civil authority in exchange for a degree of freedom in its preaching and liturgy. Orthodoxy had to renew itself as the symbol of the Serbian nation. For this reason it had to make its presence felt in the occupied territory. On 4 August 1941, the Synod – an administrative organ made up of four bishops and Metropolitan Josif (Cvijović) charged with day to day affairs – issued a pastoral letter in which the clergy were called upon to gather the faithful around them and to be their example. In another letter (26 September 1941), attention was drawn to the persecution of Serbs outside of Serbia and to the internecine struggle that confronted them. The Synod called upon the German occupying powers to put an end to the persecution of Serbs in Croatia and in the occupied territories under foreign domination. The leadership of the Serbian Orthodox Church fell into the hands of Metropolitan Josif of Skopje who had been expelled from Macedonia. The prelate had a strong personality and was familiar with the rigours of war, having fought in the Balkan wars against the Ottomans. Josif acquired permission at the end of May 1941 to visit the patriarch in his German prison or in Rakovica. This first meeting took place in the company of two German officers. The patriarch informed the metropolitan that he approved of what he was doing because he always acted in the interests of the Serbian Orthodox Church. But he was unable to pass on patriarchal authority to him because such would be in conflict with canon law. The German officers pressured Gavrilov without success to give his permission nevertheless ‘in so many words’. The Synod, however, interpreted Gavrilo’s verbal support as an endorsement of a (provisional) transfer of authority. Metropolitan Josif headed the Serbian Orthodox Church until the end of the war. 212

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From 29 August 1941, the German occupying regime handed over the governance of Serbia proper to Milan Nedić, a former Minister of Defence and military chief of staff. General Nedić had been an officer in the pre-war Serbian army and was known as a capable military leader. He became convinced during the Interbellum of German superiority and considered a war against the Wehrmacht as a non-starter. The German occupying regime had their suspicions nevertheless. For the Serb population in time of war, Nedić was less of a Quisling and more of a man ‘who knowingly sacrificed himself, much as Marshal Pétain did, in order to prevent the loss of Serb lives and in general to soften as much as possible the severity of the German occupation. To some extent this is a fair judgement.’117 The general was an avowed enemy of the resistance in Serbia, of the communist partisans he was determined to oppose without mercy, and of the nationalists he considered to be inspired by the Serbian government in exile in London. For Nedić, the German occupation was God’s justified punishment for Serbian society’s neglect of religious values during the Interbellum. What he had in mind was a Serbian variant of the national revolution of Vichy France, an authoritarian movement that would promote family values and bring about a moral renaissance. Because the German occupying regime had little if any interest in an independent National Socialist Serbia, and because Nedić’s government was and remained unpopular, his suggested political implementation of the ancient Serbian and ethical ideal of Svetosavalje (a reference to Saint Sava, apostle of Serbia) ultimately came to nothing. Nedić tried to win the support of the Serbian Orthodox Church and repeatedly visited the patriarch in his monastery prison. In October 1941, he convened the synod in order to inform the bishops that the German occupying regime was unhappy with the attitude of the church. On the other hand, the patriarch was convinced that the general had managed to avoid more damaging developments by placing himself in the position of collaborator and taking on government leadership. He continued to refuse public support to Nedić, in spite of the latter’s insistence. In Yugoslavia, invasion by Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and their allies had led to a relatively swift victory. Almost immediately thereafter, however, fighters emerged in the primarily Serbian regions – those at least who had escaped being taken as prisoners of war – ready to use their military arms in resistance and taking a step backwards, as it were, in national history. The so-called cetan, the group that had once turned against the Ottomans in the Balkan wars, acquired a new form in 1941. For the Chetniks, this historical parallel served to legitimate their struggle. The German invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 signalled the appearance of a new resistance movement, the communist-dominated partisans. Hitler’s decision to cover the southern flank of his invading forces by occupying Yugoslavia resulted in the nightmare of a two-sided partisan war.

4 Epilogue In the present chapter, three specific questions have guided our research and argumentation. What position did the most senior authorities of the Christian churches 213

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adopt towards the new rulers? What were the consequences of the identification of religion and nation for the churches’ position under occupation? And to what extent did the churches lose or maintain their religious freedoms and their social institutions under a totalitarian or nationalist occupying regime? The aggressors in the Second World War encountered military and civil resistance in the first instance, but in the process of confirming and legitimating their authority they also had to account for numerically well-represented religious institutions with deep-rooted national sentiments. They were obliged to win over the leaders of the most important Christian churches, willingly or unwillingly. The question of the churches’ loyalty towards the new rulers had a unique dimension: were there theological arguments that might support a declaration of obedience? The loyalty question was addressed to the archbishops and primates of the Roman Catholic Church, to the patriarchs and metropolitans of the Orthodox churches (who had an authoritative constitutional function rooted in the history of their respective nations), the bishops of the Lutheran churches in the countries around the Baltic, and the synods of the Calvinist churches. While the picture is a complicated one, it is clear nonetheless that the highest ecclesial authorities were a significant factor in the process of legitimating regime change and occupation. In Austria, the archbishop went particularly far in his efforts to establish a compromise with the Nazi regime. In Poland, where the primate of the pre-eminently Polish Catholic Church had fled to Rome before the capitulation, a similar agreement was impossible because of the racial policy of the National Socialist invaders. In Serbia, where the patriarch was immediately arrested, the church leader’s silence became a gauge of Nazi repression. In Greece, on the other hand, the archbishop was replaced in order to facilitate a legitimate transfer of authority, but his successor developed into a ‘Guide of his People’ for his efforts in combating the famine. In Northern and Western Europe, where a comparatively mild form of occupation had been the order of the day in 1940, church leaders initially played a role encouraging the public acceptance of the new regime, especially in Vichy France, Belgium and Norway. The same theological grounds for legitimating an occupation were evidently not shared by all. It would appear that the conquest of Eastern Europe was so radical and violent that there was simply no room for reflection on the cause thereof or on obedience. In other parts of the continent, however, we can locate reactions in two more or less distinct camps. The first reflected on war and occupation as a punishment for moral and religious decline during the Interbellum and saw it as occasioning a process of purification. In the positive sense, this awareness led to the emergence of movements and institutions that addressed the population at both political and ethical levels. The adhesion of the National Revolution in the New France of Vichy serves as a clear example in this regard. The second camp focused rather on the Christian notion of the obligation to obey the divinely appointed worldly authorities, rendered in Paul’s renowned letter to the Romans, which was invoked on occasion to grant legitimation to the new leaders. But the question also turned around the right of Christians to engage in resistance. The most striking result was the declaration ‘Foundations of the Church’ (Kirkens Grunn), on 214

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which basis the Lutheran Church in Norway detached itself from civil authority and argued in favour of an obligation to resist an unjust state. What made it possible for the church as national institution to promote obedience to the new regime or indeed advise against it? In response to our second question, we can begin by pointing out that the Christian churches considered themselves, and were considered by others, to have made an important contribution to the formation of European nation states. This process was reinforced when the major multi-ethnic empires of Central and Southern Europe fell apart after the First World War. The dominant religion turned out to be an important factor in the formation of national awareness in the new states. Even the denial of this process serves to demonstrate its existence. When there was clear evidence during the Interbellum of religious pluralism in a (new) state, this pluralism was a potential source of disunity. It gave the occupying regime the opportunity to use oppositions and opponents to reinforce its own authority. Each of the three satellite states of Nazi Germany had its own national church: in Denmark the Lutheran People’s Church, in Slovakia and Croatia the Catholic Church. The Danish church made its own contribution to early acceptance of dependence on Berlin. Yeshayahu Jelinek has made a comparison between Slovakia and Croatia. The impact of Nazi ideology on Croatian fascism was ‘evident’. The Croatian state welcomed ideas from the Third Reich and ‘ecclesial opposition to these was also more determined and open’. The Slovak People’s Party, by contrast, ‘avoided certain utterances and deeds incompatible with the Church teaching. In addition, the regime granted the anti-fascist clergy some living space, provided it remained politically passive. The conflict between national and religious goals in Slovakia was less evident.’118 Another significance of the church as a national factor in the Second World War is related to two types of occupying regime: the totalitarian and the nationalist. Under the Nazis, who pursued a policy of racial extermination with respect to the Jews and Slavs, the said distinction was also a relative one. They violently attacked Catholicism in the annexed regions of (former) Poland because Catholicism was seen there as a pre-eminent factor of Polish national awareness. The same was true for the suppression of Orthodoxy in occupied Serbia. The persecution of Serbian Orthodox citizens unleashed in the independent state of Croatia is among the most pointed examples of the violent consequences that can result from the identification of a church and a nation. While the Italian occupying regimes were equipped with a fascist ideology, the latter was not used against the Christian churches in every instance, although a process of Italianization was implemented with some degree of consistency. The Christian churches were forced to accept such imposed nationalization under the Albanian, Hungarian and Bulgarian occupations. It was considered a violation of the churches’ cultural integrity and came as a serious blow to those churches that were often considered the location in which national cultural treasures, such as the vernacular, were preserved and revivified. Nazi Germany’s allies and Fascist Italy even pursued a policy of ‘ethnic cleansing’ in the Balkan regions under their authority, rooted in nationalist fervour. The said ‘cleansing’ also extended to the churches. 215

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A variant of the relationship between church and nation can be observed in Western as well as Central Europe: ecclesial support for the national unity movements that emerged in response to the political crises at the beginning of the Second World War. The variant in question is best understood as more political and less cultural. The État française, which was proclaimed by Marshal Pétain in June 1940, was seen by its initiators as an exodus from the democracy and laicism of the Third Republic and a return to traditional principles and an authoritarian and national regime. In reality, this was an option for a certain idea of France and was a form of renewal that was endorsed by the Catholic and Protestant churches of the day. Related organizations emerged in the Netherlands and Belgium with an emphasis on corporatism and authoritarian forms of government. The church authorities, at least those of the Catholic Church, initially exhibited a certain readiness to tolerate such a development and even favour it on occasion. The dominant ideology in independent Slovakia – a state governed by ‘clerico-fascism’ – was an idealized image of an authoritarian and corporative nation state. The government of the Second Republic in Czecho-Slovakia had already turned in this direction, convinced after the Treaty of Munich that democracy and laicism had been responsible for its defeat and the subsequent violation of its sovereignty in 1938. When it came to the concrete suppression of Christianity – the answer to our third question – points of agreement are evident between National Socialism and communism. In their specifically totalitarian perspective, the churches – and especially those with extensive social roots and influence – became a hindrance to the equalization of society, which had to be de-confessionalized. Christian education, built up over centuries, and more recently established Christian organizations had to be abolished. The churches were stripped of their civil status and reduced to private associations. The state no longer provided financial support or paid the salaries of church officials. Stalin and Hitler, both raised as Christians, were guided by the principle of ‘discretionary powers’ in their policy towards Christianity. Christian churches were to be suppressed in principle, but they could also be tolerated and used when the war required it or when an occupying force was establishing itself. Hitler went further than Stalin in the implementation of this policy, but both demonstrated their readiness to profit from the church as well as suppress it. When the Soviet Union became involved in the Second World War, the Russian Orthodox Church acquired a renewed degree of elbow-room as a result of the Soviet policy of ‘Russification’ in the recovered territories. The churches were not persecuted to the same intensity throughout occupied Europe, at least not at the outset. A striking difference can be observed between the religious politics of the National Socialist occupying regimes in Central and Eastern Europe and those of Northern and Western Europe. Concrete suppression and radical persecution characterized policies towards the church in the annexed regions on both sides of the Altreich: in the ‘Westmark’, in the ‘Ostmark’ and in the captured Polish provinces along the (former) eastern border of Germany. In the North and West, the churches were treated with greater tolerance. The Lutheran Church in Norway was comparatively quick in its opposition to the Nazi regime, but the Norwegian National Socialist Quisling 216

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played a central role in this regard. He used his radical religious politics to settle a score with the Norwegian establishment. In the initial years of the Second World War, when Germany appeared to be invincible, political rapprochement was clearly evident with respect to the ‘new order’ of a Europe dominated by Nazi Germany. This was particularly the case with the states that were able to maintain varying forms of independence in spite of being occupied. Mutual ‘tolerance’ between the occupying regimes on the one hand, and the authoritarian or corporative movements on the other, did not last. From the German invasion of the Soviet Union (22 June 1941) onwards, opposition intensified and (albeit partial) domestic reconciliation steadily evolved into a domestic conflict. The war became tangible in more and more domains and in more and more places.

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Map 2 Occupations in Europe.

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CHAPTER 5 RELIGION IN ALL OUT WAR

Introduction As explained above, with the German invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, the war in Europe changed character. Invasions completed with clockwork regularity in anything from a few days to a maximum of two months made way for total and permanent conflict, ‘final victory’ or definitive defeat its apparently unavoidable result. It was presented and experienced as a confrontation between two ideologies: National Socialism and Communism. War as a clash of armies was a thing of the past. The new situation was a power struggle between two social systems. New dimensions of society took second place to the necessary war effort. This meant, among other things, that government leaders had to appeal to the loyalty of institutional Christianity (and Islam) and such loyalty came with a price. The question thus arises as to the extent to which the need for a collective war effort curbed the policy of suppression totalitarian leaders had deployed thus far towards the Christian churches. Had a ‘divine truce’ between the secular state and institutional religion become a necessity? And were religious leaders capable of responding to this invitation or expectation? Religion was a potential source of patriotism and militancy, and it could also nourish obedience under a secular authority. Docility and militancy were valued by the totalitarian ideologies of the twentieth century, but for varying reasons and in a secular context. The urgency of the collective war effort saw to it that differences were relativized, and when the conflict reached its climax reality took the upper hand. The ancient bond between religious institution and nation state was revived. From June 1941 onwards the Second World War became steadily more radical throughout Europe. Religious institutions not only observed this reality at the administrative level, they also experienced it in local communities and parishes. The advance of the German invaders left a political no-man’s-land in its wake, in which religion was free to regenerate after decades of persecution. On the whole, however, this respite did not tend to last long. Occupying regimes wasted little time in their efforts to control and exploit the revival. But the afflictions of war also became a theme with which the religious leaders and the faithful in general were confronted and with which they were forced to grapple. This applied to questions of life and death on the battlefield as much as it did to the encouragement and comforting of family members on the home front. In the present chapter we will focus on the German advance from 1941 onwards and the subsequent occupation of western segments of the Soviet Union up to and including the turnabout in the fortunes of war after the Russian victories at Stalingrad and Kursk 219

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(both in 1943). Our study will endeavour to answer four questions: How and to what extent did the Christian churches share in the warfare? What freedoms were the religious institutions able to acquire or maintain amidst the violence of war? How was the ancient alliance between church and nation state activated in the years of the war? To what extent was (the Christian) religion a source of comfort and encouragement on and off the battlefield?

1 The Great Patriotic War On Sunday 22 June 1941, the day on which German forces invaded the Soviet Union, Metropolitan Sergii (Stragorodsky) delivered a dramatic message to the faithful gathered in the cathedral of the Epiphany in Moscow. He had just completed celebrating the liturgy and had been informed about the war in the sacristy. After a brief moment of reflection, he drafted a sermon in which he condemned the invader and invoked God’s blessing on all believers that they might take a stand on behalf of the fatherland. The metropolitan quoted from the history of the nation. The hostile days of the knights of the German Order, of the Swedish king Charles IX of the House of Vasa, and of Napoleon had returned. Once again the descendents of the enemies of Orthodox Christianity were determined to force the people of Russia to its knees. In the same historical perspective he recalled Alexander Nevsky and Dimitri Donskoy, medieval rulers who had fought with success against Sweden (1240) and the German Order (1242) respectively, or against the Mongols (1378). He called them ‘the holy pioneers of the Russian people, who gave their lives for the fatherland’.1 In the calendar of the Russian Orthodox Church, 22 June is the Feast of All Saints of the Land of Russia.2 This feast alone stimulated patriotic emotions. It is not clear whether the metropolitan was the first – taking the Patriotic War against Napoleon in 1812 as his example – to refer to the defence of the country against Hitler as a Great Patriotic War. On the first day of the invasion, Minister for Foreign Affairs Molotov also used the expression, but the ecclesial variant was couched in language that did not call for the defence of the revolution, but rather the defence of the fatherland, stating that ‘our Orthodox Church’ had always shared the fate of the Russian people. Together with the people, the church had endured trials and tribulations, and together with the people it had been comforted by victory. Sergii distributed his sermon in the form of a pastoral letter to all his parishes, thereby transgressing the ban against developing activities outside the church and interfering in matters of state. Four days later, the metropolitan had sung a prayer of entreaty for Russian victory in his cathedral during a celebration that was attended by hundreds of believers. He had set the tone of an orthodox offensive, in which patriotic rhetoric took pride of place and the war was explained as an attack on Russia, not on the Soviet Union and not on socialism. The church leader had been unintentionally transformed into a determined war leader, certainly when compared with Stalin, for whom the invasion was apparently such a shock that he had to wait until 29 June, a full seven days later, before he could address his 220

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hard-pressed people in a radio broadcast. The Soviet authorities quickly recognized the metropolitan’s true value and moved him with haste to Ulyanovsk at the foot of the Ural Mountains, to keep him and his entourage safe from the German invaders in their advance on Moscow. The Orthodox Church could breathe again. In the autumn of 1941, the publication of the atheist journals Bezbozhnik and Antireligioznik was halted, officially because of a paper shortage. The printer responsible for their publication now devoted his time to a book entitled The Truth about Religion in Russia, intended as propaganda on religious freedom for the Soviet Union’s Anglo-Saxon allies. The experienced reader was faced, nevertheless, with a sad picture: ‘Photographs of worn, tired, sad, elderly faces of the lay church activists; the meagre quantity of active churches photographed. The statements assuring the reader of complete religious freedom in the USSR sound hollow and unconvincing in the face of these photographs and of the total absence of church statistics.’3 The book portrayed Hitler and his forces as the embodiment of the Antichrist. In 1942, the government granted the Orthodox Church permission – in Moscow at least – to organize the traditional nocturnal Easter procession (8–9 April) outside the church walls, in spite of the blackout and the danger of German air attacks. ‘As they carried the icons through gaunt, deserted streets, believers wept in gratitude and relief. “Dear God,” sighed one, “Our Stalin let us process all night in our Easter vigil. God grant him health.” The people were allowed to celebrate eternal life, and soon they would be helped to pray over their grief.’4 In besieged Leningrad, Metropolitan Aleksii seized the opportunity to urge his distressed faithful to demonstrate perseverance and patriotism. Easter, Eastern Christianity’s most important feast, coincided in 1942 with the seventh centenary of the aforementioned victory of Alexander Nevsky against the knights of the German Order, a conflict that had taken place on the ice of Lake Peipus and had saved the city of Novgorod. The similarities were obvious: Russia could survive through the religious faith of the Russian people. Reward followed in 1943. On 3 September, Sergii was summoned back to Moscow. The next day he was informed that he was to be received by Stalin together with the other two metropolitans still resident on Soviet soil, namely Aleksii (Simansky) of Leningrad and Nikolai (Jaruševič) of Kiev. Three written testimonies to this encounter have survived: a report by Anatoli Levitin-Krasnov, a member of the Church of the Renovationists, the left-wing variant of Orthodoxy, dictated by Metropolitan Nikolai; an account by Mark Popovsky, who received the information from Metropolitan Aleksii via a third party and who found that the prelates had thrown away the chance of more concessions. A third report was published in 1994, consisting of the personal notes of Georgii Karpov, the NKVD (secret police) expert on religious affairs.5 The midnight meeting was both symbolic and dramatic. Minister for Foreign Affairs Molotov joined Stalin in receiving the Orthodox delegation and opened the discussion with a question concerning the ‘needs’ of the Church. Sergii responded and spoke in the first instance of the convocation of a Sobor (Council) to facilitate the election of a patriarch and thus ascribe him greater authority, also with respect to the Renovationist 221

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Church. He also asked permission to restart the publication of the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate and thereby restore communication between the dioceses. Metropolitan Aleksii asked for permission to open bank accounts to allow parishes to take care of their own administration. Both Sergii and Aleksii also expressed a desire for a theology programme to be set up for new priests and the reopening of (former) churches in regions where they were now lacking. The final question was a painful one (‘neudobny’), and in contrast to the previous questions was not met with much enthusiasm. Metropolitan Aleksii asked if the bishops might be granted the freedom to visit the camps and prisons. In a dramatized version of the encounter, Stalin is said to have interrupted the ensuing silence, taking his pipe from his mouth and asking: Why have you no personnel? Where are they? Aleksii and Nikolai were taken aback by the look on Stalin’s face and fell silent with embarrassment, since everyone present was well aware that the church’s personnel had been deported to the camps. Only Sergii refused to be flustered by the question. ‘We lack personnel for several reasons, one of which is we train a man to be a priest, but he becomes a Marshal of the Soviet Union.’ A satisfied grin moved the dictator’s moustache. He said: ‘ “Yes, yes, I was a seminarist. I even heard about you.” He then fell to reminiscing about his years as a seminarist. He said that his mother had regretted to her dying day that he had not become a priest.’6 The conversation had taken a turn. The prelates were to make a list of prominent church prisoners and their release would be investigated. When the list was submitted in October of the same year, it turned out that most of the bishops in question were already dead. Stalin invited the metropolitans ‘to create a Vatican of sorts’; in other words to create a patriarchal centre of administration in Moscow with the same charisma as the papal administration in Rome. According to Karpov’s notes, this remark was intended to promote ecclesial restoration in the interior. In his later account, Popovsky summarized the discussion as an incentive for the Russian Orthodox Church to participate in the Soviet Union’s foreign policy.7 After all, the designation of the patriarchate of Moscow as the ‘third Rome’ was extraordinarily appealing to Slavic orthodoxy. It was observed in Levitin’s – dramatized – report that the metropolitans, apprehensive after decades of persecution, were unassuming and let the opportunity of reaching a bigger and more advantageous ‘deal’ slip through their fingers. ‘Had the bishops been Jews, they would have bargained a better deal and today we would have had legalized religious education for children.’ According to the same report, minute taker Georgii Karpov, head of the NKVD department that had been responsible for the arrest and execution of priests, only appeared at this juncture. Stalin informed those present that Karpov was to be appointed as liaison between the Church and the state. ‘But,’ Sergii is alleged to have retorted, ‘is this not the same Karpov who had persecuted us?’ ‘Precisely,’ replied Stalin, sadistically happy with the effect. ‘The Party used to order Karpov to persecute you, and he fulfilled the will of the Party. Now we shall order him to be your protector-guardian. I know Karpov, he is an obliging subordinate.’8 At the end of the discussion – by this time three in the morning – Metropolitan Sergii was exhausted. ‘Stalin took him by the arm like a true altar boy, helped him carefully 222

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down the stairs, and said on taking his leave at the door: “Your Grace, this is all I can do for you at the present time.” ’9 A government car was waiting to take the prelate to the former residence of the German ambassador, which was to serve as his home and office in Moscow from then on. Stalin had taken the initiative to organize this meeting at a point at which the fortunes of war had turned for the Soviet Union. The Red Army had enjoyed success at the Battle of Stalingrad and the Battle of Kursk. The time had now come to explore the consequences of potential victory. The Russian Orthodox Church had been a loyal partner in the defence of the fatherland, but its potential was considered to be largely untapped. It could be exploited as a useful instrument in the cultural reconstruction of the Soviet Union, but more importantly, it was an institution that could serve – as of old – Russian domination in the states of Central and Eastern Europe that had been liberated by the Red Army. Furthermore, a degree of ecclesial independence could be a useful argument in relations with the Anglo-Saxon world, in which public opinion had been deeply disturbed by Stalin’s persecution of the churches.10 Only four days after the meeting, on 8 September 1943, a sobor or synod of the Russian Orthodox Church was organized in Moscow. Upon the suggestion of Metropolitan Aleksii, the locum tenens Metropolitan Sergii was elected as patriarch. The nineteen participating bishops were flown into Moscow by the Soviet air force. The haste exhibited by the Stalinist regime in calling the synod raised questions about the selection of attending dignitaries. Besides the three metropolitans, only ten bishops were publicly active at the time. The remaining six must have been released from prison for the occasion or allowed to return from exile. The four days between the end of the meeting and the synod must not have offered enough time to transport other bishops from their various places of captivity. A few, moreover, may have refused to participate. In 1943, the Catacomb Church was still a ‘dynamic reality’. Bishop Afanasii (Sakharov), for example, who had a following among the ‘underground’ clergy, refused to recognize the legitimacy of Sergii’s election as patriarch. The patriarch and the two metropolitans, Aleksii and Nikolai, now constituted a Russian Orthodox ‘war cabinet’. While Sergii busied himself with matters relating to pastoral care and moral theology, Aleksii concentrated on patriotic appeals and collections for the forces. Nikolai focused on international relations and became a member of the Extraordinary State Commission for research into German war crimes in the occupied territories, and was ‘in fact the main Soviet foreign policy spokesman and propagandist, in clerical garb’.11 In this function, for example, he signed a declaration in which the murder of ten thousand Polish officers in the forest of Katyń was ascribed to the Germans, while all the evidence pointed in reality to the NKVD. The new patriarch celebrated a solemn liturgy in his cathedral on 7 November 1943, the 26th anniversary of the October Revolution. The variable portion of the said liturgy consisted of prayers of thanksgiving for the recapture of Kiev by the Red Army. The same patriotic liturgy was repeated in Moscow and Leningrad in November 1944. A more pregnant illustration of the incorporation of the Orthodox Church into the Soviet policy would be hard to find. 223

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2 Orthodoxy and the experience of war The Workers and Peasants Red Army, the primary force in the defence of the fatherland, had been instituted by an atheist state. Its militancy was nourished by a communist ideology and controlled by a network of officers charged with political formation (politruks). For them, the turnabout in the official policy towards religion was of little importance. ‘Formal religion, so comforting to some civilians, was little use to the soldiers at the front. Rage and hatred, which the state also nurtured, were more likely to inspire the men on the brink of combat.’12 Moreover, the bulk of the Red Army stemmed from a generation that was raised on communist doctrine and in the isolation of ‘socialism in one single land’, in which Moscow was simply the centre of the world: the ‘Komsomol Generation’.13 The Soviet authorities’ change of policy towards the church caused confusion among party members, who had been informed at great length about the backwardness of religion. Mikhail Kalinin, head of state in the Soviet Union during the war, was ‘still telling Party propagandists that it was all right for younger men to laugh at middle-aged recruits in the Red Army who turned up wearing crosses’ at the end of 1943.14 The political officers observed in the meantime that some among the younger generations of soldiers, who had seldom if ever attended a religious service and had been schooled in atheism, wore a cross round their neck, underneath their shirt. When tackled about it, they stated that they had received the cross from their grandmother. Some even carved crosses from tin beakers. ‘They burned their party cards if they were going to die,’ a veteran remembered, ‘but they did not throw away the crosses.’15 Officers and soldiers alike – probably the majority thereof – crossed themselves before going into battle according to ancient Russian custom.16 The American historian Catherine Merridale, whose work offers a sketch of the Red Army ‘rank and file’, has concluded that such religious gestures and words should be understood as ‘totemic’, more an echo of faith than official evidence of its presence. ‘They said things like “God save me”, but what they believed I couldn’t say’, Merridale quotes a veteran. ‘I am an atheist myself, but not very strongly, I came back alive, I suppose I live under a lucky star.’17 From 1940 onwards recruits from the annexed former Polish provinces also served in the Red Army. They were divided into small groups and incorporated as such into the larger companies. They came from a world unfamiliar to their Soviet comrades. Orthodoxy may have been disadvantaged and restricted in Wolhynia and Galicia, but it had not been eradicated. Some maintained deeply rooted religious convictions in an army that officially propagated atheism. On Orthodox and Roman Catholic (i.e. Polish) Easter, soldiers from the said provinces attended services.18 The exigencies of war had been different for older generations. During the German siege of Leningrad, (institutional) religion turned out to be relevant for keeping up morale among those defending the city and the besieged population. ‘Only twenty-one churches operated in the whole of the Leningrad diocese, the rest having been knocked down or turned into warehouses, garages, cinemas, planetaria or “museums of religion”. 224

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The Cathedral of Our Saviour of the Spilled Blood – a multi-coloured neo-Russian confection, filled with glowing mosaic – was only saved from demolition, ironically, by the outbreak of the war.’19 The response of the women from Leningrad interviewed as part of a post-war project is unequivocal: ‘Valentina Petrova still recalls the Russian Orthodox churches that remained operating during the Siege. Lubov’ Shaporina remembers Easter, 1942, celebrated under intense bombardment and in conditions of extreme starvation. Sof ’ia Buriakova laments her meagre offering to relatives who came, as was their family’s tradition, to celebrate Trinity Sunday and their saint’s day. Many of the blokadnitsy (people under siege) reveal the religious and spiritual significance of their extreme attempts to provide their dead with the proper rites of burial.’20 The opportunity to engage in private initiatives and exercise one’s freedom was much increased during the siege of Leningrad. One of the sectors in which this was clearly the case was religion, in particular Russian Orthodoxy. In and around the cathedral of Saint Nicholas, Metropolitan Aleksii organized a daily icon procession and the custom was maintained even during air-raid warnings. Volunteers came to protect their churches from fire after bombings. ‘Church activity increased as the city’s population declined, and only one church was closed, temporarily, during the hungry winter.’21 At such moments, the church’s social network was at the highest state of readiness. ‘How many Leningraders actually attended services during the first siege winter is hard to say.’ Anna Reid, who has studied diaries kept in the besieged city, found a writer who described the (wintry) service in the Cathedral of Saint Vladimir: ‘choir wrapped in shawls and felt boots, oil in the icon lamps frozen solid, the sacraments taken with beetroot juice in place of wine’. It was possible that Stalin had only reopened the churches on a temporary basis and that religion was to face condemnation anew. ‘A ten year-old girl, taken into one of ninety-eight new orphanages that opened between January and March 1942, woke one night to see her class teacher kneeling, head bowed, at the dormitory window. The teacher whispered that she was praying for her son, who had gone missing at the front – and begged the girl not to tell anybody what she had seen.’22 When the curfew was lifted in Moscow during the orthodox celebration of Easter 1942, witnesses reported that the vigil and the procession were attended by older believers and presided over by priests in threadbare liturgical garb. The second celebration in 1943 attracted considerably larger numbers, including soldiers. A report in the New York Times on the 1944 celebrations speaks of a congregation of primarily housewives and men in their forties and fifties; young people were few and far between, represented by a few soldiers.23 The general impression suggests that tolerance in Soviet policy was restricted to the older farming population, the lowest and the most limited segment of the population in terms of social mobility. Young people living in the cities stayed away from the liturgy, which official propaganda continued to brand a remnant of ignorance, superstition and prejudice. ‘Its textbooks in 1944–1945 still talked of religion as superstition, the stupefying of people, and a means to enslave the masses. On the other hand, the regime forced the rehabilitated Church to concern itself exclusively with what it called “the practice of the cult”.’ This implied that the Orthodox Church was obliged to narrow its mission to purely spiritual and ‘supernatural’ matters.24 225

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During the siege of Leningrad, Metropolitan Aleksii also took the initiative in a different form of support: church collections for the Red Army. Such collections had previously been forbidden in the Orthodox Church. The faithful responded positively. One anonymous churchgoer left 150 golden ten rouble coins under the cathedral’s icon of Saint Nicholas. In January 1943, Metropolitan Sergii requested permission in a telegram to Stalin to be allowed to open a bank account in his name for the purposes of collecting money for the defence of the fatherland. Permission was granted with thanks from Stalin himself. The bank account was to be seen as a de facto recognition of the Orthodox Church’s status as a legal entity. ‘By January 15, 1943, in the besieged and starving city of Leningrad alone 3,182,143 rubles had been donated by the faithful for the Church’s Fund for the Defense of the Country, plus another half-million rubles expressly for the building and arming of a tank column named after Dimitry Donskoi.’ Dimitry was a medieval religious hero, not a proletarian equivalent.25 The ringing of church bells, such a characteristic of Russian Orthodoxy, returned in the 1940s. It would appear from instructions issued by the authorities on 22 August – after Nazi Germany’s capitulation – that local administrators were ‘not to prevent church communities that already have bells from sounding them in towns and villages, and not to prevent the acquisition of bells’. Bells, moreover, could only be acquired where they were being offered for sale or where factories had preserved those that had been confiscated.26

3 Religion and the invading forces On 26 June 1941, four days after the beginning of the German invasion, the Catholic bishops – assembled in Fulda ‘at the tomb of Saint Boniface’ – issued a pastoral letter in which they appealed to the faithful to fulfil their duty and be ready to make sacrifices ‘in the service of our People’. To the men mobilized in the Wehrmacht, responsible for ‘incomparably heroic exploits’ on the battlefield, they sent ‘a salutation of grateful affection and heartfelt blessing’. They hoped that the soldiers would be granted the ‘comforting awareness’ that they were ‘not only serving the fatherland’, but also following ‘the sacred will of God’.27 It is striking that the bishops did not openly subscribe to the idea of a necessary battle against ‘godless Bolshevism’ at the beginning of the campaign, although, as the Nazi authorities had observed,28 they had done so in the past and had given expression to their endorsement of this interpretation in pastoral letters between 1921 and 1936. The collective letter despatched from Fulda also made public a large number of complaints concerning the confiscation of churches and monasteries in Germany and the forced reduction of the church’s representative role in society. In the bishops’ vision of things, this sort of ecclesial persecution was comparable to that of Bolshevism. The fight against the Soviet Union could then be described as a defence of the ‘Christian Occident’ against barbarian destruction, while at home the Christian population was being suppressed ‘with boundless intensity’.29 226

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The ‘Spiritual Council’ of the German Evangelical Church was much more assertive. On 30 June 1941, the Council sent a telegram to Hitler announcing the introduction of an intercessory prayer supporting ‘decisive armed combat against the Soviet Union as the arch enemy of order and culture at every level in the Christian Occident’. Theophil Wurm, the (Lutheran) Bishop of Württemberg, refused to allow the prayer to be recited in his own region because it ignored reality: the systematic contestation of the proclamation of the gospel and the development of ecclesial life on the home front. Wurm himself was no stranger to the appeal to ‘national unity’, but in the context of the Nazi persecution of the churches, such overtures overstepped the mark.30 The German army that went to war with the Soviet Union had Catholic and Protestant chaplains among its ranks, although they were limited – as in the past – to the Wehrmacht and not to the military formations set up by the Nazis such as the Waffen SS and Hermann Göring’s Luftwaffe. By 1 May 1943, a total of 17,353 Catholic priests and seminarians had joined up, 7,295 from the secular clergy and 10,058 from the male religious orders and congregations. At least 10 per cent (1,052) were Franciscan Friars Minor.31 A smaller number were appointed as chaplains and were thus considered part of the officers’ corps. The majority were assigned to the various ambulance units and were not obliged to carry a weapon, although they still had to swear the oath to Adolf Hitler in person. Only a few managed to evade this obligation. After the military defeat at Stalingrad in 1943, hundreds more priests and seminarians were conscripted into the army. Estimates of around 20,000 in total are not exaggerated.32 In that same spring of 1943, the Wehrmacht had 9,692 Protestant ministers in service, 8,588 fully fledged clergymen or associates, and 1,104 vicars or candidate clergy. The majority were chaplains and thus had the rank of officer. There appears to have been twice as many Catholic clergy in the Wehrmacht as Protestant, while the ratio in Greater Germany in 1943 was the other way round: 54 per cent Protestant and 40 per cent Catholic. The large number of priests can be traced back to the presence of the regular clergy in Germany, the male orders and congregations who numbered 21,310 in 1943.33 The Reich concordat made provision for a (Catholic) military bishop, Franz Justus Rakowski, who completely identified himself with Nazi Germany’s military goals. For this reason, at least in part, he was refused admission to the episcopal conference of Fulda.34 Chaplains wore both a Christian cross and a swastika on their uniforms.35 A better image of the ambiguity of their message is difficult to imagine. They shared the fate of their comrades. During the siege of Stalingrad, the 16 Protestant and 19 Catholic chaplains serving in the Sixth Army were taken prisoner.36 They had functioned as Christians in an army that had been nourished, willingly or unwillingly, by Nazi propaganda. The chancellery of the National Socialist Party (under Martin Bormann) also set out to eliminate the provision of pastoral care in the army. The first regular priests and ministers were dismissed from their posts in 1942. Such measures offered evidence of an intensifying party political violation of the (Christian) traditions of the German military forces.37 On the Eastern Front in 1942, the Catholic and Protestant chaplains to the 18th Panzer Division both noted that their advice and liturgical services were in constant 227

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demand, in spite of increasing competition from the National Socialist ideology. The longer the conflict in Eastern Europe continued, the more bitter and fanatical was the latter becoming, evolving more and more into a (pseudo) religion. ‘The war in the East was becoming a religious war, reminiscent of the Thirty Years War both in its brutality and in its fanaticism.’38 Nevertheless, and as both chaplains observed, soldiers on the front lines in immediate danger of death needed to be told that they would be dying for a greater cause. Protestant and Catholic chaplains carried out their pastoral duties (‘Geistliche Betreuung’) alone, one clergyman per division, and in the minority vis-à-vis the political officers. They did their best to preside at services on the battlefield, which were sometimes forbidden by the Nazi military leaders and often had to be improvised, making them all the more meaningful for those who participated in them. Religious feasts were celebrated as often and with as much emphasis as possible at the front, where death was always lurking round the corner. Reference was made from time to time to a ‘crusade’ against communism. Some Jesuits claimed that the war against the Soviet Union was God’s ‘Judgement’ against Bolshevism and saw themselves as ‘instruments’ in the hand of the supreme Judge. In the summer of 1941, the Society of Jesus was in fact the first to be officially expelled from the Wehrmacht, although 246 of the original 651 members of the Society continued in service, working as medical orderlies who were free to express concern and compassion towards wounded soldiers – some of them Russian – and thereby find meaning in their military existence.39 In 1942, Cardinal Faulhaber, the Archbishop of Munich who had served as a military bishop in the First World War, praised the chaplains for the selflessness with which they had shown themselves ready to share the fate of the soldiers on the battlefield. In peace time, the eyes of the male youth will light up when you talk about what you experienced in military pastoral service, the prelate insisted. According to one priest-soldier, however, the distance between Faulhaber’s words and reality on the battlefield could hardly have been better expressed.40 In general terms, Catholic men appear to have accepted conscription into Nazi Germany’s military service without public protest. The striking refusal of an Austrian peasant and conscript by the name of Franz Jägerstätter (1943) to join the army remained an exception. While their bishops may have vented critical remarks against National Socialism, their love for the fatherland was either a matter of course or had been acquired along the way. Records show that Jägerstätter and 13 other Catholic men refused military service and were put to death for this reason.41 The Church beatified Jägerstätter in 2007. Images of the Bamberg Horseman, the archangel Michael or Saint George fighting the dragon, which decorated many a young man’s bedroom in those days, reminded young people day and night of ideals such as valour, chivalry and heroism. The eighteenthcentury military commander Prince Eugene of Savoy, in whom ‘Catholic piety’ went hand in hand with ‘enormous valour’, was presented as a guardsman fighting an enemy that had made its way to Europe from ‘endless Asia’ and ‘roaming restless had set its sights on the German heart’.42 Werner Mölders, a pilot in the Condor Legion, became a real hero for Catholic youth. He had ‘fought against the communists’ in the Spanish Civil 228

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War – and bombed Guernica – and become a war hero for a second time in battles with the Allied air force. He was killed in November 1941. A rumour spread among young Catholics that he had been murdered by the Gestapo or the SS , who had been unable to tolerate the idea of a relationship between bravery and Christian conviction.43 On 30 February 1943, the forces of allied Italy had a total of 2,375 chaplains, 172 of whom were serving in the multinational army on the Eastern Front. According to historian Mimmo Franzinelli, four political orientations were to be distinguished among them. The first group consisted of fascist standard-bearers who had enlisted to express their endorsement of Il Duce: 382 chaplains belonged to this ‘hyper-fascist’ minority. The second group consisted of priests who wanted to serve Il Duce usque ad mortem et ultra, who wanted to sanctify the fascist adventure with a blend of religious and fascist language and the history of the fatherland with evangelical zeal. The third category was made up of chaplains who rejected militarism, but were nevertheless convinced that they had a duty to serve. The fourth group consisted of chaplains who understood the pastoral care they offered to the forces as a personal sacrifice.44 In order to sustain the morale of his soldiers, Mussolini was forced to seek refuge in religious assistance, in spite of the fact that such a decision did harm to fascism’s totalitarian project. The fascist uomo nuovo would never have seen the light of day if its spiritual leader had been a Catholic priest instead of a party member. On the other hand, he was forced to admit – albeit implicitly – ‘that, in a cultural setting where soldiers tenaciously adhered to the Catholic and peasant tradition, the chaplain attended to their spiritual needs better than did the party functionaries’.45 The chaplain was a village pastor who had been despatched to the front. He was familiar with the complex and deeply rooted spirituality of the majority of Italians, most of whom had a rural peasant background. God and the fatherland were set in stone as the foundation of the Italian soldier’s self-esteem. The chaplains managed to adapt their symbolism and images to the changing circumstances of the war. In 1942, 2.5 million pictures of the Blessed Virgin Mary were distributed among the troops on the occasion of the Easter celebrations: ‘pagelline di Nostro Signora della Vittoria’. They were intended to boost the army’s morale and to counter the use of esoteric and ‘superstitious’ symbols. In the offensive phase of the conflict, the God of the Army gave direction; in the hard reality of battle, the suffering Christ became the defining image. Every soldier was seen as a ‘lay priest’ and as a ‘little redeemer’, giving his life according to the example of Christ for the redemption of society.46

4 Religion and German conflict In the first months after 22 June 1941, and in the midst of what seemed like triumph after triumph, the invading forces encountered a local population that in some instances welcomed the invaders – in spite of being terrorized by the violence of war – because they thought they had come to liberate them from communist domination. Religion became visible once again. A priest returning from exile or emerging from his craftsman’s 229

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workshop appeared in almost every Ukrainian city, registered with the German Ortskommandant and asked permission to reopen the church and take charge of the liturgy. Some church buildings were still intact, because they had served until 1937 as a cemetery chapel or had been treated as historical monuments. In the villages and small towns, the locals painted ‘their’ churches white. The bells and icons that had been preserved in hiding were retrieved and restored to their proper place. In the city of Vasylivka, the community restored its magnificent iconostasis, which had been broken up and hidden by different parishioners.47 The celebration of the Orthodox feasts resumed in Ukraine in 1942. The consecration of water, a liturgical custom associated with the feast of the Epiphany in early January, attracted large numbers, especially from the Ukrainian cities along the Dnjepr, who set off in procession to the river to break a hole in the ice and bless the water. Easter 1942 was celebrated with elation. The church on the market square of the city of Poltava (Ukraine), for example, attracted a congregation of 5,000. On the eve of the feast of Pokrov (Our Lady of Perpetual Help, 14 October), countless pilgrims proceeded in groups towards the city of Kamenec-Podolsky (likewise in the Ukraine) carrying icons and banners. ‘No amount of surprise and lack of sympathy from the more enlightened inhabitants of the city could interrupt their lowly song.’48 Even the religious harvest festival was celebrated anew according to ancient custom. The invaders had not expected such a religious revival. More than any other German occupying institution, individual commandants and soldiers in the Wehrmacht offered assistance to religious groups, although this was not the consequence of an official political strategy. Officers occasionally took receipt of petitions from the locals asking for their churches to be reopened. Protestant and Catholic chaplains and clerics serving as medical orderlies helped with the restoration of the liturgy, and soldiers helped repair and refurbish church buildings. The vast majority of the troops, however, obeyed orders and stayed away from religious manifestations until the civil occupying authorities had taken control. Vandalism and the desecration of churches by individual German troops was also considerable.49 The SS Einsatzgruppen, who followed in the wake of the Wehrmacht and were charged with the sinister task of eliminating communist party officials and Jewish citizens, were completely unprepared for the religious situation that awaited them. In a report on the Baltic population dated 26 June 1941 – the fifth day of the invasion – reference is made to the fact that the rural people of Latvia, especially the elderly among them, had been friendly towards the German troops, in contrast to their urban counterparts. ‘In an illuminating aside, it refers to the “religious question” as “perhaps decisive in determining the attitude of the rural population in the future as well”.’50 It began to dawn on the invader that granting religious freedom could contribute to the stability of the occupation. In another report focusing on Ukraine, it is made clear that religion was the key to the preservation of public order. But the Einsatzgruppen continued their callous and merciless work without making any distinctions. They forced priests to praise Hitler in their sermons and left the impression that little had changed: the Nazis turned out to be just as intolerant and repressive as the communists. ‘The persuasiveness of such extorted 230

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homilies, lacking genuine conviction on the priests’ part, must have been largely lost on the believers.’51 Lacking information on religion as well as personal religious experience, the Einsatzgruppen had no standard against which they could interpret the religious phenomena they encountered. One SS unit came to the conclusion that ‘religion was an important factor’ for the simple reason that ‘even old Bolsheviks prayed before being executed by firing squad’.52 Another group concluded that freedom of religion was vital for the local population because Ukrainian country folk always wanted to know when they could go back to church. In the majority of SS reports, elderly peasant women tended to have the greatest interest in the reopening of the church. But another group observed: ‘The opinion that the youth is indifferent to religion, is incorrect for the countryside and only partly applies to the cities.’ A second observation sketched the situation further: ‘It is apparent that orthodox self-expression is markedly weakened; there exists a catacomb religiosity like that of ancient Christianity.’53

5 Rivalries in Nazi religious politics An occupying regime established itself in the wake of the front line troops and the goals of the National Socialist conquest of Eastern Europe were marked by racist and economic principles. Racism related to the original inhabitants: Slavs and Jews among them were seen as Untermenschen. The former were expected to serve the German Reich with everything they had at their disposal, including at times their lives; the latter were to be eradicated. The economic programme called for the exploitation of the East’s mineral resources, particularly the fertile soil, for the benefit of the German Reich. In addition, a Lebensraum was to be created for German farmers; the colonists and pioneers of the Germanization of Eastern Europe. The medieval knights of the German Order had already provided a good example. These ideological values and norms were ultimately to be implemented by what was in fact a many-headed monster. The occupied part of the Soviet Union, to the extent that it was no longer the field of military operation, was divided into two Reich Commissariats: Ostland and Ukraine. In Berlin, moreover, a Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories was set up under the leadership of the National Socialist ideologue Alfred Rosenberg. Concrete occupying policy in Eastern Europe exemplified the polycracy approach characteristic of German domination: diversity together with a conflict of competencies between the administrating institutions. In the first instance, the Wehrmacht marched through the streets and villages, giving priority to the establishment of civil order behind the front. After the consolidation of the occupation, however, others took power: the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA – Reich Security Head Office), which was responsible for public order in the occupied territories and was under the command of Himmler, and the Reich Commissioner appointed for a given region. Representatives of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories, SS Einsatzgruppen and the Gestapo also acquired positions in the occupying apparatus. 231

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The Nazi institution responsible for religious policies, the Berlin-based Reich Ministry for Ecclesial Affairs, which had intentionally established good relationships with the orthodox migrant church in the period between 1933 and 1941, was not consulted on decisions relating to Eastern Europe. In the hierarchy of positions adopted with respect to the most important religious institution, the Russian Orthodox Church, the said ministry was to be considered the best disposed. At the opposite extreme, and adopting the most hostile position, were Hitler and Martin Bormann, the leader of the National Socialist Party Chancellery. In June 1941, Bormann drafted a secret document intended for the various Gauleiter in which he proclaimed that the scientific truths of National Socialism were not to be reconciled with the dogmas of Christianity. This meant that the party had to refuse to reinforce existing religions. The supreme command of the Wehrmacht and Rosenberg’s ministry remained relatively favourable; the RSHA , the Reich Commissioner for the Ostland and particularly the Reich Commissioner for the Ukraine continued to be hostile.54 Alfred Rosenberg, Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, was intent on preventing the establishment of religious institutions in occupied Eastern Europe that might evolve political resistance to the German authorities in their pastoral activities. His attention was focused in this regard on the universal churches: the Roman Catholic Church with its international centre in the Vatican, and the Russian Orthodox Church with its administrative centre in the Moscow patriarchate. It followed that German occupying policy should focus on the independence of orthodox churches in the Ukraine, Belorussia and the Baltic States, and on the fragmentation of Baltic Protestant or Catholic churches; in both instances along ethnic lines.55 Rosenberg had summarized his thoughts on the matter in his 1939 Thesen über Weltanschauung, in which he constructed the popular religion that was to replace Christianity. He saw himself as a new Martin Luther, able to offer Christianity a new religious perspective. As minister, Rosenberg devoted a great deal of energy and official support from December 1941 onwards to the establishment of a so-called Edict of Tolerance, according to which the churches in the Eastern territories were granted freedom of religious practice if they limited themselves to strictly religious matters, did not endanger the public order, and registered themselves – across the hierarchical spectrum – with the local and regional occupying authorities. ‘In the practice of German officials, regulation was to outweigh toleration.’56 But Rosenberg failed to have religious freedom proclaimed in the way he had imagined. Bormann managed to convince Hitler that this measure would generate protest among the German churches that did not enjoy such freedom in their own fatherland and create false expectations. The final version of the edict dating from 19 June 1942 was thus far removed from the original draft and remained without significance. Hitler had already insisted in 1940 that Rosenberg should keep out of church affairs for the duration of the war. As we noted in Chapter 2, he had also developed an aversion to the idea of a pseudo-religion in the NSDAP. ‘But Rosenberg refused to take the hint; he was too wrapped up in his early schemes for a new faith, with himself as its prophet, to view the fact that it did not catch on with the people as anything more than a temporary 232

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hindrance.’57 While Rosenberg was becoming incensed at the ‘sabotage’ of a few bishops, Hitler saw the latter as protesting prelates who could do him no harm as long as they maintained their obedience to God and their respect for the authorities. After all, the crusade against Bolshevism had won (albeit unspoken) support in Christian circles. ‘This was also fully appreciated by Hitler; as he told Himmler in 1942, “if filled churches help me keep the German people quiet, then in view of the burden of war there can be no objection to them”.’58

6 War and destruction in the Ukraine The conquest of the Ukraine by German forces in the late summer of 1941 marked the beginning of a protracted period of mass killings and a struggle for power that was to last for years. In terms of violence and numbers of victims, it was comparable with the war that raged in occupied Yugoslavia. The Soviet troops – army and secret police – deported scores of citizens during their retreat and killed extensively in the country’s prisons. The establishment of a National Socialist occupying regime that was to follow then sounded the death knell for Ukraine’s Jews. The majority were murdered in mass executions at the end of 1941 before the system of extermination camps had been constructed in Central Europe. Under German protection, a radical variant of Ukrainian nationalism was able to take up arms in 1943 and annihilate the Polish citizens in Volhynia and Galicia in a campaign of ethnic cleansing. The Polish resistance movement then mobilized itself in defence of its compatriots, fighting a guerrilla war against the said nationalists. The successive years of German occupation also had a demoralizing effect on institutional Christianity. At the moment of the invasion, a period of darkness and persecution appeared to have come to an end. Churches rediscovered their original purpose and opened their doors. But the German liberator turned out to be an occupier who quickly dashed any hope of realizing Christian ideals. In their efforts to reconstruct orthodox Christianity, moreover, ecclesial leaders were confronted with the active participation of their Ukrainian youth in the murder of Jews and in the ethnic cleansing campaigns against the Poles. They were either unable to respond to these facts or their response went unheard. The flame of hope that had burned in 1941 was extinguished in the demoralization of 1944. The German invasion had created a new expectation in the Ukraine; independence. The occupying regime of the Generalgouvernement had already opened the door to Ukrainian independence in 1939. A mere two decades earlier, the same ambition had failed in the struggle to establish states and national boundaries in the latter days of the First World War. The memory of this failure was still fresh in the population’s mind. In September 1939, after the annexation of the Polish eastern provinces by the Soviet Union, Galicia and Volhynia became part of Western Ukraine. The new Soviet regime enlisted reinforcements among the Ukrainian youth. In the summer of 1941, the same recruits changed allegiance and endeavoured to establish a Ukrainian government in advance of the Wehrmacht. At the beginning of July 1941, radical nationalists grasped 233

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the opportunity to proclaim their own state in the city of Lvov/L’viv, which by then had already been captured. The German military authorities forced their withdrawal. According to estimates, four-fifths of the nationalist leaders – including Stepan Bandera, the leader of the radical wing – were arrested by the Nazis between 1941 and 1942.59 The German regime detached Galicia from Ukrainian administration and included it as part of the Generalgouvernement (occupied Poland). Wolhynia became part of the Reichskommissariat Ukraine. At the dawn of a new religious freedom, both pre-war churches, the Autonomous Ukrainian Church and the Autocephalous Ukrainian Church, re-established themselves after two decades of persecution. The former, with its links to the Russian Orthodox Church, was reconstituted from Volhynia. This came as no great surprise, since the formerly Polish territory, with its abundantly clear orthodox majority, had only experienced two years of communist rule and had suffered only moderate church persecution. In August 1941, five orthodox bishops convened under the leadership of the oldest member of the region’s hierarchy, Aleksii (Hromadsky), Bishop of Kremenec. After the sovietisation of Volhynia, Aleksii had placed himself under the authority of the Patriarch of Moscow. The assembled bishops were faced with the problem of maintaining links with Moscow in a region that was now occupied by Germany and at the same time in the grip of a revival of Ukrainian nationalism. The regional synod at the monastery (Lavra) of Počaev decided to set up an archeparchy (archdiocese) of Wolhynia and elected Aleksii as archbishop. The bishops responded to the question of Russian authority by pointing out that Ukrainian ecclesial autonomy had been recognized in Moscow by the great council of 1917–18, and that the canonically appointed exarch of the Ukraine had left for Moscow without leaving instructions on how the church was to be administered under occupation. The bishops also decided that the traditional prayer for the bishop in the Autonomous liturgy would be localized in the person of Aleksii, who would then unite himself in the said prayer with the Metropolitan of Moscow.60 The Autocephalous Orthodox Ukrainian Church was also established at this time. At the height of Ukrainian nationalism, it had the advantage of wanting to be a resolutely Ukrainian church. The general church council (Tserkovna Rada) was assembled in September 1941 with the intention of reviving the church of Vasyl Lypkivsky that had been eradicated prior to the war. The first Ukrainian liturgy was celebrated on 9 October 1941 in Kiev’s Andreas cathedral after the German military had cleared the building of mines. In December 1941, the Bishop of Zhytomyr, Polikarp (Sikorsky), was permitted to represent the Autocephalous Church as its ‘provisional head’. The ‘provisional’ character of this appointment quickly vanished. In February 1942, three new bishops were ordained, among them the nationalist Stepan Skrypnyk. The latter had first become a monk and then been ordained Bishop of Perejaslavl under the name Mstyslav. His personal contribution to the national (and nationalist) character of the Autocephalous Church was considerable. Both orthodox churches competed with one another for the endorsement of the faithful. The Autocephalous Church used Ukrainian in its liturgies. The Mother of God 234

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was to be represented wearing the garb of a Ukrainian farmer’s wife and memorial services were to be celebrated in honour of saintly national predecessors who had suffered under the regime of the Russian Tsar.61 The synodal structure of the Autocephalous Church was also exceptional, as was its readiness to grant lay people a more important role in the church’s activities. Autocephalous priests could be seen in civilian clothes, for example, where possible in national colourfully embroidered shirts, without beards and with short hair, recruiting members from among the nationally minded citizenry.62 The Autonomous Church, on the other hand, which employed Church Slavonic in its liturgy, attracted believers with a Russian upbringing and inclination. It also remained a safe house for the traditional piety of the farmers and the bourgeoisie. The majority of the monasteries, both male and female, tended to lean towards the Autonomous Church. In 1942, steps were taken by both churches to coordinate the administration of the various dioceses. The central figures in this process were Aleksii for the Autonomous Church, and Polikarp for the Autocephalous Church. An official meeting took place at the Lavra of Počaev in an effort to come to an agreement between the two churches and an act of unification was signed on 8 October 1942. The meeting agreed that the Autonomous Church would recognize the Autocephalous Church and that they would work together towards the establishment of a common synod of Ukrainian bishops. But the act encountered resistance from (Autonomous) priests in eastern Ukraine who were traditionally better disposed towards Russia. They were critical of the Volhynian Metropolitan Aleksii, insisting that his readiness to reach a compromise had been exaggerated. Of greater importance, however, was the opposition of the German occupying regime. Metropolitan Aleksii was received by the Reichskommissariat on 23 October 1942 and was informed that the German authorities were unable to approve of the proposed unification for a variety of reasons. The man behind the blockade was Erich Koch, Reichskommissar for the Ukraine and a former railwayman from the Rhineland. He claimed in his memoires that throughout his career as a Nazi he had been able to uphold the insights of both socialism and Protestantism. He was appointed Gauleiter in East Prussia in 1928, a function he was to exercise until his appointment in 1941 as Reichskommissar thanks to the mediation of Hermann Göring. Koch proved himself a reliable administrator when it came to the oppression and murder of the Ukraine’s Slavic and Jewish population and the strict implementation of measures designed to economically exploit this agriculturally wealthy land to the fullest. This earned him a powerful reputation (Groszherzog Erich) within the Nazi hierarchy. During his tenure as Reichskommissar he managed to amass a fortune. His prestige allowed him to sidestep the edicts of Ostminister Rosenberg and relativize them. The local proposal to unify the Ukraine’s two Orthodox churches was in line with the latter’s conviction that the Nazi regime had to oppose the universalistic churches of Rome and Moscow and only promote regional or national religions. Koch rejected the idea, however, convinced that such a development would outgrow him in terms of administration. He charged his staff to support both competing churches and demand a say in the appointment of bishops.63 He did in fact what Hitler had proposed in his headquarters on 11 April 1942. The creation of a large national church in the Russian 235

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territories was to be avoided; it was in Germany’s interest, the Führer argued, that every village develop its own sect and create its own god. The magic cults of the blacks and the native Indians could serve as examples for an occupying regime intent on keeping subjected nations stupid. The clergy had proven themselves useful in this regard in the time of the Tsars.64 Earlier, on 3 November 1941, a bomb attack had been carried out on the renowned cave monastery of Kiev. The central part of the monastery, the cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption with its much venerated icon of the Blessed Virgin, was reduced to rubble. Other icons survived, although they were stored in an empty school during the German occupation. The identity of the person/s who gave orders to have the cave monastery blown up has never been clear. The most likely explanation maintains that Erich Koch and Martin Bormann, the leader of the Party Chancellery, ordered the attack as part of their efforts to rob Ukraine of its cultural heart. Now that society was to be organized according to National Socialist norms, such historical reminders were no longer welcome.65 It also appeared that the secular attitude of the population of the capital Kiev was quickly becoming the norm once again after the initial outburst of religiosity. The increasing lack of the primary necessities of life turned survival during the occupation into an art. Some lost their faith through contact with the German occupying regime and the ideology of National Socialism. In other instances, secularity reflected the worldview characteristic of a generation of young adults, the so-called ‘Komsomol Generation’, who had been formed in an atheistic educational system. Only the Andreas cathedral remained open in the city. While there were 23 Autonomous churches and three Autocephalous churches in Kiev, all were located in the suburbs. The liturgy was celebrated on occasion without a congregation. ‘An actor from Kiev once said: “What do the inhabitants of Kiev believe in? A lump of bread and that’s it.” ’66 Church attendance was sometimes prevented during the harvest period when the Germans forced the local population, including the village priest, to devote all their time to bringing in the grain. But the primary reason for low attendance was indifference and opposition, especially in the eastern, more Russian-oriented part of Ukraine. Indifference was a result of having been raised in an atheistic system, but direct opposition also had its roots in popular critique of the clergy’s obedience to the occupying regime. Sermons were closely monitored by the German police. On Hitler’s birthday (20 April) in 1942, for example, all priests were obliged to celebrate a special liturgy. The majority complied, praying at the same time for the defeat of the Soviet Union. For members of the congregation with relatives in the Red Army, such prayers would have had a disastrous effect on their further church attendance.67

7 Ukrainian nationalism In 1943, when the fortunes of war appeared to be turning, the German occupying regime lost its grip on Ukrainian nationalism. The latter’s radical wing gained in strength and 236

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numbers, recruiting from a generation that had been trained to use weapons, first by the Soviets and then by the Nazis. In political terms they belonged to the so-called OUNBandera – Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists-Bandera Faction, named after the nationalist leader Stepan Bandera who had been arrested in 1941. They differed in age and radicalism from the older nationalists who belonged to the more moderate OUNMelnyk. According to estimates, 5,000 members of the Ukrainian Hilfspolizei defected in March 1943 to the Bandera partisans who had organized themselves into the UPA – Ukrainian Insurgent Army. This formation had liquidated the remaining nationalists in a civil war and heeded the call of its youthful new leader Mykola Lebed to ‘purify the entire revolutionary territory (in Wolhynia) of its Polish population’. History had a role to play in the militant situation. The Ukrainian and Polish resistance movements were convinced anew that the German and Russian armies would spend themselves in a series of major battles and that the Polish and Ukrainian nationalists would be forced to contest and ultimately settle on the boundaries between both states as they had done at the end of the First World War.68 From February 1943 onwards, the UPA organized ‘bloody nights’ in Polish villages in Wolhynia and to a lesser extent in Galicia. This provoked reprisals from the Polish resistance army, the Armia Krajowa. A division was formed in Wolhynia at the beginning of 1944 – the largest in the Polish resistance – to fight the Ukrainian UPA . The number of casualties ran into the tens of thousands. It is probable that the same number of Ukrainians were killed in the previous civil war as in the campaign of ethnic cleansing of Polish citizens that followed.69 For the radical nationalists, the Autonomous (and thus Russian-oriented) village priests had lost touch with their Ukrainian national awareness. Ukrainian partisans were thus responsible for ambushing the car of (Autonomous) exarch Aleksii in the forest of Smyga on 7 May 1943 and accidentally killing the elderly archbishop with no fewer than 14 bullets. ‘Radical nationalists found a way to excuse the killing: Aleksii deserved to die, they said, for he had been involved in Russification.’70 After the murder, the unifying force of the Autonomous Church in Wolhynia flagged. The election of a successor required a synod of all the church’s bishops, but the German occupying regime refused to grant permission for such an assembly. The Autocephalous Church, by contrast, increased in size and numbers, in part under pressure from the Ukrainian partisans who supported this Orthodox variant with force. An Autonomous church bishop, for example, was dragged from his presbytery in the middle of the night and hanged in a nearby forest. In another example dating from the middle of June 1943, partisans burst into a village church near Kovel, forced the congregation to lie on the ground and shot the priest at the altar.71 Sheptytsky, the Greek Catholic Metropolitan of Lviv, was likewise confronted with heartrending dilemmas. He was head of the most important Orthodox Church in Galicia (unified with the Holy See), which the German regime planned to confine to the Generalgouvernement. A Polish aristocrat by birth, Sheptytsky had proved himself to be a trustworthy advocate of Ukrainian nationhood. Prior to the declaration of Ukrainian independence in his city on 30 June 1941, he had received the radical Ukrainian nationalists and given them his blessing. On the following day, however, he published a 237

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pastoral letter in which he referred to their historical action as a divine blessing, yet urged the faithful to prove that the time was right for independence through ‘discipline, solidarity and conscientious fulfilment of their duties’. The letter did not contain words of praise for Hitler.72 Nevertheless Sheptytsky took his seat in the Ukrainian National Council that submitted a written appeal to the German occupying authorities on 14 August 1941 asking for Galicia to be recognized as an independent region in exchange for loyal cooperation with the ‘government of Greater Germany’. In February 1942, and in his capacity as chairman of the Ukrainian National Council, Sheptytsky signed an additional letter addressed to ‘His Excellency, the Führer Adolf Hitler’, which lamented the bitter fate of the Ukrainian population. ‘The letter, which closed with the assurance that the “leading circles in Ukraine” were still willing to cooperate as closely as possible with Germany, made use of anti-Communist as well as anti-Russian and anti-Polish arguments which were supposed to be persuasive to the German dictator.’73 The German authorities put an end to this upsurge of Ukrainian independence: the National Council was disbanded. Immediately after the German invasion, anti-Jewish pogroms broke out in Lviv. It quickly came to the metropolitan’s attention that young church members had enlisted in the Hilfspolizei of the occupying regime and had participated in large numbers in the wholesale massacre of Jews in Galicia and Wolhynia. In December 1941, Sheptytsky condemned the occupying regime, insisting that it was based on principles that ran counter to Christian teaching. His illusions in this regard had been shattered. ‘The continual frustration of his efforts and a growing awareness that the only use the SS had for Ukrainians was as accessories to Einsatzgruppen mass murders made him more skeptical about the benefits of collaboration.’74 In November 1942, he had a message proclaimed from every pulpit in his diocese, a message that opened with the fifth commandment: ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill!’ and dealt with all forms of homicide. He seems to have been preoccupied with the fear of what he defined as ‘murder addiction’ occurring in Galicia. At that moment a civil war between Ukrainian nationalists and Polish resistance fighters was a particular focus of attention. ‘The fact that he gave a copy of his letter to Rabbi David Kahane in 1943, when the latter was hiding in the Metropolitan’s quarter, indicates that Sheptytsky himself considered it also as a Jewish-related appeal.’75 The metropolitan only avoided arrest for this single action because he was so popular among the Ukrainian population of the Generalgouvernement. If he had been imprisoned, it would have interfered with the Nazis’ goal of playing off Ukrainian nationalism against the Polish majority.76 On the other hand, by identifying himself with Ukrainian nationalism in this way, the metropolitan alienated Polish members of his Greek Catholic Church who were unwilling to share his support. Polish historians have raised the question whether Metropolitan Sheptytsky exerted enough effort to put an end to the killing of Poles by the Ukrainian units. Boleslaw Twardowski, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Lwów/L’viv, turned to the Greek Catholic metropolitan and urged him to protest and condemn such killings. In various appeals and pastoral letters, Sheptytsky did indeed condemn the actions in question and threatened the perpetrators with excommunication. But the question whether he did so 238

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with complete determination remains open to contradiction. In any event, a number of Greek Catholic priests railed against the Poles from the pulpit.77 Conversely, Polish priests also engaged in combat with Ukrainian nationalists. A case is known of a Polish priest by the name of Roman Daca who served as a military chaplain in the district of L’viv. In the period that Poles were being threatened by Ukrainian units, Daca formed a partisan unit of his own that tried to protect Polish inhabitants in a number of villages from both the German Einsatzgruppen and the Ukrainian nationalists. Remigiusz Kranc, a Capuchin Franciscan and parish priest in Ostróg, took command of Polish volunteers in defending the city against the Ukrainian nationalists. Under his leadership, the Capuchin monastery, seminary and church, as well as the city’s prison in which Polish inhabitants had sought refuge, were reinforced and defended. Ostróg held out against the Ukrainian nationalists for almost three weeks.78 An oral declaration has been passed down to us in which Metropolitan Sheptytsky predicted a period of chaos and anarchy in the event of a German defeat, which he had already begun to reckon with at the end of 1942. In August 1942, he wrote a letter to Pope Pius XII lamenting the violent deeds of the German occupying regime in Ukraine. ‘Today, the entire country is in agreement that the German regime is perhaps even more evil than the Bolshevik; in fact, it is almost diabolical. For a year, not one day has gone by on which the most horrible crimes have not been committed.’79 The Jews experienced the first casualties; Sheptytsky estimated that more than 200,000 had already been eliminated. He informed the Pope that Germany’s anti-Catholic laws had not yet been implemented in Galicia – religious education in schools was still permitted – and that the clergy even received eine freiwillige Unterstützung (a voluntary salary) of 50 Reichsmarks. He concluded nevertheless that these facts were insufficient to counteract the demoralization provoked by the massacres and the loss of a sense of justice and humanity. Sheptytsky’s support for the policies of Otto Gustav Freiherr von Wächter, appointed governor of the Generalgouvernement in January 1942, is worthy of note. Both men shared a certain nostalgia for the Habsburg monarchy. In April 1943, von Wächter started recruiting Ukrainian men for an SS division to be styled ‘Galician’ with the purpose of bringing the struggle between the Ukrainian partisans and the Poles and Russians above ground. The 14th SS -Volunteer Division ‘Galician’ was a novelty because Slav recruits were admitted to the ranks of the SS for the first time. The Greek Catholic Church contributed to the formation of the new division, organizing a special liturgy in the cathedral in L’viv at its inauguration – presided over by Coadjutor Archbishop Josyf Slipy – and providing five chaplains – unprecedented in the SS – among them Vasyl Laba of the metropolitan’s staff.80 Himmler, who was aware that Sheptytsky had protested against the persecution of the Jews – more on which in Chapter 9 – nevertheless accepted the church’s assistance at this juncture.81 The Greek Catholic metropolitan supported the new SS division because he believed that only a regular army would be able to put an end to the rudderless and anarchical actions of the Ukrainian partisans. Such a division was no longer necessary in 1943 to annihilate the Jews since the latter had already been completed in 1941. ‘As the brother of a general who helped to create the Polish army which defeated the West Ukrainian 239

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republic in 1920, Sheptytsky knew from hard experience that a Ukrainian state without an army was an impossibility.’ The metropolitan hoped that a regular army would bring hostilities within controllable limits. According to Timothy Snyder; ‘Sheptytsky’s support of an SS division forces us to confront the basic difficulty of Ukraine’s strategic position, and the desperate means even tolerant men could justify to themselves.’82 From 1943 onwards, Sheptytsky dedicated himself to tempering the emergent civil war between the Ukrainian nationalists and the Polish resistance army, the Armia Krajowa. He planned to issue an appeal for peace together with the Polish bishops, but he was not to succeed. The metropolitan had come to see the Nazi system as a collection of lies and injustices, as a caricature of civilization however one understood it. ‘This system is something so phenomenal that one’s first reaction to the sight of the monster is dumfounded amazement.’ In 1939, he had asked the Pope in a letter to ‘delegate’ him for martyrdom, although he never received a response to this somewhat mystical request. The best and only opportunity under Soviet occupation, he wrote, had now passed. The three years of German occupation had convinced him that the sacrifice of his life had become in the meantime ‘less worthy in God’s eyes than the prayer of a child’.83

8 Belorussia In July and August 1941, the Wehrmacht captured large parts of Belorussia. The German advance was then brought to a standstill, but National Socialist triumphalism continued unabated. A German occupying regime was to be set up in Belorussia and was given the name Weissruthenien, part of the Reichskommissariat Ostland. The name carried with it a clear programme. In German parlance, ‘Ruthenia’ was used to designate the Slavic peoples in the territory between Central Europe and Russia. Given its vagueness, therefore, it was possible to interpret the concept in the broadest of terms. At the very least, however, it was directed against the claims of ‘Great Russia’ or Russia proper.84 The German occupation of Belorussia was particularly ferocious with respect to both the partisan war being waged behind German lines and the persecution of the Jews in the occupied territory. On 7 November 1941, for example, the commemoration day of the October Revolution in the Soviet Union, thousands of Jews were arrested in the ghetto of the capital Minsk and forced to organize the parade that had been a custom since 1917 dressed in their best clothes. They were provided with Russian flags and were compelled to sing revolutionary songs for the film cameras. The same 6,624 Jewish citizens were then locked up in a factory complex and on 9 November they were all shot dead. The 9 November was the day on which the Nazis commemorated their first Hitlerputsch in Munich (1923), but also the date of the Reichskristallnacht, the pogrom that took place throughout Germany in 1938.85 Where it was not simply a question of destructiveness for its own sake, German policy was geared towards the generation of Belorussian nationalism and the appointment of a Belorussians to the country’s administration. For reasons of race, the Nazis were 240

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accustomed to looking down on the Belorussians, a narrow majority of the population. But the occupier hoped for a revival of the national ambition that had emerged in 1918 but had been successfully suppressed under Soviet domination. German expectations were dashed by the fact that Belorussian nationalism had never really taken root and by the virtual absence of a Belorussian-minded elite.86 The largest minority was Polish, concentrated in the western districts of Weissruthenien that had been part of the Polish republic up to 1939. The German occupying regime did not want to give them undue preference, in spite of the fact that some spoke German. From the German perspective, the Roman Catholic Church was the ‘Trojan Horse’ of Polish nationalism. A report dated 28 July 1941 and stemming from the sinister Einsatzgruppen suggests that the latter had been ordered to prevent the immigration of Catholic (Polish) priests into Belorussia and ‘interfere’ with the pastoral activities of the priests present in the country.87 They were suspected ‘of using their proselytizing to win Belorussian converts to Polish nationalism’.88 In a letter to the Holy See from November 1941, the (Polish) Archbishop of Vilnius complained about the hostility of the German regime towards the Catholic Church. Only the ‘sacerdotes schismatici’ (Orthodox clergy) were able to profit from the new occupation. Polish priests despatched from Vilnius to Minsk were arrested and deported and at least three of them died while in prison.89 Weissruthenien was part of the Reichskommissariat Ostland, which also included the Baltic nations. Hinrich Lohse was Reichskommissar, its highest authority. He had been Rosenberg’s candidate, but had proven himself ‘eccentric’ on account of his lack of abhorrence for Russians and Russian institutions. The Reichskommissar was also hard at work concretizing his own feudal ambitions, including the confiscation of richly furnished castles for himself and his staff. He exercised religious tolerance in the region of Pskov in the northwestern part of the Soviet Union, which had been Polish up to the sixteenth century. Rosenberg detested Russian Orthodoxy and opposed Lohse’s position. The revival of the Russian Orthodox Church in the region was a development he would have preferred to counter.90 The independence of the Orthodox Church was one of the goals of the occupying regime’s religious politics. The church was thus to be supported. An important reason behind this was the apparently positive response on the part of the clergy to the obligation to declare one’s loyalty to Hitler. At a service in the cemetery chapel of Minsk, for example, which was attended by 2,000 people and at which 45 children were baptized, a word of gratitude to the Führer was expressed during the homily. Various organs of the occupation later expressed their amazement at the ‘positive’ attitude of the clergy and church circles in general during the first months of the occupation (and at how little the occupying regime had been able to profit from it).91 In canonical terms, the highest ecclesial authority was Nikolai Jarušević, the exarch appointed by the patriarchate of Moscow for the western regions of the Soviet Union. As we noted above, however, Nikolai had sought refuge behind the lines of the Red Army in June 1941 and he was thus unable to directly oppose German church politics. A bishop consecrated according to canon law was required in order to have an independent church, but because of the persecution of the church in Belorussia there was no resident 241

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incumbent to be found. The German occupier opted for a bishop resident in the monastery of Žirovič: Panteleimon Rožnovsky, a Polish citizen. Panteleimon had professed his ecclesial fidelity to orthodox Moscow with exceptional doggedness. In the pre-war period, when his diocese (Pinsk) was located in eastern Poland, he had resisted the ‘Polonization’ of the Orthodox Church. He thus chose the monastery of Melec as his place of refuge. When the Red Army invaded in 1939, he was the obvious choice for Orthodox Bishop of Belorussia. But he was banished to yet another monastery (Žirovič) after Moscow replaced him in July 1940 with the aforementioned Nikolai. It was here that the Germans found him, recalled him and appointed him head of the Orthodox Church of Belorussia. The German Nazi regime was evidently pressing for a ‘Belorussian Autocephalous Orthodox National Church’.92 This was a rare example of open National Socialist support for a Christian church in occupied territory. But the cooperation of the concerned church authorities left much to be desired. This became apparent in March 1942 when Belorussia’s Orthodox bishops came together for an ecclesial assembly. The country was divided into six eparchies, one of which, Grodno-Bialystok, located in what was now East Prussia, became an exarchate. Panteleimon, who epitomized fidelity to Moscow and continued to refer to Sergii as head of the Russian Orthodox Church in his liturgical intercessory prayers, turned out to be an opponent of independence. Again under pressure from the Germans he was despatched to yet another monastery, his third, this time in Liady. Archimandrite Philotheus (Narko) was the next German candidate for Metropolitan of Minsk. He attracted attention because he regularly included prayers of thanksgiving for the Führer in his liturgies and invited visitors to bless themselves in front of a portrait of Hitler in his reception room.93 But he too turned out to be opposed to canonical independence for the Belorussian Orthodox Church. This became manifest at a second assembly of the church at the end of August 1942, which the German occupying regime had manipulated along nationalist lines. A further opponent, Archbishop Venedikt Bobkovsky (Bialystok-Grodno), received his invitation to the meeting too late and was removed from the train by German soldiers on his way to Minsk. The assembly opted by a majority for ‘autocephaly’, but insisted that the canonical procedure should be followed. At a third meeting on 17 April 1943, official petitionary papers were drafted for the Orthodox patriarchs of the Middle East, in particular the Patriarch of Constantinople, who was expected to complete the process of independence with his blessing. Metropolitan Panteleimon was brought back from exile in the monastery of Liady for the occasion. But the letters mysteriously disappeared before being handed over for delivery to the German authorities.94 It was only in June 1944, when the Red Army was already at the gates of Minsk, that a centra rada (central church assembly) made it possible for the Orthodox Church of Belorussia to bind itself to the Nazi regime. Shortly after casting their votes, however, the episcopal delegates sought refuge with the Wehrmacht in the west. German manoeuvring in the direction of independence and the bishops’ delaying tactics had no influence on the evident religious revival that was taking place at the time. 242

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On the eve of the German invasion, Minsk had already lost all its churches. The last liturgy had been celebrated in 1937 at the new cemetery. It appeared to be the end for an Orthodoxy that had once boasted two Cathedrals, two theological seminaries, fifteen churches, a monastery and a community centre. The cathedrals lay in ruins and the church buildings had been recomissioned as schools or archives. In 1941, shortly after the German invasion, seven churches were reopened. The number of infant baptisms quickly rose to 22,000. There was also evidence of an endeavour to catch up on wedding and funeral services. The revival finally resulted in the reopening of 120 parishes in the diocese of Minsk, 30 per cent of the pre-revolutionary count.95 There appeared to be an acute shortage of priests, but the German occupier refused to allow the reopening of a seminary. Priests who had attended a theological seminary prior to the First World War and had abandoned their ministry on account of church persecution applied anew for priestly recognition. The churches in Minsk were so full that it sometimes became impossible for the faithful to make a sign of the cross during the liturgy. The cathedral had a capacity of 1,500 and a further 2,000 gathered outside. A collective confession had to be organized in order to accommodate the large numbers of people seeking the sacrament. ‘Two excellent choirs, known respectively as the “metropolitan” and the “cathedral”, were organized in Minsk. The cathedral choir consisted of members of the Odessa Opera Company which had become stranded during a guest performance in Minsk as a result of the German occupation.’ On the feast of the Epiphany in January 1944, between 80,000 and 100,000 people participated in the traditional procession in the city. ‘Both shores of the Dnieper River were covered with people for a distance of three kilometers.’96 The revival of religion was one of the more conspicuous developments that took place after the German occupation of Belorussia. A report from the SD dated 23 October 1941 states that older men and women were the first to visit the reopened churches, but that young people also started to attend services as time passed, including former members of the Komsomol. Seven weeks later, on 12 December 1941, the results of a census were published in Smolensk, a city in which the German advance had stalled for a period of time at the Dnieper and in which a great deal of damage had been done. Orthodox Roman Catholic Lutheran Muslim No religion

24,100 849 259 24 201

94.6% 3.4% 1.0% 0.1% 0.8%

Two census results are particularly striking. First, the population of the city of Smolensk at the time of the census had been reduced from its pre-war 150,000 to roughly 25,000. The reduction had its roots in massive flights, deportations and unimaginable mass executions. Second, the number of census participants who declared themselves to be without religion seems relatively small. This may point to the flight (or deportation) of communist party leaders, but also of secular citizens or of the ‘Komsomol Generation’.97 243

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9 Orthodoxy in the Baltic States The unexpected appearance of the Russian Orthodox exarch Sergii (Voskressensky), namesake of the Patriarch of Moscow who had appointed him to the western provinces of the Soviet Union, was nothing short of spectacular. During the withdrawal of the Red Army he had hidden himself in the crypt of the Orthodox cathedral in Riga. On 1 July 1941, the day of the German invasion, he was discovered and arrested. After four days he was released on bail. Several different explanations exist in relation to Sergii’s reason for remaining in his ecclesial territory. Some argue that as an anti-communist, he had hidden himself in order to avoid his watchdog secretary, a secret agent working for The People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD ). Others suggest he was determined to preserve the connection between the orthodox churches and the patriarchate in Moscow under German occupation. Others still argue that the metropolitan was deliberately left behind by the NKVD to act as a spy during the occupation.98 Lack of clarity concerning Sergii’s motives continued to plague him until he met a violent death in 1944. The Baltic States were incorporated together with Belorussia into the Reichskommissariat Ostland under the leadership of Hinrich Lohse. This also became a reference framework for Sergii, who drafted a Denkschrift, or memorandum, in November 1941 for the German occupier. He wrote that his goal was the creation of an autonomous Orthodox church under one single administration that would also include Belorussia. He also wanted to avoid any suggestion of a schism and organize this Orthodox Church of the Ostland according to canonical norms and thus within the framework of the patriarchate of Moscow. The church was to remain autonomous until it achieved autocephaly in a lawful manner, i.e. be receiving permission from the patriarch. Sergii’s plans followed the so-called leadership principle, in an effort to introduce a concept from National Socialist public administration into Orthodoxy. Sergii did not succeed in incorporating the Belorussian Orthodox Church into his project. He encountered opposition in the Baltic States from Metropolitans Alexandr in Tallinn and Avgustin (Pētersons) in Riga. In his mind, the said prelates had set out to lead their flocks into a national church on the withdrawal of Russian forces and, moreover, had granted a say to the laity: the much feared influence of synodal governance. The blatant negation of the leadership principle in combination with an equally clear antiRussian mood led to a complete break between the exarch and Metropolitan Alexandr at the end of 1942, although the Bishop of Narva, Pavel (Dmitrovsky), the second Orthodox prelate in Estonia, remained faithful to Sergii. Alexandr’s example was followed by church communities in which the Estonians were in the majority, while believers who were more inclined to Russia remained faithful to the patriarch. A similar public break did not take place in Latvia, but Metropolitan Avgustin, a supporter of independent governance, turned his back on Sergii at the personal level. Divisions did not emerge in Lithuania, where the entire Orthodox Church was to be identified with the Russians. Sergii’s greatest ecclesial triumph was not achieved in the Baltic States but rather in a Russian region to the north thereof, surrounding the Russian cities of Pskov and Novgorod.99 The Wehrmacht, and more specifically the supreme command of the 244

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Heeresgruppe Nord (Army Group North) granted him permission to set up an Orthodoxe Mission in den befreiten Gebieten Rußlands – an Orthodox Mission in the liberated regions of Russia. Most of the region remained under military supervision throughout the war, whereby decision-making was determined more by concerns of public order than ideological zeal, although the SD and the SS intervened on occasion to contain any potential religious revival. In July 1941, two orthodox priests who had been arrested by Stalin’s secret police (NKVD ) in Latvia were set free. The two made their way to Pskov and celebrated the first liturgy in the city for years. From that point onwards, believers emerged in the various villages and cities intent on restoring and reopening churches, retrieving icons from their places of hiding, and on following anew the orthodox calendar of religious services and processions. According to estimates, 40 per cent of the (well over 400) former churches were restored together with their carillons. Baptisms and funerals were requested in large numbers, as if an entire decade of church persecution and official atheism had to be eradicated in as short a time as possible. This ‘religious rebirth’ extended to the press and the educational system and immediately exposed a lack of priests. Theology students were drawn from among Russian émigrés in Paris to help alleviate the situation. The canonical character of the Russian Orthodox Church was given due and careful consideration. In the liturgies celebrated in the territory that fell under the jurisdiction of the besieged city of Leningrad, for example, Sergii had prayers said for Metropolitan Aleksii (Simansky). In his 1944 Easter message, the latter responded by expressing his joy at the patriotic fidelity of believers living under fascist servitude. In August 1941, archimandrite Pavel (Gorškov) of the cave monastery in Pskov had four horse-drawn carriages full of provisions donated by pilgrims and parishioners delivered to the hospital in Pskov, which was also being used to intern Red Army prisoners of war. He also maintained secret relations with Soviet partisans. His monastery was bombed during the retreat of the Wehrmacht. In 1944, Nazi scorched earth policy led to the destruction of countless – reopened – churches, and the murder of those believers who had sought refuge in them from the violence of war. The destruction of the city and the land was yet another indication of the Nazi’s racebased abhorrence of the Russian people and its civilization, even in times of crisis. Nevertheless, German policy towards the Orthodox churches in the Baltic States was, in the first instance, a result of pragmatism on the part of the occupying regime, or perhaps dissension within its ranks. On the one hand there was Rosenberg with his Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories who saw the Orthodox Church as an instrument of Russification in the Baltic States. Such Russian influence had to be suppressed in favour of the nationalization of religion. As the exarch from Moscow, Sergii had thus to disappear from the centre of the church. On the other hand, some were of the opinion that the creation of an independent Orthodoxy in the Baltic States would reinforce the church, although it had to be suppressed in the long run as a religion ‘alien’ to Baltic culture.100 The exarch for his part managed to make an impression on the German occupiers, in spite of the fact that he did not speak their language. He organized lavish receptions for 245

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officers in his episcopal residence and in exchange had a car placed at his disposal and even a coach and horses. He was publicly at odds with his position: the prelate from Moscow who served the enemy. ‘Later, when his position was uncertain, when he had begun to have forebodings of the tragic end of his career, at a dinner which included many of the foreign clergy, the Exarch irritably exclaimed: “If you fathers had lived through my Moscow life, and if they had roasted you on the skillet as they did me, you would have also jumped.” ’101 Sergii (Voskressenky) was murdered on 28 April 1944. He was on his way from Vilnius to Riga, hurrying to attend the funeral of Dmitri Smirnov, a renowned tenor. In addition to his chauffeur, the metropolitan had also invited the singer Innokenty Redikultsev and his wife to join him for the journey. A priest who had seen the exarch’s corpse in the car reported that it was riddled with bullets. According to other witnesses, the car had been overtaken by another vehicle from which men dressed in German uniforms opened fire. With the permission of the German occupying authorities, the metropolitan was given a grand and ceremonious funeral. It was made clear in every possible way that the attack was the work of Soviet agents. Sergii had never spoken negatively about the Patriarch of Moscow, but he had expressed his opposition to Bolshevism. During his last public appearance, he had stated in relation to Stalin’s policy of religious rapprochement that the Soviet leader was neither Saul nor Paul. The possibility that the Germans were intent on having Sergii eliminated, however, should not be dismissed. As a matter of fact, Bronislav Kaminsky, the Belorussian military commander of the anti-Communist Russian National Liberation Army, was to die under similar circumstances only six months later. His men had caused such havoc during the Uprising in Warsaw (August and September 1944), and had spilled so much civilian blood that they had reinforced the population’s readiness to resist.102 After the Uprising, Kaminsky was taken prisoner and shot, probably by the Gestapo.103

10 Western Christianity in the Baltic States From the religious perspective, the Baltic States served – and continue to serve – as a borderland between Eastern and Western Christianity. After the departure of the Soviets, the Lutheran churches in Estonia and Latvia had been able to breathe more freely. They also shared a common cultural heritage with the German occupier, but the collective sense of relief was to be short-lived. In the days prior to the advance of the Wehrmacht, efforts were made to form national governments, but none succeeded. The Baltic States became part of the Reichskommissariat Ostland, with Riga as its administrative centre. Their independence remained a fantasy. According to the plans of the German occupying regimes, the male population was to be exploited as forced labour in the German Reich. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Latvia welcomed the German invaders as liberators and a number of their ministers also returned from Germany. For their part, the German commanders maintained a well-disposed distance. Few officers allowed themselves to be welcomed by village clergy with the traditional bread and salt or took 246

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part in folkloric celebrations, but the religious revival was not impeded in any significant way.104 Ecclesial administrative structures were restored and cemeteries were returned to church ownership. ‘In the eyes of the occupier, however, such cooperation was not selfevident since few if any of the Latvian ministers had given evidence of a National Socialist disposition.’105 Communist persecution and deportations had left the church with a serious shortage of ministers, a shortage that only increased during the German occupation. ‘There had been about 250 Latvian Lutheran clergy in 1940 but only 95 were left by late 1944 (most had fled to the West); the Estonian figures were 191 and 79.’106 While local communities were able to reclaim their churches, not all of them managed to have a presider appointed to lead them, but formation and training for ministers was gradually restored. The renowned theology faculty of the University of Tartu (Dorpat) in Estonia was reopened in 1943, taking the form of a Theological Institute. But boundaries were quickly set to this ecclesial resurrection. The Lutheran cathedral in Riga, for example, which had been confiscated from the German community in 1931 in a gesture of nationalism, had to be returned ten years later. ‘The narrowness of the room for movement allotted to the Church was, however, evident in the fact that the German war effort required even such items as church bells.’107 The Nazi regime renewed permission for religion to be taught in primary schools, with the exception of the Old Testament.108 In a report compiled by the Einsatzsgruppen that followed in the wake of the Wehrmacht, reference is made to a prayer of intercession formulated by a minister working as an assistant in the Ostland civil service in which the ‘pan-German Army’ and Hitler were mentioned. At the time of the report, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Latvia had incorporated the prayer into its liturgy. The Roman Catholic Church had asked for ‘time to reflect’ on the matter via its bishop and exarch Sergii had not yet reacted. The leadership of the Evangelical Lutheran Church also endeavoured to acquire public financial support from the German occupying regime, pointing to the position of Lutheranism in the Baltic States: a Western European bridgehead in opposition to Rome and Moscow in a country (Latvia) with a considerable Roman Catholic (Polish) and Russian Orthodox minority. ‘In its history, and in the formation of its ministers, the Latvian Evangelical Church had always maintained its association with German intellectual culture.’109 The Lutheran Church supported the National Socialist relief organization for the socalled victims of Stalinism and contributed to the formation and kitting out of auxiliary troops. ‘When the German army recruited Latvians to fight against the Soviet Union, the Church did not remain passive in this respect either, for the Church and the individual parishes assisted the Latvian Legion also financially.’110 While there was talk of resistance in the Lutheran Church, few supported it. A minister by the name of Arturs Zellitis and a theology student by the name of Arturs Kaminskis were arrested for publishing an anti-German resistance newspaper and later imprisoned in concentration camps outside Latvia. They appear, however, to have been an exception. Dominant in Lithuania, the Roman Catholic Church was equally delighted at the expulsion of the Soviet regime, which had imprisoned and deported its spiritual leaders 247

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and reduced its position in society. On 4 July 1942, the Archbishop of Kaunas, Juozapas Skvireckas, and his auxiliary Vincentas Brzigys, published a declaration thanking the Wehrmacht for the liberation of Lithuania and expressing the hope that freedom of religion would be respected once again. A requiem mass was celebrated in Kaunas’ cathedral the following day in memory of the German soldiers and local insurgents who had given their lives for a free Lithuania.111 Auxiliary bishop Brizgys lead the way in a series of declarations of obedience to the new authorities. He explicitly forbade his priests from taking part in any form of political activity.112 Once again, the period of relief was short-lived. In the latter part of 1941, the episcopal conference observed that in Lithuania, as elsewhere in Eastern Europe, the Nazi regime had allowed greater freedom of religion than the Soviets. The said regime, however, was inspired by an ideology hostile to Christianity and had thus refused to restore the Church’s rights in terms of religious education. The theology faculty in Kaunas, the scene in March 1942 of a church celebration in memory of the coronation of Pius XII (and of a free and open manifestation of Lithuanian Catholicism) was forced to suspend its teaching activities at the end of the same year. Churches were forced to close their doors by order of the Nazi regime. On the other hand, bishops did not unconditionally fulfil all the wishes of the Nazi authorities, refusing, for example, to back recruitment into the Lithuanian SS unit. Nor did they conceal their critique of Nazi policy in Lithuania including, for example, compulsory labour in Germany. But the Church did not encourage anti-Nazi resistance, which relied in Lithuania on passive tactics, except of troops of so-called red partisans, backed by Soviets. Armed fighting against Germans would only bring nearer the return of the Soviets. The most immediate challenge was to find an answer to the massacre of the country’s Jews, which was initiated almost immediately after the German invasion. We will return to this in Chapter 9. In the new (and time-honoured) capital Vilnius, church relations were dominated by a conflict of nationalities. Lithuanian sovereignty had been confirmed at the beginning of the war in 1939. Under both the Soviets and the Germans, emphasis was placed on the Lithuanian national character. This nationalization was disputed by the Polish community resident in the city and its surroundings. Political opposition was also given expression within the Catholic Church. In March 1942, the German authorities arrested the entire population of the major seminary (15 professors and 70 seminarians) and then interned the Archbishop of Wilno/Vilnius, Romuald Jalbrzykowski and his chancellor in a monastery. Of Polish origin, Jalbrzykowski was in fact succeeded by his Lithuanian coadjutor, Mečislovas Reinys. The Holy See appointed him apostolic administrator with all the powers of a residential bishop.113 The bishops in occupied Poland were critical of the appointment – as described in Chapter 3 – and did not welcome it. Reinys set about the reform of the church in Vilnius along Lithuanian lines. In October 1942, he took part in a meeting of the Lithuanian Episcopal Conference in Kaunas. The Holy See advised against his plans, however, after receiving complaints from the Polish episcopate.114 Reinys restricted the use of Polish in his archdiocese and scrapped the additional ‘Regina Poloniae’ (Queen of Poland) from the Marian litany. In his appointments he occasionally gave preference to Lithuanian priests, some of whom 248

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were actively engaged with the occupying authorities in efforts to restrict Polish culture and influence in their parishes. On 23 March 1942, the Russians bombed Vilnius, hitting the barracks that housed Lithuanian auxiliary troops as well as the archiepiscopal residence. Bishop Reinys had a narrow escape, his chancellor perished. Polish Catholics in the city interpreted the bombing as Russia’s revenge for Lithuania’s politics under occupation. The German occupier also took religious countermeasures. Two days after the bombing, sixteen predominantly Polish monasteries of religious women were closed and 253 religious women were interned. According to the reports of the German police, the Lithuanian Catholic clergy were satisfied with this move. Auxiliary bishop Brizgys was informed that the action had been intended to secure the interests of Lithuanian Catholicism. The convents in question had to be searched, moreover, since they were suspected of offering refuge to Jewish women. The nuns were released after their various convents had been searched. Mention is made in the same (political) report that the leadership of the Lithuanian Catholic Church did not protest and even exhibited a degree of satisfaction at the occupying regime’s measures.115 In 1944, the Catholic Church in Lithuania found itself entangled in the growing opposition between occupied Lithuania and the Polish resistance movement. Reference can be made by way of example to the case of Ambrozius Jakavonis, the parish priest of Jeczmieniszki in the municipality of Podbrzezie. It was claimed that the man had worked closely with the Lithuanian police and turned in a number of resistance leaders from his village. More than thirty villagers were said to have been killed as a result of his actions. A unit of the Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa) arrested him around 24 April in his presbytery, court-martialled him and executed him on the spot.116 As acting archbishop, Reinys complained to the Holy See about the activities of the Armia Krajowa in Vilnius and its surroundings. He rounded in particular on the Polish clergy who ‘without his knowledge and without his permission’ had abandoned the church communities to which they had been assigned and joined groups of irregular soldiers. In 1944, he suspended a number of chaplains to the Armia Krajowa. The priests in question, who were under threat of arrest for their part in the resistance, refused to accept dismissal and placed themselves under the jurisdiction of the (Polish) military bishop.117

11 Religion on the periphery: Transnistria Romanian troops formed part of the army that invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. The Conducător of Romania, Ion Victor Antonescu, who had assumed the title of Field Marshal on the same day, was their commander-in-chief. Together with the Wehrmacht they recaptured Bessarabia and on 16 October – after a two month siege – Odessa. The Black Sea port city and its Ukrainian hinterland, located between the river Bug and the river Dniester, fell under Romanian occupation and acquired the name Transnistria. In the three years of Romanian domination, the region was to become 249

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synonymous with punitive expeditions against its citizens and the murder of thousands of Jews. The Romanian occupying regime was not as rigidly organized as its German counterpart. It permitted religion once again, albeit with a preference for Romanian language and cult. A religious revival became apparent in rural regions after years of Soviet persecution. Romanian soldiers, particularly the military chaplains, assisted in the process. Religious revival in Odessa itself was not so spectacular, although an orthodox ceremony was organized on the square in front of the old Nicholas cathedral after the capture of the city, which turned into a peaceful mass demonstration.118 In March 1942, the renowned monastery of Saint Panteleimon opposite the train station was reopened. The introduction of Romanian culture was the primary goal of the Romanian occupying regime and the Romanian Orthodox Church was to be an instrument to this end. It opened a mission in Odessa, the Miseunea ortodoxa romăna in Transnistria, with the intention of offering a religious counterbalance to the Slavic orthodoxy of the patriarchate of Moscow. The latter was indigenous to the south-eastern part of Ukraine, although it had been exposed to merciless persecution under Stalin. At Easter 1942, the first under Romanian rule, the governor Georghe Alexianu led a procession to the cathedral. He used the occasion to grant amnesty to 218 prisoners who were allowed to celebrate the feast with their families. In rural areas, between 300 and 400 churches were either opened or reopened. In the city of Odessa, 25 of the 48 churches that had existed prior to Stalin’s persecutions were reopened. The clergy increased in number. In 1942, Transnistria had an active clergy of 285, 133 of whom were of Romanian origin (115 priests, 5 deacons and 13 cantors). Of Ukrainian origin were 88 priests, 10 deacons, and 54 cantors. The five staretsi of the reopened monasteries were all Romanian.119 A Romanian archbishop was appointed in November 1942. Visarion (Puju) was not only expected to help the people forget the flamboyant conduct of his predecessor, archimandrite Iuliu Scriban, he was also considered capable of understanding and winning the favour of Russian and Ukrainian believers since he had studied theology in Kiev. At Christmas 1943, however, he was dismissed on account of his ‘Russophilia’. His successor made a case for a further Romanisation of orthodoxy. It is surprising that orthodoxy in this part of Ukraine was never subject to the same divisions that characterized the rift between the Autonomous and the Autocephalous churches outlined above. Together with his Romanian successor, Bessarion maintained his association with the patriarchate of Moscow. In his ‘Great Historical Decree’ of 15 June 1943, enacted at a moment when the fortunes of war had turned against the Romanian occupier, Field Marshal Antonescu stated that all were at liberty to practise religion and pursue the arts.120 For some, the religious revival was a form of personal liberation or the recognition of a parental or national tradition. It elicited resistance, nevertheless, and on two different fronts. One was a certain disappointment with respect to the conservative character of orthodox dogma and its (Romanian) leadership among the generation that had been set free to discover the church openly for the first time. The other was a response to the Romanian character of the church. The Romanian pastorii in their multi-coloured vestments, 250

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sometimes wearing patent leather shoes and powder on their faces, were considered strange by the Ukrainian faithful. On occasion the priests in question had a dual function: priest and trader in fruit and petrol. The Romanian church’s ostentatious preference for the monarchy also stimulated resistance.121 It was important for public opinion and its changing moods that the faithful in Odessa be made aware of the fact that Stalin had mitigated church persecution in the Soviet Union, restored Metropolitan Sergii (Moscow) to favour, and allowed him to be elected as patriarch. The Romanian priests abandoned their churches in the face of the advancing Red Army and the Slavic communities were able to breathe more freely for a while under the Slavic clergy who had hurried to replace them, before being the renewed target of religious repression in a victorious Soviet Union.122

12 Religion on the periphery: Finland As the result of a pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, Finland found itself under the Russian sphere of influence. In October 1939, therefore, the government in Moscow summoned Finnish negotiators to discuss the establishment of a Russian military base on the Hank peninsula and the return of part of Karelia that had been under Russian sovereignty until 1919. The Finnish government did not accede to these demands and on 30 November 1939 the Red Army attacked. Finnish defences, under the leadership of Field Marshal Carl Gustav Emil Mannerheim – who had trained as an officer in the army of the Tsar – stood their ground for two months. The winter conditions and the courage of the Finns in confronting the might of the Soviet Union transformed the conflict into one of the most spectacular ever seen in Europe. The Red Army managed to force a first breakthrough in February 1940. On 12 March 1940, the Finnish government concluded the peace with the Soviet Union and lost territory in the Karelian Isthmus and the northern banks of Lake Ladoga. Finland was also obliged to accept half a million refugees. Finland then opted to establish closer links with Nazi Germany. It gave the Wehrmacht permission to use the railway line to the northern part of Norway for the transportation of troops and munitions for the German occupying regime and to establish a base for the purpose. On 10 July 1941, almost three weeks after the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, the Finnish army also invaded the Soviet Union. The goal of this Continuation War – the continuation of what had come to be known as the Winter War – was the recapture of former Finnish territory in Karelia. Mannerheim refused, nevertheless, to allow the Finnish troops to participate in the German siege of Leningrad. He did not want to alienate himself completely from the western powers by entering parts of the Soviet Union to which Finland had no claim. The goal of the war, the re-conquest of Finnish territory, was achieved in December 1941 at the cost of 25,000 dead and 50,000 wounded soldiers. Roughly 300,000 Russian and Finnish citizens lived in the eastern part of Karelia. When the Finnish troops were approaching, more than 200,000 agreed to evacuation on the command of the Soviet 251

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authorities, Russians as well as Finns. Roughly 85,000 stayed behind. The Finnish regime tried to reinforce ties between East Karelia and Finland, and one of the measures employed in the campaign was an endeavour to establish religious unification. The majority Russian Orthodox population had to be converted to Lutheranism and were put under pressure to do so.123 The Evangelical Lutheran Church, which represented 96 per cent of Finnish believers, played a primary role in rousing militancy on behalf of the nation. The Finnish Church was traditionally loyal to national politics and at the same time traditionally oriented towards German Lutheranism, although it had already distanced itself from the National Socialist manipulation thereof. Its national character evolved during both wars into a patriotic force. Patriotism acquired religious connotations. At the end of 1939, Archbishop Erkki Kaila wrote a letter to the sister churches abroad in which he made it clear that as far as Finnish self-awareness was concerned, Finland was waging a war in the name of all Christianity against a godless Bolshevik aggressor. Expressions of solidarity were received from the Archbishops of Uppsala and Canterbury. The Lutheran Church saw itself as the representative of the ‘sacred values’ that inspired the Finns to fight and encouraged them in the dreadful wartime conditions in which they found themselves. As a result, religious practice enjoyed something of a revival. In addition, the church turned out to be an institution capable of organizing effective social assistance to those suffering from the hardships of war. The same could be said of the church’s diaconal services and the pastoral care provided by its chaplains in the Finnish army. As a result, the Lutheran Church evolved into a genuine people’s church in the course of the war and it was accepted as such by the state. In a social democracy that promoted the separation of church and state, it was thus valued and appreciated.124 The church’s ministers had a particular influence on the rural population, the reservoir from which the country’s forces were drawn. ‘The clergy was patriotic, not to say nationalistic, and very anti-communist. To ordinary people, the choice was one between Lutheranism and Communism.’ The church allied itself in word and deed with the fate of the nation and encouraged the people to believe that Finland would survive the war and that justice would prevail. The church’s ministers were there to offer comfort. Indeed, in many parishes they served as the bearers of bad news to the families of fallen soldiers. ‘The clergy was also perfectly disposed to see the German “crusade” against the Soviet Union as a battle on behalf of Western culture against atheistic Bolshevism. Fear and dislike of the Soviet Union were so strong that they made the clergy close its eyes to unpleasant developments that were going on in the areas controlled by Germany.’125 The fact that the Christian faith had been a source of militancy in the Winter War can be inferred from an analysis of the content of 66 homilies preached at the funerals of deceased soldiers. ‘Sacrifice’ is a key word, frequently drawn from the bible, especially the New Testament. The soldier’s sacrificial death is compared to that of Christ, although the unique character of the latter is also underlined. ‘Sacrifice is the greatest expression of Christian love. Love for one’s native country is similar to Christian love and God’s love.’126

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In the sermons, ‘sacrifice’ was the price to be paid for the maintenance of a legal social structure. The nation’s survival required its citizens to be ready to make sacrifices. In doing so they would preserve freedom, religion and the Finnish fatherland. The sermons also underlined the justification of the war against the Soviet Union. ‘It is war for Christianity, Western culture and all the holy and precious values of the people in the West, such as religion, home, native country, humanity, truth and justice. It is also a war for small nations.’127 Reference to the special significance of Finland was likewise not omitted during the funeral sermons. The almighty God had guided the Finnish people to independence after subjection to Sweden and Russia. His Providence would see to it that the just would triumph at the end of the war. A comparison was also made in this regard between Finland and the people of biblical Israel.

13 Conclusion The Finnish example can be seen as a pars pro toto, part of a general and visible participation of the Christian churches in the total war that afflicted Europe between 1941 and 1945. Soldiers sought meaning in religion for the suffering and death they encountered on the battlefield. They were supported in their search by chaplains representing the various denominations. The conflict was interpreted in terms of love and sacrifice, all for the fatherland, but such words also had religious connotations. The war, as we have said, was total. The ideological component was of particular significance. Churches and their faithful were challenged to participate in the defence of the (Russian) fatherland or in a crusade against ‘godless Bolshevism’, in name of the (endangered) civilization of the Occident. The ideological struggle – built, in principle, on atheistic foundations – was consciously charged with religious and cultural arguments and sentiments. In the midst of this polarization, however, it is evident that church leaders in Germany and the Vatican were reticent to identify themselves with the said crusade in an unqualified way, not because they disagreed with polarization in relation to communism, but because the domestic conflict between the church and the Nazi state was ongoing. Total war, which demanded intense selflessness and social engagement, forced both Hitler and Stalin to embrace an opportunistic religious politics. In the Soviet Union, the state put an end to its persecution of the Church. The Russian Orthodox Church reminded the population of its role in national history and took a prominent place in the defence of the fatherland. But the immediate future was even more important. The church had the potential to become an instrument in the domination of the Eastern European states with their substantial orthodox sister churches. Nazi Germany’s religious politics continued to be opportunistic under the Führer’s command, but this also had its roots in the absence of a planned and deliberate concept of administration. Opportunism in relation to religion was also promoted by the rivalries that existed between the various centres of power in both the state and the party. The revival of religion presented itself, as it were, as a factor of domination in occupied territories, but German religious politics 253

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was not consistent in this regard and did not make efficient use of the potential resources the churches had to offer. One evident and established given in the circumstances of war was the correlation of religion and national identity. This was expressed in two ways. The Nazi occupier’s divide-and-conquer politics did not only play off peoples and nations against one another, it also exploited their primary religious affiliations in the same way. The churches were an expression of a given nation and were thus considered targets in both politics and war. In the regional and wretched civil wars that emerged here and there in Eastern Europe at a time in which the main adversaries were engaged with one another in a life and death struggle, religion also had a role to play, serving to motivate operations that included ethnic cleansing. The women of besieged Leningrad were intent on burying their (numberless) dead according to the rites of the church, an ardent endeavour to maintain some degree of normality in the midst of war. Religion in an organized society is a way of life, a way of mutual communication and solidarity. In a state in which civil authority was crumbling and civil morality was on the decline, churches, rituals, and the tradition of diaconal assistance became increasingly important factors in maintaining (reasonable) stability in the midst of mounting social uncertainty. Religion, it appeared, was not only a source of militancy, it also stimulated the maintenance of normality – or at least the desire to do so – and the comfort and solidarity that stems from shared suffering.

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CHAPTER 6 CHURCHES BETWEEN LOYALTY AND RESISTANCE

Introduction The campaign mobilized by Nazi Germany and its allies against the Soviet Union had two major consequences for other regions of occupied Europe. The invasion was presented as a ‘crusade’ against communism, its intention in part to inspire other social institutions to form a common ideological front. On the other hand, the ‘crusade’ provided the communist parties in Europe with legitimation, motivating them to organize resistance in support of a socialist fatherland under threat. The second major consequence was an intensification and scaling-up of the war. As a result, Germany itself was forced to look for new ways to keep the wartime economy productive. Men – and to a lesser extent women – from the occupied territories were expected to fill the gap left by Germans who had been called into military service. This led to a campaign of forced labour in Eastern and then Western Europe. Communist parties in occupied Europe shared a common sense of solidarity with, and obedience to the centre of, the revolution: the Soviet Union. They no longer felt bound by the consequences of the 1939 Non-Aggression Pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, which had established relative neutrality towards German occupying regimes. Party leaders felt at liberty to resume their ideologically motivated struggle against National Socialist domination. Before the war, moreover, some parties in Europe had gained considerable experience in underground warfare. The communist resistance opted for armed struggle. Military factions were formed, units of partisans, some of which evolved into armies. In political terms, communism became the core of a broader leftist collaboration. In addition – or perhaps by contrast – there was a degree of national resistance, organized by soldiers from the defeated army and often at the beginning of the occupation, which, with the necessary reservation, could be styled civilian. As the war continued, the Christian churches were confronted with these two forms of resistance. ‘National’ resistance was closer to them than communism, the ideology of which they condemned, but sometimes major ideological gulfs were bridged out of necessity. A second important factor was the need to mobilize the home front in all the occupied territories as well as among Germany’s allies in support of the struggle and the wartime economy. The most significant form this mobilization took was forced labour in Nazi Germany itself, which was imposed from 1940 onwards on ever increasing numbers of (male) citizens in Eastern Europe and from 1942 in all the occupied territories. The campaign against the Soviet Union also resulted in a new phase in the Nazis’ programme 255

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of mass murder. The systematic killing of psychiatric patients was provisionally reduced, that of Jews and of Roma and Sinti – the theme of Chapters 8, 9 and 10 – increased. This intensification was met with protest and resistance; protest in the form of (public) manifestations of civil disobedience, resistance in the form of armed partisan struggle. An important element in this regard was the organization of places of safety for people being pursued by the occupying regime. In some instances they were Jews, but in others they were members of the underground or simply men fleeing conscription into forced labour in Germany. Increased resistance led to increased repression. The SS was thus able to assume greater power and influence within the National Socialist polycracy. This took place in the first instance in the occupied regions of Central and Eastern Europe, where SS Einsatzgruppen indulged their racist murder campaigns from the outset. But it also became a fact in Northern and Western Europe, where, until the middle of 1941, the various regimes had remained comparatively moderate.1 The Christian churches were confronted with a twofold dilemma. Was it allowed, as a matter of principle, for Christians to disobey their legal or factual government and thereby take up arms against them and kill their adversaries? Rooted in the gospel and its historical experience, Christianity was, after all, law-abiding. A second question was related to one’s choice of political party. Could Christians support a struggle that would associate them with communism, an ideology they were expected to vigorously reject? Was there thus a need to draw a line? Or was communism an even greater evil than National Socialism? In the present chapter we will focus our analysis on the religious dimensions of disobedience and active resistance. The other side of the coin, collaboration, will be observed in the shadows. We will endeavour to provide an answer to four questions. Were the reality and content of religion relevant to the growth of civil disobedience and active resistance? Did the Christian churches try to officially regulate such disobedience and even encourage it? Was a divining line drawn with respect to communist resistance? How and to what extent did disobedience and the resulting use of violence against the occupier become a topic of debate in religious circles? 1 Religion and war in Yugoslavia 1.1 Resistance in Serbia As we observed in Chapter 4, there was little if any lull in hostilities between occupation and resistance. Local uprisings followed shortly after the invasion and subdivision of the state (April 1941), in occupied Serbia as well as in independent Croatia (June 1941). The uprisings had two sources of inspiration. The construction of a Croatian state dominated by radical nationalists led to an intensification of pre-war ethnic opposition between Serbs and Croats which took violent form in that part of Croatian territory in which Serbs constituted the majority. In addition, the communist part of Yugoslavia considered itself authorized from 22 June 1941 to engage in armed struggle in defence of the Soviet Union. Its goal was the establishment of a socialist state in a reunified Yugoslavia. 256

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These motivations – nationalist and ideological – must be distinguished from one another although they appear to have been intertwined at the beginning of the occupation. They became visible in the form of two resistance organizations: the ‘Chetniks’ and the partisans, the former a collective term for Serbian militants, the latter an inclusive term used by and for communist-dominated underground forces. Both acquired their final form in the second half of 1941 in a phase of spontaneous hostility. The term ‘Chetnik’ refers, as we have said, to a particularly Serbian tradition: the struggle waged by farmers against Ottoman domination. At the beginning of the occupation in Yugoslavia there were in fact two formations that made use of this historically laden title. The first was that of Kosta Pećanac, which reached the height of its powers in May 1942 with a force of 13,400 men.2 They were to be distinguished in command structure, if not in name and ideology, from the formation of colonel, later general, Dragoljub-Draža Mihailović. The latter was appointed Minister of War in the Royal Yugoslav government in exile. In January 1942, the ‘Chetniks’ under General Mihailović were recognized by the Yugoslavian government in exile in London as the ‘Yugoslav Army in the Homeland’. Through its swift and violent interventions, his group ultimately became the largest and the only formation. The leadership quickly concluded that direct confrontation with the German occupier would be futile until the European theatre of war had delivered a decisive defeat against the Wehrmacht and its allies. They were familiar with the history of reprisals against Serb insurgents and their reticence was confirmed by new and bloody reprisals on the part of the Nazi regime, which endeavoured to motivate its soldiers by reminding them of the leading role Serbia had played in the beginning of the First World War. Between 19 and 21 October 1941, for example, 2,300 citizens of the Serbian city of Kragujevać and its surroundings were executed by members of the Wehrmacht. The killings included 144 schoolchildren and a large number of their teachers. Eight priests of the Serbian Orthodox Church were also put to death. In the neighbouring municipality of Groznice, German soldiers attacked the village church in the middle of Sunday services. They killed the parish priest, Nikola Aleksica, and the male members of the congregation.3 A further example is the bloodbath in the city of Kraljevo where the German military executed 1,736 men and 19 ‘communist’ women after a house to house round-up a week earlier. The victims included all the workers employed in a local airplane factory in the service of the German air force. While it is true to say the Jews and communists were the first to be singled out during such punitive expeditions, the German authorities also had citizens shot at random in order to meet their reprisal quotas. Their reign of terror had a deterrent. For the Serbian middle class, resistance appeared to be putting the continued existence of country and people at risk. When the German authorities appointed General Milan Nedić as leader of the Serbian government – the ‘Pétain’ of occupied Serbia – he was able to rely on a degree of loyalty from the population. The ‘Chetniks’ of Kosta Pećanac, for example, submitted to his authority. General Nedić was able – and permitted – to put together his own ‘Serbian Guard’ from among the said Chetniks and the militant followers of the fascist leader Dimitrije Ljotić. 257

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As we noted above, Mihailović’s ‘Chetniks’ decided to wait for an allied invasion before unleashing widespread revolt. In the meantime, the ‘Chetnik’ high command was expected to promote Serbian interests in a Yugoslavia divided by a diversity of occupying regimes. In practice this meant that the commander-in-chief, Mihailović, focused his forces on the elimination of domestic opponents to Serbian goals: the Ustaše in Croatia, the Muslims (‘Turks’) of Sandjak and Bosnia-Herzegovina and ultimately the communists and their partisan allies. In order to suppress the latter he even sought a modus vivendi on occasion with German and Italian commandants. Although some were nourished by Serbian nationalism, the partisans by contrast had two ideals to live up to: the ideal of a socialist state and the idea of Yugoslavia based on ‘unity and brotherhood’, in the governance of which each of the different component regions would have an equal say. In the initial phase of the uprising, the latter was a source of conflict. In September 1941, for example, the Muslim population of the village of Kulen Vakuf in Bosnia was almost completely annihilated by a unit of partisans, in spite of the fact that the villagers had not taken part in the oppression of Serbs in this part of the Croatian state. The incident can only be described as ethnic cleansing of the bloodiest kind. There was an awareness at the time that the partisans were actually part of an uprising that had started as a spontaneous endeavour to defend Serbian farmers against the new regime.4 In the international ideology of the communist movement, however, motivations of this sort had to be sacrificed to a higher goal: the defence of a socialist fatherland (the Soviet Union) and the socialist revolution.5 For the Communist Party Secretary Josip Broz Tito and his supporters, 1941 was a year of active and complete resistance intent on dividing the military focus of the German army and its allies and reducing military pressure on the Soviet Union. The communist leadership in Yugoslavia, moreover, had high hopes for the Red Army. Serbia was chosen as the partisans’ first line of battle. It was there, after all, that the Red Army were expected to invade Yugoslavia. Faith in the imminent arrival of Soviet forces likewise inspired a conviction that the socialist revolution was close at hand. Tito and his partisans were disappointed in their expectations by hard military facts and by the Nazi occupying regime’s draconian repression. The liberation of the Yugoslavian nations thus became an end in itself; the resurrection of a multinational and multicultural state based on ‘unity and brotherhood’. Tito was obliged to abandon his headquarters in Belgrade and regroup in December 1941 in mountainous Bosnia. But the ideological priorities were not completely eliminated. The first partisans – mostly Serbs – were divided in December 1941 and March 1942 into two so-called Proletarian Brigades, the unmistakable advance guard of the communist revolution. Tito’s forces, however, slowly but surely came to reflect the many-sidedness of the Yugoslavian population. ‘Religious officers were present in all Partisan battalions and brigades, and clergy of all faiths participated at various levels of the Partisan forces, including the organs of the provisional national government. Non-Communists occupied leadership positions, although none could command more than a platoon.’6 Communist leadership was also established in liberated regions in the so-called People’s Committees. A second unusual feature of the partisans was the role played by women in 258

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the struggle. From the outset they were placed on an equal footing with their male counterparts and treated as such. Their contribution, in hindsight, was clearly a decisive factor in the ultimate victory of the partisans. The other resistance movement, the ‘Chetniks’, were mostly farmers – although some came from the cities – who actualized the Serbian tradition of resistance to Ottoman domination in a campaign against their Croatian and Bosnian compatriots. The said tradition was confirmed when the followers of General Mihailović decided not to shave and to let their hair grow following the example of the ‘Haiduks’ (knightly bandits) from the generation of their forefathers. Serbian heraldic symbols were revived together with flags bearing a skull and the motto ‘Freedom or Death’. ‘They were self-appointed leaders, many of them styling themselves vojvodas or chieftains, following the old Serbian tradition, and claiming absolute control of their detachment.’7 The historical inspiration behind this Serbian militancy had its roots in a mixture of religion and politics. Two shared memories were cherished: the veneration of Lazar, the Serbian king and martyr who died at the battle of Kosovo Field (or Blackbird’s Field) in Kosovo fighting the Ottoman sultan; and The Mountain Wrath, an epic composed by the Montenegrin prince and bishop Petar Petrović-Njegoš on the defence of Serbian orthodoxy against the ‘Turks’. The relics of Prince Lazar were transported from Kosovo to the Panonian Plain in 1690 (see Chapter 1). They were first located in Szentendre (Saint Andrew) near Budapest, but then moved in 1697 to the monastery of Ravanica in the Srem region. By the nineteenth century, Prince Lazar had evolved into a sort of Serbian Christ figure, in whose suffering and death the nation shared. In his resurrection Serbia would also rise again. Lazar’s remains were left in peace and venerated in Ravanica until members of the Ustaša stole golden rings from his coffin in 1942. With the help of the German occupiers, Lazar was then brought to a place of safety in Belgrade. He was interred in the cathedral of the patriarch and venerated on Vidovdan (Saint Vitus Day; 28 June).8 The central figure in the epic of the Montenegrin prince and bishop Njegoš is a fellow orthodox cleric (Vladika) Danilo, who set out to defend Montenegro against Ottoman military ambitions and cursed Slavs who had converted to Islam. The bishop considered these Montenegrin converts as his brothers and sisters, but at the same time he was convinced that their return to orthodoxy would help the country maintain its freedom. In the Second World War, partisan leader Milovan Djilas was inspired by the tenor of The Mountain Wrath. Violence may have been an evil, but it was permitted because it was a concrete expression of the human desire for good and for freedom. Moreover: ‘the title Djilas gave to the central chapter of his study of Njegoš – “Poet of Serbian Cosmic Misfortune” – indicates that he supported the popular idea that Serbia faced the indifference or hostility of practically the entire world, in spite, or perhaps because, of its goodness’.9 If Serbian orthodoxy was at the core of nationalism and served to guide the resistance, then the position of the Serbian Orthodox Church was of crucial significance. In his 1942 Easter message, Metropolitan Josif called upon the Serbian faithful to preserve unity, a unity forged in the Orthodoxy, language and blood of the martyrs of the glorious past; of 259

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glorious saints such as Bishop Sava and Prince Lazar. ‘Our harmony saves the Serbs.’10 Five conflicting parties curried its favour: the German occupying regime, the government of General Nedić, the fascists under Dimitrije Ljotić, the Chetniks, and the partisans. As we observed in Chapter  4, the German occupier had immediately interned the Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church – Gavrilo Dožić – on account of his open and effective protest against the April 1941 treaty that saw Yugoslavia become an ally of Nazi Germany. His imprisonment was continued because he was seen as a religious leader with links to the Russian Orthodox Church and as a symbol of a pan-Slavism that Nazi Germany was determined to eradicate.11 The Germans were also unhappy with his replacement, however, the locum tenens Metropolitan Josif, whom they considered too passive. Josif insisted that the Synod of the Church could not make licit decisions in the absence of the patriarch and refused to make public statements against communist resistance for fear it would alienate the Serbian faithful from the Serbian Church. An additional inducement on the part of the German occupier was their promise to help establish measures against the further spread of Catholicism in the Balkans. The metropolitan responded that the occupying regime would first have to restore the canonical unity of the Serbian Orthodox Church in what had previously been Yugoslavian territory before they could expect the bishops to cooperate.12 A second candidate for the support of the Serbian Orthodox Church – General Nedić, the leader of the government of ‘national salvation’ – received the same answer. As we also observed in Chapter  4, he asked for the metropolitan’s support in October 1941, mentioning in the process that the Germans were unsatisfied with the passivity of the Church. Josif responded that while it was true that the Orthodox Church rejected communism and especially Bolshevism in principle, it had no desire to condemn either party in the prevailing climate of civil war.13 As a result if its ‘passivity’, Nedić’s supporters considered the Serbian Orthodox Church to be guilty of the death of Serbian citizens. In the official press, the Church was accused of avoiding its responsibility and of demonstrating its inability to respond to the demands of the new era and the war. In 1942, the Germans made a concession to the Serbian Orthodox Church. It was granted permission to celebrate the birthday of the king on 6 September 1942 with a solemn liturgy in Belgrade cathedral in which bishops were free to participate. Nedić and his entire cabinet, however, were also to be present.14 In this climate, the Church also made a renewed effort to have the patriarch freed from internment or at least acquire permission for the members of the Synod to visit him on a regular basis in his monastery prison. Permission was refused. General Nedić also made similar attempts at mediation, but without result. Patriarch Gavrilo was – especially for Hitler – the patriarch who had torpedoed the alliance with Germany in March 1941. The sympathy of the episcopate lay with the ‘Chetniks’ of General Mihailović. It was nourished by shared ideas on Serbia and a common devotion to the monarchy. The Synod maintained ongoing contacts with Mihailović and there is even evidence of concrete assistance on the Church’s part for combatant units. It seems reasonable to suggest that such contacts were also maintained with the interned patriarch. Three bishops are known with certainty to have actively cooperated with the ‘Chetniks’: 260

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Figure 16 Gavrilo Dožić, the patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church. Photo: SOMA , Brussels.

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Nektarije Krulj (Tuzla), Valerijan Stefanović and Joanikije Lipovac (Montenegro). Two occasions have been documented at which a funeral service was held in the Orthodox cathedral in Belgrade, and in the presence of a bishop, for a fallen ‘Chetnik’. There are no records of such services being organized for General Nedić’s fallen soldiers.15 The majority of the clergy were extremely suspicious of communism on account of the church persecution in the Soviet Union and under the influence of Russian immigrants during the Interbellum. ‘Dr. Djura Djurović, secretary-general of the Chetnik Central National Committee, testified at his trial in the summer of 1945, that “threequarters of the Orthodox clergy supported the Draža Mihailović movement”. That seems a fair estimate.’16 Moreover, their sympathies may also have remained unspoken since many priests kept their opinions to themselves for fear of German reprisals. ‘Small numbers of priests were engaged with both sides, but the majority tried to keep out of the conflict and waited to see how the war would develop.’17 Orthodox priests occasionally held prominent positions in the resistance. Momčilo Djujić, for example, became the most senior commander (vojvoda) in the north of Dalmatia and the west of Bosnia, while another priest by the name of Savo Bozić served as commandant of an important group of ‘Chetniks’ in the north-east of the same region. The said clergy, however, did not always uphold their commitment to love their neighbour. At the end of September 1942, a ‘Chetnik’ unit under ‘Pop Djujić’ killed two hundred inhabitants of the village of Gata near Split.18 A priest by the name of Vlada Zecević was senior commander of the ‘Chetniks’ in the west of Serbia. He defected to the partisans when conflict broke out between both parties in ‘his’ region and even became a member of the Communist Party. During and after the war he was to hold senior administrative functions in Tito’s army.19 The communist ideology was dogmatically atheistic and this, as we noted, made the combination of priest and partisan all the more remarkable. But the fact of it was far from coincidental. The official goal of the conflict was, after all, a nationalist one: the liberation of Yugoslavia. The communist leadership was aware of the need to give religion a place in this national war of liberation. In a liberated village, for example, a unit of partisans had the Orthodox church bells sounded to announce to the inhabitants in a traditional fashion that a meeting was about to take place. As conflict between partisans and ‘Chetniks’ increased in the course of the war – and ‘Chetniks’ justified their aggression on the claim that communists were hostile to religion – it became a matter of urgency for the partisans to formalize the place of the clergy in their struggle. After taking the village of Velika Bukovaca near Doboj at the beginning of 1942, for example, they forced a seminarian to adopt the role of orthodox priest, insisting he open the church in the village to show the local population that the partisans respected religion.20 1.2 Federalism Macedonia also had a role to play in the ideal of a federally structured Yugoslavia that Tito and his associates had in mind. Partisans fighting for the independence of this part of the country were not only engaged in a battle against the Bulgarian occupier, they also 262

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rejected the restoration of (pre-war) Serbian domination. An essential element in achieving their goal was the establishment of an autonomous Macedonian Orthodox Church. In October 1943, an office for religious affairs was set up at the general headquarters of the Macedonian partisans. In a letter to the clergy in liberated regions of the country it was stated that they should make clear to the faithful in their charge that the partisans were not permitted to violate religious rights and that they were to grant the priests the same freedoms as in the past. A relatively large number of Orthodox priests in Macedonia joined their ranks. The office for religious affairs ordered them to use the traditional liturgical prayer of intercession for the archbishop and bishops in the region, but no longer to mention their (Serbian) names. They were also expected to pray for the National Liberation Army (the partisans).21 In the same month, October 1943, a meeting of Orthodox priests was held in the village of Izdeglavje near Ohrid, in a region liberated by the partisans. Decisions were made thereafter that can be considered the beginning of an independent Macedonian Orthodox Church, detached from the Serbian mother church. A steering committee was set up that was to organize an ecclesiastical assembly eighteen months later – in March 1945 – which called for an independent church and for the exclusive appointment of priests and bishops of Macedonian origin.22 When it came to Islam and Catholicism, the partisans also went out of their way on occasion to promote understanding among the faithful and where necessary involve them in the struggle. While Catholicism tended to be identified with Croatia, the said identification was not exclusive. A number of Catholic priests associated themselves with the partisans: 78 in total, of whom 43 died.23 In Slovenia, Metod Mikuž – a Catholic priest – functioned as a contact person, in Croatia Svetozar Rittig, a septuagenarian parish priest of St Marc’s Church in Zagreb who joined the Partisans in June 1943. Both acquired an ambiguous reputation. Islamic Bosnians from every corner were invited to express their support or to join the partisans. In September 1941, for example, a partisan (officer) in the village of Glavatičevo near Konjic was heard encouraging his atheist Muslim comrades with enthusiasm to go into the local mosque and let the villagers see that the partisans had acknowledged Muslims in their ranks. In another Bosnian village, two Muslim partisans read from the Qur’an in order to show the village elders that there were Muslims among the partisans.24 Tito himself recognized the importance of respecting religious sensitivities. In June 1942, he ordered the appointment of priests and hodjas (Qur’an scholars) to the Proletarian Brigades to take care of the religious needs of the troops and to reassure the people; Christian and Muslim spiritual advisors wore a cross or a half moon on their left sleeve. The elite partisan troops made use of religion in their propaganda and in battle. Mohammed Hodzić, a partisan attached as a hodja to the 10th Herzegovina Brigade, was invited to lead the prayers in the village mosque. The communist leaders called him to task when they heard that he had interrupted the service because of an alarm. They feared that his actions would be seen as evidence of disrespect for local religious sensitivities and did not want to run the risk of having the partisans be accused of untrustworthiness in religious matters.25 263

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The partisans finally succeeded in liberating parts of Yugoslavia, in some instance for only a short period of time, but in others (in 1943 and 1944) liberation was permanent. A number of reasons can be identified for their ultimate victory over the occupying forces and the ‘Chetniks’. The first had domestic roots: terror sown by radical Croatian nationalists had nourished resistance among Serbians, but also among Bosnian Muslims. The occupier never managed to suppress this ongoing revolt completely. The Italian occupying force failed at two decisive moments: in December 1941 and in May 1942. In the spring of 1942, the Regio Esercito withdrew from the zone it had been occupying. The vacuum was only filled by the Germans in 1943, giving Tito and his partisans time to consolidate. A second reason is to be found in the fact that the British government changed course in 1943 and withdrew its support to the ‘Chetniks’. From then on London focused its support on the partisans with weapon droppings and intelligence. A third and final reason has to do with the failure of German occupying policy. More or less limitless German terror failed to distinguish between the pioneers of the resistance and those who simply followed along. As a result, the Germans forfeited whatever sympathy they had won among the population. They also forfeited the opportunity to manipulate the ‘Chetniks’ to their own ends and use them as a German instrument in the Serbian civil war against the partisans.26 1.3 Liberation in Croatia and Slovenia The Red Army and the partisans liberated Belgrade in October 1944. The Eastern front had now been shifted westwards to a line connecting Riga with the Yugoslavian capital. Plans for a post-war reorganization of Europe included the restoration of a multi-ethnic Yugoslavia. To that end, the partisans were expected to liberate the western regions of the country: the satellite state Croatia and occupied and annexed Slovenia. Allied assistance was also expected to be limited. The Red Army concentrated itself in 1945 on Nazi Germany, and the British–American invasion focused on Italy as a landing point rather than the Balkans. The partisans continued their advance under the motto ‘fraternity and unity’, but they were also influenced by the communist ideology and from time to time a desire for revenge. Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Slovenia were liberated in May 1945. Croatian soldiers and refugees sought sanctuary in Austria, in the zone occupied at the time by the British. They were disarmed, however, and the majority were returned to liberated Yugoslavia where they were taken prisoner by the partisans and often executed. The border town of Bleiburg, for example, since then inscribed in the historical consciousness of Croatia as a place of bloody memory, witnessed many such killings.27 Officials of the Catholic Church, which had profound links with the Croatian state, also ran the risk of arrest and execution. ‘Many Catholic priests had been killed by advancing Partisan forces, some in the hazards of war, others for suspected collaboration with the Ustaše.’28 In Herzegovina, for example, the Franciscans running the secondary school in Siroki Brijeg were all killed in an attack on their monastery and a number of 264

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the school children met with the same fate. The partisans suspected the Friars Minor of having sheltered Ustaše combat units.29 During the partisan advance, 177 priests were put to death; 71 priests and 4 nuns were killed in prison.30 Of the 950 Catholic clergy a quarter had joined or collaborated in some form with the Ustaše movement. On the other hand, a rather substantial number of Catholic clergy in occupied Yugoslavia (at least 43 and among them at least 18 Croat Catholic clergy) collaborated with the partisans.31 ‘As many as 383 Croat Catholic clergy (included one bishop) were allegedly killed during and immediately after the war; a fact that undoubtedly reinforced the episcopate inability to break openly with the Croat authorities or to side with the Resistance.’32 Archbishop Stepinac had called upon his priests to steer clear of politics – his standpoint had always been the same – but also to stay where they belonged, in the parishes. Pavelić, the leader of the Croatian state, invited the archbishop, in what then appeared to be the last days of the regime, to accept the leadership of a provisional government. He refused the offer, but accepted Pavelić’s request that he condemn partisan violence. He and four other bishops published a pastoral letter on 24 March 1945 in which they exonerated the Catholic Church as an institution of any wrongdoing. Individual Croatians had defended themselves against the attacks of others and the Church had condemned such reprisals. The Croatian episcopate called for an international commission of inquiry to determine whether war crime accusations were justified or nothing more than a means to eliminate those citizens the communists considered an obstacle to the realization of their party programme. On 10 April 1945, the fourth anniversary of the independence of Croatia was celebrated in Zagreb cathedral. During the celebration, communism was portrayed not only as the Church’s greatest enemy, but also the enemy of human freedom. ‘We pray God to help the Croatian people in today’s fateful hours to save our state.’33 In the months after the liberation, the Church authorities continued to apologize for the misdeeds of individual priests. In pastoral letters and editorials in the church press, the Church insisted that it had made sure ‘conversions’ had followed canonical requirements and had taken place without coercion. According to historian Stella Alexander, however, their position with respect to the members of the Ustaša remained ambiguous. ‘Even that of those prelates who condemned the excesses and atrocities most decisively: for these were carried out by Catholics who needed to be reproved, even chastised, and were part of the bishop’s flock. Communists, on the other hand, were condemned as the instruments of Satan and the agents of evil.’34 Two Croatian bishops panicked when they heard reports about the partisan advance, and fled. One was Archbishop Sarić of Sarajevo, whose position as a church leader had been compromised more than any other on account of his open sympathy for and cooperation with the Ustaše. He took the former Bishop of Banja Luka, Josip Stjepan Garić, with him to Austria. In Dalmatia, the bishops sought contact with the partisans of their own accord. The Bishop of Zadar, for example, made his way to Sibenik at the moment of the city’s emancipation and thanked the ‘people’s government of Croatia’ for this act of liberation. Archbishop Stepinac was determined to remain in his episcopal see. 265

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He assembled the chapter of the archdiocese and gave the canons permission to leave. At the same time, however, he made it clear that he had no plans to leave Zagreb. None of the canons left the city. In the difficult years that were to follow, ‘he was to hold firm to his determination never to leave his people unless directly ordered to do so by the Pope’.35 The Slovenian bishop Rožman also left his diocese in May 1945, convinced that he would be free to return to Slovenia a few weeks later with the Anglo-American troops. During the Italian occupation of Slovenia he had played a mediating role, much more than his fellow bishop Tomažić of the diocese of Maribor who had declared his loyalty to the German occupier on 16 April 1941. It is worthy of note that Rožman and Tomažić’s pragmatism with respect to the Italian and German occupying regimes did not extend to the partisans. They had two reasons for this. The first was their belief that armed resistance might lead to civil war and that innocent citizens would be its victims The second was the Church’s condemnation of communism as formulated in the encyclical Divini Redemptoris. Bishop Rožman repeatedly condemned the ideology of the partisan resistance. The bishop’s position was reinforced on 13 October 1942 when a prominent Catholic politician by the name of Marko Natlačen was murdered by a partisan dressed as a priest. In 1943 he wrote in a pastoral letter that the battle against communism was not political but a religious matter as it touches upon the belief in God. To reject atheistic doctrines was a religious duty. No one, he insisted, could be both Catholic and communist at the same time.36 In August 1942, the senior authorities of the Italian occupying regime sought contact with Bishop Rožman to warn him that any acts of resistance in the territory under their control would meet with radical reprisals. Under pressure from a pointed warning on deportation, the bishop was urged to organize a meeting of Slovenian politicians with a view to tempering resistance. In spite of his rejection of partisan ideological goals, Rožman continued to maintain – clandestine – contact with the Slovenian priest Metod Mikuž, theologian and historian, once his secretary and mentioned earlier as a specialist on religious affairs in the Slovenian partisan command. In December 1941 and again in January 1945, Bishop Tomažić, by contrast, refused to allow his priests to cooperate at any level with communists (and thus with the partisans).37 In both occupied zones – after the Italians suspended hostilities mid-1943 under exclusively German authority – Slovenian auxiliary forces were set up to defend Slovenia against the partisans in the interior and those advancing from the south-east. With episcopal encouragement, chaplains also enlisted in this newly established Landeswehr. In September 1944, Bishop Rožman even suggested that their number be increased to thirteen. On 20 April 1944, the bishop took part in a public ceremony in which the Landeswehr swore an oath of allegiance. After celebrating low mass he left the stadium in which the event was being held. While he did not attend a second such public ceremony, nevertheless he took the salute in person at a parade passing in front of the Ursuline Church in Ljubljana.38 After May 1945, Rožman and his two fellow bishops from Bosnia-Herzegovina were either unwilling or unable to return to their respective dioceses. ‘All three found refuge in monasteries in Austria and Switzerland and spent the rest of their lives in obscurity. 266

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None had sought Vatican permission to leave his diocese and none was subsequently received by the Pope.’39 In 1946, Bishop Rožman was convicted – in absentia – of treason for collaborating with the Nazi regime. In 2009, when Slovenia was independent, the conviction was annulled on procedural grounds. Archbishop Stepinac was placed under house arrest on 17 May in liberated Yugoslavia. A year later, on 18 September 1946, he was arrested in the sacristy of his church. After a relatively short trial he was sentenced to 16 years forced labour. In 1992, the Sabor of the new Croatian state condemned the court decision and the juridical process. 1.4 The Serbian Orthodox Bishop Nikolaj Velimirovic´ In the memory of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Bishop Nikolaj Velimirović became a unique symbol during the war of conflict and suffering in Serbia. He spoke to the collective imagination through his vision of a Slavic orthodox mission and by the way he gave personal expression to his vision. For this reason, he was canonized in 2003 by the Serbian church. Saint Nikolaj Velimirović was first and foremost an active and much appreciated preacher, a model shepherd for his flock. Nikolaj Velimirović was born into a family of farmers in Lelić near the city of Valjevo on 23 December 1880 (4 January 1881 according to the Julian calendar). He was baptized in the monastery of Čelije, which he later entered as a monk. He was then selected to study theology in Russia. Together with his confrere Justin Popović, he became the last Serbian student to attend the Theological Academy in Saint Petersburg prior to the outbreak of the October Revolution. He continued his studies in Switzerland where he received a doctorate from the Old Catholic Theological Faculty at the University of Berne. As a result of his university education, Velimirović was unique among the Serbian Orthodox clergy at the beginning of the twentieth century. The majority of them had little training and according to some reports little manners; a model of provincialism, but also of corruption and ignorance.40 Velimirović also spent time in England in 1910. After the outbreak of the First World War, he returned to the Anglo-Saxon world to encourage understanding and sympathy for the Serbian nation and its church. The University of Cambridge even awarded him an honorary doctorate. In England he became acquainted with liberal Protestantism, which appealed to him at the time. But in similar fashion to the Croatian Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac, Velimirović abandoned his original sympathy and optimism with respect to a united Yugoslavia. This turnabout was part of his rejection of the ideas of the Enlightenment and the French revolution, which was branded ‘Roman-Teutonic’ or ‘Roman-German’ and ‘alien’ to Slavic culture.41 In the 1920s, Velimirović – by this time a bishop, first in Zica, then in Ohrid – came into contact with a group of evangelicals called the Bogomoljacki pokert or Bogomils (‘Bogomoljac’ means ‘someone who worships God, a devout person’), a network of pious orthodox believers who addressed one another as brother or sister. Bogomil circles became a source of monks and nuns who contributed to a revival of the monasteries of the Serbian Orthodox Church. Velimirović became the spiritual leader of one such monastery. 267

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The bishop evolved at this time from a self-conscious and well-dressed clergyman into an ascetic and conservative figure. As a result of his spiritual transformation he became more and more critical of Western civilization. The influence of Russian orthodoxy was a direct consequence of the immigration of Russian clergy to Yugoslavia after the civil war in the Soviet Union. The cultural impact of these often highly educated newcomers contributed to a movement known in the Interbellum under the term svetosavlje. The word referred in the first instance to Saint Sava, the founder of Christianity in Serbia. Svetosavlje was also the title of a journal published by the Theological Faculty in Belgrade from 1932 to 1940. The said ideology is an amalgamation of a variety of tendencies in the Slavic world: of Russian Slavophiles and Russian messianism, but also in the conviction upheld by many that only Orthodoxy had preserved Christianity in its purest form. ‘A Serbian theologian defined it as “Orthodoxy ennobled by a healthy Serbian nationalism”.’42 Velimirović developed images of the ideal Serbian state that had embraced the church and of an ideal Serbian Orthodox Church into which society had been absorbed. The evils of both clericalism and laicism were thus to be banished from Serbia.43 The idea of ‘redemption’ was also present. In the Battle of Kosovo (or Blackbird’s Field), and in the First World War, Serbia had suffered for Christianity and the Christian civilization. It had the ‘apostolic task’ of leading the East to baptism and the West to contrition. This, in a nutshell, was the core motif of the suffering of the Serbian people.44 The bishop was not the only representative of the Orthodox Church who was to exhibit a degree of admiration for the National Socialism emerging in Germany in the 1930s. The same could be said for many like-minded refugees fleeing Tsarist Russia and seeking sanctuary in Yugoslavia. Velimirović praised Adolf Hitler because he had realized as a man of the people that nationalism without religion was an anomaly, ‘a cold and insecure mechanism’. In the twentieth century, the German Führer had been drawn to the ideas of Saint Sava, and as a layman had taken an important task upon himself in his own land, a task ‘that befits a saint, genius, and hero’.45 In the same period, Velimirović raised the issue of the anathema of the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem who had crucified Christ. In 1936, when he was reappointed as Bishop of Ziča, he gave an address – with the Yugoslavian prime minister in the audience – on the two most dangerous developments of his time: clericalism in the Catholic Church and ‘bloodthirsty Judaism’ disguised as socialism or freemasonry. The modern ideas of democracy and socialism were ‘Jewish inventions’.46 The slogans of modern Europe, the bishop opined, had all been launched by the Jews: democracy, atheism, capitalism and communism. Their goal was to place the Jewish Messiah on the throne of Christ without anyone being aware of it, and the said Messiah was Satan himself.47 The Bishop of Ziča, a supporter of the coup d’état of March 1941 against the alliance with Nazi Germany, was interned after the German invasion in the monastery of Ljubostinja. The reasons for his internment seem ambiguous. His prestige as an orthodox thinker and preacher was even greater at that moment than that of the patriarch. ‘But he was compromised by his close personal friendship with Dimitrije Ljotić, the Serbian fascist leader, who was fervently religious and sang in the cathedral choir; Velimirović 268

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did not support him politically but their friendship was well known.’48 The German occupier, however, did not intern a fascist bishop but a prelate with religiously conservative ideas. The man’s prior history also had a role to play: the bishop was seen as pro-British as a result of his training in England and his informative presentations on Serbia to the Anglo-Saxon world during the First World War. At the end of December 1942, the patriarch and the bishop were interned together in the monastery of Vojlovica near Pančevo where Velimirović wrote a ‘speech to the Serbian people from his prison window’ that also contained anti-Semitic passages. In August 1944, two months before the liberation of Belgrade by the Red Army, the patriarch – sick and exhausted – and the bishop were transferred by goods train and truck to the ‘priest block’ of Dachau concentration camp. Both were treated as ‘Ehrenhäftlinge’ or ‘special detainees’ and were allowed to wear their clerical garb. They were discharged from the camp in 1944, transferred to a Bavarian health resort and then to Vienna, where they were finally liberated by American troops on 8 May 1945. Velimirović managed to reach the remains of a group of ‘Chetniks’ after a journey along the Adriatic coast. Together with his religious companion Ljotić, he then took part in a rearguard action against the partisans who by that time had gained the upper hand in Yugoslavia. As Tito’s success made it impossible for him to return to his diocese, the anglophile bishop immigrated to the United States. He died on 18 March 1956 and was buried in the monastery of Saint Sava in Libertyville (Illinois). Veneration of Velimirović emerged in the United States after his death. In 1982, he was considered as a saint in the dioceses of Sabać and Valjevo, the region in which he was born. His remains were returned to Serbia in 1991 and buried in the village of Lelić, his birthplace. Pavle (Stojčević), the Serbian patriarch at the time, initially tried to stop what he considered an overhasty canonization, fearing the risk of exposing Velimirović’s statements on Nazi Germany to public debate and the risk of stirring excessive (religious) nationalism during the (first) period of a political and international crisis over Yugoslavia. On 24 May 2003, Nikolaj Velimirović was canonized in the (new) cathedral of Saint Sava in Belgrade. Tens of thousands filed past the place where he had been interred. He was praised as ‘the greatest Serbian since Saint Sava’. Icons of the bishop quickly found their way into circulation. In the Serbian Orthodox Church, canonization is not the result of a process of canonical research, but rather the sanctioning of an already existing cult. Its confirmation required a ‘divine sign’, and the latter was provided by the faithful. Reference is also made in this regard to a divine epiphany the bishop is said to have received in 1944 while he was being held in Dachau concentration camp. 2 Religion and war in Greece 2.1 Religion and the Greek Civil War A second partisan movement developed later in the south of the Balkans, although in terms of strength it ultimately came to equal its Yugoslavian counterpart. Both groups were led by communists, but there was an evident variety of political convictions among 269

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the ‘rank and file’. In 1945, Tito’s partisans formed the core of the post-war government. After liberation from German and Bulgarian occupation, however, the Greek partisans continued their struggle in a genuine civil war. The difference was to have an effect on lines of division in post-war Europe. Greece came under the British sphere of influence, Yugoslavia under that of the Soviet Union. In occupied Greece armed resistance grew in 1942. With the help of a British military mission, for example, Greek combatants succeeded in blowing up a viaduct on the railway line between Thessaloniki and Athens. The line was of vital importance for the transportation of munitions to the German expeditionary army in North Africa. The explosion can be seen as a signal for the guerrillas who had concentrated themselves in the northern Greek mountains and the Peloponnesus. Communists exercised a leading role in the political formation of the Ethnikon Apeleutherotikon Metopon (EAM ), the National Liberation Front, and in the military, the Ethnikos Laikos Apeleutherotikos Stratos (ELAS ), the National People’s Liberation Army. But they did not have a monopoly: the andartes, rebels with a century-old tradition of mountain resistance, were not always politically motivated. ‘Helped by Italy’s weakness in central Greece, EAM /ELAS grew rapidly, especially during 1943, until it became one of the largest in Europe and posed a major threat to the German strategic position in the Balkans.’49 On 9 September 1943, moreover, the Italian occupying army lay down their arms in Greece. The German regime ruled in its place as it had done elsewhere in occupied Europe, namely with ever intensifying repression. Initially, a degree of ‘Hellenophilia’ was evident, especially in the German officers’ corps. Nazi ideology encouraged respect for Greek antiquity in contrast to its Slavic counterpart. But before long attitudes changed: Greeks were no longer seen as the heirs to Classical Antiquity, but as ‘Balkan fanatics’ who had come under ‘Semitic influence’ (Phoenician) and had thus lost their reliability. ‘Eastern Front rules had come to Greece, and Italian and Greek civilians were now being treated much like the Russians had been.’50 In 1944, towards the end of the occupation, the German authorities also managed deploy their own ‘chaos thesis’ in the promotion of internal Greek conflict, and to such a degree that the Wehrmacht were able to leave the country without much difficulty. ‘In the final months of occupation, the seeds of the Greek civil war were already being sown.’51 The German regime and the collaborating government in Athens enlisted auxiliary troops from among the ‘Evzoni’ (traditional Greek elite troops), the police battalions, and groups of immigrant Pontic Greeks. The political elite, which owed its position of power to the pre-war situation, simply watched and waited. As a result, the EAM and the ELAS were able to seize considerable power within the Greek resistance and to exercise a central position in what had become a national movement.52 Throughout occupied Europe, a pattern of political rivalry between national and communist resistance was slowly emerging. The Greek variant thereof evolved into a bloody struggle that was fought both during and after the German/Bulgarian occupation. The British forces claimed the liberation of Greece for themselves, the vanguard reaching Athens on 14 October 1944. Four days later, the prime minister of the Greek government in exile, George Papandreou, sailed into the port of Piraeus but George II , 270

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Greece’s king at the time, did not follow. A service of thanksgiving was celebrated in the cathedral in Athens, but it did not take long before conflict emerged. Two months later, on 2 December 1944, a hostile confrontation broke out between the British and the National Brigade, which was loyal to the returning government, on the one hand, and the EAM , which had organized resistance in the Greek capital, on the other. The conflict lasted a month and was finally settled in favour of the British army, which by this time had swollen in number to 75,000. These Dekemvriana (December events) introduced the second phase of a civil war that was to plague liberated Greece for four years. ‘The British intervention in Athens in December 1944 was the first time during the Second World War that one of the Allied powers openly used military force to decide the post-war political development of a liberated country.’ Great Britain’s traditional desire to dominate Mediterranean trading routes to British India was recognized at the Yalta conference between Stalin and Churchill in October 1944, at which Greece was placed under British supervision (90 per cent) in exchange for Soviet hegemony in the other Balkan nations. The intervention in Athens was also intended as a warning to other countries in which the end of the occupation was in view. ‘The Dekemviriana also influenced developments in at least one country of Western Europe – Italy – by providing a warning to the Communist Party there, and by strengthening the resolve of the British.’53 The civil war lasted four years. Late into 1948, the Greek military leadership, together with British and American officers, were still not sure whether they would be able to deal the – in the meantime renamed – Democratic Army of Greece a decisive blow. But the theatre of war changed in 1949 when the Greek army was granted logistic support and military advice from the United Sates. President Truman formulated his foreign policy ‘Doctrine’ in 1948, and the Americans took over from the British. A second factor was likewise international in nature. The emerging conflict between Stalin and Tito’s Yugoslavia forced the latter to seek the support of Western powers. As a consequence, Yugoslavia withdrew its support to its communist brothers and sisters on its southern border, in other words in Greece. The Peloponnesus was purged in 1948, and also in 1949 were parts of the mountainous region on the northern Greek border from Albania to Bulgaria.54 2.2 The regent Damaskinos In the early years of the occupation of Greece, the Greek Orthodox Church assumed an important socio-political role, namely combating the consequences of the famine. Its presence in this regard was even stronger than the succession of collaborating governments and thus, as a national institution, it became a factor of importance in German occupying politics. The Greek Church, moreover, complied with the norms the Nazis had established for its pragmatic approach to orthodoxy in the Balkans. The Churches were not permitted to have strong links with the Russian Church and with pan-Slavism. They were likewise not allowed to nourish links established during and after the First World War with the Anglican Church and with the Ecumenical Movement 271

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in the Anglo-Saxon world. And they had to provide a counterbalance against Roman Catholicism.55 This meant that during the German occupation, the Archbishop of Athens was free to maintain a prominent and visible position in Greek society, in contrast to the Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church who remained in internment throughout the war. Damaskinos took office in July 1941 after his predecessor, Chrysanthos, had refused to swear in the collaborating government of General Georgios Tsolakoglou. At that moment he was considered acceptable to the Nazi regime. As we noted in Chapter 4, his determined intervention during the famine that raged during the winter of 1941–2 earned him a position of moral leadership in occupied Greece. At the end of 1943, however, a dramatic change took place. Willingly or unwillingly, the Church became an institution of ‘civil resistance’. As we shall see in Chapter 9, when the Jews in his archdiocese came under attack in 1943 he played a leading role in efforts to keep them out of the hands of the German police. This was the archbishop the British encountered when it became clear that any return of King George II to Greece would meet with strong resistance. The monarchy was too closely related to the Metaxas dictatorship and thus had no support among the middle classes. The British government had already realized this by the autumn of 1943. At this early stage, however, the idea emerged of appointing a regent to govern a period of transition following the expulsion of the German occupying regime; British eyes fell on Archbishop Damaskinos. The man was acceptable because of his authority and his ‘firm attitude towards the Germans’.56 But King George II – in exile in London – wanted to return in person and stubbornly refused the idea of a regent. In December 1944, when armed conflict had broken out in the streets of Athens, the appointment of a regent became a matter of urgency. The king continued to refuse. Winston Churchill travelled to Athens during the Christmas period of 1944 and received Damaskinos on the British warship Ajax. The archbishop appears to have been dressed as one of the guests at a Christmas dinner being offered onboard. Churchill wanted to appoint him as regent. He was impressed by Damaskinos’ ‘commanding presence’.57 For the next two days, Churchill chaired consultations between the archbishop and the political leaders of the resistance. The latter agreed to Damaskinos’ appointment as regent. Even the communists appear to have approved of the idea. ‘In the closing days of the year, Damaskinos’ appointment was reluctantly proclaimed from London by the King who had been battered into agreement by Churchill. Greece, though technically an independent country, was at this stage in fact a form of British protectorate.’58 The archbishop was sworn in as regent on 31 January 1945. In his new position he made an important contribution to the realization of the so-called Varkiza Pact in February 1945, in which the political conditions for a ceasefire were formulated. Looking back on his time as British ambassador to Greece, Reginald Leeper wrote, ‘The quality in him which impressed me most was his large-heartedness. There were many people who said bitter things against him, but I cannot recall any occasion on which, in my presence at any rate, he showed personal resentment against his critics, though he could speak with flaming anger against the deeds of violence.’59 272

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In his memoires, the British ambassador underscores his conviction that the archbishop was above all a man of religious devotion. ‘One of his happiest days as Regent was the Greek National Day, March 25, 1945, when the wonder-working image of Our Lady of Tinos was brought from its island shrine to Athens and was carried by the Archbishop himself, dressed in full robes, in solemn procession through the streets of Athens to the Cathedral. I was told by a reliable witness that the Archbishop has been greatly moved and had spent the whole evening of that day in private devotion.’60 The regent was charged with the task of administering the Greek state and giving it legitimacy via a referendum on the monarchy and in the introduction of parliamentary elections. On his initiative the timing of both events was reversed. On 31 March 1946 a parliament was elected with a right-wing monarchist formation gaining the majority at the cost of the pro-republican parties. The referendum on the monarchy was held on 1 September 1946. Two-thirds of the electorate (68 per cent) voted for the restoration of the monarchy. On 28 September, King George II returned to Athens. Archbishop Damaskinos was then free to conclude what had turned out to be a burdensome charge. 2.3 The papades and the Civil War The memory of patriarch and martyr Gregorios is kept alive in the Greek Orthodox Church: as a result of his support for the Greek war of liberation, he was hung by the servants of the sultan in his own cathedral on Easter Sunday 1821, dressed in full liturgical regalia. The Second World War provided a new occasion for martyrdom, but in this instance its victims were mostly priests, simple papades rather than bishops of the calibre of Gregorios. The priests were thus held up to the faithful as symbols of national independence. Indeed, the church historian Demosthenes Savramis considers the fact that there were no bishops among the martyrs of the Second World War to be a sign of relative decline in the Greek Church.61 The humble position of the average Greek priest was paralleled by poor educational standards among the clergy. Prior to the war, in 1938, only 78 of the 7,761 priests in the Orthodox Church had enjoyed a complete theological training and only 91 had attended a five year formation programme in a major seminary. In total, there were 37 priests with no education whatsoever. After the war, in 1946, the pattern does not appear to have changed much in essence.62 As a matter of fact, the improvement of priestly formation was one of the programme points adopted by the leftist resistance movement. References to the number of priestly casualties of war vary considerably. In 1949, the Academy of Athens granted a posthumous gold medal to 223 priests who were killed between 1941 and 1949 while the Greek Orthodox Church speaks officially of 348 martyrs. Savramis’ research suggests that as many as 471 priests were killed between 1941 and 1949: 105 by the German occupying authorities, 22 by the Italian invaders, 53 by the Bulgarian occupier, and the remaining 265 by the communists in the course of the civil war. The figures reveal that more than half died during a national conflict. On the other hand, and in contrast to the Russian revolution, in which the orthodox popes were suppressed as enemies of the people, the communist resistance fighters in Greece 273

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sometimes turned on the papades because their humble origins among the poorer echelons of the population and their readiness to die for national ideals linked them closely with the Greek people.63 The resistance had chosen the Peloponnesus and the mountainous region in the north to serve as a basis for armed operations. As such they inherited a traditional form of bandit existence typical of the region. In 1942 and 1943, however, there is evidence of a gradual transition from banditism to politically motivated activism. Priests had been a relatively frequent target of the traditional bandits ‘for their relatively comfortable lifestyle attracted envy – “A priest is like a storeroom”, ran the proverb, “He needs filling” – and they suffered more than their fair share of kidnappings. In April 1942, for example, five men kidnapped a priest’s son after the holy man refused to give them food. Fifteen villagers were caught, trying to rob an isolated monastery near Karchtsa.’64 During and after the occupation, however, Greek Orthodoxy as such was not the focus of conflict and persecution. The EAM had not included the abolition of religion in its programme. The resistance movement opted officially for a different strategy. Its prestige and influence were in fact increased by its acceptance of traditional institutions such as the Greek Orthodox Church and the family. Even the communist wing of the resistance movement hesitated to implement Marxist perspectives on religion for fear of alienating the rural population. Religious ritual became a permanent feature of all official EAM events. Meetings were preceded by a liturgical service, new resistance fighters swore their oath as members of the ELAS in the presence of a priest, and after military successes services of thanksgiving were organized. Little of this was mentioned or underlined in the official propaganda. In the official ideology, social revolution was the dominant theme.65 Some of the kapetans in the field shared the conviction that Orthodoxy and communism had much in common. The leader of the communist revolt, Aris Velouchios, even emphasized the importance of the Church and the virtues of Greek family life, based on monogamy and the readiness to make sacrifices for the sake of the common good. ‘ “What many of us in the resistance wanted,” remarks Dimitris Karathanos, one of the few communists before the war,“was not the abolition of Orthodoxy or the dissolution of the traditional family, but laokratia (People’s Rule) founded on the values of egalitarism and solidarity and the principles of direct popular participation and social justice.” ’66 Rapprochement was a two-sided affair. A group of priests proclaiming aloud the motto of the EAM – Laokratia! – took part in a parade celebrating the liberation of Athens on 12 October 1944.67 The historian Mark Mazower makes reference to a sitting of an EAM court – a phenomenon of the resistance movement – in a certain village on Sunday afternoon, 19 March 1944. ‘The priest took the position of the court reporter as he was one of the few men able to write well enough. Most other people who attended were illiterate. The judges sat in front of a small table which contained a bible and the priest’s papers.’68 Stories had also survived of a religious fraternization. ‘When an ELAS officer, called “Kassandra”, visited the town of Aigios in 1943, his first act was to call on the town’s bishop to seek his blessing. The two men agreed that Orthodoxy and 274

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communism had many points in common, and the bishop asked “Kassandra” to keep in mind the needs of the Church.’ The most senior church administrator with unequivocal sympathies for the EAM was the Bishop of Kozani in Macedonia, Joakeim (Martianos), who ‘lost no opportunity to express his revolutionary views. His sermon in church on National Liberation Day 1944 to a crowd of ELAS dignitaries was typical. According to an American officer in the congregation, it was “cheap simple propaganda which I would hardly have believed could have come from such a distinguished venerable looking old man”.’69 Bishop Joakeim favoured the confiscation of the large rural estates. In his mind communism was a higher form of civilization and Christ was the first communist. His position, however, was exceptional in the Greek Church, and ‘scandalous’, moreover, to the more conservative members of the resistance movement. A captain in the 6th Division of the ELAS reacted to Bishop Joakeim’s speech at the Macedonian congress of the People’s Liberation Front (EAM ) in October 1943 by saying that the bishop had spoken as a revolutionary leader, and even as an extremist.70 A story also circulated in which a commandant of the ELAS entered a church, stopped the liturgy, and placed his two pistols (which he named María and Eléni) on the altar. He then prayed in a loud voice: ‘O, Almighty God, accept María and Eléni and inspire all these your servants to join ELAS this instant; otherwise I’ll blow their brains out!’71 3 Catholicism in Poland 3.1 Religion and resistance in Poland While religion in Yugoslavia was a source of ethnic conflict, in occupied Poland it was a unifying factor and a spur to resistance. This was possible for two reasons. The identification of nation and religion was a direct consequence of German occupying politics. Catholicism was not only the religion of the majority of the population, it was also an important element of national identity as experienced in Poland throughout the twentieth century. Poland had been multicultural during the Interbellum, but now the Jewish minority was subject to persecution and annihilation, the Protestant churches were robbed of their influence, and Ukrainian Orthodoxy became an ally. ‘Any remaining uncertainty regarding the equation between Pole and Catholic was made irrelevant by the Second World War.’72 In addition, the Polish had a tradition of resistance dating back a couple of centuries, which was linked in the official memory with Catholicism and the Catholic Church; a religion with its roots in the fatherland’s nineteenth-century history held Poland in its grip. Religion was not only a factor in Poland’s national awareness and thereby a source of patriotic courage. Catholicism, as a religion almost universally experienced as rooted in the people, also provided a considerable degree of comfort in difficult times of repression, especially in its rituals for mourning the dead and in the community formation and solidarity characteristic of the Sunday liturgy. Even its higher forms of philosophical and 275

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theological reflection offered solace, giving courage to prisoners, for example, in solitude or in a concentration camp. As a result of German and Russian occupation, pre-war anticlericalism diminished. The related threat of the physical annihilation of the Polish nation had a similar effect. The Polish intelligentsia recognized (anew) the significance of religion as a source of spiritual support and militancy when it became a question of the survival of the Polish people.73 In the history of the patriotic Catholic Church, however, it is important to make a distinction between the higher and lower clergy. From the historical perspective, only a minority of priests were active in the resistance in the nineteenth century, especially during the revolts against Russian tyranny in 1830 and 1863. The episcopate as a whole remained loyal, and as we observed in Chapter 1, one pope, Gregory XVI , even issued an encyclical in 1832 calling for obedience to the Tsar and condemning the revolt.74 A similar distinction between bishops and the lower clergy is also of relevance with respect to the Second World War and the choices that had to be made between the acceptance of authority, no matter how violently established, the pragmatic option, and the decision to resist, even with arms. The said distinction also has to be seen in perspective, however, since a number of Polish bishops also lost their lives under German repression. In September 1939, when the consequences of German racial politics – death and destruction – had not yet sunk in in every quarter, there were ecclesial leaders who believed that a certain acceptance of the occupying regime might lessen the intensity of German repression. In the annexed provinces of western Poland, there was no reason whatsoever to adopt such a wait-and-see attitude. But in the Generalgouvernement – and in Silesia – some bishops called for acceptance of the new authorities, albeit at the beginning. They included Stanisław Gall, the apostolic administrator of Warsaw, Jan Kanty Lorek of Sandomierz and Czesław Kaczmarck of Kielce. But their appeals and private discussion of the fact that Pope Pius XII had not openly protested against the invasion of Catholic Poland in September 1939 were not enough to undermine the national prestige of the Catholic Church in a Polish nation under repression.75 The bishops in question – who belonged to a generation that had been raised and trained for the most part in the period prior to the Second Polish Republic – saw that the Polish forces had been defeated, that Poland had once again been divided, and that help from Western Europe was lacking. They were loyal by tradition and also concluded that military resistance had little if any chance of success. A considerable portion of the lower clergy, on the other hand, chose more or less spontaneously to participate in the underground resistance, without paying much attention to the potential consequences. Memories of childhood in an independent Poland served by contrast to stimulate their patriotic fervour and their readiness to resist.76 As mentioned in Chapter 3, the Polish primate, Cardinal Hlond, fled to Rome after the September 1939 invasion. As a result there was clearly no possibility of common action on the part of the entire Polish episcopate. The bishops thus proceeded at their own discretion. In the Generalgouvernement, the Archbishop of Kraków, Adam Sapieha, was the highest authority. It was self-evident, moreover, that he would become the German occupying regime’s partner in dialogue since the latter had also established itself in 276

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Kraków. As we recalled in Chapter 3, he fulfilled his task in a twofold manner: acceptance of the de facto occupying regime coupled with patriotism and (cautious) resistance. The question whether armed struggle against the occupying regime should be accepted or rejected certainly preoccupied the church authorities at the beginning of the war. Those who rejected armed struggle appealed to the need for the ‘biological substance’ of the Polish people to survive this ‘racial conflict’. Boleslaw Kominek, an advisor to Bishop Adamski of Katowice – later Archbishop of Wroclaw – observed in hindsight: ‘We realised that the occupation could be long and drawn out and that it would be wrong to incite to people en masse to blind heroism and thus drive them into the extermination camps. Our priority was to get through this period whatever the price.’77 Bishop Czesław Sokołowski, appointed apostolic administrator of the diocese of Siedlce on 27 June 1940, is known – as the only Polish ecclesial leader – to have crossed the boundary of acceptable obedience under occupation and to have acquiesced to German demands with zeal rather than reserve. His enthusiasm was based, it was claimed, on what happened to him during the first weeks of the occupation (autumn 1939). The bishop agreed to the confiscation of church bells, for example, and made sure that the so-called ‘quotas’ – obligatory provisions delivered to the occupier – were in fact collected. He also suspended a priest who turned out to have been serving the underground as a chaplain.78 The core of civilian resistance in Poland was located in the Generalgouvernement and was a response to Nazi racial policies set on the extermination – or at least serious reduction – of the Polish nation. Polish citizens created an underground counter-culture, pursued in secret, in family circles. Literary evenings were organized together with house concerts, which included music by officially banned composers such as Frédéric Chopin. The Nazis had also proclaimed an injunction on the use of Polish in secondary schools and universities. After the latter were closed and their professors arrested, they reemerged in clandestine, undercover circumstances. The old ‘flying university’ from the period of tsarist repression returned. The Catholic Church was also involved. Monasteries provided courses in theology as well as Polish language and culture. A boarding school run by the Ursuline sisters in Warsaw, for example, provided both secondary and university education and many clergy and religious people thus played their role in what might be termed a form of civil resistance. These activities were not without risk, however. According to estimations, 200 priests were put to death after the classes they had been teaching or cultural activity they had been organizing was discovered.79 3.2 Armed resistance Military conflict, the other form of resistance, had a regular character outside of Poland, while in occupied Poland it was the work of partisans. The country’s official forces had been defeated in September 1939 but had not capitulated nor had they accepted a ceasefire. The Polish government had opted for exile and continued the struggle, first in France and after May 1940 from London. Poland was thus able to play its part in the 277

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liberation of Europe. The Polish I Corps was formed in England and fought in Western Europe. Polish II Corps, made up of former Polish prisoners of war in the Soviet Union, was formed after the latter was invaded by Germany and became an ally of Poland. The Corps was finally deployed in Italy after a lengthy period in the Middle East. Hundreds of military chaplains had been serving in the official Polish forces in 1939. Some sought refuge among the units in Europe, taking part in the invasion of southern Italy and the west coast of occupied France. Military bishop Jozef Gawlina, for example, was killed in the Battle of Monte Cassino in Italy and was buried nearby in the Polish military cemetery. Other military chaplains were taken as prisoners of war and joined the regular soldiers in the German camps. From there, 51 were transferred to Buchenwald and later to the ‘priest camp’ in Dachau. Half of them did not survive the move. Domestic resistance was based on the activities of three armed organizations: one large, the Armia Krajowa (AK , Home Army); and two small, the communist Gwardia Ludowa, in 1944 Armia Ludowa (AL , People’s Army), and the right-wing nationalist Narodowe Siły Zbronje (NSZ , National Armed Forces). This subdivision followed a pattern that became visible in a number of occupied European countries after the German invasion of the Soviet Union: a partisan formation with a communist core and a more nationalist resistance. The Armia Krajowa was a collection of officers and soldiers from the regular forces that had already established itself by January 1941 and recognized the authority of the Polish government in exile in London. It considered its actions to be a continuation of the surface struggle against the invading forces of September 1939, namely Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. It grew into one of the largest resistance organizations in occupied Europe. At the end of 1942 it numbered 200,000 men and women, a figure that was later to grow to 300,000. From the political perspective it recruited its male and female combatants from the ‘centre’ and ‘centre-left’. Some were Jewish and when captured by the German occupier they were immediately executed for that reason. The communist Armia Ludowa was formed six months after the German invasion of the Soviet Union and was initially called the Gwardia Ludowa (People’s Guard). It did not recognize the Polish government in exile, preferring to associate itself with the Polska Partia Robotnicza, the (far left) Polish Workers’ Party. Its members, roughly 30,000 in total, were united in a single uniform ideology by Communist Party functionaries who aligned their policies with the government in Moscow. As the fortunes of war began to change and the liberation of Poland by the Red Army loomed on the horizon, the influence of the Armia Ludowa steadily grew. The same Red Army also had its own Polish military unit, the Kościuszko Division. The Armia Krajowa tried in its turn to counter the predominance of the communists by intensifying its activities in occupied Poland shortly before the Soviet invasion and even succeeding in expelling the Wehrmacht in ‘Operation Tempest’ (Burza). In so doing they hoped to secure a place at the negotiating table for the Polish government in exile. But the expected recognition did not materialize.80 The Narodowe Siły Zbronje was a small and extremely nationalist resistance movement, active for the most part in the eastern regions of the country. Its losses were so major in comparison with the others that it sought affiliation with the Armia Krajowa in 278

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the second half of 1943, albeit with the retention of a degree of independence. An important figure in the movement was the young Bolesław Piasecki, before the war a Catholic politician and radical right-wing leader of the Falanga who combined his political preference for the Spanish dictator Franco with anti-Semitic tendencies. After the liberation he was to be taken prisoner and later agreed to play a role as leader of PAX , a Catholic association that appeared to be prepared to cooperate with the communist regime.81 Catholic clergy were represented in both the domestic army and the communist partisans. According to one post-war estimate, the Armia Krajowa had 270 chaplains under the leadership of Tadeusz Jachimowski, himself a priest. Other estimates place the figure at 500. But the People’s Army also had its chaplains. First among them was Wilhelm Kubsz, who was affiliated as chaplain with the Kościuszko Division and also served in a unit of Soviet partisans. His military superior, General Alexander Zawadzki, wrote in 1948 that Kubsz was able to unite the forces under his charge and endeavoured to challenge negative prejudice towards the communists. The number of chaplains associated with this Red Army of Poland is estimated at around fifty.82 A number of active priests were involved in the Polish resistance concentrated in the capital, among them the Dominican Bernard Przybylski, the Jesuits Tomasz Rostworoski and Jan Zieja, a chaplain belonging to the ‘Baszta’ regiment in the Mokotow district of the city. There was even a commission of priests, set up to coordinate ecclesial resistance activities in the capital. The said commission became a component of the Delegatura Rządu na Kraj (Government Delegation for Poland), the executive of a genuine ‘Underground State’ in occupied Poland and the instance that maintained contact with the Polish government in exile.83 The chaplains worked within the jurisdiction of the diocese to which they belonged but had to have permission to deviate from the customary rules and the stipulations of Canon Law. A senior clergyman by the name of Blažej Marabotto negotiated with the Vatican to obtain the so-called Facultates, privileges granted to the priest commandant Jachimowski and his subordinate clergy.84 The enemy were also aware of the role played by the clergy in the Polish resistance. Reports from the SS Einsatzgruppen state that meetings of the Polish resistance were staged as religious gatherings by Roman Catholic priests, who also preached about the importance of the resistance. According to German reports, Roman Catholic priests occupied positions of leadership in the resistance movement and even enjoyed close friendships with communists.85 According to Canon Law, priests were not allowed to take part in armed struggle. They tended rather to focus their underground pastoral activities on helping the wounded and endeavouring to keep up morale. Their role in the collection of intelligence remained controversial. Priests helped resistance fighters from the Armia Krajowa to acquire the baptismal certificates of children who died at birth thereby providing them with new and clandestine identities. They performed weddings and some even served as therapists in the Armia Krajowa. When it came to warning the troops about dangers to security and morale, it appeared that a priest was frequently more effective than a commandant in propagating such information. This was particularly true of a campaign 279

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against the dangers of alcoholism among the partisans fighting in the east of the country who referred to themselves as ‘men of the forest’.86 3.3 The Warsaw Uprising, 1944 The Warsaw Uprising (August to early October 1944) was the apotheosis of military and civil resistance in Poland. It was a courageous – but in hindsight hopeless – attempt on the part of the Armia Krajowa to be visible and effective in the liberation of the country. Initially, the Russian commandants saw the Polish resistance fighters as allies. This changed in July 1944, however, when units of the Armia Krajowa were disarmed on their orders. A manifesto was published in Chełm near Lublin on 21 July – later to be known as the Lublin Manifesto of 22 July – in which the Soviet-style Republic of Poland was proclaimed. It was the signal of a communist attack on democratic Poland and its government in exile. By the end of July 1944, the Red Army had reached the left bank of the Vistula and had moved in on the suburbs of Warsaw in an offensive that may well have been the most effective of the Second World War. The Russian troops were exhausted, were short of fuel and food and were forced to regroup in the face of a sturdy Wehrmacht-held line of defence. This was the military explanation of their standstill. On the political front, however, Stalin had also decided not to help the insurgent Polish and had refused to allow his forces to drop relief supplies by plane or to bomb German positions with or without the assistance of the Anglo-American allies. Stalin had different plans for Poland. The population saw that the liberation of their capital was imminent and expectations were high. The Uprising (which must be distinguished from an earlier Jewish Uprising in the Warsaw ghetto in April–May 1943), moreover, had a historical and perhaps coercive precedent in a similar action that took place at the end of the First World War. In November 1918, the Polish Military Organization (POW: Polska Organizacja Wojskowa) started an offensive in Warsaw with a view to winning independence. It was as if the following generation, a quarter of a century later, had mirrored themselves on this event. The commander of the Armia Krajowa, General Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski, gave orders in a ‘last minute resolution’ to rise in revolt, much to the surprise of his fellow combatants who were not properly prepared. Food was in short supply and weapons had only recently been sent from Warsaw to the resistance units in the eastern provinces, depleting reserves. The Polish were intent on liberating their own capital and legitimating the Second Polish Republic with an act of heroism. The Armia Krajowa assumed the leading role in the Powstanie Warszawskie, the Warsaw Uprising. Roughly 20,000 Polish resistance fighters lined up against between 13,000 and 20,000 well-armed German police and military units who had the advantage of having been able to dig themselves in in and around the city. The conflict lasted two months, in itself an extraordinary achievement, and reflected the valour of the Polish resistance fighters; heroic courage side by side with despair. The Germans had difficulty negotiating the narrow winding streets of the old city and their effectiveness was thus diminished. In addition, the Polish had grown more and more assertive in the face of the 280

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merciless terror of the Nazi forces. Himmler himself had immediately ordered the latter on hearing news of the revolt. In the early stages, large numbers of civilians were put to death. Himmler deployed the so-called Russian National Army, a formation of 10,000 former prisoners of war under the command of Bronisław Kaminskii, a Belarusian and a genuine psychopath. His men set about their task in Warsaw with such aggression and with so many deaths that they only reinforced the civil population’s readiness to resist. Estimates suggest that in a single day between 30,000 and 40,000 inhabitants of a few urban neighbourhoods were killed.87 The commander of German operations, SS General Erich von dem BachZelewski, was forced to intervene and give orders for the indiscriminate shooting of women and children to be halted. After a month, the rebels were forced to abandon the old city (stare miasto). After two months of hostilities, the Armia Krajowa capitulated in the last district of the city to be defended – Śródmieście – on 2 October 1944. In the meantime, the Armia Krajowa had been recognized by the German commander as a regular army. Fifteen thousand men became prisoners of war. A further 15,000 died in battle or from hunger and thirst. In total, the Uprising claimed 185,000 civilians. On 3 October, 48,000 survivors emerged from hiding, some of whom were critical of what they experienced as recklessness on the part of the instigators of the Uprising; a further 130,000 surfaced only later. Warsaw’s male citizens were transported to labour camps in Germany. Himmler persuaded Hitler to permit him to raze the city to the ground; Warsaw was no longer to impede Germany’s (illusory) advance on the East.88 In the same period, the French capital was liberated in a resistance-led uprising. ‘While Paris celebrated liberation, Warsaw itself was ruined and deserted.’89 During the Uprising, the Armia Krajowa and the Armia Ludowa both had their own chaplains as did the National Forces. At the height of the conflict, ideological differences disappeared and the chaplains offered their support to whichever unit needed it. In the first days of the Uprising, there were heavy losses among the ranks of the clergy. A group of ten Jesuits, for example, were killed in cold blood by an SS unit after celebrating daily mass in the monastery of the Society.90 Tadeusz Jachimowski, the commander of the chaplains involved in the resistance, was killed on 8 August 1944. Other priests and religious people presented themselves for help and support at the city’s infirmaries and field hospitals. A number of examples are known of priests taking up arms and exchanging their cassocks for uniforms. After the suppression of the Uprising, the chaplains shared a similar fate to that of the lay combatants. They were taken prisoner and often executed. Clergy who had given shelter to resistance fighters during the Uprising, or celebrated mass for them at night behind locked church doors, or functioned as contact persons with and in the underground, were also persecuted. When such activities were discovered, the clergy in question were brought before a German military tribunal. In the monastery of the Sacramentine Sisters in the Polish capital, seventeen sisters opted for a ‘blood offering’ on behalf of their fighting brothers and declared their readiness to offer their lives as ‘martyrs’ to ensure that the future Poland would be 281

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dedicated to Christ alone. Their decision had its place within a specific tradition associated with Catholic monasteries whereby members of the (female) congregations saw themselves as playing their part in redemption through ‘surrogate suffering’. Their ‘sacrifice’ was thus a concrete prayer for forgiveness and reconciliation. During an air bombardment on 31 August 1944, 34 members of the congregation were to lose their lives. The seventeen who had opted for ‘martyrdom’ did so of their own free will and with complete personal discretion.91 Various sources observe that there was striking evidence of general religious devotion in the Old City. On 6 August 1944, the first Sunday on which parts of the city were liberated, priests organized services in private houses and in bomb shelters. According to newspaper reports, the faithful came together to pray intensively. The solemn words of traditional religious hymns could be heard in the streets. Later, on the Feast of the Assumption (15 August), the Mother of God’s special role as patroness of the 1920 Polish victory against the Red Army was held up to church attendees. ‘If the Catholic masses in the first days gave the impression of an apparent return to the normality of the pre-occupation time, in later weeks they became more of an anchor and a mental escape from hell. In the Old City, during the second half of August, people prayed en masse and for hours in courtyards and cellars, an image that was later to be repeated in the downtown centre.’92 As we observed, the German garrison commander Von der Bach tried to play a moderating role. He is also known to have attempted to win over the support of Warsaw’s senior clergy or at least to use them as mediators. He made a number of gestures that could be read as a sign of respect for Polish courage and Polish national symbols. On 9 September 1944, for example, he arranged for the heart of Frederic Chopin to be handed over to auxiliary bishop Antoni Szlagowski who represented the diocese of Warsaw. The heart had been found by German soldiers in the ruins of the Church of the Holy Cross.93 There was no shortage of (religious) heroism and contempt for death during the Uprising, but this was matched with an equally fervent lust for blood and destructive passion on the part of the oppressor. ‘Almost a quarter of a million people perished in the hostilities. The flower of Poland’s anti-Nazi underground movement was killed and the city reduced to a pile of rubble.’94 The Red Army, which was waiting on the other side of the Vistula, was forced to delay its advance on Germany by six months.95 4 The Confessing Church 4.1 Church resistance in Scandinavia One of the intentions of the invasion and occupation of the countries of north-west Europe was to subordinate Germanic peoples to Nazi Germany while upholding and even reinforcing their presumed Germanic identity. In the early stages, the Nazi regime thus granted these ‘companion peoples’ more freedom and independence when compared with its policies towards Eastern and Central Europe. From 1941 onwards, however, this leeway was gradually reduced until a level of oppression was reached that allowed for comparison with Eastern Europe. 282

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There was room under such circumstances, certainly in the beginning, for the churches to organize themselves independently, and on occasion for a degree of church protest. To this end, the Protestant churches of northern and Western Europe gave birth to a specific ecclesial form: the confessing church, the leadership of which – the bishops or the synod – spoke out against what they believed to be injustice and tyranny on the basis of a certain ‘obedience to the gospel’. The on all accounts extraordinary Synod of Barmen (1934) marked the beginning of the ‘Bekennende Kirche’. The struggle of the church in Norway was not a strict repetition of what happened in Germany, but it exhibited one important parallel: an explicit ecclesial opposition to the Nazi regime. As we observed in Chapter 4, the Norwegian bishops detached themselves from the Norwegian state church in April 1942 to maintain the purity of their confession. This declaration of independence led to a ‘free, self-governed people’s church’, the leadership of which was given over to a Provisional Church Executive (Den Midlertidige Kirkeledelse). Its most important instigator, Eivind Berggrav, Bishop of Oslo, was arrested. He escaped being condemned to death thanks to church intervention from Germany and was interned. The two theological faculties in the city of Oslo followed the example of the bishops. Candidates for ordination were obliged to accept the propositions in the ‘Foundation of the Church’ (Kirkens Grunn). In order to properly understand this act of separation, a prior resolution on the part of Norway’s highest court of justice is of importance. The judges who made up this state institution had decided to withdraw from office on December 1940. This was to be understood, on the one hand, as a significant and legal protest against the violation of justice instigated by the totalitarian Nazi state. On the other hand, their action was also to be interpreted as an – albeit unintentional – invitation to other institutions in Norwegian society to take the defence of the constitutional state upon themselves. The Norwegian state church filled the vacuum. It presented itself as an instance that could distinguish with authority between the obligation to obedience and the need to refuse and resist. But in 1942, the church’s bishops and ministers took the step themselves, in what could be interpreted as an act of civil disobedience. The ‘Foundation of the Church’ was a new interpretation of article 16 of the Augsburg Confession, the Lutheran creed from 1540, in which the ‘two kingdoms’ doctrine was formulated, the earthly and the spiritual. The free bishops considered it their duty at that moment to advise the people on the question of obedience to the state, since the church was responsible for assessing the legitimacy of the constitutional government.96 The Lutheran doctrine provided them with a theological source of resistance against the totalitarian Nazi state. The church, which is part of the divine kingdom, had the right to test the politics of the state, which is part of the worldly kingdom, against the norms of faith and ethics. When the state overstepped its divine mandate according to Christian ethical standards, the church had the right and obligation to preach about it and reflect on it. Thus understood, the church was a community of faith, separated from civil authority, which maintained its freedom with respect to the ecclesial political measures of the same state. The Free Church in Norway was a ‘Bekennende Kirche’. Its theological argumentation may have differed from its German counterpart, but the idea of expressing resistance to 283

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the totalitarian Nazi state in the form of a confession was inspired by its German sister church. The ‘Foundation of the Church’ had six articles, as did the Declaration of Barmen. The Norwegian document has its roots in Lutheran theology (and is not mixed with Calvinist proposition as in the Barmen Declaration). Its signatories also considered it of great importance that they win the support of the Christians of the Inner Mission – a movement of pietistic lay people within the Norwegian state church – and of the other churches in Norway – both Protestant and Roman Catholic – all of which were concerned about freedom of conscience and religion in a society dominated by the state church. The broader church front they foresaw was indeed to become a reality. The bishops and ministers who had resigned their posts became personal examples of civil resistance against the occupying regime and in particular against the Quisling government. Their resistance focused on the policy of ‘Nazification’ of both state and society. According to Torleiv Austad, it enjoyed widespread support, from the individual to the institutional level, including parents’ and teachers’ unions, professional associations and even sports clubs.97 In addition to these forms of civil disobedience, Norway also had two resistance organizations, one civilian the other military. An armed resistance movement was formed in March 1941 under the name Military Organization or Milorg for short. This developed into a force that focused its efforts on menacing the German occupier in Norway’s vast forests and mountainous territory. In the autumn of 1943, joint leadership was established that was referred to as the Home Front (Hjemmefronten), a political collective of oppositional groups and organizations. Church representatives also took part. Imminent liberation also became tangible in Norway at the end of 1944 in a phase of destruction and havoc. The Wehrmacht started to withdraw at that stage from the north of Norway, the county of Finnmark, intent on escaping the Red Army. They deployed a scorched earth strategy on their departure. The people were ordered to evacuate as towns and villages – their churches included – were put to the torch. The Lutheran churches around the Baltic Sea followed every detail of the struggle of the Norwegian church. This was particularly the case with respect to occupied Denmark, all the more so because the Danish People’s Church was a state church. It had experienced the separation of its northern sister church as a source of religious inspiration and as an ‘ongoing reminder of potential alternatives’.98 In a document dated October 1942, the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs pointed out to the bishops that they should inform their clergy that they should refrain from making statements of any kind that could be construed as hostile towards Germany. The Bishop of Copenhagen, H. FuglsangDamgaard, did not pass on the exhortation, considering it unacceptable interference in the (international) relations between Christian churches. In his response to the minister he stated that when one member suffers, all the members suffer. From both the ecclesial and the Christian perspective, he insisted, the government intervention was based on a ‘misunderstanding’ and had done nothing but nourish uncertainty, concern and anger.99 Church ministers who were critical of aspects of the occupation or of German church politics could, nevertheless, expect a warning from the Danish Minister for Ecclesiastical Affairs via the bishop under whose responsibility they fell. The fact that the legal 284

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government could threaten church life by excommunicating ministers on account of their status as civil servants was clearly a new experience.100 It would appear that the bishops maintained their loyalty to the government until 29 August 1943, the day on which Danish war history experienced a complete turnabout. They had obeyed ministerial warnings and issued injunctions against those ministers who had indulged in ‘hostile language’ towards the German regime, and had refrained from official critique of such forms of censorship with regard to the state church. In January 1943, they addressed an official letter of protest against such measures to the Minister of Justice. The content of the letter was made known to the ministers, but those who drafted it added that it was internal and was to be treated as confidential.101 The People’s Church had to live with political supervision from a Danish government in a German satellite state. In contrast to its Norwegian sister church, however, it did not get involved in an ideological campaign. On the contrary, the Danish National Socialists only managed to attract 2.2 per cent of the vote during parliamentary elections in March 1943 and remained in the minority. The coalition government under the leadership of Erik Scavenius continued in the hands of the traditional parties. It is also true, however, that the Germans set out to tighten their control over Danish society around this time. In November 1942, Werner Best, a senior officer in the SS , was appointed controller in Denmark. But he also endeavoured to maintain his otherwise narrow basis of power by cooperating with the Danish government. In the second half of 1943, relations were close to conflagration. As a result of several strikes, the German police became more and more visible on the streets. The Gestapo involved itself in the suppression of the Danish resistance, while the Danish police had hitherto been responsible for the arrest and trial of political opponents. The Scavenius government submitted its resignation leaving the de facto leadership of Denmark in the hands of senior civil servants. A radicalization was also to be observed in church circles. In the middle of 1943, an organized resistance movement appeared to be a distant reality, at least in the eyes of the German authorities. A Wehrmacht intelligence officer observed in October 1943 that the Danes were a surly people but not unavailable for contact. ‘One can hardly describe the comfort-loving Danes as fanatical freedom-fighters or partisans.’102 In September 1943, a month prior to this observation, a first – and successful – effort was made to coordinate the various resistance groups in a Frihedsrådet, the Danish Freedom Council. Church ministers started to get involved in resistance activities on an individual basis. A Union of Ministers (PUF ) was formed to create a network for the exchange of forbidden literature. This was a Danish reaction to the Church’s struggle in Norway, where one could observe the extent to which the Lutheran Church was bound to the state (and thus to the occupying regime). The Union of Ministers was thus seen as a potential institutional framework for an alternative church. Regin Prenter, a prominent theologian and ‘Barthian’ drafted a confession for the occasion and gave it the title ‘Kirken og Retten’ or Church and Justice. In the final year of the war, when Nazi repression in Denmark had become a daily reality, the churches in the towns and villages became centres of encouragement and 285

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consolation. To a limited degree they were also centres of resistance; limited, because the Pietist movement within the Danish People’s Church had chosen to resign itself to the occupation and even interpreted it as God’s punishment of the Danish people for their immoral deeds. In addition, part of the movement, which tended to turn to its nineteenthcentury key leader N.F.S. Grundtvig in matters of national and cultural preference, chose to distance itself from political resistance for another reason. They wanted to maintain the Danish constitutional government and not allow it to be injured by illegality. Nevertheless, the rest of the movement – often closely associated with the political party Dansk Samling or ‘Danish Unity’ – was to embrace resistance for similarly historical and nationalistic reasons. The ‘Danish Unity’ Party was represented in the Freedom Council, and shortly before the end of the war, a bishop took his seat on the council, in part to counterbalance the strong communist presence in the resistance and in its coordination. The resistance offered by ministers in the Danish People’s Church was not without its dangers. Five were murdered and others found themselves in concentration camps. Roughly 1,000 ministers were forced to go into hiding as a result of their resistance activities. 4.2 The Danish minister Kaj Munk As we observed above, occupied Denmark was able to maintain a degree of independence – albeit under German supervision – until August 1943. It is against this background that the remarkable life and death of the Lutheran minister Kaj Munk, martyred for his radical rejection of this relatively mild form of Nazi domination, which ultimately revealed its true face in the murder of Munk in 1945. Kaj Harald Leininger Petersen was born on 13 January 1898 in the provincial town of Maribo on the island of Lolland. After the death of his parents when he was five years old, he was adopted by his mother’s niece Marie and her husband Peter Munk. From then on he used the family name Munk. His early encounter with death preoccupied him in his childhood, which was also determined by Sunday services, Sunday school, and evening bible classes given by a Pietist evangelist who was considered to be a representative of ‘unauthorised Christianity’.103 After studying theology at the University of Copenhagen – which brought him into contact with the radical nineteenth-century philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard – Kaj Munk accepted an invitation to serve as minister in the village of Vedersø in Jutland on the North Sea coast, where he was officially installed on 1 June 1924 after an obligatory audience with the king. He married Elise Jørgensen, a parishioner, in 1929, thus binding himself anew to the village he had been called to serve. In the isolation of his village he wrote his first theatre piece ‘The Idealist’ about the biblical king Herod, which was to be performed in 1928 by the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen with much success. Munk’s breakthrough as a playwright took place in 1931 with the publication of his play ‘Cant’, a dramatic study of belief and unbelief at the court of the English King Henry VIII . Christianity, according to the play’s primary 286

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theme, would lose its teeth if it were obliged to live on the crumbs that fall from the table of the philosophers. Within the tradition of diversity characteristic of Danish Lutheranism, Munk can be located between the Barthians and the Pietists. As far as the former were concerned he was not radical enough because he placed too much influence on humanity’s original religious powers; for the latter he was too positive: being a Christian and a believer was about love and the struggle to serve God’s interests and not only an act of intellectual assent.104 Munk was more in line with the tradition of N.F.S. Grundtvig when he spoke of his patriotism. Rooted in its Christian history, Denmark had been given a mission to fight for liberation from foreign (German) domination. The ‘Crown Jewels’ of a thousandyear-old kingdom had to be defended. It is striking in this regard – and also understandable – that Munk revered the king who was to become a symbol of national independence during the German occupation. The king was ‘the highest bishop’ and as such the source of a necessary unanimity between monarch and government. This did not exclude the possibility of being critical of any given government.105 In spite of the influence of this specifically Danish variant of cultural nationalism, Kaj Munk remained faithful to his theological pattern and model, Kierkegaard. ‘It has been postulated that just as much as Grundtvig dissociated himself from the ordinary man, just as much did Kierkegaard enjoy his company and just as much did Kierkegaard dissociate himself from the collective Denmark, and just as much did Grundtvig cultivate it.’106 In the 1930s, Munk had welcomed Europe’s new dictators – Mussolini and Hitler – as political heroes. The new National Socialist movement and its ‘national revolution’ in Germany drew his interest and admiration. The world might laugh at all the ‘Arian nonsense – which is nonsense and sometimes self-idolizing nonsense – but it is also something more: stormy weather, which fills the lungs, is positive towards life and ten times more valuable than the most profound and most sincere suicide logic.’107 On 9 April 1940, the day the Germans invaded Denmark, he hurried to the village school to explain to the children what was happening and encourage them to sing patriotic songs. In the evening, he invited the people to join him for evening prayer in his church. On the first Sunday after the invasion (14 April), he did not preach resistance. The tenor of his sermon: we could have defended ourselves better. On 2 March, Munk preached about the disciples Jesus left behind, who could look forward to the resurrection with hope, but he also spoke about his shame and sadness at the government for not deciding to mobilize the army or deploy the fleet. In his opinion it had been overmastered ‘in its sleep’.108 ‘When injustice screams on the streets, should my Church stand in silence on the sidelines?’ This was the question Kaj Munk was later to pose with increasing urgency to his church. He criticized its leaders for flight into ‘interior immigration’, the church authorities in Denmark who had ‘forced their subordinates to abuse their authority’ by forbidding Danish ministers from committing themselves to the cause of their ‘dear, brave sister church in Norway’.109 Munk the preacher – besides plays, the Sunday sermon was his favourite medium of communication – started to see himself as the man destined 287

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to ‘ignite the fire’ and not worry about limiting the flames. While he was a gifted preacher, he was also plagued at times by self-doubt. He was remarkably concrete in his use of examples and suggestions, and the reputation he thus acquired drew people from every point of the compass to listen to his Sunday sermons. Even the Danish government tried to exercise its influence. The Minister of Foreign Affairs asked his colleague in the Ministry of Ecclesial Affairs to have Munk fired from his position as preacher, but the latter skilfully managed to avoid doing so. In March 1943, the government wrote a letter – cited above – to all the ministers of the Danish People’s Church, urging them to avoid public reference to the conflict facing the church in Norway. Kaj Munk responded with a protest: the Norwegian church was fighting for the ideals that I also have sworn to abide by. ‘It is better to damage Denmark’s relationship with Germany than its relationship with Jesus Christ.’110 Munk referred to 29 August 1943, the moment at which Denmark finally considered itself to be at war with Nazi Germany, as a ‘proud day’ for the nation. He limited himself during the Sunday service to the reading of Chapter 27 of the Acts of the Apostles, in which Paul, a prisoner, is shipwrecked off the coast of Malta but manages to escape the ship by himself and safely reach the island. Deliverance from the shipwreck became an image for a Denmark that was determined to undo its cooperation with Germany. His critique of Danish passivity and the German occupier increased in its intensity and its radical content. At the end of 1943 he gave financial support to the communist resistance he had once rejected, although he asked the partisans not to use his contribution for propaganda purposes. In November 1943, Kaj Munk travelled to Copenhagen to preach at the Church of the Holy Spirit against the German occupation. The Germans immediately promulgated a ban on preaching and the Sunday afternoon service had to be cancelled. But Munk was later to preach at the cathedral in Copenhagen. During the service on New Year’s Eve 1943, Munk refused to take to the pulpit. Instead, he declared in the middle of the assembled community – and without his robes of office – that he was unable to do so because even after 29 August 1943 there were still Danes who placed themselves at the service of the national enemy. His sermon was a lesson to those who had betrayed Christianity and their fatherland out of avarice.111 Kaj Munk was killed on the night of 4 January 1944 under orders from SS Hauptsturmführer Otto Schwerdt, who had been commanded by Himmler in December 1943 to make his way to Copenhagen and to organize the ‘Gegenterror’. Schwerdt charged his SS subordinate Paul Söhnlein to fetch Munk from his house in Vedersø and shoot him on the way. His body was found the next day on the village’s main street. The German administrative elite were faced with a fait accompli. Ole Björn Kraft, a member of the Danish parliament, had also been injured at home in this manner. Werner Best, the representative of the German Reich in Denmark, was summoned by Von Ribbentrop to explain why he had hitherto been fighting the Danish resistance with judicial decrees instead of counter-terror.112 Kaj Munk became an example of personal courage in the face of consequences he consciously embraced. As post-1945 Danish society gradually became aware – and 288

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critical – of the extent of wartime opportunism, Munk came to be remembered more and more as a martyr for the cause of legitimate resistance. 4.3 The ‘Confessing Church’ in Western Europe In the countries of Western Europe, Protestantism was for the most part, but not exclusively, Calvinistic. This was certainly the case in the Netherlands, although the same can also be said of France, albeit with a Lutheran concentration in the Alsace. A form of ecclesial protest developed that exhibited similarities with the church struggle in Germany and Norway. The so-called confession was a central element in Calvinist resistance, both in the Netherlands and in France, but it was far from being self-evident in either country. At the beginning of their (theological) confrontation with National Socialism, the two main Calvinistic churches in the Netherlands took a different point of departure. The Dutch Reformed Church, the majority Protestant church in the Netherlands, was unable to make a common confession of faith in May 1940. The smaller Reformed Churches, on the other hand, succeeded in doing so. By the end of the war, however, the members of the Dutch Reformed Church had been made ready for the acceptance of a confessing church, and critical declarations from Protestant pulpits became the rule rather than the exception. There was talk in the smaller Reformed Churches of a schism: an ‘emancipation’ that split their institution in its theological interpretation of the doctrine of baptism, but also one in which the attitude of the church leaders during the occupation had a role to play. The idea of theological neutrality had made it possible for the Dutch Reformed Church to be understood as the ‘national church’ par excellence well into the middle of the twentieth century. Within this community, liberal modernist, moderate orthodox and reformed orthodoxy were able to exist and grow side by side without causing a schism. For a century, however, efforts had been made to return the church to a central authority made up of creedal documents and authoritative rules drawn up in 1619 by the Synod of Dordrecht, at which Calvinism was established in the Netherlands. The various different tendencies within the church made it difficult to arrive at the majority necessary to implement such a transformation. The last attempt to do so dated back to 1938. Proponents merged into what was referred to as a Luntersche kring, a faction named after the village of Lunteren in which they held their meetings. They were all inspired by the theologian Karl Barth and by the example of the ‘Bekennende Kirche’ in Germany. At an extraordinary meeting of the Synod, their draft of a new church order obtained a (narrow) majority, but it was set aside as a result of the ecclesial unrest that followed the Synod. The proponents of a ‘confessing church’ decided at that juncture to adopt an alternative strategy. The Dutch Reformed Church was to be reformed via a reorganization from the ground up, via the congregations. Its apotheosis was to be an ecclesial Constituent Assembly, a constitutional gathering that would accept the construction of a confessing people’s church. The war and the occupation beat them to the post, but it also reinforced 289

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their determination to succeed. On 31 October 1945 – Reformation Day – their ambitions became a reality in a new church order and a new General Synod. By that time the war had passed and liberated from internment, Norwegian Bishop Berggrav was able to attend the ceremonies as a guest of honour. He had set the example. The same war had made the much-desired reform of the Dutch Reformed Church possible. Shortly after the German invasion, the most important proponents of the ‘confessing church’ formed a ‘church consultation commission’ by order of the Synod to provide advice on the position of the Church with respect to the occupation. This construction became the engine driving the confessing church. The meeting of the Synod in July 1940, two months after the German invasion, focused entirely on administrative matters. On 27 October, however, two Synodal messages were proclaimed from pulpits throughout the country: an appeal to remain faithful to ‘the Lord of the Church’ in the face of National Socialist occupying politics and a protest against the introduction of the socalled Aryan Paragraph, whereby, in line with Nazi Germany, Jews were excluded from the civil service.113 Echoes of a number of the propositions of Karl Barth could be heard in the pastoral letter issued by the Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church on 25 October 1943. It stated clearly that Christian faith and National Socialism were irreconcilable because the latter elevated the nation to an absolute and divine eminence. ‘The salvation of every nation is not to be found in the glorification of national interests but in obedience to Jesus Christ.’ Its ‘boundless hatred of the Jews’ was a profound violation of the foundations of the faith. Pastoral letters of this sort were not always read out in church, however. Ministers sometimes ignored the Synod’s request for fear of reprisals. In some congregations, National Socialist officials and church members protested against such declarations because they considered them to be in conflict with church order, which (still) prescribed neutrality in matters of dogma and other theological issues.114 The necessity – and possibility – of public church protest also led the leaders to search for an ecumenical forum that would reinforce their statements. The German occupation thus introduced a collectivity in the Netherlands that had hitherto been so divided in ecclesial terms. ‘The struggle against National Socialism achieved what centuries had failed to achieve. Collective necessity drove the churches together.’115 In the first instance, the Protestant churches organized an Assembly. Representatives of the major Calvinist and smaller Lutheran and Baptist Church came together on 25 June 1940, focusing their reflections primarily on the dangers posed by the totalitarian state to Christian social institutions: the media, education and unions. In October 1940, the Assembly made its first official protest against the use of measures – mentioned earlier – to exclude Jews from the civil service. The representatives of the two Lutheran churches were unwilling to subscribe to the protest at that juncture, basing themselves on the principle that the Church should not meddle in state affairs. Later in the war, however, the Lutheran representatives distanced themselves from this policy of abstention.116 In October 1941, the deliberations of the Assembly of Churches were extended to include the Roman Catholic Church and changed its name to Inter-Church Consultation. Johannes de Jong, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Utrecht, took part as head of the 290

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episcopal conference and gave permission to the archdiocese’s canon lawyer to participate in the ecumenical meetings. A turning point was reached during a meeting with Reich Commissioner Seyss Inquart at which the representatives of all the Christian churches registered their objection to the imminent deportations of Jews. The ‘audience’ took place on 17 February 1942. From that day on, the said Inter-Church Consultation became the instance in which numerous objections were prepared and formulated, not only against the persecution of the Jews, but also against forced labour, the execution of religious leaders and hostages, and the rounding up of students. Objection was also lodged against the new marriage legislation, which introduced a simplification of divorce procedures. The smaller Dutch Reformed Churches – via their representative, the theologian Herman Huber Kuyper – did lukewarmly support the Assembly of Churches’ initial protest against the Aryan Paragraph. Kuyper explained his doubts in the reformed press, thereby violating the confidentiality of the Assembly’s deliberations. The resulting conflict ended with the conclusion that the elderly Kuyper was to withdraw ‘on account of deafness’ and the lawyer Jan Donner, a Supreme Court judge, was to take his place as representative of the Reformed Churches. Herman Huber Kuyper – introduced in Chapter 4 – was the son of Abraham Kuyper, the founder of the Reformed Churches, and was thus considered an authority. In spite of his advanced years, he was – and remained – the primary negotiator on behalf of his church with the occupying regime. He was thus a figure of great importance in matters of church–state policy. Kuyper – whose son Elisa Willem was to serve on the Eastern Front as a Kriegsberichter, a war reporter for the Waffen-SS , where he died at the beginning of 1944 – was afraid of infringing the reformed inheritance that his father had built up and sought to accommodate the occupier. In his opinion, there was a need ‘to avoid upsetting the authorities with ill-considered expressions of patriotism or the socalled martyrdom of church officials’.117 Within the Reformed Churches, Kuyper was opposed by the theologian and church minister Klaas Schilder (see also Chapter 4). Schilder accused him of not doing enough in his position to have him released from imprisonment in Germany (late 1940). Kuyper responded that ‘true love’ teaches us not to resist the way of the Lord as revolutionaries with big words and hollow phrases. ‘We should not shy away from martyrdom, but nor should we provoke it.’118 Schilder was released on 6 December 1940 and was appointed rector of the (reformed) Theological College in Kampen. ‘Two different tracks came together in the conflict with Prof. Dr. H.H. Kuyper: Schilder disputed Kuyper’s readiness to adapt himself to the German authorities and denounced Kuyper as too rigid in monitoring the inheritance of his father Abraham Kuyper.’119 But the core of the dispute was – and remained – a theological difference of opinion on the meaning of baptism in the light of the Calvinist dogma of predestination. Schilder preached about Calvin as someone who engaged in opposition and even encouraged it. In the meantime, he was actively establishing his own constituency, his own circle of supporters. By 1944 the (ecclesial) Liberation (Vrijmaking) was a reality. Liberation is a loaded term in Calvinism, and basically means freedom from the tyranny of dogma and Synod. 291

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The church dispute reached its apotheosis in the summer of 1944 when the allies had advanced through France and Belgium and were approaching the Dutch border. On 4 August 1944, the Reformed Synod suspended Klaas Schilder from his post at the Theological College in Kampen and as retired minister of the Reformed Church in Rotterdam-Delfshaven. He had appeared in front of the Synod a few days earlier – on 31 July – to defend himself against a number of theological objections. The discussion concluded on a negative note. A week later, on 11 August, Schilder and his sympathizers assembled in the Lutheran Church in The Hague. More than a thousand people were present. The meeting was ‘private’, but its result quickly reached the outside world. Schilder presented the assembly with a draft ‘Act of Liberation or Return’. He consciously employed the language of earlier nineteenth-century Calvinist schisms. Those present who subscribed to the draft freed themselves from the ‘synodal yoke’, i.e. from the Synod of the Reformed Churches.120 The schism was realized nota bene in the winter of 1944, at a time when the German occupying regime had become increasingly uncompromising and brutal. Some argued that it would be best to suspend the theological debate until the end of the war. In reality, the material schism – decisions concerning the allocation of the Reformed Churches’ buildings and other church property – was only to take place after the liberation of the Netherlands in May 1945. But both the Synod and Schilder had brought matters to a head in the summer of 1944, Schilder driven by theological zeal, the Synod by its dissatisfaction with Schilder’s fierce and injudicious opposition to accommodation. Where radical preachers had been able to steer the Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church towards a critical confession, the smaller Reformed Churches’ tradition of such critical confessions became a source of schism. The Protestant church in France – much smaller in terms of numbers than its northern neighbour – had similar aspirations and experienced similar difficulties in the realization of a confessing church. The inspiration came once again from theologian Karl Barth and the pressure from a group of young ministers. On 16 and 17 September 1941, a number of officials and lay members of the French Reformed Church came together in Pomeyrol – a conference resort in the Department of Bouches du Rhône and thus outside the occupied part of France – to formulate a series of propositions on the attitude Christians and the church should adopt towards the secular authorities.121 Willem Visser ’t Hooft, the secretary of the then nascent Ecumenical Council of Churches, made an important contribution to this meeting. The first proposition stated that Jesus Christ was the only Lord of the Church and of the world; in other words, the Christian Church did not recognize any other authority. The second stated that it was the Church’s duty to form a judgement on the concrete situation of the state or nation in matters concerning the commandments of God. According to the fifth proposition, the Church was to recognize the authority of the state, and was to encourage its members to fulfil their civil duties. But obedience to the state was subordinate to the absolute obedience men and women owe to God. The sixth proposition defended individual freedoms and the seventh consisted of a protest against the persecution of the Jews.122 292

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The group consisted for the most part of ministers from the southern, unoccupied part of France. The majority were also members of the French union of Christian students in which they had been inspired by the ideas of Barth. Visser ’t Hooft, who managed to travel from Geneva to the southern part of France, was able to inform the group about developments in German and Dutch Protestantism. The organizers focused their attention on Vichy France and on the problems associated with loyalty to a government that had come to power legitimately and had negotiated a truce with Nazi Germany. The propositions struck a sympathetic and positive note. In 1942, the Synod of the French Reformed Church in Valence adopted some of the ideas contained therein in its official declaration. But there were also negative reactions. The political spectrum of French Protestantism included a radical right wing. ‘La droite protestante – The Protestant Right’ formed the so-called Association Sully (named after Maximilien de Béthune, Duke of Sully, who served as Protestant advisor to the French king Henry IV in the sixteenth century). The association was the Protestant equivalent of the Action Française. It was led by Noël Nougat, a church minister and ‘le Maurras des protestants royalistes’,123 and produced a list of eight propositions as a critical and positive response to the propositions of Pomeyrol. The French Reformed Church was divided at every level, including its leaders. Its president Marc Boegner, who was expected to steer a council of 14 members in the process of decision-making, had the habit of approaching the authorities prior to any official protest to determine whether it was possible to achieve the same goals without official – and thereby public – protest. On 22 September 1942, the Synod of the French Reformed Church distributed a letter to be read out from every pulpit in which it declared that it was no longer able to remain silent in face of the suffering of thousands of Jewish citizens.124 Boegner later explained the reason for the long delay in publishing this statement, namely that it had taken time to convince his fourteen council members of the desirability of such a gesture. A few ministers did not read out the letter in public. In May 1943, the Synod was obliged to remind its ministers that it expected its messages to be read from the pulpit of every Reformed Church.125 Marc Boegner returned to Paris in 1943, where the German occupier invited him one year later to have the Synod issue a statement condemning the Allied bombings following the example of the Catholic bishops. The Synod refused, appealing among other things to the separation of Church and state. In northern and Western Europe – and following the example of the ‘Bekennende Kirche’ in Germany – the Protestant Churches made use of the pulpit to register public protest against a variety of measures being taken by the different occupying regimes (including the Vichy government in France). They were not unique in this regard. The bishops of the Roman Catholic Church were also vocal in their response to the situation in which they found themselves. In the Netherlands, church protest was even expressed in a shared (ecumenical) association of Synod and episcopate. The collective decisionmaking process that preceded such pulpit messages was unique, as was the expression of critique and protest in the public domain. In the totalitarian occupations of northern 293

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and Western Europe, in which public political debate was forbidden and those who engaged in it were silenced or imprisoned, those in authority in the various churches were often the only ones capable of offering and sustaining such public critique. 4.4 Pietism As part of the broad spectrum of western and Northern European Protestantism, the right-oriented Pietist movement was characterized by an intense experience of faith. In such communities, the horrors of the Second World War were interpreted as a punishment for the sins of modern society. In Denmark, the Pietist movement opted to resign itself to the occupation. The same was true in the Netherlands of the so-called ‘bevindelijke – Pietist’ Calvinists, who acquired their Dutch name as a result of their strong belief in predestination, divine election independent of the goals of one’s actions. In line with Calvin, Pietists believed that some are chosen for eternal life and some for eternal damnation. As Reformed Protestants, their ministers taught that while they could never achieve grace by their own efforts, they were required nevertheless to obey the call to personal conversion. The majority of Pietists in the Netherlands were concentrated on the islands and along the banks of the major rivers in the west and centre of the country. They lived in communion with one another within the Reformed congregations. In political terms they were unified and mobilized by the Reverend Gerrit Hendrik Kersten who founded the Reformed Political Party in 1918 when universal suffrage was introduced in the Netherlands. In 1940 he was serving as a church minister in Rotterdam while occupying a seat in parliament and functioning as leader of his party. On the anniversary of the party in April 1940, he spoke of the threat of war as a divine response to Dutch society’s serious sins and stated his fear that God was about to extend his punishing hand to the Netherlands. ‘Our downfall shall be great.’126 When the Netherlands was occupied in May 1940, Kersten published an article entitled ‘God’s Justice Upheld’. In his opinion, God had justly poured out his wrath on the Netherlands. This was not an injustice, not even if he ‘used the Germans to beat us’.127 He maintained this point of departure with such consistency that later articles never contained a single improper word about the German invasion or the bombing of Rotterdam, the consequences of which he had experienced in person. Following the same line of reasoning, he also considered it irresponsible to urge the population to resist or to engage in a ‘politics of incitement’. Disobedience was only justified if the authorities made demands that were against the commandments of God, such as the desecration of Sunday or the involvement of children in sport and vain service of the world.128 When the Netherlands was liberated in May 1945 Kersten and his fellow minister Pieter Zandt praised the mercy of God, who had set the Netherlands free from the oppressor ‘he had set over us for a length of time’.129 As a member of parliament, Kersten was obliged to submit to a procedure in 1945 that would clear his name, but the outcome was negative. His party continued to support their founder and appointed the 65-yearold as their honorary chairman. ‘His supporters continued to see him as a preacher of 294

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penitence who had revealed to the people what would happen if they persevered in their sin. In spite of his loyalty to the occupier, his was not suspected of having Nazi sympathies.’130 Pietism became a theme in post-war debate on the question whether such believers had in fact met their deaths on account of their pietism under the German occupying regime. To what extent did the awareness of sin and the passivity of a large number of ordinary men and women contribute to the negative outcome of their imprisonment in German concentration camps? In the latter part of 1944, the people of Putten, a village in the heavily forested central part of the Netherlands, were punished for a resistance attack on German soldiers in the vicinity. Ninety-eight houses were set on fire and 499 males were deported to concentration camps in the north of Germany; 426 did not survive internment. After the war, Putten became a village of martyrs. At the end of 1946, medical doctor A. van Dantzig published an analysis of the inhabitants of Putten he had been able to observe in the concentration camp where he had likewise been interned. He noted that the men from Putten appeared to be less able to cope with the hardships of camp life than the others, naming their close ‘rightwing Protestant’ traditions and connections as one of the reasons for this weakness. ‘It is clear that such communities offer a high degree of certainty and continuity and that their members must have been so deeply embedded in the collective atmosphere that they – abruptly transferred to a completely different environment – were very hard pressed to find an adequate way of engaging in camp existence.’131 A twofold answer emerged from the debate: piety was present in the religious culture of Putten, but it was not the primary reason why the inhabitants met their end. Fate had seen to it that they were deported to improvised and poorly organized camps in the north of Germany, a region that had been spared hostilities at the end of 1944 and had thus been designated as a reception centre for prisoners. Severe conditions, such as those in camp Ladelund on the border with Denmark, proved fatal for many of the deportees, irrespective of their religiosity. What then with respect to Pietism itself? The answer was sought in the person of C.B. Holland, the local minister in Putten, who had served the majority of the faithful in the village and had presented the Nazi regime as a herald of God’s punitive judgement over secularized Europe. On 1 November 1944, a month after the German reprisals in Putten, he preached to his congregation: ‘The entire world can see this day that the living God is a God who punishes sin, that God’s wrath is revealed from heaven against the godless and the unjust.’132 A minority among the Reformed of Putten, who were encouraged in their church to participate actively in society, referred to the Reverend Holland as ‘Reverend Germany’ on account of his ‘passive’ sermons.133 The nickname was unwarranted, because Holland was anything but pro-German. It nevertheless typifies an evident cultural contradiction between Calvinistic activism and Calvinistic pietism.

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Two forms of deportation are determinative of the collective experience of the Second World War in Europe: the deportation of the Jews to the extermination camps and the deportation of men (predominantly) for forced labour in Nazi Germany. The former, the persecution of the Jews, will be explored in detail in Chapters 8, 9 and 10. The latter, the deportation of (male) labourers to Nazi Germany was in some instances already a concrete reality from the moment of the capitulation of the Polish state in September 1939, but from the middle of 1943 onwards, it became a fact of daily life in all occupied countries to which the churches reacted in different ways. The Nazis came to power in the middle of an economic crisis. But when the Nazi Four Year Plan was devised and deployed in 1936 and the focus was turned towards re-armament, a shortage of labourers arose. The gap was filled by importing an estimated 375,000 ‘migrant workers’ based on international agreements between Germany and a number of its neighbours. The invasion of Poland in September 1939 created a different situation. According to the experts, the mobilization of German conscripts was expected to create a shortage of two million labourers in the space of two years. Women could have filled the gap in this instance, but Nazi ideology preferred women to stay at home and take care of the family. Moreover, experience from the First World War had taught them that the mobilization of women would damage the social climate at the home front and drive up wage costs. The alternative was to increase the number of ‘migrant workers’. In the summer of 1940, 700,000 Polish workers were granted work permits or deployed under coercion. Only a small number actually volunteered for work. The 300,000 Polish prisoners of war in German were also forced to work. A further 40,000 Polish soldiers who had sought asylum in Romania – a German ally – and had been handed over by the Romanian authorities to Berlin, can be added to this number. In the course of the war no fewer than 2,826,000 Polish men and women were put to work in Nazi Germany and in the occupied territories; some as volunteers, but the majority as forced labourers. They came from every level of the population: farmers, the working class, but also teachers and civil servants, and even priests and nuns.1 Clerics were enlisted to take care of the pastoral needs of the Polish labourers. With the permission of Archbishop Sapieha, the Vatican and the supreme command of the Armia Krajowa, Ignacy Posadzy was appointed as their spiritual leader. Nine priests and a small number of religious people thus managed to find their way into Nazi Germany to provide pastoral care. The rapid advance of the Wehrmacht in northern and Western Europe brought a new army of labourers under Nazi control: prisoners of war. In the flush of victory, however, 297

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the regime decided in the summer of 1940 to extend a hand to the ‘Germanic nations’ and send captured soldiers from Norway, the Netherlands and Flemish Belgium home. Only the French and French-speaking Belgian prisoners of war remained in the labour camps. In 1941, Greek prisoners were also set free. Forced labour was later to be deployed in Greece in support of national production. In military terms, the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 was initially a success. In the first six months, roughly 3.3 million Soviet soldiers fell into the hands of the Germans. Following the racial ideology of National Socialism, these were in Untermenschen destined to die by execution or in increasing numbers by starvation; 1.4 million were already dead by September 1941. When the campaign against the Soviet Union lost its impetus and was less successful than had originally been expected, the remaining prisoners of war were deployed as ‘migrant workers’ under severe and hazardous circumstances. In February 1942, civilians from occupied Russian territory were also deported in large numbers to labour camps in Nazi Germany. In the course of 1942, and certainly after the German defeat at Stalingrad in February 1943, Nazi Germany’s offensive war became defensive and its troops were even forced into retreat. Every available worker thus had to be mobilized to fill the gaps left by German conscripts and maintain sufficient levels of arms production. Occupied nations and German allies were expected to support Germany in the struggle against Bolshevism and deliver the required labour force. As Gauleiter of Thuringia, Fritz Sauckel had already been charged by Hitler in March 1942 to lead this Reichseinsatz, a mobilization of workers in support of the German Reich. In addition to Eastern Europe, northern and Western Europe was now expected to play its part. In the early stages this was organized via the so-called ‘Reich Labour Service’ and was voluntary, or in the case of unemployed labourers obligatory. Sauckel was unable to meet the required quotas, however, and in the course of 1942 the pressure was increased. In Western Europe this led to large numbers of men (and unmarried women) considered fit for labour being called up – and in some instance rounded up – for deployment in German factories and farms. The Tysklandsarbejdere or German workers despatched from the satellite state Denmark were the only ones to be assigned on a voluntary basis.2

1 Forced labour and religion 1.1 Forced labour in France France was confronted with forced deployment of prisoners of war by the invading forces immediately after the ceasefire in June 1940. Together with neighbouring Belgium, France also had experienced similar circumstances during the First World War. In May and June 1940, thousands of French soldiers were taken prisoner and deported to Nazi Germany. After the suspension of hostilities in the second half of 1940, almost one-tenth of the male population of France (more than 1.5 million men) was imprisoned in German camps. Officers were held in the so-called Oflags, the lesser ranks in Stalags or in Arbeitskommandos associated with their Stammlager. 298

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Among the prisoners of war there were more than 4,000 priests and seminarians of whom very little is known thus far. A number were treated as chaplains and were occasionally charged with the healthcare of their fellow prisoners. Some were repatriated for this reason at the beginning of 1941. After the announcement of forced labour in 1943, another group of seminarians and priests was forced to ‘retrain’ as civilian labourers. Liturgical supplies were brought in from France itself to allow them to maintain their ‘diocèse des barbelés – barbed-wire diocese’. The transition from official military chaplains to private chaplains was marked by an initiative taken by abbé Jean Rodhain. After the ceasefire, military chaplains were free to leave their German prisons together with medical staff. The Geneva Convention was thus followed in this regard. Abbé Rodhain took the initiative to recruit a chaplains corps from among the imprisoned priests who did not have the function of chaplain and were obliged as such to remain in Nazi Germany. These aumônerie Rodhain were later to form a link with the (future) priest-workers in the context of forced labour.3 After September 1942, prisoners of war were allowed to return to France when an increasingly large force of (voluntary) labourers came to take their place. This marked the so-called Relève (Relief) phase. In 1943, however, the Service du Travail Obligatoire (STO ) came into force, obligatory labour. On 16 February, a law was promulgated for the entire country requiring hundreds of thousands of young Frenchmen to contribute their labour to the Third Reich’s agricultural and industrial machine. As a result of the law, a total of 700,000 French citizens were deployed as forced labour in Germany as well as Austria. Forced labour was no respector of persons and affected every level of society. While the law was promulgated by Marshal Pétain, it had clearly been dictated by the German occupying regime. In addition to the many directly affected by it – the labourers themselves and their families – it also led to many painful discussions on the home front. The Catholic bourgeoisie bowed to Pétain. Some interpreted the departure of their sons in the spirit proposed by the French government, who tried to cultivate the ideal of ‘working for France’ abroad among the population. Others saw Nazi Germany as a line of defence against Bolshevism and thus felt obliged to give their support. The majority of bishops declared that the young men – seminarians among them – had no choice but to obey. Vatican Radio, by contrast, voiced its concerns on 19 February 1943: the Catholic Church opposed forced labour and labour deportations. But the Church in France did not espouse this rejection, although the Archbishop of Besançon together with the Bishops of Verdun, Nancy and Saint-Dié-des-Vosges later protested against the brutal manner with which labourers were being recruited in France for forced labour in Nazi German, arguing that it was close to deportation. The Archbishop of Lille, Cardinal Liénart, is understood to have stated in an address that wherever the young people of France found themselves, the so-called JOC ists (members of the Jeunesse ouvrière chrétienne – Young Christian Workers) should be among them (there were approximately 40,000 JOC ists at work in Nazi Germany). The statement was exploited by the pro-Nazi press.4 The evening after his address (15 March 1943), the cardinal took to the podium in Roubaix in front of an audience of young Catholics. He argued that it would be unjust for the working classes to be expected to 299

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carry the burden of forced labour on their own. He summoned his young audience to behave like heroic and militant Christians in the midst of this shared trial. A series of protests followed. The cardinal’s words were interpreted as an appeal on behalf of the Arbeitseinsatz. The archbishop declared that it was not his wish to comply with antiGerman propaganda. He had simply wanted to say that those who were obliged to leave should adopt a genuine social and national attitude. If any development was capable of preserving France from Bolshevism it was the unity of the French population suffering for the fatherland. It was in the same spirit, Liénart added, that ‘our seminarians’ were preparing for their departure, intent on accepting their share of France’s misfortune.5 The Assembly of Cardinals and Archbishops supported this perspective. On 9 May 1943, they declared that the Church was unable to bring an end to this trial and that Catholics should yield to it, although obedience was not an obligation of conscience. They should submit to it as Christian and French, in solidarity with the entire nation.6 Cardinal Suhard informed the Vichy government that the declaration was intended for the German occupying authorities and not the French government, and that it was a lesser evil when compared with the possibility of contradictory declarations being issued by individual bishops.7 The episcopate wanted to share its sympathies in the first instance with the families left at home. It was added that the STO was not an obligation of conscience, but a question of obedience to a command of the (legal) authorities. Those involved were expected to make the best of their situation in fraternal solidarity. As we shall see below, the French bishops as a whole shared the same perspective on the situation as their Polish colleagues, but differed from their fellow bishops in Belgium and the Netherlands. It is worthy of note that the editorial board of the French resistance journal Témoignage Chrétien published the official documents of the Belgian and Dutch episcopate; an implicit criticism of the French episcopate.8 In the autumn of 1943, this led the Assembly of Cardinals and Archbishops to turn against what was referred to as the ‘anonymous newspapers’ or persons ‘without responsibility’ who called on the people to refuse forced labour on the basis of theology, natural philosophy and natural law. According to their declaration, young men were to turn to their religious leaders and not let their consciences be determined by people without responsibility or anonymous individuals.9 More and more reports reached France of moral decline among the forced labourers, especially among the women. This ultimately led the cardinals and bishops to declare openly their rejection of forced labour for women in a statement published in February 1944. The French episcopate also made a gesture in 1943 that distinguished them anew from their fellow bishops in Belgium and the Netherlands: 26 priests departed in secret for Germany charged with providing pastoral care for their compatriots as simple labourers. For some this gesture served to compensate for their complete lack of protest against the STO.10 The request to provide chaplaincy services for the forced labourers had been addressed to the episcopate by the JOC . Their young militants were among the first to experience the circumstances of a forced ‘emigration’ to Nazi Germany at first hand. The French bishops were slow to respond to the JOC request.11 It was thanks to the determination of Cardinal 300

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Suhard that religious assistance to the forced labourers became a reality. Two hundred volunteers responded to his invitation and the situation ultimately required secrecy. The first 26 chaplains were despatched illegally to Germany in April 1943. Their average age was 32.5. Additional priests and seminarians – some ordained early – increased their numbers through ‘normal’ channels, despatched as official forced labourers or after roundups. Their number reached 300 at its peak, in addition to the 10,000 so-called militant Catholics circulating among the more than 700,000 French forced labourers in Nazi Germany. Of the 10,000 militants, three out of ten were seminarians.12 The German authorities reacted to this priestly mission with interdicts and arrests. The JOC had already been banned from developing its activities in the occupied part of France at the end of 1940. On 3 August 1943, the Gestapo arrested the movement’s most important chaplain and a ban on French priests offering themselves for work in Germany followed. In January 1944, Himmler gave orders for the location and expulsion of seminarians in the Arbeitseinsatz.13 After the Allied landing in Normandy and the attempted assassination of Hitler on 20 July 1944, the pursuit of clandestine priests and seminarians was intensified. The latter often had to take over the work of the former if they remained undetected. Experience of imprisonment and forced labour was sometimes extremely disconcerting for clergy, whether ordained or still in formation. Priests mobilized in 1939 as chaplains, military orderlies or simple foot soldiers not only experienced the rough and tumble of barrack life as something out of the ordinary, they were also surprised at the unexpected solidarity they felt towards a world they had never encountered in their formation. The priests were expected to fulfil their religious obligations – as chaplains – and realize their mission in the hard and unforgiving circumstances of forced labour. They did not distinguish themselves from the rest: no cassock, no cross, no breviary, no library of religious books. The workers shared a single fate: round the clock labour in factories and workshops, seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day. Caution was advised. They were not free to talk about their church background or their religious mission, since collaborators and Gestapo agents constantly listened in to people’s conversations. Of the 26 chaplains despatched in 1943, twelve ended up in the concentration camp in Dachau and one in Bergen-Belsen. For many priest-workers, the experience of sharing the existence of the forced labourers was a decisive one. After the liberation, in December 1945, the diocese of Rouen organized a conference for returning priests and seminarians. ‘For five years we were one of them, part of the masses as they said back then. That meant living in a multitude from every corner of society, among men who had to make do in difficult situations and in a context far removed from Christianity. And we were able to experience the extent to which religion appeared to them to be something other worldly.’14 The priests lost their ‘angelic’ status and became one with the labourers, who in their turn got to know the priests and comrades and companions in adversity. Cardinal Suhard’s decision to allow priests to participate in the STO was part of an awareness at the time of a certain deficiency in the Catholic Church in France. A topical question was linked to a more long-term issue. In April 1943, a report – mentioned in 301

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Chapter 1 – was published on the de-Christianization of the country, entitled Mémoire sur la conquête chrétienne dans le milieu prolétaire (A Treatise on the Subjugation of Christianity in the Proletarian World) and focusing on the disappearance of Christianity among the working classes. A paragraph heading in the same document spoke of La France, pays de mission? (France, a missionary country?). The report – a product of the advance of the sociology of religion – was written by two chaplains to the JOC in Paris: Henri Godin and Yvan Daniel. It had an enormous impact on the church authorities and occasioned a broad debate on de-Christianization.15 As a result, the Mission de Paris was established in Paris in 1944, followed in October 1945 by the Mission de Marseille. Both were initiatives intent on countering the de-Christianization of the French working classes by providing them with their own pastoral care and their own priestly formation. The Mission, an independent association, was charged with planting the church in the centre of the working classes. In the language of those who were responsible for the report, the workers were not only de-Christianized, they were already ‘pagan’, born outside the church. They lived a family life bereft of Christian traditions. Church circles spoke of the ‘loss of faith among the working classes’ and of ‘la paganisation des masses – the paganization of the masses’.16 The planned reconquest would only be possible, however, if the positive consequences of de-Christianization were recognized: the constructive powers and aspirations of the workers movement, which was rooted in Marxism.17 One hundred priests were initially promised for the project. The first started work in February 1944 as a manual labourer for the car manufacturer Panhard. A second started work in January 1945 – after the liberation – at a Renault factory. At the end of 1947, the Mission de Paris had sixteen priests in service, working in seven different factories. In Marseille, the Mission was preceded by an initiative taken by a young Dominican priest by the name of Jacques Loew who had already started work in the port in 1941, intent on seeking contact with the workers. In addition to de-Christianization, however, Loew was also confronted by the cruel and inhuman aspects of dock life at the time. The (idealistic) ‘priest-worker’ was thus a legacy of Second World War forced labour and it became an example of post-war Catholic idealism, especially in France. After 1944, it was to occasion intense debates and serious conflicts of identity within the Catholic Church. 1.2 The French worker-priest Victor Dillard Victor Dillard was the oldest of the chaplains who secretly served as pastor to French forced labourers in Nazi Germany. He was born at the end of the nineteenth century, on Christmas Eve 1897, to a middle-class family in Blois, south-west of Paris. During the First World War he served in the artillery, took part in the Battle of Verdun in 1916, and was promoted to second lieutenant in 1917. After the armistice, officer Dillard was despatched to Kraków and later Warsaw to help support the new Polish republic as it consolidated its independence. He met a Polish woman in Włocławek and fell in love, but inner reflection quickly led him to opt for the celibate life, to which he swore an oath at the foot of an enormous Calvary in the Polish city.18 302

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On his return from Poland, he invited his brothers and close friends to join him for dinner at Chez Maxim’s in Paris and informed them that he would be entering the Jesuits the following morning. He started his novitiate on 10 November 1919 at Beaumont-surOise. Dillard excelled in both music and sport. He made the acquaintance of Henri Desgranges at the time, the publisher of the sports journal L’Auto and originator of the Tour de France. After his philosophical studies on the island of Jersey and theological studies in Lyon-Fourvière, he was ordained priest in the cathedral of Saint-Louis in Blois on 29 June 1931. In that same year he was granted a civil honour – Knight in the Legion of Honour – for his bravery at the front in 1914–18. Before and after his ordination, Dillard focused his attention on social issues related to the 1930s economic crisis, learning about them in England and in Austria. He completed his studies with a doctorate defended at the Faculty of Law of the University of Paris – housed in 1941 in Toulouse – on the evolution of French currency. Dillard identified three primary causes of the ‘immense social injustice of our times’: a lack of spirituality, a failure to appreciate the economic reality and a gulf between the living Church and those in authority in business and politics.19 In September 1937 he was appointed to the Action populaire, an initiative of fellow Jesuit Gustave Desbuquois established in 1905 with a view to giving concrete form to the social teaching of the Catholic Church. The Action populaire served as the left-wing counterpart to the Action française. In August 1939, Dillard was mobilized in Vannes as captain in the 146th regiment of the heavy and ‘hippomobile’ artillery. Two other Jesuits accompanied him, one serving as his chauffeur. On 19 June 1940, he surrendered to the German Wehrmacht in Baigneuxles-Juifs in Burgundy together with the 500 men under his command and was transferred to a prisoner-of-war camp in Mailly near Troyes. When the officers and soldiers were transported to Germany, Dillard managed to jump from the train. Dressed in a railwayman’s uniform, he made his way to Vichy. As priest to the church of Saint-Louis in Vichy (the parish of Marshal Pétain) he urged the faithful to participate actively in the work of ‘renewal’.20 Pétain and his colleagues quickly disappointed him, but he continued to defend the principles of the national revolution and preach obedience to the head of state. At the same time, however, he rejected the threat of National Socialism and was critical of government policies. In a journal article published in 1941 he wrote that the word ‘Vichy’ – or the adjective ‘vichyssois’ – had become an expression of the evils people were suffering: food shortage, unemployment, administrative opposition.21 He also served as chaplain to the prison in Bourassol, where a number of prominent figures considered responsible for France’s defeat – prime ministers Léon Blum and Édouard Daladier together with General Maurice Gamelin, the French commander-in-chief in May 1940 – had been provisionally interned. In his dealings with them, Dillard was intent on bearing witness to Christian kindness and on setting aside political considerations.22 In November 1942, Dillard was preparing for a trip to Morocco where he was to give a number of conferences. The Allied landings in North Africa prevented his departure. If he had left a couple of days earlier his life would have taken a completely different turn. 303

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He would then have entered Germany as leader of an artillery unit. As it was he entered Germany on a train filled with forced labourers.23 In 1943, after the introduction of the STO, he is reported to have said to a fellow priest in Vichy that if they did not participate in this tribulation, the workers would be able to accuse the clergy of abandoning them, of no longer understanding the exceptional conditions young labourers had to endure or the extraordinary circumstances in which they suffered. He considered requesting a leave of absence in order to leave for Germany as a (priest) worker. His request was initially turned down, but in September 1943 he was finally granted permission to realize his plan. He quickly learned a trade and left for Wuppertal in October of the same year under a false identity: Victor Dillard, electrician, married with five children. In Wuppertal he was put to work for a firm by the name of Sillert & Jamart and was housed in barracks on the factory property opposite the sentry post and the gatekeeper’s house. He presented himself at a convent of the Sisters of Saint Charles Borromeo – originally from Nancy – who had charge of a hospital in Elberfeld. He was received by the rector on 10 October, the Feast of Saint Victor. The rector happened to have heard about a decision of the French episcopate to despatch priests together with the forced labourers and his identity as a priest was thus verified. He then celebrated mass for the first time in the convent. Only a few of the sisters were informed of his secret mission24 since priests and militants working for French Catholic Action were not permitted to serve among the forced labourers in Germany. Dillard managed, nevertheless, to visit the camps in which the French forced labourers were stationed and to bring together a group of roughly thirty militants. His time in Germany was far from easy and his letters confirm his sense of isolation and discouragement. By mid-January 1944 he was still to meet his first seminarian or militant. But he considered the work he had to do as his salvation and his simple presence among the workers as a sort of sacrament. In spite of his loneliness he kept himself busy. Celebrating mass and meeting in groups with other Catholic workers was too risky, since there was a danger that the Gestapo would get wind of him and his mission. He managed to duplicate a weekly news-sheet with some good advice for the days ahead. He was liked by his fellow workers and enjoyed their respect on account of his courage and interventions on their behalf. On no fewer than five occasions he brought sick labourers to the hospital, in spite of them being declared healthy by the company doctor. He was present at the funerals of his companions in adversity and often said a word at the graveside. Raised in the world of haute finance, Dillard became familiar with the world of the working class. The contrast even had a physical dimension: his body was not made for such labour and he found it difficult to interiorise the sensitivities of the workers. In reality he was unable as a priest to become a worker, but his effort brought him respect nevertheless. At the end of 1944, when he was being transported from his prison in Barmen to the concentration camp in Dachau, a nurse who had visited him on a regular basis found the following words written in his clothing: ‘L’honneur d’être ouvrier – the honour of being a worker’.25 304

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But Dillard also felt alienated from the workers around him. His Latin, his liturgy, his mass, and his prayers all served to single him out as a curious figure. Only a very small minority – 1 or 2 per cent – of the forced labourers practised their faith, while a little more – 6 or 7 per cent – fulfilled their Catholic duties by going to confession and communion at Easter. The remainder were not so much avowed atheists as simply indifferent, unchurched. His presence at the funeral of French workers, however, was always appreciated; a matter of convention and national or sentimental solidarity among men who were more inclined to see death and the hereafter as ‘des trucs de curés pour les posséder – tricks used by priests to get them in their power’.26 ‘Many of you had never shaken a priest’s hand before you met me,’ he said, ‘and they were surprised to see me working like everyone else. Religion, as they understand it, is a sort of bigotry practiced by respectable ladies and prominent gentlemen, served hand and foot by the servants of capitalism. But many among you are very close to the true Christian life on account of your generosity, your friendship, your reactions against the assaults on the dignity of our human person and our freedom. It is in this spirit that we must live according to an idea that is at once Christian, social, and revolutionary. Christ lived according to such an idea and the first Christians died for the success of such a revolution.’27 On 14 April, six months after his arrival in Germany, Dillard was interrogated by the Gestapo after they received a tip-off from a fellow worker. He finally admitted that he was a priest and a Jesuit, although he also insisted that he was a French officer. He was arrested at work a week later and taken to a prison in Barmen accused of spreading antiGerman propaganda. On 28 November 1944, he was transferred to the concentration camp at Dachau where he met fellow Jesuit Jacques Sommet and later his old friend and confrere Michel Riquet who had been transferred from Mauthausen. Victor Dillard died of heart failure on 12 January 1945 after surgery to remove his gangrenous leg. His last words were that he had offered his life for the Church and for the working classes. A fellow prisoner from the Netherlands wrote: ‘This Jesuit died with the same dignity as he lived. A priest for whom the interests of the church and those of the workers were one and the same . . . is that not what many of us so vehemently desire of the Catholic clergy?’28 1.3 Forced labour in Belgium and the Netherlands As a group, the French bishops had a different perspective on forced labour than their Belgian and Dutch counterparts. The Arbeitseinsatz was promulgated in March 1942 in occupied Belgium and deportations to Nazi Germany commenced in October of the same year. Having insisted to no avail on an easing of the law and even on its complete abolition, the Belgian episcopate issued a public rejection in March 1943. ‘The bishops stigmatized the requisition of young people as a violation of human liberty and dignity, forcing them moreover to cooperate with the enemy against the interests of their own fatherland. The German justification that the labour force was needed to defend European civilization against Communism was rejected by them as a fallacy.’29 The Catholic 305

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population welcomed this public protest, which was also seen as an indirect signal to priests, monasteries and convents to offer refuge to people intent on avoiding forced labour. After the bishops had voiced their protest, and in part as a result thereof, it became necessary to establish a structure in which refuge could be sought from the forced labour regulations and the repression that came with them. In Belgium, for example, Joseph Cardijn’s Young Christian Workers (in Flemish the Katholieke Arbeiders Jeugd [KAJ ] and in French the Jeunesse Ouvrière Chrétien [JOC ]) was particularly active in this regard. The organization had remained reasonably intact in spite of the authoritarian occupation. This was the result of a change of tactic forced on Cardijn by the Belgian bishops at the end of the 1920s. He opted at that juncture to steer his organization towards apolitical, ethical and religious goals. In Belgium, the said absence of political affiliation was presumably inspired by a conscious ambition to suppress ‘Flemish nationalism of whatever kind among young Flemish students’. As a result, the organization found itself more within the realm of church influence, and under an authoritarian occupying regime this appeared to be an advantage. The organization was tolerated – or managed to maintain itself on account of its explicitly apolitical character – for a considerable length of time.30 The JOC /KAJ was thus able to organize a level of structured resistance. It distributed (illegal) circulars encouraging young people not to come forward and to go into hiding. A clandestine service was established to provide assistance to those who refused to work (in Flemish Hulp aan Werkweigeraars, in French Aide aux Travailleurs Réfractaires), which arranged for safe houses and collected ration coupons. Those who agreed to go to Germany – and on occasion France – were also offered assistance. The KAJ set up a so-called Ausland-KAJ , a ‘network of militant centres oriented towards the “conversion” of fellow workers’ and maintaining links with the home front. The parish served as the core of the organization. The Walloon JOC offered similar assistance, but did not enjoy the same level of organizational development. ‘This was due in part to its alternative strategy: the JOC advised its members to go into hiding and even to join the maquisards (resistance guerrillas) rather than agree to work in Germany.’31 Protest in the Netherlands was organized jointly by the Protestant and Catholic churches. In October 1942, the senior clergy lodged a protest against the Arbeitseinsatz in Germany with the Reichkommissar. Their objections focused on the compulsory character of the measure and on the absence of rights among the workers, although they also addressed the question of the lack of pastoral care. In February 1943, the churches penned a second protest in which they criticized the rounding-up of students and other young people. ‘Thousands of young people are presently faced with being hunted down, captured and carried off as if they were slaves.’32 The joint message insisted that no one should cooperate with such deeds of injustice, because in so doing one shares in the perpetration of the said injustice. The occupying regime began to realize in September 1942 that the Catholic clergy were having a negative influence on the mobilization of labour in a number of regions. Immediately after the protest lodged in February 1943, the number of conscripted labourers turning up for work fell in some places to a mere 10 per cent. In the long run, 306

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however, the majority agreed to leave. ‘Workers, probably from Maastricht and its surroundings, were heard to have said with regard to the protest of February 17th 1943: “The concentration camps are close by, but heaven is far away.” ’33 It is also important to be aware that several managers of regional employment offices took the ecclesial call seriously: 20 of the 37 – Reformed and Catholic – resigned.34

2 Resistance in Western Europe 2.1 Belgium: between loyalty and resistance In hindsight, the letter of protest against forced labour written by the Belgian episcopate on 15 March 1943 was something of a turnabout. The occupying military regime was no longer approached with a pragmatic ‘lesser evil’ attitude. This was particularly true of the Archbishop of Mechelen, Cardinal Van Roey, who held a position of leadership among the Belgian bishops in line with the tradition associated with his See and by force of his own personal disposition. In line with his open rejection of National Socialism in 1938, he went on to condemn collaboration in both 1940 and 1941. At the same time, however, he had aligned himself – as we observed in Chapter 4 – with the politics of neutrality espoused by King Leopold III and had revealed himself to be the prisonerking’s ally and anchor. A further reason for Cardinal Van Roey’s initial pragmatism was his determination to preserve the Cité chrétienne – the system of Christian (Catholic) social organizations together with Catholic education – in the context of a totalitarian ideology.35 This policy appeared to have a chance at succeeding now that occupied Belgium was under military rule. The Bishop of Liège, Louis-Joseph Kerkhofs, had a different attitude. He had been a signatory to the pastoral letter distributed in October 1940 in which the politics of ‘lesser evil’ could be observed, but he differed from the other bishops on two primary points. He was of the opinion that the bishops had missed an opportunity to condemn German aggression and call for a degree of resistance by seeing the war from the perspective of divine providence. Moreover, the Flemish nationalists were not the only ones who deserved criticism for expecting support for an independent Flanders – which Van Roey understood to spell the destruction of the Belgian State – but every ‘bad Belgian’ who was prepared to collaborate.36 Bishop Kerkhofs was not alone in his critique of the cardinal’s pragmatic disposition. He was backed up by a Catholic movement that was active in Liege, Hainaut and French-speaking Brussels, and intent on a modernization of the Catholic Church with a view to re-Christianizing the working classes. Their perspective was reinforced during the war, in part in response to examples from France. In 1942, Bishop Kerkhofs was the first church leader in Belgium to grant his priests permission to take jobs as labourers in factories.37 The letter from the Belgian episcopate was not only critical of forced labour, it also condemned the theft of church bells. During the war, no fewer than 4,568 bells were requisitioned in Belgium by the occupier, amounting to a combined weight of 3,794,225

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kilos.38 Their argument was not only based on canon law, but also on human rights. The military regime broke its links with the episcopate at this juncture, and while the break was not permanent, the relationship was plagued with tensions from that point onwards.39 In April 1943, a month after the pastoral letter, the occupier decided that from then on religious processions also required the permission of the military authorities. As a result, several processions were held inside church buildings and boarding schools and acquired the character of demonstrations. It is known that Jesuit colleges organized ceremonies on the Belgian national holiday (21 July) and on the day designated for the commemoration of the dead of the First World War. Pilgrimages by bicycle were also organized as a divine appeal for Liberation.40 Is there evidence of a revival of religious practice during the German occupation? While there are numerous indications that people lived their faith with greater intensity, the depth thereof remains open to question. The war may have inspired a certain Catholic elite to embrace the foundations of the Christian faith and become more active, especially in the parish context. But it is also beyond question that the majority persevered in their Catholic faith, pushed along by fear and concern for their neighbours who had been taken prisoner, deported or reported missing. The occupying military regime in Belgium rarely if ever interfered with the traditional practices of the Catholic Church. On the other hand, monasteries and boarding schools were often requisitioned for use as military barracks or as hospitals for wounded German soldiers. On other occasions, buildings were left untouched while the monastery’s produce was confiscated.41 When a Bavarian Wehrmacht unit arrived at the Abbey of Chimay in search of provisions, everything was paid for on the first occasion. When the same unit returned a second time, they took every bottle of the abbey’s renowned beer – a popular brand in Belgium – without paying a penny.42 Post-war estimates exist as to the number of priests and religious people who were guilty of collaboration: between 2 and 3 per cent were believed to have actively collaborated, while 9 per cent were believed to have sympathized with the new Order. The fact that the Belgian episcopate distanced itself from National Socialism in a variety of ways is relevant in this regard. Some priests openly sided with the collaborationist VNV (Vlaamsch Nationaal Verbond – Flemish National Union) or the Walloon Legion. Cyriel Verschaeve, a Catholic priest, rejoiced at the ‘liberation’ of Flanders by the Wehrmacht. He became the chairman of the Council for Flemish Culture – set up by the Nazis – and wrote a treatise in which he endeavoured to reconcile Christian teaching with that of National Socialism. In July 1944 he met with Heinrich Himmler43 after which he fled to Austria. Armed resistance was divided in Belgium as it was elsewhere in occupied Europe. The right wing of the resistance movement in Belgium was dominated by soldiers of the defeated army and supporters of King Leopold III . Their circles provided leaders for the Legion of Belgium, known in 1944 as the Secret Army. The left wing formed the Independence Front in which the Communist Party had the most influential voice. Hostilities intensified in 1943 and 1944 and evolved into a civil war, a bloody interplay of attacks by partisans on individuals and groups who gave their support to the occupier, and 308

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German reprisals against resistance fighters as well as ordinary civilians unaware of their ‘crimes’. This intensification of terror and counter-terror ultimately cost hundreds of lives. In the same years – 1943 and 1944 – church leaders distanced themselves more from the German military authorities. Their sermons became more critical and this led on occasion to arrests. At the same time, the same leaders tried to call for moderation as acts of terror and counter-terror between the occupying regime and armed resistance organizations intensified. In January 1943, for example, Cardinal Van Roey spoke out in public against reprisals. ‘His message was badly received from both sides though. The collaborationists objected to the letter of the cardinal, because it did not condemn the intrinsic evil of the partisan assaults, the resistance fighters in their turn took the letter as a negative stance towards their struggle’.44 A post-war survey revealed that roughly 20 per cent of the Belgian clergy was actively involved in resistance in one form or another. The percentage would be much greater – 37 per cent – if assistance to the persecuted Jews were to be included as an act of resistance. The most significant contribution on the part of the clergy focused on those who were forced to flee the Nazis or go into hiding. This was particularly true when it came to Allied pilots, resistance fighters, ‘réfractaires’ (those who refused forced labour in Germany) and the Jews.45 A limited number of priests (less than 10 per cent) took part in armed resistance, offering their services in gathering intelligence or in the creation of escape routes. Benedictine abbeys, including Maredsous in Wallonia and Sint-Andries near Bruges, were well known as focal points of resistance. Dom Daniel (born André Duesberg), for example, a monk of the abbey of Maredsous, was a pioneer in the organization of armed resistance activities within the Belgian Legion. His religious superiors had granted him permission to develop such activities and he decided to leave Maredsous to live with his brother in Mons (Hainaut) to avoid being a burden on the abbey. In Mons, he recruited resistance fighters from among his former military comrades. He himself was appointed commandant in Hainaut. He was betrayed and arrested on 22 June 1942 and died in Groß-Rosen concentration camp in November 1944.46 Sister Emilia Hanosset, a member of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, serves as a further pertinent example. She helped the Secret Army by locating fields for arms drops and assisting with their transportation.47 2.2 The Netherlands: between loyalty and resistance Compared with Belgium, church leaders in the Netherlands proclaimed their opposition to the measures introduced by the occupying regime with striking frequency, including the totalitarian exercise of power (which was a threat to Christian institutions), forced labour and the deportations of Jews. Two aspects of the situation have to be underlined here. The occupying regime in the Netherlands was not a military but a political one, and it was thus more tainted by the National Socialist ideology. As such, the churches had more to fear from the totalitarian consolidation of power. In addition, church leaders in the Netherlands opted more frequently to express their opposition in the public forum than in Belgium, where the most important leader had declared his solidarity 309

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with the imprisoned King Leopold III . Their public statements were also supported by ecumenical unity. The multiplicity of Christianity in the Netherlands quickly became a sign of spiritual vigour and was no longer a fact that could be used to play Christian leaders off against one another. An explanation for the public and consistent protest on the part of the Dutch Christian leaders can be sought in part in the nature of Germany’s policy towards the churches. As a matter of fact, the Nazi regime left the Christian churches undisturbed – albeit to a degree – especially among their Dutch ‘kinfolk’. Church leaders may have been intimidated, but they were not silenced. A further explanation can be found in the Protestant endorsement of the ‘Confessing Church’ in Germany, which insisted on public witness. For young ministers in the Dutch Reformed Church, this form of confession was a shining example. But there was also a national tradition in which Christian churches not only provided their adherents with religious explanations but also instructed them on their choice of social organizations and on the way they should vote. It is also important to be aware in this regard that the church leaders in the Netherlands were themselves strong personalities – for example, the Catholic Archbishop of Utrecht, Johannes De Jong – or were replaced by stronger personalities, as was the case with the Reformed Churches. Where church leaders were tolerated, the Nazi regime operated indirectly by arresting and executing individual ministers and priests. The Carmelite Titus Brandsma, for example, a professor of mysticism at the Catholic University of Nijmegen, was arrested in 1942 and transported to the concentration camp in Dachau where he died six months later. He was chaplain to the Catholic press in the Netherlands and – in consultation with Archbishop De Jong of Utrecht – had urged newspaper managers not to publish National Socialist advertisements and to challenge the ideology. In December 1941 Reformed minister Dirk Arie van den Bosch was arrested in The Hague and transported to the concentration camp in Amersfoort where he died in March 1942. He was a much revered preacher, and had published a work on the Revelation of John and the Apocalypse in which the Germans claimed he had condemned Hitler as the personification of evil. Forced labour – more than the deportation of Jews – was the primary occasion of church resistance in the Netherlands. The most important organization in this regard was the Landelijke Organisatie voor Hulp aan Onderduikers (LO ) – National Organization for Aid to People in Hiding. In the course of the war a further group known as the Landelijke Organisatie van Knokploegen (LKP ) – National Organization of Assault Groups – added their support. The national bond between individuals and groups who were forced in the first instance to work at the local level and in secret is striking here. Both organizations represented a Christian variant of resistance in the Netherlands under occupation, a resistance that tended to follow the pattern typical of the rest of Europe: a nationally oriented force in addition to a few armed groups of communists or socialists. A Reformed minister by the name of Frits Slomp was instrumental in the establishment of the LO /LKP. At work in the northern province of Drente, he had come into contact with the church’s struggle in Germany via a close association with ministers belonging to the Alt Reformierte Kirche in the German county of Bentheim, just over the border. On 310

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9 November 1941, Slomp preached in his village church about the Egyptian midwives Shiphrah and Puah (Exodus 1. 19–21). They feared God and went against the orders of Pharaoh, refusing to kill newborn Hebrew boys. His words were an indirect commentary on what was going on around him: the German occupying regime was using the labour regulations to force godless and inhuman requirements on young men.48 Slomp’s church council accused him of unmotivated fervour. He in turn pointed to the necessity of sabotage, which was a consequence of a believer’s baptismal promises and thus a Christian duty that would enjoy blessing.49 He came into contact with Helena KuipersRietberg, a member of the board of the Bond van Gereformeerde Vrouwenverenigingen – Union of Reformed Women’s Organizations. Together they devoted themselves to setting up an organization to help people in hiding. The organization had its roots in the northern provinces but it quickly acquired national dimensions. Helena Kuipers (‘Tante Riek – Aunt Riek’ in the resistance) was to pay for her initiative with her life in the concentration camp in Ravensbrück in 1944. Slomp survived the war in hiding after an assault group helped him escape from imprisonment in Arnhem in 1944. Initial contacts were organized via Reformed networks: parishes, but also youth groups, women’s groups and unions. Slomp visited his fellow ministers and was given the nickname Frits de Zwerver – the Drifter. Assistance to people in hiding evolved into an organization and an unofficial coordinating committee – initially referred to as the ‘beurs – stock exchange’ – gathered in the consistory chambers in Kampen or in Zwolle. The number of those in hiding was growing, mostly men who refused to work in Germany, but also Jews fleeing persecution and political refugees. The organization, which had started in the country’s rural provinces, began to take on national characteristics. In July 1943, the predominantly Protestant organization acquired the support of the Catholic resistance, primarily in the south of the country and under the leadership of a priest and a teacher. From this point on one can speak of a national organization. In August 1943, a similar organization was formed: the Landelijke Organisatie van Knokploegen (LKP ) – National Association of Assault Groups – in an endeavour to coordinate local and regional assault groups that had been formed because the occupying regime had introduced food rationing in an effort to flush out people in hiding. The groups launched attacks on the offices responsible for the distribution of food supplies and on registry offices. In 1944, their work was extended to arms transport, the sabotage of German military installations and the liquidation of traitors within their own circles. In those days, the association had well over 600 illegal workers in its ranks. Local and regional LO and LKP branches relied heavily on networks established by the Orthodox Protestant churches and the Roman Catholic Church in the south of the country. As a leading figure in the LO /LKP, Johannes Post – a farmer from Drente – was to become a Calvinist resistance hero. Post was raised in reformed orthodoxy, such that every act of resistance had to be preceded by preparatory prayer. He was betrayed and arrested in the summer of 1944 and shot by firing squad. According to the Protestant resistance newspaper Trouw, he was evidence ‘that the conventional reformed Dutchman of today was, when it came to the crunch, the unconventional reformed Protestant of 1572’. His life and death ‘resonated devoutly with the fundamental roots of our national 311

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character, as it evolved in the sixteenth century under the leadership of William of Orange and under the influence of the Reformation’.50 A connection was thus established with the narrative of the Dutch Revolt, from which the present Dutch state emerged. 2.3 The Church in France: between loyalty and resistance Monasteries in France were also involved in the earliest forms of illegality. Under the leadership of Sister Eustache (Marie Wachs) of the Sisters of Providence, the hospital in Saint-André de Peltre in the annexed Moselle region provided an escape route for hundreds of French prisoners of war as well as civilians from Alsace and Lorraine who had been forced to flee the National Socialist annexation.51 The abbey of Saint-Martin de Ligugé, not far from Poitiers, was located close to the demarcation line that divided northern France from the unoccupied south. The abbey became a transit centre for those who wanted to escape. Perhaps the most famous of those who passed through its gates was Robert Schuman, Member of Parliament for the Department of the Moselle and after the war one of the founders of the European Union. He spent a few days in the abbey in August 1942 on his way to the unoccupied zone.52 The Catholic Church reacted to the tragedy of French defeat and to the armistice with its own unique religious repertoire. The churches – in the winter often unheated – filled to overflowing with believers, whether for Sunday mass or prayer services for (military) prisoners.53 Some vigil services even continued through the night, as was the case in the basilica of the Sacred Heart in Montmartre. Church buildings were also visited with more frequency during the day, be it for silent prayer or to light a candle, or be it for the exchange of information. The number of priestly vocations increased from 1,200 secular ordinations between 1935 and 1939 to 1,282, for example, in 1942 alone.54 One unexpected phenomenon was the revival of pilgrimages to places like Lourdes and La Salette (near Grenoble), and academic pilgrimages to Chartres (introduced in the 1930s by Charles Péguy and his friends). The most popular, however, was the pilgrimage to Notre-Dame de Boulogne, a statue of the Virgin Mary left over from a Marian Congress in Boulogne-sur-Mer in 1938. The decision was made at the time to carry the statue through the whole of France. It arrived in Reims shortly before the war, was driven from there to Lorrain, and via Domrémy (birthplace of Joan of Arc) to Lourdes in September 1942. The carriage on which it stood was pulled by men, rather than animals, some of them barefoot.55 The Parisian organist Maurice Duruflé’s renowned Requiem, a now classic piece of twentieth-century music, has its origins in the ecclesial culture we have been sketching. In May 1941, the ‘Vichy’ government commissioned him to write a ‘symphonic poem’. Duruflé submitted his composition in 1948. Instead of a ‘symphonic poem’ he had written a Requiem for choir, organ and orchestra, dedicated to his father’s memory. The very fact of accepting a commission from ‘Vichy’ later drew him into a debate on collaboration in 1999. Was its nationalistic timbre evidence of collaboration? The Requiem is seen as ‘national music’ of French origin. Its historicising aspects can be compared with the oratorio written by Arthur Honneger in 1939 entitled Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher.56 312

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In political terms, the leadership of the church continued to propagate unambiguous loyalty towards the person of Pétain. A number of bishops called for a just war against Nazism during the ‘drôle de guerre’ period (September 1939–May 1940), but the same bishops were the first to justify collaboration after June 1940; including the crusade against Bolshevism, which had transformed an intellectual authority like Cardinal Baudrillart from an opponent of Nazi Germany to a supporter thereof. Cardinal Gerlier, Archbishop of Lyon and Primate of the Catholic Church in France, publicly identified with Pétain. He once proclaimed – as observed in Chapter 4 – that the entire country stood behind Pétain in his efforts to restore a wounded fatherland.57 It was not only the senior clergy who were frank in their expressions of loyalty. H.A. Grouès, who later acquired considerable renown under the name Abbé Pierre, confessed in 1945, that he had taken up his post on the diocese of Isère – after demobilization in October 1940 – in the presupposition that ‘those who govern us were only determined to save what was essential to our raison d’être; our existence as Frenchmen and as human beings’.58 After demobilization in November 1940, Emmanuel Mounier, the editor of Esprit, a journal reflecting modern Catholicism, asked the Vichy government for permission to reprint his journal, not in Paris, but in the capital of unoccupied France, Lyon. Permission was granted and Esprit was published, although each edition was ‘cleaned up’ in advance by the censor.59 Bishop Henri-Édouard Dutoit (Arras), who might be considered the ‘chef de file’ in terms of collaboration, promulgated a pastoral letter on the occasion of New Year 1941. He wrote that ‘collaboration’ presupposed a free and determined will to establish a good relationship with the government. ‘Collaboration is the sign under which – if it is to last – the peace of tomorrow must be negotiated.’ This ‘inviolable fidelity to the obligation to obedience’ was proclaimed in a northern diocese, which at that moment was subject to the military government in Brussels and in which the population were, broadly speaking, very anti-German. There were relatively large numbers of believers who wanted to be faithful to Marshal Pétain, but who rejected any and every form of collaboration with the German occupier. Six professors at the Catholic University of Lille, for example, wrote a letter to the bishop in which they informed ‘His Grace’ that his appeal had offended them and that they found it difficult to reconcile his words with the virtue of patriotism.60 There were differences of opinion among the bishops, however, on the degree of permitted collaboration. On 6 September 1941, for example, Bishop Gabriel Piguet of Clermont-Ferrand – himself a former soldier – presided at a mass for the Legion française, the armed guard of the Vichy government, and rejected every form of internal or external opposition to the government (the same bishop offered places of safety in church institutions for Jews fleeing Nazi persecution and was deported to Stutthof and Dachau concentration camps in 1944). A day earlier, on 5 September 1941, the Assembly of Cardinals and Archbishops in the unoccupied zone instructed their priests not to accept responsible functions in the Legion, although the Church did not want to adopt a hostile attitude to the said military force.61 Six months later, on 25 July 1941, the same Assembly published a pastoral document in which they called for a ‘loyalisme’ without reserve towards the established authorities. 313

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‘We revere (vénérons) the head of state and ask, no insist that he be considered the centre of unity for all French men and women.’62 Two different but nevertheless ongoing lines of reasoning are evident in this unambiguous declaration of loyalty: the traditional devotion of the episcopal war veterans towards the Marshal, the victor at Verdun in the First World War, and their political option in favour of ‘Catholic’ France versus French laicity. They also feared a complete occupation of the country, should the regime in Vichy collapse as a result of the absence of such loyalty. In the meantime, the sympathetic attitude of the senior clergy towards the Marshal provoked resistance among Catholic intellectuals. In December 1940, Paul Petit, a diplomat, wrote a number of clandestine Lettres ouvertes to Cardinal Suhard, who ‘had instructed his priests to collaborate to the full with Marshal Pétain’, and to Cardinal Baudrillart, who had watered down his aversion to National Socialism and was now calling for collaboration with the occupier.63 (Petit was arrested in February 1942 for his contribution to the resistance newspaper La France continue. He was beheaded in Cologne on 24 August 1942.)64 On 26 May 1942, Paul Claudel, a writer and friend of Petit, wrote a letter to Cardinal Gerlier. He informed the cardinal that he had read with great interest about the magnificent funeral organized for Cardinal Baudrillart (who died in July 1942). He also observed that a cross had been placed on the coffin, which had been presented by the occupying regime. He considered such an honour particularly appropriate for a fervent collaborator such as Baudrillart. On the same day, he continues, he had heard about the execution of 27 hostages in Nantes. The Church of France, he remarked, did not have enough incense for the former; for the latter, those sacrificed, it had no prayer, no gesture of sympathy or indignation.65 Critique of loyalism was also to be heard in clerical circles. Beginning in 1937, Georges Chevrot, a priest at the church of Saint Francis Xavier in Paris, had been invited to deliver the Lenten Sermons – reflections on the six Sundays of Lent – at the cathedral of Notre Dame. In December 1940, he informed his archbishop – Cardinal Suhard – that he would not be able to do so. His theme had always been ‘the reconstruction of a Christian society following the laws of the gospel’. If he were to continue with the same theme it would inevitably lead him to underline the rules of Christian ethics, which were in opposition to the ideology of National Socialism. Chevrot was not willing to uphold the ‘spiritual restraint’ recommended by his religious superiors, nor was he willing to deceive those who came to listen to him. He had thus decided to return the invitation to preach.66 The first markedly Catholic resistance newspaper la Voix du Vatican – The Voice of the Vatican appeared in July 1940. A Jesuit college in Avignon had taken the initiative to reproduce, duplicate and distribute the French broadcasts of Radio Vaticana. These were provided by Emmanuel Mistaen, a Belgian Jesuit who appeared in his speeches not to have resigned himself to the defeat of France and the political consequences thereof, namely: Vichy.67 The distribution of these radio texts was understood in Catholic circles of the day as a sign of protest. The Archbishop of Paris insisted that only the church press – La Sémaine réligieuse – had the authority to state the official church position. The Archbishop of Aix-en-Provence described the illegal publication as an objectionable protest against the ‘national restoration’ of the Marshal.68 314

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After the beginning of the campaign against the Soviet Union, relationships became a focal issue, including Catholic loyalism to Vichy. In August 1941, the journal Esprit was banned and Emmanuel Mounier, its editor-in-chief, was arrested and brought to trial. Pierre Chaillet, a Jesuit, filled the vacuum. At the beginning of the war, Chaillet had been stationed in Budapest as a French intelligence officer. He made his way back to France via Syria at the end of 1940. On his initiative, the first illegal edition of the clandestine journal Témoignage Chrétien (‘Christian Witness’) was published in November 1941 with a print run of 5,000 copies. The first edition was printed in Lyon, i.e. in what was then still an unoccupied part of France. Fellow Jesuit Gaston Fessard wrote a text for the first edition entitled: ‘France, prends garde de perdre ton âme!’ (France, be careful lest you lose your soul.) It became the motto of a religiously inspired resistance. According to Fessard, it was the Nazis’ demonic intent to win over the souls of the defeated in order to be sure of their subjection.69 Catholic editors and distributors had published the journal because they recognized how dangerous National Socialism was to the faith and because they wanted to provide concrete evidence of their loyalty to the faith and the Church. ‘The choice must be made: Christ or Hitler’, an illegal pamphlet headlined in Lyon in 1942.70 In June 1942, Cardinal Suhard received a ‘Mémoire aux Évêques de France’, a memorandum addressed to the bishops of France from its Catholic citizens, in which the Church was criticized for its positive attitude towards Pétain and Vichy, which went further than ‘traditional loyalism’. Its collaboration with a regime that was considered to be the continuation of the pre-war and much condemned Action Française, was ‘a sinister deceit in political terms, a serious mistake in psychological terms, a misjudgement of France in intellectual terms, and apostasy in religious terms’.71 At around the same time, the Archbishop of Toulouse, Jules-Geraud Saliège, received a letter from Charles de Gaulle, the leader of the ‘Free French’ living in exile in London. De Gaulle urged the cardinals and archbishops to distance themselves from the Vichy regime and to consider an alliance with the Free French overseas.72 Cardinal Suhard’s reaction was twofold. In a note to the Assembly of Cardinals and Archbishops, he appealed to the distinction that had earlier been made between the Marshal, whose intentions were ‘sincere’, and those around him, who allowed themselves to be guided by ‘political convenience’. Cooperation with the government in Vichy did not imply a ‘complete accommodation of Nazism’. His second argument consisted of an appeal to the bishops to remind the faithful of the specific role of the Church in society: ‘the necessity of the virtue of prudence, the advantage of personal steps above spectacular declarations, the example of the Holy Father, the harmfulness of inexpedient fervour’.73 Suhard referred here to the primarily diplomatic dimension of the Holy See’s policies. Témoignage Chrétien was initially published as a cahier (brochure). The adjective ‘catholic’ was originally considered in discussions surrounding the title, but this was changed to ‘Chrétien’ at the last minute, thus giving access to Protestants. Five cahiers were published in 1942, and in 1943 a further five, one of which was devoted to occupied Poland and written by the Polish cardinal Hlond, then living in exile in Lourdes. In that same year, the editors and publishers decided to change the format, opting for a smaller 315

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and more popular edition, the Courrier français du Témoignage Chrétien (newspaper), with print runs of between 50,000 and 70,000 copies. In 1942 and 1943, an average of 25,000 cahiers were distributed. In 1944 – the year of the liberation – a further two cahiers were published together with several newspaper editions. The distribution of these newspapers was kindled by a need to protest against the STO, forced labour in Nazi Germany. One of the cahiers entitled Déportation urged its readers to refuse their service. In so doing, the editorial board thus implicitly ran counter to the standpoint of the bishops. A reaction quickly followed. In July 1943, the Bishop of Clermont-Ferrand spoke about anonymous theologians and jurists, offering advice in public ‘sans mandat, sans responsabilité’ (without mandate, and without responsibility); advice that ran counter to episcopal guidelines. In October 1943, the Catholic newspaper La Croix published a declaration on behalf of the cardinals and archbishops against statements issued illicitly by theologians whose conclusions usually opposed the authority and legitimacy of the government in Vichy. Their words not only alluded to the editors of the resistance paper Témoignage Chrétien, but also, for example, to the advice offered by Jesuit theologian Jules Lebreton on Catholic questions of conscience.74 In the middle of 1944, Témoignage Chrétien published a cahier on ‘The Demands of the Liberation’. An unnamed author (resistance fighter Robert d’Harcourt) reflected on ‘the obligation to resist’, particularly in the form of offering ‘l’herbergement’ to all those being persecuted – from resistance fighter to Jewish citizen – in occupied France (by this time the entire country). Robert d’Harcourt also alluded to open doors in parish rectories: ‘The silent and hidden courage of humble priests will serve as compensation for the behaviour of others.’ The latter statement was a reference to the sometimes striking differences in attitude between the senior clergy and ordinary French priests.75 Témoignage Chrétien focused on a number of primary themes. The first was the theology of the ‘Incarnation of Christ’, also referred to as a spirituality of worldly engagement on the part of believers. The second was the introduction of a new and scientific approach to the bible. The third was the rediscovery of the Jewish roots of Christianity, that was to lead to a ‘solidarité mystérieuse’ between Christians and the ‘race aîné’ (oldest race), to quote philosopher Jacques Maritain. The fourth theme was the apostolate, a universal vocation for both priests and laity. According to François Bédarida, Témoignage Chrétien represented a climate of thinking and doing that was later to inspire the new spring and new voice of the Second Vatican Council.76 The most important theologian involved in its publication was the Jesuit Henri de Lubac, at the time professor of fundamental theology at the Institut Catholique in Lyon. The maquis, France’s resistance movement, was accessible to Catholics because it was more or less free of pre-war republican anti-clericalism. ‘That was so partly because the Resistance sprang from eclectic roots mostly outside the Third Republic political class, partly because it came to include so many Catholics, and partly because anticlericalism had been losing most of its fervor within the Republican left by 1936.’ According to Robert Paxton, ‘it will never be possible to know exactly how many Catholics participated in something as protean and undocumentable as the Resistance, but their role was considerable’.77 316

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Political scientist René Rémond asked, after the event, why the bishops had allowed priests to attend to prisoners of war and forced labourers in Nazi Germany but made no effort to provide pastoral care for those who had joined the maquis. The maquis increased in number as more and more (young) men refused to leave France for Nazi Germany as forced labourers. They organized resistance groups and were in need on occasion of priestly assistance. Prominent resistance fighters approached the bishops, asking them to allow their priests to provide such pastoral care. The Vatican did not object, but in the majority of instances the request was denied. Through the intervention of the Bishop of Fribourg in Switzerland, Cardinal Tisserant managed to have this interdict overturned in Rome. The same cardinal saw to it that the papal nuncio in Vichy received notice of the instruction issued by Pius XII on his request that such chaplains could be appointed.78 Catholic resistance not only implied disobedience to the legal government in Vichy, it also led to implicit and later explicit disobedience to the guidelines issued by the French episcopate. The Bishop of Marseille, in whose diocese an escape route for refugees had been established, condemned such resistance operatives as traitors. Cardinal Liénart saw the resistance as an unfortunate form of disunity and discord. The Bishop of Nîmes, Jean Justin Girbeau, repeatedly condemned this ‘great plague of disunity’. He was an ardent supporter of the Legion and obliged his seminarians to go to work in Germany within the framework of the STO.79 A picture from 26 August 1944, the day Paris was liberated, speaks volumes. It portrays Georges Bidault, a Christian Democrat and president of the National Council of the Resistance, marching in the street next to General De Gaulle, the head of the ‘Free French’. The parade ended in Notre Dame where instead of a Te Deum a Magnificat was to be sung in gratitude for the liberation. Gunshots could be heard during the ceremony. The Archbishop of Paris was not welcome in his cathedral. During the ceremony, Cardinal Suhard remained against his will in the archiepiscopal palace. One reason for his enforced reserve was the fact that he had stood next to Pétain only a month earlier during the marshal’s last visit to Paris in July 1944. The primary reason, however, was that he had presided that same month – in the presence of numerous leading figures from Vichy and German officers in full dress uniform – at the church funeral of Philippe Henriot, a prominent politician from the 1930s, as a commander in the Milice française, and from January 1944 the Minister of Propaganda. Henriot had been killed by resistance fighters on 28 June 1944. According to two (Catholic) envoys of De Gaulle, Cardinal Suhard had been advised for his own safety not to show himself at the liberation ceremony, for fear his appearance would cause uproar and even pose a threat in the context of a sometimes deliriously cheerful celebration. Bidault was a symbol of the active presence of Christians in the resistance. The Archbishop of Paris, on the other hand, symbolized links (‘les comprommissions’) between the episcopate and Vichy.80 In hindsight, Henriot’s funeral was the last manifestation of official Catholic sympathy for Pétain’s regime. The Milice française had insisted on requiem masses in a number of French cathedrals. Although invited to do so, Cardinal Suhard did not deliver the eulogy at the funeral. This was left to Archbishop Feltin of Bordeaux who rounded against taking justice into one’s own hands and declared 317

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the murder of Henriot an act that could not by justified by Catholic morality. In Lyon, Cardinal Gerlier left in the middle of the requiem. He did not preach nor did he pronounce the absolution.

3 The Church in occupied Italy 3.1 Italy: the fall of Mussolini In the early morning of 25 July 1943, the Grand Council of Fascism in Rome decided to dismiss Mussolini. He was summoned by King Vittorio Emmanuele III , who sacked him as head of government and had him arrested. On the same day, Marshal Pietro Badoglio, who had been successful in the war in Ethiopia, was charged with forming a new government. At that moment, British and American troops had landed in Sicily. The capture of Palermo on 22 July directly occasioned the coup in Rome. Although Italy was still an ally of Nazi Germany at the time, political developments in Rome were little short of sensational. For the first time in Europe, a fascist regime had collapsed, indeed the very regime that had invented fascism in the first place.81 Nazi Germany started to account for the possibility that its first ally might give up the fight. When it finally happened – a ceasefire agreement with the Allied invasion forces was made known on 9 September 1943 – the Wehrmacht took over from the Italian occupying forces in France, and in particular in Yugoslavia and Greece. The Italians were taken as prisoners of war and many were forced to work for the Germans at the cost of their health and in some instances their life. The ceasefire was a result of the British and American landings in Calabria, Taranto and Salerno. Together with his court and Marshal Badoglio, King Vittorio Emmanuele III fled to the port city of Brindisi on the Adriatic, which was provisionally established as the capital of a southern rump state, Italia del Re. It appeared to many in the north and middle of the country that the king had abandoned his people. German forces, who had already prepared themselves for their ally’s suspension of arms, occupied northern and central regions of Italy and defended their positions in the south against Allied forces advancing from Salerno. Naples was the turning point. The people of the city revolted on 27 September and held their ground for four days. The so-called Quattro Giornate were to cost hundreds of lives, German troops and Italian civilians combined. It was the first – spontaneous – urban revolt in all of occupied Europe. The Germans were determined to clear the city. Clergy of every rank assisted the rebels. The Archbishop of Naples, Alessio Cardinal Ascalesi, grasped the opportunity to clear his name, rejecting his former sympathy for fascism and praising the heroic courage of the rebels. He also commended the result of the revolt – the liberation of Naples – to the protection of the city’s patron San Gennaro.82 The Allies continued their advance behind the Gustav Line, between Campania and Lazio, but the invasion at Anzio on the Lazio coast in January 1944 failed. It was to take until June 1944 – after hard and bloody hostilities around the ancient Abbey of Monte

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Cassino – before the Allied troops reached Rome. Florence followed in August. A second line then separated them from the north during the winter months, the so-called Gothic Line between Tuscany and Emilia Romagna. Bologna and Milan had to wait until April 1945 for liberation and the most northern regions of Italy until May 1945. A German airborne unit freed Mussolini from his prison on Mount Gran Sasso on 12 September 1943. He was given permission to set up a government under German supervision in the town of Saló on Lake Garda and to proclaim a fascist state, the Repubblica Sociale Italiana. The provinces in the north and north-east were places under the authority of a Gauleiter. This appeared to presage annexation into the Great German Reich. The only power the German occupier granted to Mussolini was the possibility to play the various Nazi administrative centres off against each other and to profit from it. The Republic of Saló witnessed the revival of fascist combat groups (squadrismo), the so-called Black Brigades (Brigate Nere). Together with the Republican National Guard, the Black Brigades were deployed against the partisans as auxiliary forces of the Wehrmacht in an increasingly merciless war. The fact that the war in Italy had completely changed in terms of character and impact in the space of three months (July–September 1943) was not only a source of uncertainty for the population, an established institution like the Catholic Church found it difficult to adopt the appropriate attitude. It had been free, more or less, to maintain its original position in fascist Italy, internally via the 1929 concordat and externally via the toleration of a multifaceted organization (Catholic Action) in a consciously totalitarian state. Reactions to the political upheaval and to the early days of the German occupying regime tended to follow similar lines: public instructions and exchanges of thought from the pulpit and initiatives and instructions from Catholic Action, which, as we observed, had survived the fascist dictatorship intact. When Fascist Italy joined the war in Europe in June 1940, the clergy tended on the whole to distance itself from war propaganda. The Catholic Church did not support the Axis powers’ attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941 with a public appeal for a crusade against Bolshevism, although it had originally stated its abhorrence of ‘godless communism’ and did so repeatedly thereafter. Mussolini underlined the church’s silence in January 1942: the senior clergy had not offered a single word of support for a people that was engaged in battle ‘against the Anglicans of England and America, against Bolshevism and the godless of Russia’. ‘On the contrary, they preached pacifism.’83 An additional form of indifference was developed in Italy’s numerous Marian devotions, a cult that was encouraged and promoted by Pope Pius XII . Mary was also invoked in processions and prayer gatherings as the ‘Queen of Peace’. In October 1940, the prefect of Parma lamented that the invocation carried the risk of discouraging soldiers who were confronted enough with physical and moral suffering.84 Religious processions were also in danger of evolving into peace demonstrations. In Rome on 30 May 1943, a procession in honour of the Blessed Virgin turned into just such a peace demonstration when the participants started to repeat the song ‘Pace Maria’. A procession in Padua on 31 January 1943 was interpreted by the authorities as a pacifist demonstration when it passed the government buildings carrying white banners with peace slogans.85 319

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In this spiritual climate, the removal of Mussolini on 25 July 1943 was able to rely on the support of the Catholic Church. It was accompanied by a warning against a ‘day of reckoning’, a murderous settling of accounts with the fascist regime. The bishops stated their public support for the new government. The military bishop, Angelo Bartolomasi, added an appeal for confidence in the monarchy, in the House of Savoy, ‘rich in warriors, heroes and saints’, and in particular in the person of Victor Emmanuel III , ‘wise and reserved’.86 Bartolomasi’s declaration of support is all the more striking when one is aware of the fact that the king’s anti-clericalism was widely known. A mixture of traditional obedience and patriotism had inspired the Italian bishops to advocate such support. It was clear that the moment had not arrived to expose the political institutions of Fascist Italy to sustained critical debate. Catholic Action responded in a similar fashion. The Bishop of Parma and its director general, Evasio Colli, sent out a circular in which he touched on three themes. Aware of the seriousness of the moment, Catholic Action had to promote obedience to the authorities. Moreover, it had no reason to be ashamed for its activities during the fascist period. On the contrary! Finally, and more than ever, the members of Catholic Action were to follow the leadership of the Catholic authorities.87 Luigi Gedda, president of Catholic Action, addressed a letter to Marshal Badoglio on 11 August 1943 stating that his organization, the largest and most influential mass movement in Italy with its 1.5 million registered members, appeared to have been the only one to have survived the fascist period with its independence intact, thanks to the determination of the Holy See. In his opinion, it was ready to take over from the fascist youth organizations and above all make use of its modern radio and film equipment to influence the schools in the patriotic sense. His offer did not only place Catholic Action at the disposal of the new government, it also suggested that Italy’s fascist inheritance should be accepted and reassigned.88 A new initiative in political terms was the resurrection of the People’s Party, if only conceptually and in debate. In August 1943, Catholic laity discussed the future form of the political organization. The pre-war populari – i.e. the former parliament member Alcide de Gasperi, together with the young Giulio Andreotti, at that moment chair of the Federation of Italian Catholic University Students (FUCI ) – called for the creation of a new Catholic political organization. Their proposed formation was called the Democrazia Cristiana. Church authorities were divided on the initiative. In the Vatican, deputy Secretary of State Montini, who had once served as a progressive chaplain to the FUCI , favoured approval. On the other hand, Alfredo Ottaviani, prominent member of the Curia and in 1953 cardinal and pro-secretary of the Holy Office, gave preference to a variety of political organizations instead of a united Catholic party. His primary policy was to wait and see.89 3.2 The German occupation of Italy In the summer of 1943 new ideas were circulating about what Italy would look like after the war. Reality, however, was that the war had continued, that the fascist state had returned and the Germans had occupied the country. At the end of September 1943, the 320

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‘Italian Social Republic’ was proclaimed. As a consequence of its general policy not to comply with new constitutional entities that had emerged during the war but to wait for an official peace treaty, the Vatican did not recognize it as such. New bishops in the north were appointed as apostolic vicars, which freed them from making a vow of fidelity to the state as prescribed in the concordat. Pope Pius XII refused to grant an audience to Marshal Rodolfo Graziani, the Minister of Defence, and – to mention another example of opposition – Bishop Giovanni Sismondo of Pontremoli in Tuscany continued to use the prayer for the king in the liturgy in his diocese. The Republic commenced nevertheless with a gesture of recognition towards the Catholic Church. On 15 November 1943, the first National Assembly accepted Catholicism once again as the state religion and ratified the concordat of 1929. The Church was called upon to support the state, ‘our tortured Fatherland’ out of patriotic fervour. The Church was expected to go to war against Russian communism and AngloAmerican Judaism.90 The Church, however, did not endorse the new fascist state. This became apparent in the case of Tullio Calcagno, a Roman Catholic priest who published a newspaper in Cremona – Crociata Italica (Italian Crusade) – in which he favoured a correct and religiously motivated support of the fascist state. He was suspended a divinis (from his priestly duties) on 23 November 1943. He persevered in his propaganda, later arguing for an independent Catholic Church. He was excommunicated on 21 March 1945 and was executed by partisans.91 The pastoral letters written by the northern bishops during these years are evidence of direct and indirect critique of the regime in Saló. The best known is the Notificazione, a product of the conference of bishops of the three Venetian regions that took place on 20 April 1944. The letter was read out in all the churches of the associated dioceses on 21 May. It contained a condemnation of the regime, and had not been toned down by the usual tactical caution or for fear of fascist or German reprisals.92 The letter was signed by the Patriarch of Venice, Adeodato Cardinal Piazza, and by twenty bishops and substitutes. The Church, the authors insisted, was above and beyond every political activity, but it could not fail to be aware of the ‘società civile e suoi problemi’. It had to stand as guarantor of human dignity and human rights. Parallel to the obligation of subjects to obey their rulers there was an obligation on the part of the said leaders to act justly and to follow the imperative of the common good. The war, with its tragic reality of errors, excesses, plunder and totalitarian methods – technically perfect but applied in an inhuman manner in death and destruction – confirmed the Church’s critical stance and justified the people’s desire for a just and honourable peace.93 The Catholic Church had three reasons to distance itself from the Republic of Saló. The first was the tragedy of the civil war raging between fascists and partisans, which had cost the lives of countless citizens. The Archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Schuster, referred in this regard to the arrest of priests and the violence of the fascist units. Throughout Lombardy, plunder, arson, theft, torture and murder had become a frequent feature of everyday life in 1944 and 1945. The second reason was the alliance between the Republic of Saló and the German occupier. The proclamation, which Marshal Graziani had enacted on 25 September 1943, signified in fact that Italy had been handed over to Nazi 321

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Germany. The third reason was related to the anti-clerical stance of the republican press in which priests were caricatured and ridiculed. The same was true of the aforementioned paper published by Don Calcagno, the Crociata Italica. In 1943, resistance was more or less confined to the (communist) partisans, but in 1944 and 1945 the situation changed, although the latter continued to form the core of the resistance movement in Italy and in some instances the majority. The stance of the bishops with respect to the partisans can only be described as ambivalent. They condemned violence, with the Archbishop of Udine, Giuseppe Nogara, for example, urging the partisan unit ‘Garibaldi’ to bear in mind that their actions ran the risk of drawing reprisals on the general population. The partisan response was to observe that the threat of reprisals would only inspire an ever increasing number of the need to resist. The revolutionary strategy of the partisans – often communist by conviction – nourished Catholic anti-communist reactions. In Istria, for example, where the partisans were often of Yugoslavian origin and communist, the bishop lamented the fate of the farming population who had to face German reprisals while the partisans continued their actions undiminished.94 The participation of the clergy in the resistance movement was small in numerical terms but important in symbolic terms. Some priests lost their lives. According to estimates, a little more than 200 out of a total of 50,000 were executed by firing squad while 1,481 members of Catholic Action also lost their lives in the resistance, among them 202 chaplains. But the impact of the execution of the clergy was extremely significant. Giuseppe Morosini, chaplain to the resistance group Monte Mario near Rome, who was betrayed, arrested and executed by firing squad on 3 April 1944 became the subject of a renowned post-war film by director Roberto Rossellini entitled Roma, cittá aperta. The execution of Don Aldo Mei, parish priest of Fiano in the diocese of Lucca, on 4 August 1944 likewise left its mark.95 The younger clergy felt a need to establish contact with the youth of Catholic Action or their own parish, convinced that by participating in the resistance movement they ran the risk of becoming alienated from their faith. In their turn, the same young priests often became advisors in relation to resistance projects, urging the young to be careful and avoid drawing reprisals on the population on account of ill-considered actions.96 Churches, church buildings and monasteries served as locations in which the resistance met to deliberate. There was even mention of pastoral assistance. In October 1944, Cardinal Schuster asked the Vatican’s advice on the matter. The response was that such assistance should be granted. There were also a number of chaplains at work among the units of the communist partisans, but their freedom to do so was not unlimited. In Colugna in the region of Friuli, the village priest Ascanio De Luca went into hiding and participated in the resistance under the pseudonym Aurelio Luco. His bishop called him to order, however, and urged him to put an end to his resistance activities.97 In Cividale (Friuli) Donn Aldo Moretti, representative of the Democrazia Cristiana in the Commission of National Liberation, passed on a letter written in Latin to his fellow priests in which he criticized the actions of the partisans. In Moretti’s opinion, the latter were under an atheist leadership that was responsible for acts of violence that were not in 322

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proportion to the intensity and cruelty of the reprisals they provoked. Moretti himself visited several villages in the first months of 1945 to foster understanding for the actions of the Catholic partisans who belonged to the Ossopo Brigade, named after the renowned fort that had featured in the struggle for Italian unification (Risorgimento) in the nineteenth century.98 In the final phase of the war, junior and senior clergy were deployed – or deployed themselves – in facilitating the orderly withdrawal of German occupying forces and an orderly transition to a new government. The Archbishop of Genoa, Pietro Cardinal Boetto, intervened with the German city commandant and prevented the destruction of the harbour that had been ordered by Hitler in person. Cardinal Schuster was involved in negotiations for the surrender of his city. The Archbishop of Milan had gone some way in his political convictions with regard to Fascism. In 1937 he had openly supported Il Duce, ‘whom he declared greater than Constantine and Charlemagne’. But in 1939 he said in front of the bishops of his diocese, that the Fascist ‘Hegelian’ state was a form of ‘statolatry’ and usurped the rights of God, causing a irresolvable conflict with Christianity.99 Church involvement, however, did not lack a degree of self-interest. Communist and socialist resistance leaders were inclined to call for revolt in the cities in which liberation was close at hand, allowing the local resistance movements to demonstrate that they were capable of ejecting the occupier on their own. Moreover, the idea of self-liberation had its place in the Marxist belief in the necessity and salutary character of the revolution. The church authorities, by contrast, not only feared unnecessary bloodshed and destruction with liberation in sight, they also had reason to support an orderly transition to internal rule after the departure of the Wehrmacht and fascist forces. In so doing they challenged the monopoly of the resistance movement. The Vatican’s apostolic delegate in Washington had intervened along similar lines with the American government after the Germans disbanded the carabinieri (internal forces of order) in October 1943. In the opinion of the Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Maglione, the period between the departure of the German occupying forces and the arrival of the Allied liberators had to be as short as possible, to prevent politically motivated groups from stirring up revolt.100 In some regions, village priests even served to guarantee the peaceful departure of German troops. In Trieste, for example, a city contested by Italian and Yugoslavian partisans, the bishop was initially unable to prevent the Germans from fighting to the bitter end. But on 2 May 1945, discussions were held in the sacristy of the cathedral of San Giusto between the German commandant and a Yugoslavian partisan officer in the presence of the bishop. In Milan, Cardinal Schuster entered into negotiations with the German commanding officer and the Italian general Raffaele Cadorna, commander of the ‘Volunteers for Freedom’, the Italian partisans. On 22 April 1945 he received Marshal Graziani, the commander-in-chief of the Republic of Saló, and on 25 April Mussolini, who met with his adversary Cadorna in the cardinal’s presence. Schuster talked to Mussolini for a full hour and tried to prepare him for the days that would follow. The cardinal told him that he should understand ‘his Calvary’ as penance for his errors. ‘Mussolini appeared to be moved, and in a moment of confidentiality he shook my hand with devotion.’101 323

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Figure 17 Cardinal Schuster, Archbishop of Milan (centre), on the balcony of his cathedral on the day of the liberation of the city. Photo: SOMA , Brussels. Schuster based himself in his role as mediator on his illustrious predecessor, the saintly Archbishop Ambrose, and the history of church authority in Milan. He was present at all the negotiations in the archiepiscopal palace to prevent those participating from reaching for a revolver and killing their opponents on the other side of the table. SS general Karl Wolff likewise presented himself to the cardinal. The surrender was finally signed ‘in the shadow of the Madonnina of the cathedral, on neutral ground and in my presence’. On 6 May, the cardinal made the agreement public during a mass of thanksgiving in the cathedral. The green-grey veil that had covered the statue of the Madonnina (a statue of the Virgin Mary on the top of the cathedral’s tallest spire) throughout the war was pulled back for the occasion.102 When he heard how close the negotiators had come to an agreement, Mussolini flew into a rage and stormed out of the negotiations. He left the city, but was quickly captured, executed near Lake Como, and later hung upside down for public viewing in the city of Milan. 4 Religious resistance 4.1 Reflections on Christian resistance In the introduction to Chapter 6 we posed four questions concerning the relationship between religion and civil disobedience or active resistance. The facts themselves have 324

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served to provide an answer. The facts differ between East and West. When the very existence of a people came under threat – the racial goal of the Nazi war machine with respect to the Jews and the Slavic peoples – the answer to the question of the moral justification of resistance was to be formulated with relative ease: the urge to survive. In an effort to prevent such horrors, however, some (religious) leaders urged passivity and acquiescence. The situation in Western Europe was different. In the early years of German occupation, a certain amount of latitude was granted to the (Germanic) nations and to the churches. Their loyalty was thus put to the test, but they were allowed, nevertheless, a certain ‘critical space’. The Christian faith in Europe was clothed in national robes. It was one of the determinative factors in the construction of a nation’s collective identity. For this reason also, the churches likewise found themselves involved in a struggle in which the very survival of the nation was at stake. In this struggle, fatherland and religion were identified with one another. Serbia and Poland serve as good examples in this regard. Church leaders were also involved. Because of German racism, armed resistance in Eastern Europe became a life or death struggle for them too, in the literal sense of the expression. The historical dimension also functioned in Western Europe. Memories of repression and resistance in the religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in the Netherlands and France served for Calvinists as grounds for disobedience towards the occupying regime. Historical struggles were revived, given new life, in (historical) songs and during the annual pilgrimage to the Musée du Désert, the place in the mountains of the Cevennes in which the flight of the French Huguenots is commemorated. The pro-resistance attitude of Archbishop De Jong in Utrecht was linked to his roots in a Catholic minority on Ameland Island in the Dutch part of the North Sea. The same was true mutatis mutandis for the construction of a Danish identity, which certain Lutheran preachers borrowed from their fellow minister N.F.S. Grundtvig’s description of the Danish–German war in 1864. Was there – detached from the national historical connotations – evidence of a Christian resistance? The discussion of this question in France was dominated by a distinction made by the French philosopher Jacques Maritain. The question was: did a person engage in an act of resistance ‘en chrétien – as a Christian’ or ‘en tant que chrétien – in one’s capacity as Christian’. The distinction is a subtle one, which is often difficult to trace in historical reality. ‘Catholics like de Gaulle for example, resisted for reasons other than religious ones. That is, their choice was not informed by, much less predicated upon, Christian principles. They did not resist because they were Christians, not en tant que chrétiens, not even, it seems, en chrétien, but as patriot.’103 For some individual resistance fighters and resistance groups, the ‘en tant que chrétien’ served as a guide. According to political scientist René Remond, the generation formed between 1935 and 1945 saw resistance among Christians as synonymous with the option for freedom, for one’s own initiative. This did not only evolve during the war, it ultimately led to the development of a new ‘ecclesiology’, to a different understanding of the Church in contrast to the hierarchically constructed French church that emerged after the Restoration. 325

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Churches spoke of ‘spiritual resistance’, implying that resistance (of Christians) motivated by the conviction that they were obliged to offer resistance to an ideology that was racist and hostile to Christianity. The dignity of the human person and the principles of the Christian faith made such disobedience a necessity. The most obvious acts of ‘spiritual resistance’ took form in the distribution of pamphlets and resistance journals, in which theological arguments (among others) against the National Socialist ideology and against the policies of the occupier could be read. Offering assistance to those forced to flee and those facing persecution can be interpreted as a specifically Christian contribution to the resistance in the Second World War; specifically Christian, but certainly not exclusively Christian. In their assistance to people forced into hiding, Christians were able to draw on their historical awareness of persecution and struggle on account of the (true) faith, the tradition of which was kept alive in the twentieth century in sermons and commemorations. In addition, offering help to people in hiding required a level of organization that the churches were able to provide via their local and regional structures and in their continued existence under ‘tolerant’ Nazi regimes. Communities and parishes and their local spiritual leaders were able to form the core of illegal help organizations. Assistance to those in hiding was a non-violent form of resistance. This changed towards the end of the war as more and more resistance groups had to be formed and deployed to disrupt the apparatus set up by the Germans to hunt down fugitives. The legitimacy of the so-called assault groups and their violence/liquidations was explicitly called into question. The reality of armed resistance ultimately led to a debate on the moral permissibility of killing one’s enemy.104 An additional question surfaced at this juncture: should spiritual leaders (chaplains) join armed resistance groups and resistance armies? Was it in fact an obligation? The moral foundations of de facto disobedience and armed resistance became a point of discussion in many Christian churches both during and after the war. We offer a selective survey in this regard, focusing on the discussion in Norway and the Netherlands with respect to Protestantism and on France and Italy with respect to Catholicism. 4.2 Protestant debate in Norway and the Netherlands The most important document relating to Protestant resistance in northern and Western Europe is the declaration discussed in Chapters 4 and 6, upon which basis the bishops separated themselves from the state church in Norway. They considered their ‘Foundations’ (1941) to be a new or actualized interpretation of Article 16 of the Augsburg Confession, the Lutheran confession of faith from 1530 that formulated the two kingdoms doctrine: the worldly and the spiritual. Bishop Berggrav and his episcopal colleagues adopted the position that they should give advice to the country’s citizens in the question of obedience to the state because the church was responsible for determining the legitimacy of the constitutional authorities.105 The Lutheran two kingdoms doctrine provided them with a theological source of resistance to the totalitarian Nazi state. It appeared, however, to represent a break 326

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with the Lutheran tradition of obedience towards the secular state, which had been derived earlier and elsewhere from the same two kingdoms doctrine. The Church as part of the divine kingdom had the right to hold up the politics of the state, part of the worldly kingdom, against the norms of faith and ethics. When the state went beyond its divine mandate according to Christian ethical standards, the Church had the right and the duty to reflect and preach on the matter. The ancient distinction between the two kingdoms thus acquired a new meaning: the Church, a community of believers, was distinct from the state authorities and for that precise reason it had the liberty to make judgements concerning the political measures applied by the same state. The departing bishops and ministers embodied civil resistance to the occupying regime and in particular to their ‘own’ National Socialist government Quisling. According to Torleiv Austad, it is remarkable how the Church played an important role in working out ethical premises and guidelines for the civil resistance. Most of the other resistance groups were not scholarly trained for ethical reflections in an occupied country under a totalitarian regime.106 The Church thus formulated a moral legitimation of ‘civil resistance’ and not in the first instance a call to armed resistance. Within the Calvinist community, the radical theology of Karl Barth was a significant source of inspiration for resistance. His involvement in the option for and elaboration of a ‘Bėkennende Kirche’ in 1934 was, and remained, an important example. In 1942, for instance, young theologians in the occupied Netherlands endeavoured to turn to Barth with questions concerning the attitude Protestants and their churches should adopt in the context of occupation. The said questions stemmed from church ministers (and Barthians) Jan Koopmans and Kornelis Heiko Miskotte. They received their answers via the mediation of the Ecumenical Council of Churches ‘in formation’ in Geneva. They were brought to the Netherlands and distributed as an illegal pamphlet which was extremely well received.107 Question and answer are part and parcel of the characteristically Calvinistic debate on the ethical foundations of obedience to the state. The first focused on the right to resist and whether one should support resistance in person or with money. According to Barth, German National Socialism had been imposed on the Dutch and did not represent an authority instituted by God. The kind of obedience it deserved, therefore, was only outward and provisional; in reality only resistance and nothing but resistance was warranted until its might was completely broken. If the Church as such was unable to reconcile itself with such illegality, because its task is to preach and not maintain public order, then it should consider the fact that this very proposition already places it on the side of so-called ‘illegality’. A second question focused on the application of the divine command to speak the truth. How should resistance people uphold this command when they stood before a Nazi judge? Karl Barth answered that those who concretize their Christian confession in the struggle to restore justice in the Netherlands speak the truth in so doing because they are motivated by their faith. Whether this truth corresponded to an ‘objective disposition’ was of secondary importance. 327

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The third and final question turned around the possibility of a church group being free – without wishing to run the risk of schism – to openly state its positions and demands, even if they went beyond the guidelines and propositions of the official church authorities. (In the Dutch Reformed Church of the day this was a bone of contention: neutrality or testimony?) Barth’s response was resoundingly positive. ‘Of the official church authorities the world over, we can only expect (in the best case) half-true, halfratified and half-binding decisions, because they are obliged – albeit with every good intention – to take regulations and treasuries, external unity and church preservation, and their relationship with the state authorities into consideration in addition to the Gospel’.108 A reflection on the juridical foundations and scope of resistance can be found in an illegally distributed brochure written by the Dutch Reformed jurist Gezina van der Molen. In December 1941, she wrote a treatise on ‘the right to occupy’ and gave a positive answer to the ‘legitimate’ question concerning the justifiability of resistance against the German occupier. At the same time, however, she observed that the population was not thereby at liberty to disregard its duty of obedience to the secular authorities. She even concluded that the occupying power was justified in certain circumstances in its execution of hostages by firing squad, a current theme in the Netherlands and the time. Active resistance was only permissible in an organized fashion was her final conclusion. For military resistance, orders were needed from the government in exile in London. Civilians were to refrain from surprise individual attacks, which the occupier had the right to interpret and punish as serious breaches of the peace.109 Evidence of the extent to which internal theological or ethically founded criticism of resistance and acts of resistance could go, can be found in the then illegal Protestant newspaper Trouw. In March 1943, it published an article by the Dutch Reformed jurist V.H. Rutgers occasioned by the deadly resistance attack on General H.A. Seyffardt. The latter was commander of the ‘Vrijwilligerslegioen Nederland – Dutch Volunteer Legion’, set up to send volunteer soldiers to the Eastern Front. Rutgers condemned the attack as an ‘assassination’. Self-defence, the jurist argued, was out of the question. Civilians had taken the law into their own hands and had made themselves guilty of ‘unlawful judgement’. They had in fact transgressed the Fifth Commandment: Thou Shalt Not Kill.110 4.3 Catholic discussion in France and Italy The debate concerning the legitimacy of resistance that was evident in France and Italy exhibits a similarly national background. The fascist regime in Italy started a war in 1940; in France, the new government of Marshal Pétain resigned itself to France’s defeat and called for a national revolution. The legitimacy of the government was not the subject of intense debate in the first years of the war. This changed in 1943 when the Wehrmacht occupied central and northern Italy as well as the southern part of Vichy-France. As hostilities increased in the theatre of war, repression, forced labour and persecution steadily intensified. 328

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In a (post-war) debate on the question of ‘spiritual resistance’ in France, Charles Molette made a distinction. Catholic Action priests and activists who had been killed while serving prisoners of war or forced labourers or prisoners in concentration camps were to be considered examples of ‘spiritual resistance’. He considered Catholics – both clergy and lay – who participated in the resistance by distributing resistance newspapers, offering a place of hiding to Jews and ‘réfractaires’ (those who refused forced labour), or hiding weapons, as resistance members ‘tout court’, whether they were part of specifically Christian resistance groups or not.111 In May 1944, the resistance newspaper Témoignage chrétien published a cahier, entitled ‘Exigences de la Libération’; on the requirements of a liberation that was already being felt (although the Allied landing in Normandy on 6 June 1944 was still a few weeks away). The cahier followed two lines of argument. First, it observed that the war for France did not come to an end in June 1940, in spite of the agreed suspension of hostilities. If the said suspension of hostilities had been accepted as the end of the war, then it would be pertinent to ask whether there was not a need to ‘re-commence’ the war. For the authors of the cahier, June 1940 was not the end; France was still mobilized and hostilities could re-commence whenever it was considered appropriate. It was not because France had suffered a defeat (in 1940) that the goal for which it fought had lost its legitimacy. The cahier’s second line of argument was that liberation should not be seen by the French as a gift from heaven, granted out of the blue without any kind of struggle.112 At a colloquium in 1978, political scientist René Rémond lectured on the transition from ‘intellectual resistance’ to armed resistance in Vichy France. He located the transition in the summer of 1943, when public expectation of an imminent liberation started to increase. At the same time, repression and violence intensified under the regime in Vichy France and the German authorities. In public opinion, the outbreak of a civil war was not far off. For Catholic resistance activists, questions concerning the ethics of armed resistance became particularly tangible.113 There were obstacles on the road from intellectual disobedience and actual armed struggle, just as there were obstacles on the road from resignation to the disaster of German victory to the rejection of defeat. Catholic tradition advocated the virtue of obedience. In choosing to participate in armed resistance, Catholics were obliged, as it were, to break away from their own Catholic environment, from their neighbours, from religious leaders, from the parish and – in the case of the clergy – from fellow priests and religious people. In addition, awareness of the need to distinguish between established authority and licit authority was not particularly widespread or clearly understood. In the French context, according to Rémond, the option for armed struggle also meant that one had to withdraw one’s support to the Vichy government, a support the Catholic Church had originally preached from the pulpit. The generation of bishops appointed during the Interbellum – after the papal condemnation of Action française – had been able to distance themselves in June 1940 from the ‘inner emigration’ into the Third Republic, which was experienced as laicist and in some instances anti-clerical. They had embraced a national community on the invitation of Marshal Pétain and under his auspices. They had suffered too much from the separation of church and state adopted 329

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before the war in 1905 to be willing to accept and welcome the disadvantages of such a separation a second time. For them there was an alternative to resistance: the Catholic mission in Vichy France (and among the forced labourers in Nazi Germany). An additional obstacle was to be found in the instinctive aversion to violence and preference for reconciliation that was a collective characteristic of France’s Catholics. From the middle of 1943, however, ‘liberation’ implied an option for armed struggle. At their meeting on 17 February 1944, the Assembly of Cardinals and Archbishops could find no other terms to condemn armed resistance than those used in the propaganda of the (Catholic) minister in the Vichy government, Philippe Henriot: resistance was equal to ‘terrorism’. In their condemnation of the words and actions of the resistance movement, they employed the same term – ‘terrorism’ – as the political leaders of the day, without realizing that the word also had a political value and was more or less equal to a political condemnation. The clergy in France (and elsewhere) were confronted – perhaps more intensely than others – with the moral problem of shedding blood and killing an enemy. Was such action reconcilable with their priestly ministry? Clergy conscripted during the First World War had already faced the same dilemma in the trenches, but now they were being asked if they were willing to participate voluntarily in armed resistance. In France there was also evidence of a historical – and ongoing – distinction between Catholics and Protestants in this regard. In the Vichy context, Catholics were reminded by the church authorities that they had a duty of loyalty to a regime that appeared to favour the Catholic Church. Protestants, on the other hand, were able to look back to a history of conflict with the legal authorities, the struggle to survive in France as a Calvinist in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Catholics and Protestants first had to be distinguished from one another, as it were, when it came to the question of loyalty, before they could finally embrace one another in the context of résistance.114 After the suspension of hostilities and the proclamation of the Republic of Saló in 1943 a discussion evolved within the Catholic Church in Italy as to whether one should be obedient to the new state; why should one do so and was disobedience warranted? Appeal was made to Pope Leo XIII ’s encyclical Sapientiae christianae (10 January 1890), for example, which justified disobedience when human laws contained prescriptions that ran counter to the law of God. The Notificazione of the Venetian episcopate alluded to above formulated the issue as follows: totalitarian ideologies deify the state and replace the law with caprice. This caprice is in conflict with personal dignity and should be rejected, even at the cost of one’s life. The law is only holy when it is just.115 At the end of 1944 and the beginning of 1945, the Jesuit journal Civiltá Cattolica published two articles in which the right to engage in resistance was examined from a Catholic (Thomist) point of view. Active disobedience could be legitimated where four conditions had been met. First, the tyranny had to be more or less permanent and taken for granted. Second, the seriousness of the situation had to be very clear. Third, the endeavour to unseat the government had to enjoy a high probability of success. And fourth, it had to be certain that the fall of the tyrannical regime would not lead to an even more tragic situation.116 330

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After the fall of Mussolini and the beginning of German occupation, Catholic resistance in Italy was inspired on the whole by two religious motivations. In the first instance, people were aware that the (new) Republic of Saló was not legitimate and that resistance was necessary for reasons of patriotism, the rejection of state racism, and of the state’s violent character. The second motivation was ecclesial in nature and related to the clergy. The latter had a duty to render assistance and charity to their neighbour and were thus obliged to do the same as chaplains to the resistance. But there was an additional (third) motivation. Priests had taught the many members of Catholic Action spread throughout the length and breadth of Fascist Italy about the Christian meaning of obedience and about Catholic social teaching. They were now able to observe that what they had taught had not failed to make its mark on the young people of the day. They drew the obvious conclusions and took part in their resistance.117

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CHAPTER 8 NATIONAL SOCIALIST MASS MURDER AND THE CHURCHES: PERSECUTION IN NAZI GERMANY

Introduction In the preceding chapters of the present volume we focused on occupation as our primary theme, with killing and manslaughter as potential side-effects thereof. In the present chapter, murder takes centre stage; the collective murder of psychiatric patients, the Jews, and the Sinti and Roma; and the murder by exhaustion of homosexuals and persecuted members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses in concentration camps. In 2010, the American historian Timothy Snyder published Bloodlands, a study of mass murder before, during and after the Second World War. The ‘lands’ in question focused on Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Russia and the Baltic States, in which 14.5 million people lost their lives in the years between 1930 and 1945; not only inhabitants of the said countries, but also men, women and children deported from other parts of Europe. Hitler had them killed for racist reasons and to make room for German colonization. Stalin had them murdered or left them to die in camps for the purity of the revolution; in reality to demonstrate that terror was an essential component of the state’s ideology and exercise of power. Bloodlands explores mass murder in the Soviet Union, the intentionally orchestrated famine in the Ukraine in the 1930s, and the show trials, executions and high mortality labour camp (Gulag) internments. The Russian Orthodox Church and the Ukrainian Orthodox Churches could have taken a stand against this situation, but, as we observed in Chapters  1 and 3, they themselves were often the target of persecution with many fatalities as a result. In the same chapters we demonstrated that the Christian churches were able to hold their own in Nazi Germany and its occupied territories although their social influence was sometimes drastically reduced, ecclesial properties were often confiscated and individual religious professionals were frequently punished for their involvement in the resistance or for their preaching. But Hitler and his regime tended to allow the core activities of the Christian churches to continue unperturbed – for the time being at least. Clergy and laity alike were confronted with mass murder. If they themselves did not fall victim to it, they gradually became aware of it as time passed. The truth about medical killing, mass executions and the extermination camps had to be kept an official secret. As a result, the facts were only gradually discovered and disseminated. Arrests and deportations, on the other hand, were often observed immediately and quickly communicated. 333

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In the present chapter we will focus on what the Christian churches and the Christian faithful did in response to discrimination, deportation and extermination. When did they become aware that such things were happening? How did they react? Did they resort to public protest or to diplomacy? Did they resist? Were they indifferent? Did they endeavour to alleviate the distress? 1 Applied biology 1.1 Euthanasia National Socialism has been described by some as a form of ‘applied biology’.1 The goal of its teaching was the maintenance and reinforcement of the German race, and the consequence thereof was eugenics, a procedure whereby those who were handicapped or mentally disordered were prevented from procreating. The first step was sterilization, the second and more radical was the decision to eliminate such categories of human beings. Medical science in Nazi Germany thus concentrated its efforts on ‘always and above all selection. The biologically inferior were to be eliminated from the organic body of the Volk, always with the promise of a better biological future for the Volk.’2 Ideology and empire reinforced this aim. In the six years following the Machtergreifung, the number of patients in psychiatric institutions increased to hitherto unheard of levels: close to 350,000. The National Socialist state had more people with mental problems hospitalized and made discharge more difficult. The existing hospitals were not prepared for this new situation and living conditions thus deteriorated in proportion to the increase in patients. The euthanasia programme in Nazi Germany was preceded by a phase of eugenics and forced sterilization. A law came into force in July 1933 dealing with the prevention of the birth of offspring with hereditary defects and the promotion of so-called hereditary health. This included forced sterilization. Euthanasia was the next step. In July 1939, Hitler gave orders for patients in nursing homes to be put to death. The Führer’s chancery set up an office to support this brutal policy in a villa that had been confiscated (read stolen) from its Jewish owner in Berlin. The address, Tiergarten 4, lent its name to the programme, ‘T4’. The competence of certain named doctors was extended to allow them to prescribe ‘das Gnadentod’ – mercy killing – when they evaluated incurably sick patients. The Führer’s authorization was dated 1 September 1939, the beginning of the war in Europe. From October 1939, the management of nursing homes in Nazi Germany were obliged to fill in a form per patient detailing the need for hospital admission, the prognosis, the need for therapy and the potential for work. The latter was of particular importance: if an individual was considered capable of productive labour then his or her chances of survival were the greatest. The questionnaires were sent for evaluation to the so-called ‘T4 Gutachter’, renowned psychiatrists associated with an institution or university who decided on the basis of a piece of paper whether a patient should live or die. Those judged ‘lebensunwert’ – unworthy of life – were quickly removed to so-called 334

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‘Tötungsanstalten’ where they were put to death by lethal injection or by a new method: the introduction of exhaust fumes to an enclosed space in which the ‘Todeskandidaten’ had been assembled. Before the programme was brought to a ‘premature’ end in August 1941, estimates suggest that more than 70,000 patients were killed in this manner.3 Included in this number were between 4,000 and 5,000 veterans of the First World War.4 On the orders of the Führer himself, their deaths and causes of death were to be kept secret. Reports by word of mouth and the frequency of certain obituary notices in the papers, however, were a source of increasing public suspicion. The euthanasia campaign moved into a new phase when Poland was invaded in September 1939. In the last ten days of the same year, the Einsatzgruppen went to work against psychiatric patients in the same way as they had against members of the Polish intelligentsia: mass executions.5 After the invasion of the Soviet Union, psychiatric patients, both men and women, were left to die of hunger, executed or gassed. According to estimates, German soldiers and police were responsible for the deaths of at least 17,000 such patients in the occupied areas of the Soviet Union.6 1.2 Churches, eugenics and euthanasia Eugenics was also a topic of public interest among Catholics in the Interbellum. The German bishops and the nuncio Eugenio Pacelli invited advice on the matter from the biologist and Jesuit Hermann Muckermann, whose insights on racial anthropology were discussed in Chapter 2.7 At the conference of Catholic bishops in Fulda on 31 August 1933, a petition was drawn up in which enforced sterilization was rejected and permanent internment in an asylum recommended as an alternative. Bishop Michael Buchberger (Regensburg) found enforced sterilization defensible under certain circumstances. Cardinal Faulhaber supported internment for the victims of heredity; the state had established a camp for ‘Schutzhäftlinge’ (political prisoners) to ‘protect’ them from society, but the ‘Schädlinge der Volksgemeinschaft’ (those who brought harm to the ‘nation’) could also make use of it.8 The Catholic Church refused to go along with active eugenics (sterilization). In practice, however, a degree of cooperation was evident, especially since a boycott on the local level might have led to the closure of Catholic psychiatric hospitals and the dismissal of Catholic nurses from public hospitals. The Bishop of Münster, Count Clemens August von Galen, held a dissenting opinion in this regard. In his Lenten pastoral letter of 29 January 1934, he argued that a person’s natural right to physical integrity should not be violated by negative eugenic measures. Necessary birth control had to be achieved though Christian formation in self-denial and the control of one’s natural desires.9 The Christian Churches in Nazi Germany were involved in two ways in preparations for the next step – euthanasia – albeit indirectly at first with the transfer of patients from Protestant or Catholic psychiatric institutions to state-run institutions from 1936 onwards. In 1937, for example, the Protestant care home Hephata in Treysa (HessenNassau) was obliged to let go of 400 patients. Bethel – the Protestant institution that 335

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gained renown as a centre of ecclesial opposition – was likewise forced to let patients go. In the same year – 1937 – nine Catholic psychiatric institutions and fifteen Catholic homes for the physically handicapped were obliged to let go of the people entrusted to their care.10 In the second instance, the Churches were involved in a moral theological discussion on the question whether the mentally ill and physically handicapped who were found to be ‘unproductive’ could be put to death. In the language of the National Socialists, this was referred to as the ‘Gnadentod’ or euthanasia. At the end of 1938, a discussion was opened at Hitler’s chancellery that explored the possibility of acquiring approval from the circle of moral theologians for the euthanasia programme. Albert Hartl, a former priest who had made a career for himself at the headquarters of the SD, was despatched on a scouting expedition. He asked the advice of theologian Canon August Wilhelm Patin, a nephew of Himmler who had left the Catholic Church in 1938 and had been promoted to the rank of SS -Hauptsturmführer. He answered that the churches had executed hundreds of people down through the centuries for a huge variety of reasons and argued that the state should thus be at liberty to put psychiatric patients to death for the sake of the general good. Further consultations were not quite so easy, but he finally found a Catholic moral theologian known to be ‘modern’ – Joseph Mayer from Paderborn – who was willing to argue that euthanasia might be considered legitimate. Theological support was also found on the Protestant side in the person of Wolfgang Stroothenke, who had written a thesis in 1940 in which enforced euthanasia was rejected but the elimination of ‘defective children’ could be approved. Friedrich von Bodelschwingh, a candidate for the office of Reich Bishop, tried to protect the patients resident in Bethel from euthanasia. In a secret document he wrote that his hospital would request to be spared cooperation at every level should the state government consider itself unable to make another decision (than euthanasia). ‘It goes without saying that we would comply with an intervention on the part of the state realised without our help.’11 In the course of 1940, when information about the killing of psychiatric patients started to reach the outside world, the first letters of protest were despatched. Archbishop Conrad Gröber (Freiburg) protested: when the state granted itself the authority to rob the handicapped of their lives, culture and human rights have no meaning. On 11 August 1940, Cardinal Bertram, chair of the episcopal conference in Fulda, despatched a petition to the head of the Reich Chancellery and to the Minister of Justice in which euthanasia was condemned. Bishop Heinrich Wienken, contact person between state and church, entered into negotiations thereafter with the ‘Euthanasiezentrale’. But when echoes of partial compromise started to be heard, the Vatican’s Holy Office put an end to all discussion of the matter on 27 November 1940: according to Catholic moral teaching, euthanasia was impermissible.12 1.3 Episcopal protest Westphalian aristocrat and priest of the diocese of Münster, Clemens August von Galen, was a critic of National Socialism, which he understood as a new form of paganism, just 336

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as he had criticized the ‘secularization’ of public life and the emergence of liberal and socialist ideologies in a document entitled ‘The Plague of Laicism’ (a reference to an expression used by Pope Pius XI ). In this regard, he was representative of Catholic social teaching in the Interbellum. In September 1933 he was appointed Bishop of Münster. His name was not initially included in the chapter’s ‘short list’, but after two candidates withdrew it was added to the terna, the list of three. Von Galen was the first to be consecrated bishop after the Reichskonkordat was agreed upon. The (National Socialist) government of Prussia raised no objections. Von Galen’s conservative inclinations and tangible distance from the ‘Parlamentsomnipotenz’ of the Weimar Republic had a role to play in the considerations of the chapter. On the other hand, a bishop who chose ‘nec laudibus, nec timore’ – ‘neither by praise nor by fear’ – for his coat of arms could be expected to exhibit a degree of obstinacy.13 During the festivities surrounding his episcopal consecration, he paid official tribute to Reich President Von Hindenburg and Reich Chancellor Hitler. This was an expression of his understanding of the state, namely that authority was granted by God, but also subject to the laws of God. Like the bishops in the Rhineland, he welcomed the remilitarization of this part of the country in 1936. And like many in the Catholic Church, he revealed himself in 1941 and later to have the mentality of a crusader when it came to ‘godless Bolshevism’.14 At the same time, his resistance to a totalitarian regime that was threatening and limiting the social institutions and influence of the Catholic Church in ‘his’ Westphalia also steadily grew. In the middle of 1941, however, Bishop Von Galen appears to have reached the limits of his patience. The same could also be said with respect to the protests of the German episcopate, which he experienced as ‘paper’ protests and ‘without effect’. He was no longer able to resign himself to the arguments of his (older) fellow bishops and announced in a letter to the bishop of nearby Osnabrück his ‘flight into publicity’. In July 1941, when the British air force bombed Münster for the first time, a number of monasteries and boarding schools were seized to serve as barracks or emergency hospitals and their resident religious communities were expelled. In Sunday sermons delivered on 13 and 20 July, the bishop criticized the physical superiority of the Gestapo against which German citizens were powerless.15 In a third sermon delivered on 3 August 1941 in Saint Lambert’s church in Münster, he tellingly formulated an open fear of euthanasia. His theme was the reduction of a person’s right to life to the so-called ‘productive person’. When it is conceded on the part of a state that one has the right to kill ‘unproductive people’ – even if the present circumstances focused only on the poor and powerless mentally ill – then the murder of all unproductive people becomes possible in principle. ‘Woe betide the invalids, who dedicated their energy and healthy muscles to the production process, who expended themselves and were robbed of their strength! Woe betide our brave soldiers, returning to the fatherland from the war badly wounded, crippled or invalid!’16 The response was unexpectedly positive. The text was widely distributed in printed form, even within the circles of the Evangelical Church, and the Gestapo reported finding such leaflets at the front lines of the Wehrmacht.17 Hitler felt compelled to put an official 337

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end to his euthanasia programme – initiated on his personal orders – on 24 August 1941. In reality, however, he simply put it on hold and relocated it to the occupied territories in the east. Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda, called the bishop’s sermon ‘a dagger in the back of those waging war at the front’.18 Nevertheless, he rejected the suggestion of Martin Bormann, chief of the Nazi Party Chancellery, who called for the bishop’s arrest. Goebbels was of the opinion that the party would have to fight all of Westphalia for the duration of the war should Von Galen be sentenced to death. The leader and spokesman was to be left alone while his subordinates were attacked. This was a tried and tested approach in the conflict between the Church and the Nazi state. The Gestapo arrested more than thirty priests of the diocese of Münster, several of whom were to meet their deaths in the concentration camps.19 Why did this episcopal sermon elicit such a powerful response? In the summer of 1941, the public mood in Nazi Germany was tense. Bishop Von Galen spoke out about wounded soldiers being threatened with euthanasia at the very moment the Wehrmacht was advancing on the Soviet Union. Early rumours about losses on the Eastern Front, which had been opened on June of the same year, only added to the tensions, as did the extension of Royal Air Force bombings to include residential areas. Münster fell victim to just such an air raid in July. The ‘Klostersturm’ (confiscation of monasteries) that followed, was reminiscent – particularly in Westphalia – of the Kulturkampf that had brought the Catholic population into conflict with the Prussian government in the nineteenth century.20 2 Euthanasia and Holocaust 2.1 Euthanasia and the mass murder of Jews, Roma and Sinti Is there an observable connection between the euthanasia programme and the collective murder of Jews, Roma and Sinti? One can argue, at the very least, that a degree of continuity was evident in this regard, particularly with respect to the aforementioned Roma and Sinti. Labelled ‘gypsies’, they were considered unable to meet the average demands of society at the intellectual level, measured according to the norms of the Nazi period. As a consequence, sterilization was requested for 450 (2 per cent) of the Sinti and Roma between the ages of 14 and 50 and implemented in 400 instances.21 After the introduction of the Nuremberg race laws (1938) they were treated as second-class citizens, although they are not mentioned by name in the law. They were concentrated in so-called Zigeunerlager or ‘gypsy camps’ or deported to concentration camps such as Sachsenhausen, where they represented 10 per cent of the ‘asocial detainees’.22 The persecution of the Jews was of a much greater order in every possible respect. At the moment decisions were being made about euthanasia (autumn 1939), senior circles within the Nazi regime were engaged in a discussion concerning an Endlösung, a ‘final solution to the Jewish question’. The debate had arisen after the occupation of Poland, when nearly two million Polish Jews came under the authority of the Nazi regime. Two points of similarity can be observed with the euthanasia programme. First, the criterion 338

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of suitability for work, the lack of which was decisive when facing the question whether a patient could be killed or not. In extermination camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau, prisoners were selected on the basis of the suitability for work. Second, the method of collective killing was the same in each instance: gas. There was, of course, a difference. ‘The importance of racial-scientific ideas is much clearer in Nazi sterilization and “euthanasia” programmes than in the decision-making process that culminated in the systematic murder of Europe’s Jews, for the Holocaust was an outcome of racial fantasy far more than of race science.’23 Continuity can be observed, by contrast, in the development of a ‘genocidal mindset’ in German society; or in other words a partly public, if silent and more importantly growing acceptance among the population of a collective killing of groups that were marginalized and deprived of any defence. 2.2 Persecution of the Jews: discrimination and ghettoization, 1933–41 Anti-Semitic Nazi policy took two forms.24 The first was a combination of propaganda, witch-hunts and street violence. Such campaigns were primarily the work of Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda, and of the Gauleiter Julius Streicher. They came to a head in a large-scale pogrom occasioned by the attack on a German diplomat near the embassy in Paris by a Jewish immigrant from Germany, Herschel Grynszpan. On the night of 9/10 November 1938, Jewish citizens, their culture and their property were subjected to a fit of National Socialist rage. Hitler ordered the arrest of 30,000 Jewish men; 267 synagogues were set alight and 7,500 shops and businesses were destroyed. More than 90 people died. The broken glass from the windows of Jewish-owned shops inspired the name Reichskristallnacht. The second policy of persecution took the form of legal discrimination. In a variety of ministries, a so-called Judenreferat was established, a Jewish office or workplace set up to concoct discriminatory measures. The bureaucrats continued to invent such regulations long after the organized killings had become a reality. The first law concerning public office was implemented in 1933 and robbed Jews of the possibility of serving in a public function. One of the Nuremberg race laws of 1935 demoted Jews to second-class citizens, while another law ‘for the protection of German blood’ prohibited mixed marriages. In 1938 and 1939, Jewish property was confiscated in every imaginable manner. The invasion of Poland in September 1939 occasioned a new phase of persecution. When the new border was established between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, estimates suggest that 1.8 million of the 2 million Polish Jews found themselves under German authority.25 On 21 September 1939, Reinhardt Heydrich conferred with the leaders of the Einsatzgruppen on measures to be implemented against the Jews who were now the subjects of the Nazi regime. The conclusion was twofold. The Jews in Poland were to be brought together into ghettoes and they were to govern themselves along the lines indicated by the German authorities. The collective ghettoization of large groups of people simply encouraged corruption and black market practices, which was precisely the image of the Jews the Nazis were intent on spreading.26 339

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In the middle of 1941, the process of ghettoization appears to have reached its conclusion and the endless relocation of Jewish groups came to a provisional end. The German proponents of the pragmatic approach – the optimal exploitation of the ‘captive’ Jewish workforce – appeared to have won the argument against the more radical wing of the Nazi hierarchy who were intent on letting the Jews in the ghettoes die of starvation. In October 1940 there were 40,000 Jewish forced labourers. Polish Jews were deployed in the building of the Autobahn from Frankfurt an der Oder to Poznan; even when this meant that they had to be housed in labour camps within the (new) Reich boundaries.27 2.3 First turning point: ‘Holocaust by bullets’ ‘Holocaust by bullets’ is an expression coined by historian Christopher Browning to designate one of the turning points in the National Socialist persecution of the Jews, a turning point that was reached in the spring of 1941.28 ‘Murder was in the air’ when the Germans were preparing a Vernichtungskrieg – total war against the Soviet Union, under which circumstances it also became impossible for the Soviet Jews to avoid their fate. The Nazi invasion of Poland focused in the first instance on the destruction of Polish culture and its representatives. Jews were collateral victims at this juncture. In their ideological motivation of the war against the Soviet Union, however, the Nazis lumped Bolshevism and Judaism together; ‘the political and biological manifestations of the same JewishBolshevik menace’.29 The ‘destructive energy’ let loose by the German attack on the Soviet Union was directed in the first instance against the enemy, the Red Army. ‘Criminal orders from above and violent impulses from below created a climate of unmitigated violence.’30 In Minsk, for example, the local Wehrmacht commandant set up a camp for Russian prisoners of war that was to house 100,000 soldiers and 40,000 civilians. The conditions in the camp were horrific. The army and the police selected 10,000 men for immediate execution. Many among them were Jewish. But there were also Jews among the roughly 20,000 who were freed from the camp in mid-July of the same year. From August 1941, however, Jews were systematically executed in the Soviet territories conquered by the Germans. Commandants presented the victims as looters and partisans of Bolshevists in an effort to win over the population. In the autumn of 1941, the systematic plan was contrived to murder all the Jews resident in a given territory. Lithuania, which had been captured from the Soviet Union, served as an exception in this regard. On 15 August 1941 – and thereafter – children were executed for the first time. The methods of mass murder deployed in this instance were not the consequence of a unilateral command from the authorities, but an interaction between the initiatives of the local commandants and ‘incentives’ offered by Himmler and Heydrich.31 Himmler and Heydrich were also intent on a ‘controlled escalation’ of the killing process. Excesses ran the risk of stimulating aversion among the Wehrmacht commandants. There was also a danger that secrecy surrounding the executions would be breached and the true nature of the German campaign exposed. ‘More important, 340

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given the complex mix of nationalistic, opportunistic, and anti-Semitic motives at work, pogroms contained a degree of unpredictability that ran counter to any systematic antiJewish policy as adopted in Germany and other parts of occupied Europe.’32 Himmler was concerned, moreover, about the psychological effects of this reign of terror on the men who had to implement it and the evident danger that it could undermine the loyalty and effectiveness of the troops. Any memory of ‘1918’ and the unrest on the home front that had been a dagger in the back of the German army in that year had to be avoided at all costs.33 2.4 Second turning point: ‘Endlösung’ In the last week of October 1941, the small group of faithful supporters surrounding Hitler – and gradually others – knew what Hitler expected of them and the general direction in which they should draft and deploy their plans. The Nazi regime had reached the stage that even women and children were no longer to be allowed to escape what came to be called the Endlösung der Judenfrage, the ‘final solution to the Jewish question’. Something was to be organized after the end of the campaign, an end the German high command expected optimistically before the arrival of the oncoming winter. Endlösung means physical destruction, and plans for its implementation were anticipated ‘in the following spring’ or ‘after the war’.34 The necessary arrangements were made between October 1941 and March 1942. This meant that the first extermination camp with gas vans – mobile gas chambers – became operational in Chełmno, in the ghetto of Łódź in Reichsgau Wartheland (Warthegau), but similar mobile gas chambers were also despatched to the concentration camp in Sajmiste near Belgrade in occupied Serbia and to Bełzec near Lublin in the Generalgouvernement. The latter was to see the construction of the first gas chambers, supplied with gas from the vans. Odilo Globocnik, the SS leader in Lublin, had an extermination camp built in Sobibór. Labourers were recruited from among the Ukrainian prisoners of war, the socalled Trawniki, named after the prisoner-of-war camp of the same name near Lublin. In the spring of 1942, the Nazi regime was ready with its (technical) preparations for the planned mass killing and in June 1942 the extermination camp Treblinka was added for the murder of the Jews in Warsaw. Auschwitz had been a camp for Polish civilian prisoners and Russian prisoners of war from 1940, but in 1942 it became a place of catastrophe for the Jews and was thus extended in February 1943 to include Birkenau. The camp also served at that time as the final destination for 14,000 Roma and Sinti of German origin, most of whom were Catholic, deported on Himmler’s orders from the beginning of 1943.35 The so-called Wannsee Conference on 20 January 1942 – in an SS villa on the Wannsee in Berlin – became the moment at which the planned deportations were worked out in (great) detail. Heydrich, who chaired the conference, spoke of a separation of the sexes, of forced labour that would lead to a natural reduction in numbers, and of an appropriate treatment for the remaining prisoners, who could not of course be released and thereby bring about a renewal of the Jewish race. The euphemistic language made it clear to those 341

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present that the Jews were to be murdered systematically and in large numbers. The plans applied to all Jews in every corner of Europe, from Ireland to the Urals and from the Barents Sea to the Mediterranean. At the end of 1942, mass killing also became the established fate of the Roma and Sinti. On 16 December of that year, Himmler gave orders to this end. The Nazi ideology no longer considered them ‘asocial’, but condemned them henceforth to be treated according to racist criteria. Himmler’s orders applied to Roma and Sinti in Nazi Germany and the annexed territories as well as the occupied countries of Western Europe. VichyFrance was an exception in this regard; it had imprisoned the Roma and Sinti in camps of its own accord. For Roma and Sinti travelling in Central and Eastern Europe, deportation orders were not necessary. They had long run the risk of being executed or arrested and transported to Auschwitz.36

3 Churches and the deportations: phrasing the question Bishop Von Galen’s protest against euthanasia serves to demonstrate that a message from the pulpit could be effective. Hitler had to take public emotions in Nazi Germany into account and as a result he decelerated the implementation of his euthanasia programme. The question must thus be asked whether ecclesial disapproval was voiced against the deportation of Jews and of Sinti and Roma, and whether such protests had comparable consequences. In the case of euthanasia, the issue was one of general morality that was also of importance to the churches. In the case of the deportation of the Jews, the ecclesial authorities had to decide whether or not to formulate public protest concerning the fate of a population group that could not numbered among the parishes and communities under their care. They had to own up to the fact that mass murder was such a moral evil that it transcended their prevailing attitudes: the traditional Christian criticism of the Jews, thinking of society in terms of socio-cultural boundaries, and the then current racist anthropology. Protest then became a moral imperative that was to extend beyond the radius of the Christian community and an ecclesial anti-Jewish tradition. Critical voices had the potential to solicit repression from the occupying regime. The measure of the terror it deployed was a factor in the decision to engage in public protest. As we have observed, however, there were also internal reasons for maintaining a reserved position, rooted in ideas and opinions concerning the Jews that were current within the churches and among their leaders. Ancient arguments surfaced concerning the Jews who had crucified Christ and refused to convert and thus called punishment upon themselves. A modern variant was the ecclesial critique of the support emancipated Jews had given to the emergence of such ideologies as socialism and communism. Another modern variant was the emergence of a racial anthropology during the Interbellum that had influenced both Catholic and Protestant theologians and leaders. The question whether the ecclesial authorities would engage themselves on behalf of a (threatened) population group that was sometimes distant from the Christian churches 342

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and their faithful in the society of the day has to be explored per land and per occupation. The said question did not officially apply to those who had converted to Christianity, for the spiritual welfare of whom every church leader should in principle have been prepared to fight. But the significance of the baptism of Jews was relativized on occasion, and often by prominent theologians. Unofficially, the question also did not apply to rabbis or to Jews who were socially integrated at the national level. But distinctions were clearly visible in Christian representations of Eastern European Jews and even more so – it appeared – of emancipated Jews who held prominent (intellectual) positions among the liberals and social democrats, but especially among the communists and the freemasons. Ecclesial protest was to take a variety of forms: a public appeal from the pulpit, a public or private document critical of the occupying regime, or a verbal intervention. Such messages are to be distinguished nevertheless from an alternative form of solidarity: the provision of places where persecuted Jews could go into hiding. Monasteries offered such places of refuge as did Protestant villages in certain regions of the country. This form of assistance was illegal and could result in punishment if discovered. What connected the two – public pulpit statements and the provision of hiding places – was that the former made the latter possible. A sermon might be heard in a Christian community that was not in itself open for contact with the Jewish world. There are indications that Christians in some locations opened their doors and hiding places after hearing from the pulpit what their leaders thought about the persecution of the Jews. In the present chapter our focus is on national churches, their leaders and their communities. The occupying regime, which provides the perspective of our study, serves to occasion this view. The majority of the Christian Churches, moreover, had a national structure. As point of departure, this also allows us to address the question of the response of the Catholic bishops in their own diocese against the background of the ongoing and often intense debate concerning the role of Pope Pius XII . The bishops did not only have personal responsibility in their own dioceses from a canonical perspective, they were also expected to make choices and take decisions in a national context, and often without the customary contact with the Holy See. Deportations were visible events, but the destination of those deported remained an official secret. The mass media was subject to censorship in Nazi Germany and the occupied territories, but from 1942 onwards, the existence of extermination camps was made public by the Allies via radio news broadcasts making it possible for reports detailing mass extermination to be distributed in the underground press. The Church also had its place in this disorganized mass communication, specific to the Second World War: the preaching tradition included pulpit messages or pastoral letters that reflected on war and morality. Churchgoers could thus be swayed by what they heard in church. And during the war churchgoers were numerous, to say the least. In the following pages we will explore the reactions of the churches to the exclusion and deportation of Jews in Nazi Germany (Chapter 8) and in the countries under Nazi occupation (Chapter  9). In Chapter  10 we will explore the same topic in relation to countries associated with Nazi Germany. The distinction is a relevant one. Pressure on 343

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one’s ‘own’ government often had a greater effect than petitions addressed to a ‘foreign’ occupying regime. 4 Christianity and discrimination 4.1 Germany: the Evangelical Church and discrimination against the Jews On 4 October 1933, the following ‘Vision’ was published in a Christian weekly in Breslau, the Evangelischer Ruf: — Sunday service: The entrance hymn is sung, the pastor stands in front of the alter and says: — ‘Nichtarier are requested to leave the church.’ — No one moves. — ‘Nichtarier are requested to leave the church immediately.’ — Again, silence. — ‘Nichtarier are requested to leave the church immediately.’ — At that, Christ stepped down from the cross on the high altar and left the church.37 Two editions later the weekly stated that the president of the government in Breslau had announced a publication ban because it had caused scandal among the population.38 ‘Nichtarier – Non-Arian’ became a commonly used word in Nazi Germany from 7 April 1933 onwards when the law governing civil servants was promulgated after the Reichstag fire. Jews – Nichtarier – were no longer allowed to hold such positions unless they had been appointed before 1 August 1914 or had fought at the front during the First World War. This form of discrimination was later to be ‘imported’ into the German Evangelical Church. Efforts to establish a central church order – a Reichskirche – led in July 1933 to a law that linked the Church to the state. Where ‘German Christians’ acquired the advantage in church communities, criticism of pastors with Jewish roots followed, as did critique of Christianity’s Jewish heritage. This varied from rejection of the Old Testament to the rejection of the apostle Paul. At the National Synod of the Prussian Church in 1933 – referred to above as the ‘brown synod’ – the representatives were obliged to vote on a proposal to exclude those of ‘nonArian origins’ or those married to someone of ‘non-Arian origins’ from church office. The opposition formed the minority, its spokesperson drowned out during the synodal meetings. The synod compromised by allowing ‘non-Arians’ to continue to hold their present office and excluding ‘non-Arians’ from such offices in the future. Of the 18,000 Evangelical pastors in German in 1933, less that 0.2 per cent could be designated as ‘non-Arian’ according to the Nazi regulations. Seventeen thereof were pastors in the Prussian Church; eleven had already been appointed prior to 1 August 1914 or had served at the front during the First World War. The law on Arians thus applied to only six pastors.39 This relatively low figure was given by way of explanation for the fact that even in oppositional circles the law on Arians was not seen by everyone 344

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as a core theme of critique. The theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, however, was not among them. He referred to the July 1933 law equating pastors with civil servants as a ‘fatal privilege’ of the German Evangelical Church. It not only made the national discrimination against Jewish pastors a fact, but it also led to the exclusion of Jewish candidates from university-level theological studies.40 Bonhoeffer joined forces with the pastor in Dahlem, Martin Niemöller, and wrote – as observed in Chapter 2 – a theological critique of the law against Arians that became the foundational text of the Notbund – Emergency Covenant of oppositional pastors.41 He encountered hesitation within his own circles, including the leading theological of the Bekennende Kirche, Karl Barth. The latter did not exclude the possibility of a schism within the German Evangelical Church at that moment, just on account of the issue of anti-Jewish discrimination. He expected more malignant measures and more bogus doctrine to occasion the rupture. It has to be observed in hindsight that he later did fully grasp the significance of the law against Arians for Jewish Christians and for the Church – and thereby for the emerging Bekennende Kirche.42 Between 1933 and the beginning of 1937, the Evangelical Church in Germany was preoccupied for the most part with itself: the centralization of its ecclesial administration and the relationship between the Church and National Socialist renewal. Two wings had formed: the ‘German Christians’, who extended the racist ideas of National Socialism with a religious interpretation, and the Protestants of the Bekennende Kirche, for whom the purity of the confession represented a commandment. The image became somewhat diffuse thereafter. Growing disagreement within the Bekennende Kirche led to its inability to make a critical statement concerning the Nuremberg race laws, laws that were evidently acceptable to the ‘German Christians’. During the Synod of the Prussian Bekennende Kirche in Berlin-Steglitz (September 1935), a discussion on the issue ended in ‘desperation’.43 The Synod had been influenced by a law published simultaneously that associated pastors even more with the state and regulated their finances.44 Reference is made to a number of attacks, five in total, on rectories in Nassau-Hessen, Bavaria and the Rhineland during the Reichskristallnacht. The attacks took place in villages without Jewish residents where the people were so enraged that they took out their anger on the local church representatives, condemning them as ‘Judenknecht – servant to Jews’. Bonhoeffer’s prediction from 1933 was thus fulfilled: what the Church allows to happen to the Jews today, it will suffer itself tomorrow.45 Things were different in a number of places. In the church in Barmen, for example, where the foundations of the Confessing Church were first articulated, Pastor Karl Immer appeared at the Sunday service without his official garb. He declared that he was unable and unwilling to preach after the Word of God had been set alight nearby – a clear reference to the local synagogue that had been burned to the ground.46 Julius von Jan, the pastor in Oberlenningen (Württemberg), addressed his congregation on 16 November 1938, the day of penance. He no longer considered it justifiable to remain silent and he preached on Jeremiah 22,29 (‘O land, land, land. Hear the word of the Lord’). Where, he asked, is the man who cried out in the name of God and of justice as Jeremiah did? The pastor was arrested and assaulted.47 345

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As observed in Chapter  2, ‘German Christians’ in Bad Godesberg put together a Declaration on church order in April 1939 in an endeavour to broaden their support. One of its statements reads: ‘On the question of the relationship between Judaism and Christianity we say: the Christian faith stands in an unbridgeable religious opposition to Judaism.’ Hanns Kerrl, Minister for Ecclesial Affairs, insisted that the Godesberg Declaration be applied to the entire German Evangelical Church. On 31 May 1939, the conference of Church administrators responded positively and a number of Lutheran bishops, including Wurm and Marahrens, accepted the document with a few modifications. The German Evangelical Church declared itself ready ‘in complete dedication’ to align itself with the ‘national political construction work’ of the Führer.‘A serious and consciously responsible policy on race was necessary among the common people in order to keep the nation pure.’48 This was something of a Protestant paradox. At the end of the 1930s, the German Evangelical Church, which was closer to Jewish culture than the Catholic Church on account of its principle of biblical primacy, underwent an aggressive process of ‘Entjudung – de-Jewification’, the removal of Jewish concepts from Christian usage. This anti-Jewish campaign included the scrapping of names and expressions from the hymn book (such as God Zebaoth, Hosanna, Jehovah) as well as the modification of certain church names (such as the Jerusalem church, the Tabor church, the Zion church). Anti-Semitism was even included as part of the confession of faith on occasion. On 26 February 1939, for example, a German Christian pastor asked the school children who had come to confess their faith (Konfirmationsfeier) in the Advent church in the north of Berlin the customary questions. One of them inquired: ‘ “Will you fight against Rome and Judah all your life?” The response: “Yes, with the help of God.” ’49 4.2 Germany: the Catholic Church and discrimination against the Jews In contrast to the Evangelical Church, the Catholic Church in Nazi Germany was not engaged in a debate concerning central church order. The hierarchy – in essence the bishops – were responsible for church leadership and were expected to act accordingly. The concordat agreed in 1933 established the framework within which the Church and state were to communicate with one another. The said communication tended to be critical as a rule, because the totalitarian state was intent on taking over the social institutions the Church sought to control, while the Church condemned the Germanic ideology as a form of neo-paganism. Nevertheless, a variety of sometimes minimal mutual loyalties continued to be accounted for. The bishops were able to speak as a collective within the framework of two episcopal conferences: the northern and central conference in Fulda and the southern conference in Munich. When the Nazis organized a boycott of Jewish businesses in April 1933, the chairs of both conferences, Cardinal Bertram (Archbishop of Breslau) and Cardinal Faulhaber (Archbishop of Munich), were confronted on the issue by Rabbi Leo Baeck, the president of the Jewish umbrella organization, the Reichsvertretung der Deutschen Juden – Reich’s Deputation of the German Jews. They reacted with silence. At the same 346

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time, the philosopher Edith Stein wrote a letter to Pius XI asking him to speak out in public against the boycott but the Pope did not respond. The exchange of thoughts on the issue provides adequate insight into the line of argumentation. In a circular letter to the German archbishops, Cardinal Bertram expressed his objections to adopting an official position. The boycott had to do with an economic struggle with ‘an interest group that is not close to us in ecclesial terms’. An episcopal initiative might thus be interpreted as interference in matters that did not belong to the competence of the episcopacy. Such an initiative, moreover, would not be without consequences. For his part, the Archbishop of Munich pointed out that the Nazi measure against the Jews was so unchristian that every Christian – not only the clergy – had to stand up to it. At the same time, however, he observed that the Catholic authorities had more important issues to deal with, such as the question of sterilization and the fight for the continued existence of Catholic schools and associations. Cardinal Faulhaber was of the opinion that the Jews could defend themselves. To him, the swift end to the boycott was evidence of this.50 The German bishops offered no official or public protest against either the Nuremberg race laws or the Reichskristallnacht. On 11 November 1938, two days after the pogrom, Cardinal Faulhaber was himself the target of an aggressive demonstration by Nazi supporters in front of the episcopal palace. Windows were smashed, doors were forced from their hinges, and the cardinal’s private chapel was damaged. The demonstration was the result of a call from Adolf Wagner, the Gauleiter of Munich, published in all the morning papers, inviting people to gather that evening against ‘world Judaism and its black and red allies’. The ‘black ally’ was thus confronted with an immediate after-effect of the insurgence against Jewish property.51 A positive if indirect reaction to the Nuremberg laws can also be attributed to the prince-bishop of the diocese of GrazSeckau whose chancellor notified parish priests to follow the laws with care for every marriage celebration.52 But different reactions were also possible. Father Bernard Lichtenberg, appointed ‘Dompropst’ (provost) of the Cathedral of Saint Hedwig in Berlin in 1938, after having offered a prayer for the Jews on the evening after the Reichskristallnacht. He reminded those in the church that a (burning) synagogue was also a house of God. He was to pray for the persecuted every Sunday thereafter, whatever their faith. He was arrested in October 1941 for his criticism of the Nazi witch-hunt against the Jews and convicted of ‘misuse of the pulpit’. He died on his way to the concentration camp in Dachau on 5 November 1941. 4.3 Germany: the Evangelical Church and the deportation of the Jews The deportation of Jews from Germany commenced in the autumn of 1941. The issue was raised at a conference of ecclesial administrators on 21 October of the same year. It would appear from the notes taken by Lutheran Bishop Theophil Wurm (Württemberg) that they did not see any point in bringing a case on the matter before the state authorities. In a letter addressed to a senior Nazi functionary in 1942, however, he states that he had 347

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learned from returning holiday makers what was going on in the occupied territories: the systemic murder of Jews and Poles. Even those who consider the prominent place held by Jews in society to be detrimental, the bishop observed, cannot accept the idea that one nation has the right to eradicate another by introducing measures that relate to every individual without paying heed to personal guilt.53 Two months later, the ecclesial administrators (‘German Christians’) of a number of Landeskirchen – Regional Churches – published a memorandum on the position of Evangelical Jews in their institutions. They were to be expelled from the German churches, in which ‘Rassejüdische Christen – Christians of Jewish race’ had no place and no rights. Two days before Christmas 1941, the church chancery ordered the Spiritual Advisory Body of the German Evangelical Church to call upon the authorities ‘to take appropriate measures, such that baptised non-Arians be kept away from the ecclesial life of the German flock’. Such baptised non-Arians were to seek ways to practise their faith separately within their own institutions.54 Bishop Wurm was not associated with the ‘German Christians’. On the contrary, at a climax in the church’s struggle he spent a short period in prison on account of his resistance to their pursuit of power. ‘He was very firmly in the saddle with his Landeskirche, and could count upon the devoted and loyal support of the great majority of both clergy and laity.’55 He supported the social suppression of the Jews, but not their annihilation, and while he was not against the fact that the church was engaged in a dispute with Judaism, he did not support that way in which it was being pushed to extremes. When an (early) deportation from Baden was being planned in November 1941, Bishop Wurm took up his pen in support of a 66-year-old Jewish citizen, albeit one whom the bishop himself described as ‘an anti-Semitic Christian’. A pre-war statement addressed by the bishop to the Minister of Justice is of particular interest. He observes that the state had the right to challenge the Jews as a dangerous element and that he considered the admonitions of historical figures such as Heinrich von Treitschke or Adolf Stöcker on the pernicious influence of Judaism on religion, morals, literature, the economy and politics to be relevant. He writes that he himself, twenty years earlier and as leader of the Evangelical mission in Stuttgart, had openly contested the infiltration of Judaism in the social services and not without success.56 But pastors had to be reminded of the words of Jesus: what advantage does a person have if he has gained the whole world, but has suffered the loss of his own soul? It is for this reason, he states, that the church authorities admonish the people, knowing that they will be reviled as servants of the Jews and be threatened with the same reprisals as those faced by the Jews.57 In 1941, a group of Christians turned to their Bavarian bishop Hermann Diem with the criticism that the Evangelical Church in Germany had been silent on the persecution of the Jews. In their opinion, it was the Church’s special duty to take a stand against Christian anti-Semitism, whereby the deportation of Jews and the passivity of the Church was excused as the curse Israel had ‘earned’.58 Bishop Diem suggested that his fellow bishops should use the occasion of the third Sunday of Advent to preach with clarity on the issue. Bishop Wurm refused to do so in his diocese in Württemberg,59 348

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politely excusing himself with the claim that he did not want to endanger anyone, but preferred to take personal responsibility for any protest.60 At the beginning of February 1942, however, Bishop Wurm asked himself, in a memorandum to the chancery of the German Evangelical Church – its political department – if it was right to make the already ‘unfortunate [. . .] non-Arian Christians [. . .] even more unfortunate by refusing them participation in our religious services?’ A year later he wrote about the ‘Ausrottung’ or systematic extermination of the Jews as a denial of human dignity that was so essential in a civilized nation. The Church’s silence on the matter, the bishop insisted, was the result of concern for the reputation of Germany abroad. In the course of 1943 he sent similar memoranda to the authorities in Württemberg (8 February), to Adolf Hitler (16 July) and to the German government (20 December).61 He wrote to the Führer that the persecution and extermination of the Jews was a ‘violation of the true foundations of western thought and engagement, and directed against the God given right to a dignified existence’. Bishop Wurm’s protest was not a public one, but it would appear that news of his letter to Hitler reached as far as London.62 In June 1943, the church’s Spiritual Advisory Body (Geistliche Vertrauensrat) discussed the intention of the Nazi government to use its authority to dissolve marriages between Jews and Christians. Bishop Marahrens observed that he had sent an ‘Eil-Eingabe’ – an emergency memorandum – to the Minister of Foreign Affairs in which the Nazi regime was spared critique, but the Church’s support for those in mixed marriages was confirmed. The Church had to take responsibility, the bishop argued, ‘when the sanctity of life is not respected, marriages are ruined, and innocent people are treated with injustice and violence’. The bishop petitioned the minister to avoid burdening necessary political measures with severe injustice, whereby ‘a (moral) weight is laid on the conscience of our people that it cannot bear’.63 The war became more of a reality in Nazi Germany in 1943 with the publication of the lists of those who had died serving their country and as a result of night-time bombings on towns and villages. Pastors and their faithful alike were gripped by their own will to survive, but among the shrinking ranks of the ‘brothers’ of the Confessing Church, revelations about the purpose and goal of the deportations continued to cause alarm. In October 1943, at the final synod of their Prussian church in Breslau, the Fifth Commandment (Thou Shalt Not Kill) became the central theme of discussions: an attack on one’s neighbour and thereby on the command to love one’s neighbour is ultimately fratricide. ‘The annihilation of people simply because they are family members of a criminal, or are old, mentally sick or belonging to a foreign race, is not the power of the sword granted to the authorities by God.’64 ‘Let us contritely confess: we Christians are also to blame for despising and denying his scared commandments. We have often remained silent, we have been too hesitant and not stood up enough or at all for our conviction that God’s sacred commandments are unconditional.’65 A degree of contrition is evident here that was only to emerge with clarity in Stuttgart in 1945, after the war: guilt and penance in a public confession of the German Evangelical Church for its moral neglect in the Nazi period. 349

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4.4 Germany: the Catholic Church and the deportation of the Jews On 13 November 1941 Cardinal Faulhaber wrote to his colleague Cardinal Bertram. In his city, Munich, a thousand ‘Nichtarier’ had been deported under barbarous circumstances. Two thousand more were to follow. And in spite of the fact that these round-ups took place in the middle of the night, the archbishop continued, the scenes were reminiscent of the past deportation of African slaves. The question had reached him from among the laity whether there was still something the bishops – the only ones with the courage to speak at such times – could do for these fellow human beings, even if it was only to lessen the indescribable harshness with which such deportations were implemented. Faulhaber himself was of the opinion that the bishops would achieve nothing by approaching those charged with the implementation of the deportations who blindly accepted the regime’s racist principles. He considered it an obligation, nevertheless, for the German episcopate to stand up for those ‘Nichtarier’ who had become ‘new creations’ and children of the Catholic Church through baptism. The bishops could demand that they be treated with leniency from the humanitarian perspective – something the racist fanatics did not recognize – and bearing in mind Germany’s historical honour.66 Cardinal Bertram responded six days later with three reasons for being silent. The first was that Jews wearing the yellow star were not prevented from entering Catholic churches. The Catholic faithful had to and would display sufficient Christian spirit to approach non-Arian believers with love and Christian tolerance. Second, he had heard from Bishop Wilhelm Berning (Osnabrück), member of the Prussian State Council and permanent contact person between the bishops and the Nazi government, that the National Socialist ideology would not recognize ‘new creations’ through baptism. Race was and remained the primary criterium. Third, the episcopate should be aware of the fact that its potential influence was limited, and that it should thus focus on matters of greater importance for the Church, such as hostile anti-Christian and anti-church influences in the formation of young Catholics.67 Cardinal Faulhaber acquiesced. He had heard from Bishop Berning that Church instances could make contact with the local offices of the State Police to ascertain whether Christian ‘non-Arians’ had been earmarked for deportations intended for Jews. This would allow the Church the possibility of providing the said Christians with pastoral care prior to deportation. These Jews were being deported to territories to the east of Germany where they would not be allowed to participate in the religious services organized by the Poles.68 At the bishops’ conference held in the same month of November 1941, the question of the ‘evacuation’ of Jews was discussed. Clergy were to be encouraged to provide the aforementioned pastoral care to Catholic ‘Nichtarier’ destined for evacuation. ‘Non-Arian priests and nuns were to prepare themselves to work in the camps as pastors, especially for the children. In increasing measure, people in mixed marriages were presented with an ultimatum: divorce or evacuation. The bishops discussed whether a “separatio tori, mensae et habitationis” (separation from table and bed) might be considered on request of the “Arian” side, following the stipulations of Catholic canon law.’69 350

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The bishops in Nazi Germany abstained from general protest against the deportation of Jews to labour camps, as they initially understood it. They concentrated rather on providing pastoral care for those among them who had been baptized as Catholic, who were to be supported in the best possible way when deportation proved to be inevitable. They also registered their opposition on the basis of Catholic marriage law to increasing pressure on those in mixed marriages in Nazi Germany to seek divorce. Cardinal Bertram protested against this, but not, as he himself saw it, from a lack of love of German culture or an underestimation of the damaging consequences of Jewish influence in the said culture. He protested rather because he considered there to be inviolable human obligations towards members of other races and because the principles of law and morality maintained by Catholics and other true Christians were being violated.70 In March 1943, the deportation of Roma and Sinti was also the subject of an episcopal debate. Bishop Joseph Godehard Machens (Hildesheim) wrote to Cardinal Bertram stating that ‘Catholic gypsy children from four different places in his diocese – it could have been more’ had been rounded up from children’s homes. As ‘protector of the oppressed’, the bishops had a duty to inform the faithful about such a serious act of disrespect of human rights and of God. ‘The impression had to be avoided,’ the bishop continued, ‘that we do not dare say the words “Non licet tibi” (You are not permitted) out loud.’ The cardinal responded with the suggestion that the pulpit should be used to point to the ‘eminent and principled significance of the Ten Commandments for the life of all the people’. No pastoral letter was prepared, however, nor was any protest registered with the state authorities.71 Cardinal Bertram wrote to Himmler and the Reichssicherheitshauptamt – Reich Security Head Office – for the first time on 17 November 1943. The bishops had been receiving more and more reports about ‘degrading’ conditions in the prison camps for ‘Nichtarier’. With a view to Germany’s reputation at home and abroad and accounting for requirements of Christian moral teaching concerning obligations to one’s fellow human beings – including those of different races – the bishops requested that living conditions in the camps be investigated. A potential improvement might be to allow prisoners to respond to letters from family members. The bishops also asked for priestly pastoral care for Catholic prisoners. The ‘profound moral influence of the sacramental life on the collective behaviour of those who participate in it’ might prove useful to the camp commandants.72 There are indications that Cardinal Bertram’s cautious stance elicited critique within his own circles. A letter addressed to Lorenz Jaeger, Archbishop of Paderborn, on 30 June 1944 defending his policy would appear to confirm this. Senior Nazi officials had informed him that a pastoral letter had been interpreted in the British media as reflecting a ‘hostile anti-German tenor’. He was thus inclined, more than was his wont, to ask: ‘Quia expediat?’ (Who benefits?). Even if a pastoral letter were to contain nothing that was particularly focused on Germany, Bertram insisted, the hostile press were at liberty to draw such conclusions. The cardinal reminded his fellow bishops of the maxim he intended to maintain: ‘in necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas’ (unity in necessary things, freedom in doubtful things). A critical statement on the conduct of war was a subject 351

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that enemy powers would be only too happy to employ in their propaganda against the German authorities.73 Cardinal Bertram’s caution had its roots long before the war in the Kulturkampf of 1871, when Reichskanzler Bismarck set out to contest the Catholic Church as a ‘Fremdkörper – foreign body’ in a united Germany after the declaration of papal infallibility by Pope Pius IX . In response, Catholics set out to demonstrate that they too could be guided by their love for the fatherland. For Bertram, old enough to have experienced the Kulturkampf at first hand, this meant that the Church’s loyalty to the authorities should be maintained wherever possible. He ‘was determined to avoid any threat to pastoral care and displayed an uncompromisable will not to endanger the pastoral mission of the Church through provocation of the regime’.74 A Vatican diplomat had earlier observed that the German episcopate had been silent about the deportations. On 9 December 1942, the auditor of the nunciature in Berlin, a certain Giuseppe Di Meglio, prepared a nota on what he referred to as the Jewish problem. He was soon to leave Berlin and was busy taking stock of his diplomatic activities. ‘A few priests and Catholic laypeople have observed with astonishment that, in the last analysis, the German episcopate has made no single collective judgement concerning the serious mistreatment of the said Jews, while the French episcopate immediately adopted a position against the race laws in France introduced by Marshal Pétain and dissenting voices have also been raised in other states.’75 It should be observed with respect to this evaluation that the nuncius himself, Cesare Orsenigo, likewise lacked renown as a public and energetic critic of the Nazi government’s deportation of the Jews. 4.5 Dietrich Bonhoeffer Judging from hindsight – and thus with an understanding of Church developments that have, in the meantime, become history – the minister and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer can be seen as the most important figure in the Church’s opposition to National Socialism. Dietrich was born in Breslau on 4 February 1906 together with his sister Sabine. The twins were the sixth and seventh children of Karl Bonhoeffer and Paula von Hase, both of whom had upper middle-class roots. The family line on Karl’s side stretched back to a certain Bonhoef, who had left the Dutch city of Nijmegen in 1513 for Schwabisch Hall in the southern part of Germany. His father Karl was a psychiatrist, associated with the university in Breslau from 1904. In 1912, he was appointed professor of psychiatry and neurology at Humboldt University in Berlin and at the Charité hospital, a prestigious chair in the German academic world. The First World War hit the family hard. Their second son Walter died at the front in Flanders. For Dietrich – 12 years old in November 1918 – there was an ‘invisible boundary’ within the family that was also ‘not to be crossed’ between those who had taken part in the war and the smaller number who had matured during the collapse of German society (‘Zusammenbruch’). This new generation – his generation – had to be creative and no longer accept responsibility for the existing order. They had to create their own form of living based on radical criticism.76 352

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Dietrich opted for theology when he was 17 years old, and following family tradition he chose the university in Tübingen and the student group ‘Igel’. He initially saw his choice of study as a form of ‘vocation’, throwing himself into the study of theology as a science with intellectual curiosity. The Church came into the picture much later. ‘In contrast to theologians who stem from an ecclesial-theological environment and only later discover that there is also a “world”, Bonhoeffer started in the academy only to discover the Church at a later date.’77 In 1924, the 18-year-old travelled to Italy with his brother Klaus. The latter was much taken by the classical monuments in Rome, while Dietrich was drawn to the Catholic churches, especially Saint Peter’s basilica. The journey left Protestant Bonhoeffer with a lifelong fascination for the liturgy and culture of Catholicism. After Tübingen, Dietrich continued his studies at Humboldt University in Berlin, defending his doctoral dissertation in December 1927 under the supervision of theologian Reinhold Seeberg. His dissertation was entitled Communio sanctorum: The Ecclesial Community in Lutheran Church Doctrine and was a dogmatic study of the sociology of the Church.78 During his studies he prepared himself for pastoral ministry by working with a children’s group at the Evangelical parish in the Berlin suburb of Grunewald. He met some of them later in a youth group, which also included young Jewish participants. ‘Almost all of the members of this group lost their lives to Hitler.’79 In 1928, Dietrich spent an academic year as assistant at the German Evangelical parish in Barcelona. He enjoyed Spanish life and with the encouragement of his brother Klaus he became a bullfighting enthusiast. He returned to Berlin in 1929 and was given the position of assistant while he worked on his ‘Habilitation’. On this occasion he wrote about Akt und Sein, Transzendentalphilosophie und Ontologie in der systematische Theologie – Act and Being: Transcendental Philosophy and Ontology in Systematic Theology. The emerging influence of the philosopher Martin Heidegger is clearly observable in this work. The official academic ceremony took place on 18 July 1930. At that moment, however, Dietrich was still determined to continue his studies and this time his attention was drawn to the United States and the Union Theological Seminary in New York, a former Presbyterian seminary that had evolved into a college for every denomination and a centre for liberal Christianity. UTS also had ecumenical ambitions and it was in New York that Bonhoeffer’s own ecumenical interests started to grow. A year later in September 1931, he served as a member of the German delegation at the annual meeting of the World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship Through the Churches in Cambridge (UK ). He was later to be elected to the board as one of its three European youth secretaries. In 1931, Bonhoeffer found himself at a crossroads in his life. He was an unsalaried lecturer in theology at the Humboldt University. In November of the said year he was ordained pastor in the St. Matthäuskirche – St Matthew’s Church in Berlin. He met theologian Karl Barth, who had transferred from the pulpit to the lecture theatre, from preaching to the work of a professor of systematic theology, away from the concrete representations that clouded his radical theological insights. Bonhoeffer took the opposite course. The theologian with an interest in systematics was more attracted to the 353

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life of the pastor and to providing an answer to question of the plausibility and legitimation of his words. In addition, his studies in the United States had kindled an interest in ethical questions and in concrete forms of grace and action.80 He thus concluded that he had to be active in the Church as a ‘servant of Jesus Christ’. Hitler’s Machtergreifung – Seizure of Power in 1933 only underlined this conviction. ‘Christian pacifism, which I so vehemently contested not so long ago, became self-evident for me.’81 Bonhoeffer was initially positive towards the evolution of the 28 Landeskirchen into a single Protestant Reichskirche, which filled many with enthusiasm in the weeks following the Nationale Erhebung – National Rising. He hoped that the ‘German Christians’ would be submerged in this one great church. But one particular theme drew his critique from the outset: discrimination against Jewish pastors. He wrote in March 1933 that it was the task of Christian preaching to say: ‘Here, where Jew and German stand together under the word of God, here the Church must show that it is still the Church or no longer so.’82 Bonhoeffer’s name was included in the manifesto of the oppositional ‘Young Reformation Movement’ in May 1933. He contributed to a Confession that was formulated under the leadership of Friedrich von Bodelschwingh in the church-run Bethel facility. The manifesto makes a clear statement about the so-called ‘Arian paragraph’ that discriminated against Jewish pastors in the Reichskirche. The passage in question was written by Bonhoeffer himself: ‘Christians with their roots in the pagan world should rather submit themselves to church persecution than abandon their fraternity with Jewish Christians given form by word and sacrament in any manner whatsoever, either willingly or under duress.’83 In 1935, shortly after the implementation of the Nuremberg race laws, he made what was later to become a renowned statement: ‘Nur wer für die Juden schreit, darf auch gregorianisch singen – Only those who cry out for the Jews may also sing Gregorian Chant.’ At that moment he himself was ready to resign from the struggle raging within German Protestantism, but he was nevertheless the first to establish a priority: the German Evangelical Church would belie its very nature if it were to declare the Arian paragraph – the first measure taken in the legal discrimination against Jews in Nazi Germany – applicable to its own pastors. When Ludwig Müller was elected Reich bishop at the national synod (27 September 1933) in Lutherstadt Wittenberg, Bonhoeffer and others were handing out pamphlets in the vestibule in name of the oppositional Pfarrernotbund. A month later he took up a post as pastor to the German community in London, moving in to the rectory in suburban Forest Hill. This allowed him to offer outsiders in the Anglo-Saxon world critical insight into the conflict from his new position as pastor and rooted in his function in the ecumenical endeavour. He got to know the Anglican Bishop of Chichester, George K.A. Bell, then president of the ecumenical organization ‘Life and Work’; a friendship that was later to become particularly significant during the war. In May 1933, he arranged for the bishop to write a pastoral letter against the ideas of the ‘German Christians’. This was an indirect declaration of support to the Synod in Barmen, which had established the foundations of the Bekennende Kirche. Bonhoeffer was not present at the synod. 354

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Bonhoeffer returned to Germany in July 1935 where he became senior lecturer in a programme for young pastors organized by the Bekennende Kirche in Prussia and located on a country estate in Finkenwalde, a small town close to Stettin. In terms of career and human development this was among the most valuable experiences of his life. He was able to share his theological insights with dozens of pastors and quickly gathered a circle of friends and like-minded individuals about him. This inspired his endeavour to establish a convivium, an assembly of like-minded pastors and theologians. He also taught young Protestants preparing for the Konfirmation, one of whom was Maria von Wedemeyer his future fiancée. While in Finkenwalde, Bonhoeffer experienced disunity within the Bekennende Kirche as well as pressure from the Nazi authorities. He found it difficult to accept that promises made in Barmen and Dahlem had been so quickly and so extensively withdrawn. ‘We are not drifters, who obey this leadership today and another tomorrow. We have no reason to be unfaithful [to our word] because an alternative church leadership is being offered us from outside.’84 He argued that it was a ‘legitimate evangelical disposition to distance oneself from the official ministry, yes even from any exercise of the pastoral ministry, rather than submit oneself to a false (read: political) leadership’.85 In a wave of arrests and juridical limitations placed on the Bekennende Kirche in 1937, the theologate at Finkenwalde seems to have been spared. But at the end of the same year it was forced to close its door. A new form of formation was implemented in the so-called ‘Sammelvikariate – collective pastorate’. Candidates for the ministry were spread out in small groups in different church districts where superintendents and pastors were appointed to ensure their training. Bonhoeffer himself thus served as assistant pastor and ‘lecturer’ in Pomerania. On account of his oppositional stance and writings, however, he finally drew the attention of the authorities. In January 1938 his permission to reside in Berlin was withdrawn. An additional threat also became a reality at this time, namely a Wehrmacht recruitment drive. As an experienced recruit, Bonhoeffer was obliged to register himself for military service on 3 November 1938. This implied the further obligation to report changes of address and the requirement to ask permission to travel abroad. He was called up in May 1939 and turned to his father for help. The latter managed to arrange a deferment and Bonhoeffer left for England in the same month, his furlough-pass helping him to cross the border. In London he had the opportunity to meet the Dutch pastor Willem Visser ’t Hooft, who had been appointed in the meantime as secretary to the Provisional Committee of the World Council of Churches. Visser ’t Hooft later recalled the way Bonhoeffer had spoken to him about the approaching war: ‘remarkably free of illusions’ and ‘sometimes close to clairvoyant’.86 He travelled to the United States where he accepted a series of speaking engagements and was even offered the opportunity to serve German refugees in New York as pastor. He turned it down. He admitted to himself that he found it difficult to be completely clear concerning his reasons for returning to Germany. ‘A sign of uncertainty, or a sign of something that transcends our consciousness?’87 355

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On the night of 7/8 July, a ship carrying Dietrich and his brother Karl-Friedrich sailed out of New York harbour. Bonhoeffer was on his way to his final destination. In that same period he was preoccupied with the theme of an ‘early death’. He wrote to his Finkenwalde students about ‘death from outside’ and the ‘death from inside’: ‘that it may be given to us, that the death from the outside will not find us before we are made ready for it through this death of our own: let this be our prayer. Then our death is really only the passageway to the perfect love of God.’88 In 1940 he was appointed to the function of visitator for the Confessing Church outside Berlin. This made sense now that contact between the pastors was being made more and more difficult. Bonhoeffer made three trips through Eastern Prussia. In September 1940, the Reichssicherheitshauptamt banned him from speaking in public on account of his ‘volksersetzende Tätigkeit – activities as agitator’ and required him to present himself to his local police on a regular basis. Bonhoeffer responded with a letter in which he rejected the accusation that he had been an agitator. He had no desire to identify himself with such circles and made reference to his forefathers and their contribution to the growth of Germany.89 He remained under suspicion nevertheless. In the summer of 1942, Bonhoeffer made his last contribution to the work of the Bekennende Kirche as a free man. He wrote an article on the law and the gospel in which he rejected any distinction. ‘Even the congregation in the catacombs [his sympathizers] will never be deprived of the universality of its mission. [. . .] It will learn that the world is in disorder and that the kingdom of Christ is not of this world, but precisely in this it will be reminded of mission towards the world.’ In the meantime, a solution had been found within the family for his new lack of employment. His brother-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi found him a position in German military intelligence – Abwehr – under the direction of Admiral Wilhelm Canaris. This also meant that he had become part of a conservative opposition to Hitler’s Germany, an opposition that was to evolve into a conspiracy. The Abwehr worked with everyone, including communists and Jews: ‘why not then with the people of the Confessing Church?’ In order to avoid problems in Prussia, Bonhoeffer was stationed in Munich where his superior, Josef Müller, could be trusted. The latter also negotiated a place for him to stay in the Abbey of Ettal, a Benedictine monastery near Oberammergau.90 Bonhoeffer’s work for the Abwehr can be divided into three phases. He took up his post when Nazi Germany was experiencing a flush of victory after the capitulation of France in the summer of 1940. He was free to travel abroad in this period – namely to Switzerland – and re-establish pre-war connections to exchange information. The second phase was characterized by preparations for an actual coup d’état. It started with the invasion of the Soviet Union and ended with a crisis that led to the dismissal of Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch on 19 December 1941. The resistance group within the Abwehr had hoped it could count on him as supreme commander to take over the leadership once Hitler had been eliminated. During the same period, Bonhoeffer was able to inform church contacts abroad about preparations for a coup d’état and attempt to win over support among allied Christians for the formulation of a set of peace terms that would provide the German initiators with some room to manoeuvre. In the third 356

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phase, Bonhoeffer was actively involved in plans to overturn the regime. After a failed attempt to assassinate Hitler in March 1943, the central resistance group under Admiral Canaris was rounded up. Bonhoeffer himself was arrested on 5 April 1943. In September 1941 Bonhoeffer was in Geneva where he met once again with the secretary of the emerging World Council of Churches, Pastor Visser ’t Hooft. It was two months after the Wehrmacht invasion of the Soviet Union and people were impressed with the advances Hitler and his troops were making. Dietrich contradicted reports. This was the beginning of the end, he reported to Visser ’t Hooft. ‘He saw my surprised reaction and added: “He’s never going to succeed.” He was convinced that Hitler was making the same mistake as Napoleon.’91 ‘One of us asked Bonhoeffer: “What are you praying for in the present situation?” Bonhoeffer answered without the slightest hesitation: “If you must know, I’m praying that my country will meet defeat, because I believe this is the only way it can do penance for the suffering it has brought to the world.” ’92 On 30 May 1942, Bonhoeffer was able to travel to neutral Sweden where he could meet his friend Bishop Bell in person the following day and inform him about the conspiracy against Hitler. As a result, the bishop arranged to meet the British Minister of Foreign Affairs, Anthony Eden, on his return to London and appeal to him for the creation of a degree of political space for the German resistance. The answer was negative. The bishop then turned to the ecumenical movement in an effort to gain support for the German resistance. ‘Hitler’s system is doomed, and the crash may come more suddenly and sooner than some expect.’93 The bishop spoke in the House of Lords about the need to distinguish between Nazis and other Germans. He hoped thereby to have clarified the reality of an opposition in Germany and the need to encourage and assist. At Finkenwalde he met a student Eberhard Bethge, who was to become his best friend and spiritual confidant; ultimately his first biographer. The two men lived together up to the moment Eberhard announced his intention to get married to the niece of Dietrich. Shortly afterwards, on 17 January 1943, Dietrich became engaged to Maria von Wedemeyer, the third child of Hans and Ruth von Wedemeyer. Dietrich knew the family – and thus also Maria – from the time he worked in Pomerania as assistant pastor and teacher. They met again in June 1942 when he found himself in Klein-Krössin between trips to Sweden and Italy. She was 18 years old at the time. The engagement did not lead to a marriage; before long the young couple were separated from one another by prison walls. On 13 March 1943 Hitler was scheduled to visit the supreme command of the Heeresgruppe Mitte – Army Group Centre, in the Belorussian city of Smolensk. This was the moment the opposition had chosen to make its move. A bomb was first placed in his plane but failed to detonate. A second attempt also failed. Hitler did not stay long enough in the building for the assassination attempt to be guaranteed any success. Two weeks later, the core of the conservative opposition were arrested, in spite of the fact that there was no immediate connection with the attempted assassination that had not yet been discovered. The Reichssicherheitshauptamt had already been planning to relieve the Abwehr of its independence for quite some time. As a result, Von Dohnanyi was arrested. On 31 March 1943, the family came together to celebrate the 75th birthday of Karl Bonhoeffer. The children and grandchildren sang a cantata by grandfather Walcha entitled 357

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‘Lob den Herrn’. On Hitler’s orders, Karl was awarded the Goethe medal for art and science on the occasion. Three days later – on 5 April 1943 – Dietrich was arrested. According to what had been agreed, Bonhoeffer confined himself to strictly ecclesial activities and passed on responsibility for other details to Admiral Canaris and his brother-in-law Von Dohnanyi. The charges against him were finally stated as: ‘Wehrkraftzersetzung’ – subversion of the war effort. The first deadline for his appearance in front of the Reichskriegsgericht – Military Court of Justice, was set for 16 September 1943, but this was constantly postponed. Imprisonment came as something of a shock to Bonhoeffer. He meditated on a period that was now in the past and on the separation his new situation had forced upon him. The first text he wrote in prison bore the title ‘awareness of time’. He was allowed visits from his parents and fiancée in the building in Berlin-Tegel, where some of the wardens appeared to be silent opponents of the Nazi regime. They carried messages to the outside and allowed him certain privileges during visiting hours. He no longer had the opportunity to attend religious services, but this inspired him to focus his attention all the more on theological questions, in particular the modern ‘extra-religious’ interpretation of biblical concepts in a secular world. After the failed assassination attempt on Hitler’s life on 20 July 1944 and the bloody repression that followed, the situation changed. Dietrich was convinced that his days were numbered. A plan of escape was devised in September of the same year but it had to be called off when he received news of his brother Klaus’ arrest on 1 October. In the same month, Dietrich was transferred to the cellars of the Reichsicherheithauptamt prison in Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse in Berlin where he was interrogated and refused further contact with his fiancée and family. Unlike his brother, Dietrich was not tortured. Around the time of his birthday he was transferred to Buchenwald concentration camp. His parents and fiancée were not informed. Artillery fire from the advancing American army could already be heard in Buchenwald on 1 April 1945. Two days later, Bonhoeffer was brought by truck with other prisoners to Schönberg near Passau in the south of Germany. Hitler had apparently chosen 5 April 1945 as the day on which those who had participated in the conspiracy against him – including Von Dohnanyi and Bonhoeffer – were to be executed. The discovery of a diary kept by Admiral Canaris containing numerous details about the conspiracies convinced him that all those involved should be put to death. On Sunday 8 April, Bonhoeffer organized a service at the request of his fellow prisoners. After the service he was taken from Schönberg to the concentration camp in Flossenburg (likewise in Bavaria) where he was condemned by a court in the early morning of 9 April to death by hanging. The prison doctor present at the time later reported that he saw Bonhoeffer on his knees and deep in prayer through his half-open door. He found Dietrich to be an extraordinarily kind man, and the dedication and confidence evident in this attitude of prayer touched him deeply. ‘He also prayed briefly at the place of execution and then climbed the stairs to the gallows with courage and self-control. Death followed a few seconds later. I have practiced medicine for almost fifty years and I have rarely seen a man die with such devotion to God.’94 358

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Figure 18 Statue of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (to the right) in the western entrance to Westminster Abbey, London. Gallery of twentieth-century martyrs. As one of ten modern martyrs, a statue of Dietrich Bonhoeffer was placed above the western entrance to Westminster Abbey in London in 1998. 4.6 Germany: churches and baptized Jews Assistance to baptized Jews was a recurring theme of both Christian churches, evident in their internal discussions and in their critical messages addressed to the Nazi authorities. Both churches were also engaged in initiatives to provide concrete help. Two Catholic bishops stand out in this regard, namely the Bishop of Berlin and the Archbishop of Vienna. The fact that such assistance was offered in both capitals is not accidental. In relative terms, Berlin and Vienna housed the largest number of Jews who – themselves or their nineteenth- and twentieth-century predecessors – had been baptized as a means of acquiring access, as it were, to the dominant (Christian) culture. Information on the number of baptized Jews was put together on the basis of a census organized in the Greater German Reich on 17 May 1939, the first after the implementation of the Nuremberg race law and the Anschluβ. According to racial criteria, there were 330,539 Jews in the country, ‘Volljude’ according to Nuremberg, 297,407 of the ‘Mosaic faith’, 13,126 Protestant (3.9 percent) and 10,403 Catholic (3.1 percent). In addition, the census records 71,126 so-called ‘Mischlinge’ (crossbreeds or hybrids) of the first degree, of whom 34,745 were Protestant and 21,408 were Catholic. A category of second degree ‘Mischlinge’ also existed, numbering 41,456, of whom 24,796 were Protestant and 12,987 were Catholic. The number of Jews in Groβdeutschland who had been baptized as Christians – Protestant and Catholic combined – thus numbered nearly 117,500.95 359

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During the period of discrimination against the Jews, church leaders endeavoured to negotiate on behalf of emigration initiatives. In 1936, for example, Cardinal Bertram sent a request to the American Bishops Conference asking for financial support for Catholic Jews planning to leave the country. The American episcopate’s response was reserved. The request for help had to be considered in combination with a similar request from a Mexican seminary and from priests who had fled the Spanish Civil War. In March 1939, Cardinal Faulhaber asked Pius XII to intercede with the presidents of Brazil and Argentina in an effort to increase the quota of visa permissions for ‘christliche Nichtarier – non-Arian Christians’. He was aware that the heads of state wanted to avoid a ‘mosaïsche flood’ in their respective countries, but the emigration from Nazi Germany was becoming an ever increasing and urgent necessity.96 The papal nuncio in Rio de Janeiro passed on the request. The president of Brazil agreed ‘in omaggio degli Santo Padre’,97 but it was later observed that the conditions for acquiring a visa were so strict that few if any could take advantage of the Brazilian concession, and in spite of its urgency, the request evolved into a lengthy and bureaucratic procedure. In November 1941, permission to grant a visa to Catholic ‘non-Arians’ was put on hold, sine die.98 Assisting Jews to emigrate was the goal of the Sankt Raphael-Verein – Saint Raphael Society, an organization within the German Catholic Church. The society was a product of the Kulturkampf and was established in 1871 to help Catholics forced to emigrate for religious reasons. From 1924 it was subsidised by the state and became a subdivision of the state emigration office. By the end of 1933, the society had established its own office for ‘non-Arian converts’, which joined forces in 1935 with Caritas in Berlin, a major Catholic organization providing social support. The Saint Raphael Society had started in the meantime to work together with the Evangelical ‘Büro Pfarrer Grüber’, an office set up by Pastor Heinrich Grüber in 1938 – after the Reichskristallnacht – to assist Protestant Jews. The Paulus Bund – Saint Paul’s Covenant, had originally been set up for this purpose, but its chair, the jurist and literary historian Heinrich Spiero, together with other Jewish board members had been forced to resign in 1937. Spiero started his own consultancy office but was forced to abandon it in 1938. Pastor Grüber took over his task but was arrested in December 1940. The Nazis ordered that the Covenant’s activities be taken over by the state-controlled Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland – Reich’s Association of the Jews in Germany. The Saint Raphael Society also attracted the attention of the Gestapo. Its secretary, Fr. Max Gröβer, was arrested in 1937 and by the time he was released in 1938 he was a broken man.99 He died in 1940 and was succeeded by Pallottine priest Alex Menningen. Menningen instigated new negotiations with the state emigration office and managed to have the Saint Raphael Society recognized and granted access to financial resources. An office was established in Lisbon and at the Pallottine generalate in Rome dedicated to helping persecuted Catholic Jews in both word and deed. But on 25 June 1941 – a few months prior to the general ban on Jewish emigration – the Saint Raphael Society was outlawed in Nazi Germany. Konrad Graf Von Preysing, Bishop of Berlin, intervened at that moment. He had already established his own ‘Hilfswerk’ in August 1938, a relief organization based in the 360

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episcopal residence that was set up to give advice to the many Catholic Jews in Berlin should they be forced to emigrate. After the closure of the Saint Raphael Society, this inner-church relief organization became an increasingly more important refuge for Jews no longer allowed to emigrate and now threatened with deportation. The cathedral provost Bernhard Lichtenberg supervised its activities until his arrest on 23 October 1941 for praying explicitly for imprisoned Jews during a service. His death was not only punishment for the said public prayer, but also vicarious punishment for his superior Bishop Von Preysing, who was well known for his critical stance towards the Nazi regime.100 Preysing took over the general leadership of the organization in person and function in order to protect others associated with its activities. Bishop Von Preysing enjoyed a unique position among the German bishops. He was born into an aristocratic family in Bavaria and entered the Bavarian diplomatic service before following his call to the priesthood. He served as a priest in Munich and was appointed canon in the archdiocesan Cathedral of Our Lady in 1921. He became bishop of the Bavarian diocese of Eichstätt in 1932 and five years later Bishop of Berlin, the second bishop of a diocese founded in 1930 in predominantly Protestant Prussia. He was also press secretary to the episcopal conference in Fulda at the time, and in this capacity had to fight for the freedom of the Catholic press, which was then subject to severe restrictions after the promulgation of Pius XI ’s encyclical ‘Mit brennender Sorge – With Burning Anxiety’ in 1937. The bishop had no illusions concerning the National Socialist state. After the invasion of Poland in September 1939, his pastoral letters did not address issues such as just war and solidarity with the government. He resigned as press secretary in the middle of 1940 when the chair of the conference sent a birthday wish on behalf of the church to Hitler on 20 April without the authorization of his fellow bishops. Following Lichtenberg’s arrest in 1941, a social worker by the name of Margarete Sommer took responsibility for the everyday affairs of the Berlin-based relief organization. She appeared to be well informed on the deportations and how they were progressing and she was quickly informed about the protocol of the Wannsee Conference in January 1942. On 14 February of the same year she managed to inform Cardinal Bertram about the Jews who had been ‘abtransportiert – evacuated’ to the east. She spoke of the poor conditions in the Litzmannstadt (Łodz) ghetto and made reference to mass executions in Kowno. ‘Both Lithuanian and German “non-Arians”, Christians as well as Jews, are going to their deaths with serene gravity. They are reported to have prayed together at the top of their voices and sung psalms as they went to their death.’101 4.7 Austria: Church and anti-Semitism An Austrian counterpart to these relief measures was set up by Cardinal Theodor Innitzer, the Archbishop of Vienna. The Austrian capital housed 90 per cent of Austria’s Jews. As president of the University of Vienna, he had strongly objected to anti-Semitic activities against Jewish students and made a case for the provision of special pastoral care. At the opening of the Catholic Opus Sancti Pauli in 1936, established in support of the so-called ‘Judenmission – Mission to the Jews’, he spoke about the natural right to 361

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justice and love of which Jews were being deprived. In the spirit of the founder, the Jew and priest Johannes Österreicher, the said mission was a conscious endeavour to reconcile Jews and Catholics. Österreicher had his roots in Moravia and was a prominent priest in Austria. He only managed to escape persecution after the Anschluβ in 1938 because he was warned in advance in the confessional. He fled to Paris and later to the United States. He was among the intellectual vanguard of Jews who had been baptized as Catholics and he made the revival of Catholic resistance to anti-Semitism his life’s work. He was to play an important role in drafting Vatican II ’s 1965 Declaration on the Jews (Nostra Aetate).102 Cardinal Innitzer grew up in a middle-class Catholic family and had once been a member of the Christian Social Party. His background thus exposed him to a certain anti-Semitic tradition. The middle class in the Habsburg Empire formed a sort of social counterpoint to the Jewish bourgeoisie, who had acquired full civil rights in 1867 and acquired considerable wealth in the period of industrialization and liberalism. Jewish city-dwellers were particularly active in the (German language) cultural and academic world of the capital Vienna. But a ‘counterforce’ had evolved in the same capital among the lower middle-class – a social cohesion motivated in part by economic factors and political goals – and anti-Semitism was one of its binding features. Middle class and lower middle-class were ‘embraced’ as it were and united by the lower clergy, who tended to have the same social background. The Christlich-soziale Partei – Christian Social Party – was established in 1893, supported by similar priests who had adopted the ideal formulated by Emperor Joseph II in the eighteenth century that the clergy should be guardians of a just society. The said ideal was now transformed into a political and social mission on behalf of the middle class. This placed them in potential conflict with the episcopal hierarchy as well as its allies, the aristocracy and even the monarchy. Anti-Semitism was a significant factor. In Vienna, where Adolf Hitler had once sought refuge, competition and even conflict arose between a Christian-social, Catholic and Austrian anti-Semitism on the one hand, and a German national, anti-clerical and ‘anti-Habsburg’ variant on the other.103 Around the turn of the century, the Christian Social Party had managed to establish itself as the leading political formation, with Karl Lueger, the Mayor of Vienna, as its most renowned (or perhaps infamous) member and chairman. ‘Its program was based upon Catholic social teaching and represented, more importantly, the interests of the “petite bourgeoisie.” ’104 When the Habsburg emperor was dethroned in the revolution of November 1918, the Christlich-sozialen formed one of the supporting pillars of the First Republic. They were clearly not the party of the monarchy. Anti-Semitism was thus far from unusual within Austrian Catholicism. The bishops were familiar with it from the Interbellum period, because they were young priests at a time when a significant segment of the clergy supported the Christian Social Party. Even Bishop Gföllner (Linz), who had rejected National Socialism in a pastoral letter in 1933 – see Chapter 3 – considered ‘ethical anti-Semitism’ to be acceptable. Resisting ruinous Jewish influence was not only a right, but also ‘a strict and conscientious duty of 362

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every pious Christian’. In 1933, the Austrian episcopate had distanced itself in a pastoral letter from Nazi Germany’s racist obsession, which it claimed would lead to racial hatred and conflict between nations. The letter also condemned unchristian sterilization legislation together with radical anti-Semitism105 and should thus be interpreted as public evidence of the Austrian episcopate’s desire to distance itself from National Socialism in neighbouring Germany. The same episcopate, however, managed to come to terms with Chancellor Dolfuβ and his authoritarian and corporative state.106 In May 1938, a few weeks before the Anschluβ and the beginning of a period of intense anti-Semitic discrimination and persecution, Jesuit George Bichlmair, the successor to Johannes Österreicher who by this time had fled the country, proposed the establishment of a relief organization for ‘non-Arian Catholics’. Bichlmair was a popular student chaplain at the University of Vienna and the personification of the Austrian clergy’s ambivalent attitude towards the Jews. In March 1936, he had argued that baptism did not deliver the Jews from their ‘vile inherited characteristics’. ‘The legacy of killing Christ had so diseased Jews as a collectivity that Jews entering the church would have to work for generations to undo the hereditary damage.’107 But in 1938 he pioneered support for ‘non-Arian Catholics’ and took the initiative in setting up a centre that went beyond its pastoral remit from the outset, providing education, vocational advice and legal services.108 Bichlmair was arrested in November 1939 for counselling Jewish converts to Catholicism and expelled from Vienna. Jesuit Ludiger Born took over at the helm and Cardinal Innitzer relocated the activities of the service to his archiepiscopal palace to protect it against police raids. By the middle of 1940, preparations were underway for the establishment of the Erzbischöfliche Hilfstelle der Caritas für nichtarische Christen – Archiepiscopal Support Centre for non-Arian Christians, which started work on 1 December of the same year. Those who worked at the Hilfstelle understood it in the first instance to be an office providing advice to people who wanted to emigrate. Up to the autumn of 1941, when emigration was forbidden throughout Nazi Germany and the deportations announced their arrival, the centre managed to help 150 ‘wards’ to emigrate. But there was also room for a domestic mission. In cooperation with Protestant organizations in Vienna such as the Evangelical Swedish Mission and the Quaker Society of Friends, the Hilfstelle set up a private school for both Christian and non-confessional Jews. A dedicated space for conducting church funerals of Jews who had been baptized as Catholic was also established at Vienna’s Jewish Cemetery. Jews baptized as Catholics formed part of the so-called ‘nicht-mosaische Juden – non-Mosaic Jews’. They were not numerous in relative terms. In 1938, 7,917 Jews were described as not religious in the orthodox Jewish sense, but some of these were Christian and others were non-confessional. A little more than half (3,836) were Catholic and 1,425 were Evangelical.109 The witch-hunt against the Jews in the immediate aftermath of the Anschluβ also led to a number of Catholic Jews returning to the Jewish fold: in the first few months 1,211, but by 1939 this had fallen to 293, by 1940 to 12 and by 1941 to 5. In 1942, by contrast, records state that 1,702 Jews joined the Catholic Church between March and September 1938.110 Catholic Jews in Vienna, moreover, experienced 363

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considerable opposition from their Jewish ‘Stammgenossen – tribesmen’ – to use the archbishop’s word – who had excluded them from relief services being offered within the Jewish community. Evangelical Jews were given into the care of the Schwedische Israelsmission – Swedish Israel Mission in Vienna, a Lutheran organization established in the 1920s to assist impoverished Jews and promote Jewish–Christian dialogue. This was remarkable, when one bears in mind that the Evangelical Church in Austria maintained a sturdy ‘deutschnationale’ tradition, aligning a Lutheran minority with Greater Germany and – unsurprisingly – with ‘German Christians’. More than a hundred church officials were members of the Austrian National Socialist Party. As early as May 1938, two months after the Anschluβ, Bishop Hans Eder of the Evangelical Church in Austria observed that his pastors no longer dared to stand up for the Jews. The Swedish Israel Mission was thus invited to offer assistance.111 The Swedish pastor Johannes Ivarsson was shocked by the hatred – ‘racial hatred’ – he encountered among the members of his community in Vienna towards the Jews. Rightminded citizens with a clear affinity with Sweden asked the pastor: ‘Do you help Jews? Surely not! That’s unbelievable!’112 Non-confessional Jews were able to turn to the Society of Friends (Quakers) for help. Together with the pastors of the Swedish Mission, Ivarsson and Göte Hedenquist, they too managed to negotiate – sometimes with success – emigration visas for Jews, especially Jewish children. This came to an end with the ban on emigration in 1941. The deportation of Jews from Austria to the ghettos in the Generalgouvernement started in 1940. From that time onwards, the Hilfstelle endeavoured to maintain contact with 1,224 deported Catholics. Cardinal Innitzer informed the Vatican on 20 January 1941 that he had been reliably informed that all the Jews living in Vienna – roughly 60,000 – were scheduled for deportation in the weeks following the end of January, including Jews who had been baptized as Catholics.113 Many of the Catholic Jews who had been ‘evacuated’ to Poland bore their fate with ‘heroic courage’, the cardinal observed, and were sometimes an example for ‘Mosaic’ Jews.114 The deportation of Austrian Jews was discussed at a conference of Austrian bishops in February 1941. The discussion focused on the possibility of providing help for those who had been baptized as Catholics. The bishops decided to turn to the Pope and to use the so-called Peter’s Pence – money collected for the Vatican – to assist the deported. The German bishops also came to hear of this and asked themselves whether the bishops as a whole should not intervene in the interests of humanity or whether the initiative in this regard should be left to Rome. The question was left unanswered. Experienced church leaders saw little possibility of a change or mitigation in Nazi policy, aware as they were that the deportations had been ordered by the Führer himself.115 The Hilfstelle offered concrete assistance to ‘its own’ Jews, but was also confronted with its own impotence and with indifference rooted in (Austrian) anti-Semitic tradition. Cardinal Innitzer informed the Vatican on 20 May 1942 that 20,000 Jews had been deported to the Generalgouvernement, among them roughly 1,000 Catholics whose situation was now desperate. The provision of assistance from Vienna was no longer 364

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possible.116 The Hilfstelle was forced to focus on those left behind, including Jews associated with the Evangelical Swedish Mission and the Quakers who had shut down their activities at the end of 1941, in addition to those who had been willing and able to go into hiding, often in monasteries. The Hilfstelle provided food vouchers to monastery superiors, many of who had offered a place of hiding to Jewish children, and on occasion adults, in their institutions. The intensity of Cardinal Innitzer’s involvement is all the more remarkable when one bears in mind that he had personally and publicly greeted Hitler in 1938 in an endorsement of the Anschluβ. He had done so at the time in the hope that his acquiescence would favour the position of the Catholic Church in ‘Ostmark’, but the said hope evaporated in the space of a couple of weeks. He was also disciplined by the Vatican for his actions, and his public efforts from then on to assist Jews baptized as Catholics came to be seen as a resolute endeavour to rehabilitate himself.

5 Persecution in the annexed nations In the following pages we will focus on the persecution of Jews as well as Roma and Sinti in the regions and states surrounding the Altreich, the German Reich, prior to 1933, which had been or would be annexed or – as with Bohemia and Moravia – subsumed into a protectorate. In the said territories, the National Socialist regime was free to implement orders coming from Berlin without interference. Such a regime had little if any need to deal with opposition, whether from society at large or diplomatic representatives. It was able to count on a loyal system of civil servants and police, segments of domestic administration that had already been cleansed. In annexed territory on Germany’s western border – the French-speaking regions of Alsace, a large part of Lorraine and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg – Jewish citizens had been expelled in large numbers shortly after the German invasion. This policy of ‘abschieben’ (shunning, pushing away) was a typical National Socialist strategy that preceded deportation and mass murder. In Alsace, for example, Robert Wagner, head of the Nazi administration, announced on 14 July 1940 – Bastille Day in France – that ‘Francophiles’ had to leave the city and the country. They were transported to France via Vosges and included a large number of Jews. French-minded citizens and Jews were also expected to leave Lorraine for the departements of France. Of the 23,790 citizens expelled from Alsace and Lorraine, 3,295 were Jews.117 German Jews were also expelled from Baden, the Saarland and the Palatinate: 6,504 in total. Vichy France was a foreign country to these German Jews. They were housed in internment camps set up in the 1930s for political and Jewish refugees. Other ‘undesirable’ categories of the population met the same fate. Roma and Sinti were arrested as ‘asocial elements’ in July 1940 and expelled. A second wave of expulsions followed in the latter part of 1940. In December of that year, for example, 49 ‘professional criminals’, 36 homosexuals, 29 ‘savages’, a Francophile and 146 ‘asocials’ were ‘evacuated’ with their families to Vichy France.118 365

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The Germanification of Alsace and part of Lorraine inclined the Nazi regime to apply the same church policy it had implemented in Sudetenland in 1938 and in occupied western Poland in 1939. Sermons were to be delivered in German only and the Lutheran and Catholic Churches were to be deprived of their legal status. These measures led to disillusionment among ministers and pastors with respect to the prevailing German regime, but they did not inspire ecclesial protest. Records suggest that no warnings were issued from the pulpit concerning the forced emigration of the Jews, which had already been implemented in the months following the rapid capitulation of the French forces. With the memory of the First World War fresh in its mind, the capitulation left a profound impression on the region’s population. Of the 3,900 Jews resident in Luxembourg on the eve of the German invasion of the Grand Duchy on 10 May 1940, roughly 3,000 managed to leave the country in 1940 and 1941. This came to an end, however, with the emigration ban issued in October 1941. A significant portion of the said 3,000 were expelled by the German authorities, but 816 Jews remained in Luxembourg, 664 or whom were ultimately deported in seven transports. Only 53 survived the deportation. The Catholic Church did not react as an institution to the German occupier’s antiSemitic policies although individual priests and lay Catholics did so on occasion and offered concrete assistance.119 Joseph Philippe, the then Bishop of Luxembourg, never made a public statement condemning the forced emigration or deportation of Jews from the Grand Duchy. His silence (he was also uncritical of National Socialist dogma) is ascribed to his decision to avoid public statements and thereby avoid the risk of being expelled like his fellow bishops in Alsace and Lorraine. Without him, the diocese of Luxembourg would have been dissolved.120 The Catholic press sometimes compared the measures taken against the Jewish population to those taken against the Catholic Church and against the continuation of Luxembourg as a nation, which was destined to be absorbed into Groβdeutschland.121 Luxembourg’s chief rabbi Robert Serebrenik, who had managed to leave the Grand Duchy in May 1941 with 61 Jewish refugees, drew the same comparison. The Luxembourg government in exile asked the rabbi to put together a memorandum on the persecution of the Jews. The text states that he considered it important for people to realize that the Catholic population in annexed Luxembourg had to face more physical and mental suffering than the Jews. The latter were to face expulsion, all of them, and in the most terrible manner. The former, however, had a mission to fulfil: they were to concede to becoming German once and for all.122 At the end of 1938, immediately after the annexation, the Reichsgau Sudentenland to the east of the Altreich witnessed the departure of a relatively large number of Jews to the rump state that remained of Czechoslovakia. There were only 1,886 Jewish citizens in the Sudetenland, which meant that the persecution of Jews in many towns and villages tended not to affect the general public in a significant way. While the anti-Semitic campaign inspired National Socialist sympathizers, it is also possible – according to an internal NSDAP report – that it was opposed by ‘Catholic clergy’.123 But this passive rejection did not lead to public protest, and audible objections to the obligation to wear 366

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the yellow Star of David, for example, or to the actual deportations, were few if any within the churches. The destination of the Jewish refugees in 1938 had been Czechia. They felt instinctively welcome, since Jews had held prominent positions in the economic and cultural life of the First Republic of Czechoslovakia – and explicitly lay state – and its first president Thomas Masaryk was well-disposed towards them. They nevertheless introduced a language problem into the new state: many of them were German-speaking. This applied in fact to 30.4 per cent of the 117,180 Jews living in Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia.124 That number swelled in the 1930s as a result of Jewish immigration from Nazi Germany and later from Austria and the Sudetenland. In 1939, when the international crisis surrounding Czechoslovakia had reached its climax, a transfer agreement was reached with the Jewish Agency for Palestine, allowing 2,500 Jews to leave for Palestine. Three phases can be discerned in the persecution of Jews in what came to be called the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia after March 1939. During the first phase (1939–41), under the ‘lenient’ Konstantin von Neurath, it remained punishable by law to help Jews emigrate the country but in reality the risks were few and far between. With the arrival of Reinhard Heydrich, Himmler’s right hand, the second phase unfolded (1941–3): deportations. Heydrich implemented a ‘Reichauftragsverwaltung’ in the Protectorate in May 1942, which meant that the German regime had acquired precedence over the relative autonomy of the Czech authorities. A process of Germanification took place in Bohemia and Moravia and the German race laws became operative in a Czech context. The persecution of the Jews was an important dimension of Heydrich’s policy and its severity was unprecedented. Every assistance granted the Jews was considered ‘reichsfeindlich – hostile to the Reich’ and punishable by death. On Heydrich’s arrival the Protectorate numbered 80,000 Jews. Between the middle of October 1941 and 1945, 73,608 were deported to the ghetto in Terezin (Theresienstadt). The third phase (1943–5) focused on the liquidation of the remaining Jews, a ‘Jew hunt’ involving paid informers and agents working for National Socialist institutions.125 From March 1942, the ‘asocial’ Roma and Sinti were interned in camps with Auschwitz as their final destination. Hundreds were classified as ‘asocial gipsies’ and transported to the aforementioned concentration camp.126 There is some debate concerning the claim that the Archbishop of Prague, Cardinal Karel Boromejsky Kašpar, once condemned the legal discrimination of the Jews in 1939 as ‘complete contempt for human rights’. He is said to have protested the intended announcement from his sickbed on 5 July 1939 and to have stated that he would publicly condemn the measure in a pastoral letter should it be implemented.127 A more recent publication insists, however, that there is no evidence for such a protest from the ailing cardinal.128 The discriminatory measure was in fact implemented and indeed radicalized by the arrival of Reinhard Heydrich in the middle of 1941. ‘None of the foremost representatives of the Catholic Church protested publicly against the introduction of the Nuremberg Laws.’129 But after the death of Kašpar in April 1941, the bishops had other priorities. They issued a declaration on 18 July 1943 condemning the ‘bombing terror’, especially the 367

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bombardment of Rome. The text makes no mention of the Allies – an effort was made to avoid political statements – and speaks simply of targeted attacks on ‘magnificent houses of God’.130 On 15 August of the same year, the bishops took a stand against the ‘godlessness in the East’ at the very moment the Czech government in exile was seeking an alliance with the Soviet Union. The Czech population were surprised by this declaration because the senior clergy had been reticent up to that point when it came to publicly positioning themselves on the war.131 In March 1945, the bishops directed their priests to open the doors of their rectories for German refugees from Eastern Europe and to persuade their Czech parishioners to make their stay a memorably comfortable one.132 Three hundred and seventy-one Czech priests were imprisoned in a concentration camp. A few of them were arrested and tried for providing Jews with baptismal certificates with a view to ascribing them a ‘safe’ background. Generally speaking, however, the contribution of the Catholic Church in terms of saving lives can hardly be described as impressive.133 There are two possible explanations for this. The first is related to the revival of the cult of Wenceslas – as described in Chapter 3 – which led to the definition of Czech national identity under the German occupation in religious terms, whereby non-Catholics – mostly Jews and freethinkers – were excluded ‘from the Czech nation’.134 The second explanation has to do with the ruthlessness of Reinhard Heydrich and the public punishment of Czechia after an attempt on his life, all of which nourished a collective fear. In the Protectorate, dozens were condemned to death (and some beheaded) for helping Jews go into hiding.135 This explains, to a degree, why potential rescue efforts were so evidently ‘scant’.136 But it did not have to be so. The Czech Protestant Přemysl Pitter was director of an orphanage in Prague. He became active in the League Against Anti-Semitism in the 1930s, founded by pastor Bohumil Vančura. Pitter remained in contact with the Jewish children he had been forced to expel from his house during the occupation and when he preached in the Church of Czech Brethren he encouraged the faithful to share food vouchers with their Jewish fellow citizens and offer other forms of assistance.

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CHAPTER 9 NATIONAL SOCIALIST MASS MURDER AND THE CHURCHES: PERSECUTION IN THE OCCUPIED COUNTRIES

1 Poland: centre of persecution 1.1 Extermination camps Poland occupies a central space in the Bloodlands of Central and Eastern Europe. Murder and mayhem surrounded the country on every side, from the Einsatzgruppen and their pursuit of Polish citizens, to the deportations by the Soviet regime in the east until 1941, to the racist hunting down of Jews, Roma and Sinti from 1941 onwards that was to lead to an ‘Endlösung – final solution’. According to Norman Davies, of the 18 million who died in the Second World War, 11 million died in Poland.1 By 1939, the Nazi regime had extended its domination to include Poland, which it considered inferior, and thereby a few million Jews. During the German occupation, the Jews were divided over a number of administrative zones. In the annexed territories – Wartheland, Danzig together with West Prussia and Silesia – 300,000 Polish Jews were gassed. The campaign started in December 1941 and the gassings were carried out for the most part in an extermination camp in the middle of the city of Chełmno. On the other side of the state border, during the German invasion of the Soviet Union (from June 1941), Polish Jews were the first to be rounded up and executed en masse, the majority in 1942. The largest group of Polish Jews (according to estimations 1.6 million) lived in the Generalgouvernment, many of whom had been forced to relocate to the region in 1939 or 1940 to swell the population of the ghettos. From 1942, these Jews were gassed in the (new) extermination camps.2 From the European perspective, Poland is unique in relation to the persecution of the Jews for three reasons. In comparative terms, it had the largest Jewish population: 3.4 million, 10 per cent of the total Polish population and 40 per cent of the country’s urban population. From the first days of the German invasion onwards, moreover, it also experienced the dramatic loss of thousands of ethnic Poles, murdered by the occupying regime and by the Einsatzgruppen. As a result, the population focused immediately on its own survival and little attention was paid in this distressing context to the suffering of its Jewish compatriots. Third, the Generalgouvernment was the location of the majority of the extermination camps. Occupied Poland thus became the involuntary destination of millions of deported Jews from Northern, Western and Southern Europe.3 In the very place in which the Nazis implemented their mass killings, however, there was also an indigenous anti-Semitism that was to assist, on occasion, those who actually carried out the killings. 369

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1.2 Anti-Semitic Kulturkampf In Germany, anti-Semitism had acquired anti-Christian features, while in Romania it was inspired by Orthodoxy. In a speech delivered in Paris in 1938 (and later in New York), however, the Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain stated with regard to Poland that ‘it is generally the Catholic sections of the Polish population which seem most touched with anti-Semitism. Deplorable incitements have spread among them, and the Catholic press has all too often been an accomplice.’ He made this observation as a Christian exploring the Jewish question, testifying to his alarm at what he saw.4 According to Maritain, Polish Catholics contributed too often – without admitting publicly to anti-Semitism – to a climate in which the tragedy facing the Jews was viewed with the indifference of the ‘reasonable man who goes coldly along his way’. Their anti-Semitism had acquired a Catholic form; a passion to defend national interests acquired support from Poland’s traditional religion.5 The population of the Polish state, whose borders had been the subject of conflict during and after the First World War, was multicultural. The state ultimately inherited a troubled relationship between its Ukrainian and Polish residents, but also between its Jewish and Polish citizens. At the Paris peace conference in 1919, a rejuvenated Poland and an enlarged Romania were obliged to respect the rights of (new) minorities. Representatives of both countries complained that the provisions of the treaty were the product of unheard-of pressure from the American Jewish lobby at the conference. ‘The Polish prime minister, Ignacy Padereweski, protested that his country was being treated as if it were “a nation of inferior standards of civilization”.’ In the eyes of some Polish politicians, this segment of the peace treaty was ultimately to be counter-productive.6 The Catholic Church in post-war Poland was soon to make a statement on the issue. In a pastoral letter issued in 1918, the Polish episcopate rounded against the pogroms that had marked the transition from war to peace. The bishops exhibited a typical combination of anger – at the presumed immensity of Jewish endorsement of the October Revolution (‘Jewish agents in the service of Bolshevism’) – and aversion to the violence directed against the Jews.7 A distinction has to be made here, however, between, a secular form of anti-Semitism and an anti-Semitism that was religiously motivated. The description of Jews in Catholic texts (especially in the period prior to the First World War) did indeed differ from similar texts with a secular character. It is impossible, nevertheless, to distinguish Catholic antiSemitism completely from racial anti-Semitism because religious hatred and secular hatred seemed to reinforce one another. ‘Catholic anti-Semitism would not have taken the shape it did, had racialist ideas not been such a key component of European culture at the time, and secular anti-Semitism could not have gained so much support, had it not shared a lot of common ground with Christianity.’8 Such a tone was not evident in Polish texts and sermons from the nineteenth century. Jews were rarely depicted with sympathy, but they were never the object of virulent hatred. Indeed, in the revolutions that marked the nineteenth century, there were even moments of fraternal entente between Polish Catholics and Polish Jews.9 The nineteenth-

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century bishops had rejected racist anti-Semitism, focusing their attention rather on what they considered to be the Church’s real enemy: freemasonry. ‘Significantly, almost all the traits later ascribed to the international Jewish conspiracy were first imagined as Masonic characteristics; a great deal of what would become modern anti-Semitism involved a word substitution, placing Jew where Mason had been.’10 Debate is evident among Polish historians – and also in the English language literature – on how these ‘inter-communal antipathies’ should be understood. According to Brian Porter-Szücs’ study of Polish Catholicism, there can be little doubt that the Catholic Church was obsessed by one or other ‘Jewish conspiracy’ and by stereotypes concerning ‘Jewish evil’. ‘Anyone who reads the Catholic press in Poland from the 1920s and 1930s cannot help but be shocked by the intensity and frequency of the anti-Semitic diatribes. This was not a tangential issue at the time, but something that the editors of nearly every Catholic periodical considered to be of primary importance.’11 Norman Davies observes, by contrast, that Jews in Poland were not exempt from the collective irritations and antagonisms ethnic groups tended to harbour towards one another. ‘Yet it must be stressed that the pressures and discriminations to which Jews were exposed were nothing exceptional. In terms of wealth, education, and social position, the Jews occupied a middling position among the minorities, inferior no doubt to that of the Germans in the western districts but superior to that of the Ukrainians and Byelorussians in the east.’12 In the Polish republic, the position of the main political parties with respect to the Jews varied from guarded cooperation on the left to open hostility on the right. Although it condemned attacks on the Jews, the Socialist Party was not immune from anti-Jewish influence and some socialists in the 1930s were even inclined to call for a Jewish emigration. The Polish Peasants’ Party, which had combated anti-Semitism in the early 1920s, declared the Jews in 1935 to be an ‘alien people’ in Poland and supported efforts to encourage emigration. The National Democratic Party called for the complete elimination of Jews from Polish society and was clearly the most bitter in its anti-Jewish politics. They insisted that Jews should no longer be allowed to exercise their right to vote, that they should be removed from industry and trade, and that they should even be forced to live in ghettos.13 Lines of division were more or less complete, and from a broader perspective the same can even be said for Central and Eastern Europe as a whole. The historian Tony Judt observes (in his interview with Timothy Snyder) that mutual ignorance was persistent. ‘It is frequently observed today – and true, withal – that their Christian neighbors (Ukrainians, Belarusians, Poles, Slovaks etc.) were miserably ill informed about the Jewish communities in their midst. They cared little for them and harbored ancient prejudices in their regard. But the same was largely true of Jews in their feelings towards the goyim. The relationship, to be sure, was profoundly unequal. But in this respect at least there was a certain symmetry. Indeed, it was precisely that interdependence of mutual ignorance which would account for the ease of ethnic cleansing and worse in Central and Eastern Europe over the course of the twentieth century.’14 Mutual ignorance was nourished by remarkable and sometimes extreme differences in the economic status of population groups. ‘In the market towns, rural Christians 371

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would have encountered Jews as shopkeepers and artisans, and Jews would have encountered Christians as farmers.’ The difference was also evident in the Polish cities, albeit in a different form. ‘The overwhelming majority of urban Jews in Poland were poor and working class, although whereas Christians tended to work in large factories, 88 percent of Jewish workers were employed (or self-employed) in tiny family-run firms.’ The small minority of Jews who had managed to penetrate the middle classes tended to concentrate on specific occupations. ‘Though constituting only about 9 percent of the population, Jews made up slightly more than 50 percent of all doctors, 33 percent of all lawyers, and almost 25 percent of all journalists.’15 Many Jews in Eastern Europe found it hard to identify ‘with the language and culture of the hostile Poles, Ukrainians and Romanians who surrounded them and with whom there was for the most part a relationship based exclusively upon antagonism, ignorance and mutual fear’.16 It is also worthy of note that only 12 per cent of the Jewish respondents to a pre-war census listed Polish as their mother tongue.17 According to Tony Judt, however, a growing majority of young ‘Ostjuden’ managed to detach themselves from their Jewish religious heritage and ‘yiddishkayt’. ‘Thus the very idea of a unified history of European Jews is itself problematic, to say the least: we were divided and splintered by region, class, language, culture and opportunity (or its absence).’18 The hierarchy of the Catholic Church in Poland had a marked opinion concerning the ‘dangers’ of Jewish influence on culture. In 1936, Cardinal Hlond, the Primate of the Polish Church, published a pastoral letter on Catholic moral principles in which he identified Jews with freethinkers and with the advance guard of atheism and the Bolshevik movement. ‘It is a fact that the Jewish influence on morality is dangerous and that their publishing houses are purveyors of pornography. It is true that the Jews permit fraud and (financial) exploitation and that they trade in living merchandise (a euphemism for prostitution). It is true that the influence of Jewish schoolchildren on Catholic schoolchildren is negative from a religious and ethical point of view.’19 The cardinal also informed his public that not every Jew conformed to this image. Many Jews were religious, honest and considerate. In a great many Jewish households, family values were healthy and constructive. It is good, he maintained, that Catholics shopped at Catholic-run stores and avoided those run by Jews, but it was forbidden, he insisted, to destroy Jewish stores, to damage their merchandise, break their windows or throw stones at their houses. While Catholics were not permitted to read Jewish newspapers and the publications of Jewish publishing houses, they were likewise not permitted to attack Jews or injure them. The cardinal thus condemned physical violence directed towards the Jews, but at the same time he encouraged a ‘peaceful’ boycott of Jewish shops and publications.20 The second in line in the Church’s hierarchy was – as mentioned before – Adam Sapieha, the Archbishop of Kraków. Sapieha had a political preference for the National Democrats and had distanced himself in a spectacular way from Marshal Józef Piłsudski, arguing that the man appeared to have had the intention of establishing a socialist and Jewish Poland in 1918. When Piłsudski died in 1935, he was buried in the Wawel Cathedral in Kraków as the hero of Polish independence (his heart in Vilnius, the place 372

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of his birth). Two years later, however, the archbishop had his tomb transferred to an external crypt, alarmed at the number of pilgrims visiting his grave and disturbing the peace of the cathedral.21 In 1938, he did his best to unite Catholic nationalists with the nationalist party in office. It was underlined in the election manifesto that the Jews formed a ‘separate national group’ in Poland, with interests that differed from the interests of the state and of the Polish nation. The Jews had to leave Poland. ‘We see the solution to the Jewish problem not through street disturbances and the breaking of the wellinsured windows in the Jewish shops, but through economic planning and organized mass emigration of Jews from Poland.’22 Occasioned by Reichskristallnacht in Nazi Germany, the Kraków archdiocesan newspaper – Głos Narodu – stated that the German government’s intention to punish the entire Jewish community for the act of a single Jew by confiscating Jewish property and detaining Jews en masse in concentration camps was ethically indefensible. The editorial continued, nevertheless, that every people – and certainly the German people – had a right to defend itself against such an alien nation as that of the Jews and against its detrimental influence on social life. Germany’s anger was thus ‘understandable’.23 In the period between 1934 and 1939 there were 95 episodes of violence against Jews in which a total of fourteen lost their lives and roughly 2,000 were wounded. ‘The irresolvable tension – indeed, paradox – of Catholic anti-Semites was that they consistently condemned violence and hatred even as they elevated suspicion, fear, and even hatred itself to a fever pitch. Catholic texts from interwar Poland were marked by an unrelenting drumbeat of fear mongering about the war against the Jewish-BolshevikMasonic plot, but despite the apparent militancy it was very difficult to both remain within a Catholic morality and take the next step toward actual violence.’24 At the end of his New York speech, Maritain concluded by expressing his hope that Polish Catholics would understand that it was not enough to distance themselves from the hatred of Jews as such ‘in the heaven of spiritual feeling [. . .] while conceding to their enemies all the legends, the prejudices, the heated arguments in whose name they are persecuted on the earth of temporal realities.’25 1.3 Deportation and murder As discussed in Chapter 3, the German invasion went hand in hand with the murder of thousands of members of the Polish elite and the Polish military forces. Almost every Polish family had a victim to mourn. ‘The Auschwitz concentration camp, when it was created, was intended principally for Poles. Only in 1942 did it become foremost a place of industrial killing of European Jewry.’26 In 1939 and 1940 Jews were killed because they were Polish, but from 1941 and 1942 they were murdered because they were Jews. In the first period of the German occupation, Jewish citizens were harassed on the streets and some were subjected to pogroms and to public humiliation at the hands of German soldiers. The so-called ghettoization process followed in the autumn of 1940. In Warsaw, the most infamous of the Nazi ghettos, and later in other cities in the Generalgouvernement, neighbourhoods were set aside in which Jews were expected to set 373

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up their homes. Their isolation led to a scarcity of food. At the same time, other Polish citizens could observe that the Jews had disappeared from streets. In the course of 1942, the ghettoes were completely cut off with de facto starvation as a result. Deportations within the Generalgouvernement commenced towards the end of 1941. An additional characteristic feature of the isolation of the Jews in Poland was the fact that they were almost completely cut off from outside help. This became all the more apparent during the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto on 19 April 1943. Isolation then took on a dual significance. The German occupier had effectively sealed off the ghetto, but the outside world was also conspicuous by its absence. In the first days of their struggle, the Jewish insurgents received help from small units of the Home Army (Armia Krajowa) and from the (left-wing) People’s Army (Gwardia Ludowa, later Armia Ludowa), but this was best described as a sort of moral support and not something that might influence the outcome of the Jewish uprising.27 ‘The uprising in the Warsaw ghetto was the single most significant act of Jewish resistance to the Nazis.’28 The little help Polish onlookers managed to offer the Jews remains an ongoing historical debate. Norman Davies observed that the questions ‘why the Poles did little to help the Jews is rather like asking why the Jews did nothing to assist the Poles. Stories of individual gallantry, though real enough, vastly exaggerated the opportunities for chivalry which actually existed.’29 Brian Porter-Szücs argued in contrast that many Polish Catholics – perhaps too many – may have been convinced that the National Socialist struggle against the Jews was ethically reprehensible, but they had learned prior to the war that the Jews were involved in wicked practices in Polish society. ‘For most Polish Catholics, intervening in a fight between two dangerous foes made no sense.’30 Open protest from the pulpit was not loud enough to be heard in occupied Poland. In the western provinces such as the Reichsgau Wartheland – annexed territory – the Nazi regime had rendered the Catholic and Evangelical Churches powerless. Any form of public critique was subject to immediate punishment. Bishop Charles Radónski of the city of Włocławek, for example, was expelled from his Wartheland diocese. In January 1940, however, he managed to inform the Vatican from exile in Budapest that not only had the churches been closed down and his priests arrested, but Poles and Jews were being taken from their homes and deported.31 The same reign of terror that typified the German occupation of the annexed territories was not a feature of life in the Generalgouvernement. Repressive measures were intense, but not always self-evident. The Church authorities had a minimum of latitude. The most senior Church leader in the Generalgouvernement, Archbishop Sapieha, intervened on a number of occasions with the governor Hans Frank, asking him to grant Jews who had been baptized Catholic the freedom to organize religious services in the ghettos. He also asked that members of the so-called Baudienst – Construction Service (a labour battalion for young Polish workers) no longer be employed to round up Jews. The same Baudienst had even been involved in massacres. Historians Jan Gross and Irena Gross make reference to this latter intervention only and are critical of the archbishop’s restraint when it came to the deportation of the Jews from the Generalgouvernement.32 Other historians argue by contrast that he had learned from 374

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experience that his requests and protests would be ignored when they involved the persecution of the Jews. ‘Thus, he faced a dilemma: either continue to intervene on behalf of the Christians of Jewish origins in the hope of some small success, or try to defend all the Jews but in that way destroy all hope for success.’33 In the autumn of 1941, a letter from Archbishop Sapieha reached the Vatican. He reported that the situation in Poland was more difficult than it had been in the preceding years. Priests and laity were being arrested on a weekly basis and few of them could look forward to returning to their former lives in good health. The Bishop of Łódź, Wladimir Jasínski, and his auxiliary had been banished to a monastery.34 Shortly thereafter, Sapieha met with Pirro Scavizzi, an Italian military chaplain who was travelling on the Maltese hospital train and visiting Italian soldiers on the Eastern Front. Scavizzi reported in November 1941 that Archbishop Sapieha had told him that he could no longer guarantee the secrecy of the letters he had sent to the Holy See. On 2 February 1942, the archbishop wrote a letter to Cardinal Secretary of State Maglione describing the situation as one ‘in which a savage power rules the world under which there is great suffering’. At the end of the same month he composed a nota addressed to Pius XII , in which he stated that ‘our people’ find themselves in tragic circumstances, robbed of almost every human right and at the mercy of cruel individuals who are bereft of human emotions (‘sensu humano destitutorum’). The land and its people groan under such horrendous terror.35 The archbishop managed to pass his letter on to the same Italian military chaplain, Pirro Scavizzi, who was on a (second) trip to the Ukraine and was shocked at what he observed concerning the mass murder of the Jews. Shortly after Scavizzi left Kraków, a messenger from the archbishop caught up with him and asked him to burn the letter immediately for fear of discovery and reprisals. The chaplain copied the letter and burned the original.36 When he returned to Rome, he reported its contents to Pius XII with whom he had attended school in Rome. In August 1942, the archbishop received a visit in Kraków from another Italian military chaplain by the name of Quirino Paganuzzi. He brought with him a message from Pius XII in which reference was made to the possibility of a public papal protest against the persecution of ‘Church and Synagogue’. According to Paganuzzi, Archbishop Sapieha expressed his gratitude for the Pope’s support but he did not recommend a public declaration. ‘Why should the pope publicly condemn or deplore the terror facing Jews and non-Jews, if in so doing their lot would be made worse?’ The archbishop – who had recently experienced German repression in his own household with the arrest of two priest-secretaries – assured the military chaplain that Polish Catholics and Polish Jews were victims of one and the same tragedy. ‘We would like to help the Jews more than any other, but the situation is so impossible that we are the least able to do so.’37 In an accompanying letter to Pius XII , he insisted that any public protest would lead to new persecutions in occupied Poland (‘quia hoc ad novas persecutiones praeberet’).38 Based on the information currently available, it would appear that neither Archbishop Sapieha nor any of the other Polish bishops issued or published letters to be read in their churches publicly addressing the fate of the Jews. There are two possible explanations for this. The first is to suggest that the pre-war division – or perhaps hostility – between 375

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Polish Catholics and Polish Jews ultimately prevented the bishops from speaking out publicly on behalf of fellow Poles facing persecution and death inspired by a general sense of moral imperative. Their actions, when they were able to act, focused in the first place on Jews who had been baptized as Catholics. The second interpretation would be to suggest that the German reign of terror gave priority to the struggle for personal survival and the survival of the Church and its ministers: ‘Neither the sacred office of bishop, nor the soutane or the religious habit, offered protection against persecution, concentration camps, prison and death.’39 Ambiguity was evident with Polish Catholicism. The historical literature refers more than once to a report from an officer in the Armia Krajowa, the Home Army, dated July 1941 – shortly before the deportation – in which a degree of understanding is exhibited for German policy towards the Jews. In the midst of all the evil the Nazi regime had brought on the Polish people, the anonymous author observes, it nevertheless revealed ‘a possibility of the liberation of the Polish society from the Jewish plague and marked out a way on which we need to proceed, of course less cruelly and less brutally, but steadily’. The author of the report saw it as a visible sign of God’s will ‘that the occupiers themselves contributed to the solution of this burning issue, because the Polish nation, soft and unsystematic, would never mobilize enough for the energetic steps that are indispensable in this matter’.40 The report was sent to the Polish government in exile in London. Resistance newspapers published appeals to help the persecuted Jews. Underground press with a socialist or liberal inclination sketched a future republic in which all of Poland’s minorities would be guaranteed the same rights and anti-Semitism would be banished forever from public life. The right-wing resistance newspapers continued to speak of a ‘Jewish problem’ that would still have to be solved after victory on the basis of mass immigration and an international accord. A ‘spiritual racism’ also continued to be apparent in the Catholic press, a racism ‘that was based on opposition to the “Jewish way of thinking” in various fields of Polish national life. However, this anti-Semitism did not broadcast a message of liquidation and did not advocate genocide and annihilation of the Jews.’41 When the Jews were deported en masse from the Warsaw ghetto in 1942, the tone of the Catholic resistance newspapers changed. The tragedy of the ghetto and of the public killings was then reported ‘with accurate details and an unequivocal condemnation of the murderers and their dispatchers’. The Christian position was that such mass killings would desecrate the cultural heritage of Christianity in Poland and that a spiritually healthy Polish nation would be unthinkable in a country in which millions of citizens had been annihilated. Moreover, it would not be long before the murder of Jews spread to (other) Poles.42 A further regularly cited statement came from Zofia Kossak, a resistance fighter and journalist. In August 1942 – during the deportations from the Warsaw ghetto – she published a pamphlet on behalf of the ‘Front for the Rebirth of Poland’ (Front Odrodzenia Polski), a small resistance group made up of Polish Catholic intellectuals: ‘The author addressed the conscience of the Poles, calling on them to put aside their justified antagonism towards the Jews and not to stand idly by while they were being murdered 376

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by the Germans. [. . .] We do not want to be Pontius Pilate,’ she wrote in a reference to the Christian passion narrative in which the Roman governor invited the people to choose between Jesus and another prisoner, Barabbas. ‘We are not capable of actively intervening against the German butchery, but we protest from the depths of our hearts, overcome with compassion, and compelled by anger and dismay.’43 In 1987, a Polish intellectual and professor of literature at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, by the name of Jan Błoński, posed the following question in the renowned Catholic weekly Tygodnik Powszechny: ‘Did we express solidarity with them (the persecuted Jews)? How many of us decided it was not our business?’ His article caused a flood of reactions.44 Błoński sought to find an explanation for the combination of hostility and compassion towards the persecuted Jews in one single person. ‘He found the answer in the complex dialectic between Catholicism and Polish nationalism: Zofia Kossak was willing to give her life for the Jews; but if, in some miraculous fashion, the Jews had disappeared without suffering any injustice, she would certainly have felt relief.’45 The same Zofia Kossak had written earlier – in July 1942 – in the underground newspaper Prawda, about individual village priests who had tried to provide a safe house for a number of persecuted Jews. Some among them had been arrested and executed for doing so. She also observed, on the other hand, that a priest in the diocese of Sandomir had advised the farmers in his parish to warn the authorities that a Jewish refugee from the ghetto was wandering around in the neighbourhood. The local police finally tracked the woman down and shot her ‘like a dog’. The publisher of Prawda noted that the priest was thus an accessory to murder. We would not have remembered this incident, Zofia Kossak continued, were it not for the fact that it is evidence of a hideous confusion of ideas, of German ideas creeping in to the Polish psyche. This should not be permitted.46 Thanks in large part to her efforts, ‘The Social Committee for Aid to the Jewish People’ was established in September 1942 with a view to helping Jews find places of safety. For security reasons it bore the official name ‘Konrad Žegota Committee’. Two months later it was reorganized and renamed the ‘Council for Jewish Aid’ and links were forged with comparable organizations such as the Department of Social Services in the city of Warsaw. With the absence of protest signals from the church authorities, historians Jan and Irena Gross are convinced that the men and women in Polish villages would probably not have heard about what was going on with the Jews of Poland, let alone about their fate in the extermination camps. ‘It is sad, that the most important role in the conspiracy of silence and co-participation – by acquiescence – in these crimes, of course sensu largo, belongs to the Polish Church.’47 It could even be said that some villagers donned clothes for church on Sunday that had been stolen from their deported Jewish neighbours. ‘One day we woke up in our town and we were all dressed in Jewish clothes.’48 For the same reason – the absence of public protest – priests and religious people reacted differently to the situation, some offering places of safety, others reporting their presence: ‘from denouncements to self-sacrifice. No adequate comparisons of the proportion of clergy among helpers and their proportion in the population at large were possible, but limited analysis revealed no major role for the Catholic clergy in Jewish 377

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rescue.’49 ‘The record of the Catholic Church in providing forged documents and hiding places, the latter chiefly for children, was generally an admirable one; but not all priests were equally admirable.’50 According to the Polish-American historian Nechama Tec, however, who survived the war in a Polish monastery, the church’s contribution to the said ‘rescue’ was no greater or more intense than that of the other segments of the Polish population.51 Individual pastors appeared to be willing to issue proof of baptism documents to Jews, and a few were executed for their efforts.52 Marceli Godlewski, pastor of All Saints Church located in the Warsaw ghetto, who was known before the war as a notorious antiSemite, did his best to smuggle out Jewish converts. Other parish priests falsified documents ‘and it appears to be true that virtually every convent in the Warsaw area was hiding a few Jewish children’.53 Converts were allowed to openly organize religious services in the ghetto, and some were appointed to high-ranking positions in the ghetto’s police. According to Yaakov Ariel, ‘Poland was the largest arena where both children and adults sought temporary shelter, or a permanent home, in Christianity.’54 Monasteries of male and female religious orders and congregations took in Jewish children, although the women were clearly in the majority in this regard. Nuns and religious sisters staffed and ran Catholic Poland’s orphanages, day schools and boarding schools and their numbers are estimated at around 20,000 sisters in 2,289 institutions. A number of Jewish children had already been absorbed into these institutions when the ghettos were being established, but the vast majority found relative safety here from the beginning of the deportations (spring 1942) to the summer of 1943. The municipality of Warsaw tried to house ‘homeless Polish children’ in its own institutions, but the numbers – mostly Jewish children – increased steadily when the ghetto was shut down. The municipal director, Jan Dobraczýnski, had close ties with the monasteries in and around Warsaw and he organized the distribution of Jewish children across a variety of institutions run by religious women, providing them with false identity papers. ‘This method proved to be exceptionally successful. Of the several hundred children placed in this way, only two boys were killed. The rest of the children survived the occupation.’55 Dobraczýnski’s actions were not without risk. Social workers in the municipality faced the possibility of being reported for helping Jews. A distinction also needs to be made here between monasteries in the annexed territories in Western Poland and those in the Generalgouvernement. The former had faced more intense repression. From August 1939, the Nazi regimes in the western provinces subjected religious run orphanages to systematic searches and to closure. The children underwent a ‘racial examination’ intended to distinguish the ‘Nordic’ types who were to become German. The sisters did not always manage to smuggle children out and avoid such examinations, and as a result it was seldom possible to offer a secure place of safety to Jewish children.56 The number of Jews who managed to survive in hiding in one or other of the highly varied Catholic institutions or with Catholic civilians is estimated at a maximum of 15,000 men and women.57 This is less than 0.5 per cent of the original Jewish population of Poland. Of the male orders and congregations, 21 monasteries and other institutions 378

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are known to have functioned as safe houses.58 A total of 37 female congregations and orders participated in the rescue of Jewish children; only six thereof also offered a place of safety for adults. Of the 189 monasteries of nuns and sisters in which Jewish children were able to hide during the war, 137 were located in the Generalgouvernement, the majority in and around Warsaw. Specific reference is made of the Franciscan Sisters of the Family of Mary who hid Jewish children in their twenty monasteries, orphanages, primary schools and hospitals. Ten sisters were sentenced to death for offering shelter.59 On occasion, entire monasteries were punished. The Salesian community in Praga on the outskirts of Warsaw, for example, who took Jewish boys into their schools and youth clubs, was executed collectively for their actions.60 In 2004, around 680 cases were documented of Polish men and women who were executed by the Germans because they had helped Jews. The real number is probably much greater. The historian Feliks Tych has come to the conclusion that if we accept that an estimated 200,000 Polish citizens helped Jews avoid deportation – i.e. 1 per cent of the Polish population – and we then compare both figures (presupposing that the rescue of one Jewish citizen required the assistance of more than one person), the risk of being caught can be calculated as 3/100. In 97 instances, therefore, the attempted rescue was successful.‘Poles who hid Jews usually fell into German hands as the result of denunciation by fellow Poles. Then, both the rescued and their rescuers (and sometimes entire families) were killed.’61 The story of Antonina Wyrzykowska – ‘a deeply religious peasant woman from the vicinity of Jedwabne who gave shelter to seven Jews on her farm during the war’ – is particularly well known in this regard. After the war she informed a journalist that even after 1945 she would never tell a priest in Poland what she had done and that her daughter had been right to throw out the medal she had received from Yad Vashem (Righteous among the Nations) because she wanted no one to see it anyway.62 A further step was the phenomenon of active Polish cooperation in the deportation of Jews. Reports exist from early as the autumn of 1939 of attacks on Jews and Jewishowned property whereby Polish citizens – in particular the rural population – cooperated with the German occupier. This situation worsened after the German invasion of the Soviet Union and the conquest of Poland’s (former) eastern provinces (June 1941). As described in Chapter  3, the Soviets had expelled ethnic Poles from governance and replaced them with ideologically correct newcomers who included Jews in their number. The stereotype of the Jewish communist, the spectre that haunted Soviet control at the end of the First World War, was thereby reinforced; in spite of the fact that hundreds of Jews were also deported to Siberia. The Nazis – the new occupier from 1941 onwards – organized pogroms in the eastern provinces and in the Generalgouvernement with the help and cooperation of the local (peasant) population. While only a small portion of the actions against Jews was initiated by their fellow Poles, the latter’s concrete support of German round-ups was more frequent in both the villages and the cities. In some instances, Jews were forced to sing Soviet songs as they marched under duress through a city or village behind the rabbi, who was in turn forced to hold a red flag in his hand.63 On 10 July 1941, shortly after the 379

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Wehrmacht had passed through the town, the Jews of Jedwabne were forced to demolish a monument to Lenin that had been left behind by the Russian occupier and carry the broken fragments in a sort of procession to the local dump. Having completed their task they were summarily executed; 1,600 in total. Jedwabne’s pastor tried in vain to prevent the atrocity; ‘his influence proved to be only temporary’.64 Literary historian Przemysław Czapliński described this procession with a ranting and abusive crowd on either side as a ‘way of the cross’. The adult community had thus reproduced the crucifixion of Jesus. ‘It is ironic that the Jews, whose prosecution has always been justified by the long-ago killing of Christ, this time took on precisely the role of The Redeemer, with Poles filling all the roles customarily assigned to the Jewish characters. Because the script of the Way of the Cross had been set in motion, the inhabitants of Jedwabne, following the anti-Semitic interpretation of Christianity, not only knew how to act, but also were totally convinced that their behavior was justified.’65 When the killings at Jedwabne came to light in 2001, the pogrom was seen as evidence of the complicity of Polish citizens in Germany’s persecution of the Jews. Since that time, a number of testimonies have been published reporting the cooperation of the Polish rural population in German ‘Aktionen’. With their Jewish neighbours out of the way, their neighbours were free to steal their property.66 It is important to be aware, however, that German sources also display a desire on occasion to pass blame on to the Poles. The greater the Polish contribution to the deportations, the lesser the German contribution appeared to be.67 The fact that mass killings were so extensive in occupied Poland has led to heated debate concerning its possible prevention. Three elements are of importance for the present study: the absence of public ecclesial protest, the question of a degree of complicity in the deportations on the part of (Catholic) Poles, and the individual rescue operations instigated by Polish Catholics. Religious women played a more exceptional role in such operations than their male counterparts. More will be said in this regard in Chapter 11, when we explore the extent and consequences of Christian families and Christian institutions providing places of safety to Jews. Jan Gross’ 2000 publication on the pogrom in Jedwabne has shed new light on the question of the complicity of individual Catholics and the attitude of the clergy. While the historical debate on the concrete contribution of Polish citizens to this act of slaughter continued, the Polish government and the Polish episcopate nevertheless made a public statement of guilt in 2001. ‘We want, as pastors of the Church in Poland, to stand in truth before God and the people, but mainly before our Jewish brothers and sisters, referring with regret and repentance to the crime that in July 1941 took place in Jedwabne and in other places.’68 The Polish bishops – as far as we are now aware – did not protest in public concerning the persecution of Jews as well as Roman and Sinti. A large segment of the said episcopate had already been silenced: by killing, imprisonment and expulsion, or by terror. In the Generalgouvernment, the Archbishop of Kraków managed to maintain a certain counterbalance to the Nazi regime and its leader Hans Frank, both in his capacity as archbishop and in his personal character. He did so in the knowledge that priests among 380

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his staff were being arrested – his secretaries – or killed on account of their faith and their position. Archbishop Sapieha chose not to speak in public about the deportations he had observed. He intervened, nevertheless, on behalf of Jews in the ghettos who had been baptized Catholic, although his efforts were in vain. Before the war he had spoken out against the influence of Jews in Polish society. One is forced to conclude, for the time being at least, that he was apparently unable to find the opportunity during the war to speak out in public against the persecution of the Jews. 1.4 Maximilian Kolbe Franciscan Maximilian Kolbe is revered in Poland as an exemplary martyr of the Second World War. He died in the concentration camp in Oświeçim (Auschwitz) after taking the place of another prisoner who had been condemned to solitary confinement and starvation. In his thoughts and deeds, Kolbe represents Polish heroism and valour, but also the Polish quandary with respect to the Jews in his country. Raymund Kolbe was born on 8 January 1894 in Zduńska Wola, a town in Eastern Poland that was then part of the Russian Empire. He was the second son of Julius Kolbe, an ethnically German farm labourer, and Maria Dabrowska, who was of Polish origin. In 1914, Julius joined Józef Piłsudski’s Polish Legions. He was later hanged by the Russians after being captured as a prisoner of war. Raymund and his brother Frans opted for the religious life and the priesthood, impressed as they were by the monastery of the Friars Minor Conventual in the village of Lagiewnik near Łódź where Brother Rafaël Chylinski – a Polish officer who had entered the order; an amalgamation of piety and chivalry – was venerated. After an (illegal) journey across the border between Russian Poland and Austrian Galicia, both brothers were admitted to the minor seminary run by the Conventuals in Lemberg. Raymund professed temporary vows in 1911 and left for Rome the following year to study philosophy at the Gregorian University and theology at the Conventual international house of studies. Kolbe was ordained priest in Rome on 28 April 1918 in the church of Sant’Andrea della Valle and celebrated his first mass in the church of Sant’Andrea delle Fratte, more precisely in the third chapel on the left where a statue by Domenico Bartolini entitled Madonna of the Miracle is located. The statue commemorates the appearance of the Blessed Virgin Mary to a young Jew by the name of Marie Alphonse Ratisbonne on 20 January 1842, an experience that led to the man’s conversion. In Kolbe’s later life, this event was magnified to become a heavenly sign of the goal of his work: conversion, including the conversion of Jews. Raymund took Maximilian and Maria as his religious names. The latter referred to his exceptional devotion to the Mother of God who is said to have appeared to him as a child. He called her ‘Mamusia’, his little mother.69 According to Kolbe she offered him two crowns: one white as a sign of purity, the other red, the martyr’s crown. He accepted both. His devotion inspired him to put together a group of Catholic militants, the so-called Militia Immaculatae (Knights of the Immaculata), with links to the proclamation of the 381

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dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary by Pope Pius IX in 1854. The Knights were to engage themselves in the struggle against Freemasonry. On 16 October 1917 two priests and five brothers committed themselves to the initiative in Rome, seeking acknowledgement from the church’s authorities. Five years later, on 2 January 1922, the Militia Immaculatae was officially recognized by the Vatican as a ‘Pia Unio – Pious Union’. Kolbe returned in 1919 to what in the meantime had become an independent Poland. He taught church history at the Conventual major seminary in Kraków, but poor health interfered with his activities and he was forced to spend time in Zakopane, a mountain resort frequented by tuberculosis sufferers. He returned in 1922 and entered a period in his life marked by almost inexhaustible energy, exploring and embracing forms of propaganda and militancy on behalf of the Catholic faith. He proved to be a follower and associate of Pope Pius XI and the latter’s belief in Catholic Action as a response to modern and secular movements of his day. He was of the opinion that Catholic Poland was under threat from the same forces that were the source of secularization in France and Italy. On Kolbe’s initiative, a weekly publication entitled Rycerz Niepokalanej (Knight of the Immaculate) was established, a reference to the dogma of the Immaculate Conception and to his own ‘Pious Union’. Two militant slogans graced its front page: ‘She shall strike at your head’ and ‘you have destroyed all the heresies in the world’. The publication was a success: with a print run of 60,000 in 1927 expanding later to 200,000. The Friar Minor was a militant in combating heresies, but he was also lenient towards heretics who changed their ways. He observed in a critical article on Freemasonry that the said ‘gentlemen’ appeared to govern the governments of Europe. ‘But let us hear what The Protocols of the Elders of Zion has to say’, he continued, citing at length this inauthentic text that was used to validate hatred of the Jews. According to Kolbe, the Jews created Freemasonry as an instrument in the service of their conspiracy. ‘Would it not be better for you, Polish Masons who have been cheated by a handful of Jews, and you, Jewish leaders who have been flirting with the enemy of humanity, Satan, to turn honestly to God, to recognize the Saviour Jesus Christ?’70 In 1930 Kolbe and a number of his confreres left for China and Japan to test the idea of establishing a ‘Niepokalanów – City of the Immaculate’ in mission territory. The order was unable to find a place in Shanghai, but the local missionary bishop of Nagasaki appeared to be receptive to Kolbe’s almost boundless organizational drive. He worked in Japan from 1933 to 1936, with occasional interruptions for visits to his native Poland. He travelled to Poland once again in 1936 for the election of a new provincial superior, but this time his health prevented a return to Japan.71 He was then appointed superior of Niepokalanów, which had grown in the meantime into a substantial monastery. As a result, he also acquired responsibility for a relatively large publishing house. In 1934, a couple of years prior to Kolbe’s definitive return, the Polish Conventuals started to publish a Catholic newspaper under the title Mały Dziennik (Little Daily). The paper cost five groszy, half the price of other newspapers. Kolbe thus acquired the 382

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leadership of the largest press in Poland, which published some of the most malicious anti-Semitic documents of the day. No other Catholic newspaper was able to equal Mały Dziennik in the regularity and depth of its anti-Semitic content. Kolbe himself wrote relatively little about the Jews. He spoke out on occasion against increasing hostility towards Jews, freemasons and heretics. Love, for Kolbe, was the only way to convert such individuals. In response to the boycott of Jewish merchants he said that it was better to speak about the promotion of Polish businesses. Mały Dziennik, however, did not make such a distinction.72 Pater Kolbe did not exhibit hostility towards religious or traditional Jews. Rather, he was anti-liberal, against Freemasonry and anti-secular. He believed it was important to resist ‘secularists’, whether they be Jewish or Polish, and that they should be considered a danger to Poland and the Church. ‘Militancy was an essential part of Kolbe’s Catholicism, quite in keeping with the policies of the Holy See and Catholic Action.’ He was a typical representative of the Catholic social teaching of the day. ‘Anti-Nazi but laboring under several stereotypes that Nazis and others were touting about supposed Jewish economic and cultural influence.’73 In an edition of Rycerz Niepokalanej dating from 1933, the story is told of a Hungarian soldier who was killed in the city of Michalovce in eastern Slovakia during a campaign waged by the Hungarian army to retake the town (in Hungarian Nagymihály) in 1919. Someone had to pay and the unfortunate choice was Moshe Deutsch, father of six children and Jewish, who had had nothing to do with the death of the Hungarian soldier. The pastor, Alexander Oppitz, then offered himself in exchange for the innocent Deutsch, in what the newspaper called an act of ‘true Christian love’. According to Brian PorterSzücs, ‘This eerie foreshadowing of Kolbe’s own fate at Auschwitz hints at the moral standards that would guide him at his moment of martyrdom, and at the sincerity of those who propagated the most frightening anti-Semitic stories of global conspiracies even while preaching love of one’s neighbors and enemies.’74 After the invasion of Poland by German troops on 1 September 1939, Kolbe was ordered by the governor of Warsaw to vacate Niepokalanów. The buildings were to be employed as a field hospital for wounded Polish soldiers. In consultation with his provincial superior, Kolbe remained with five priests and fifty or so lay brothers. In the early morning of 5 September, the advance guard of the Wehrmacht arrived in Niepokalanów. A few days later, the priests and brothers were deported to an internment camp in Nazi Germany. Kolbe had been granted permission to remain and take care of the wounded, but he chose to share the fate of his confreres. They were held in a camp at Amtitz near Guben an der Oder before being transferred on November 1939 to a Salesian monastery in Polish Ostrzeszów. A month later, on 8 December 1939, they were ordered to return home immediately. Given their veneration of the ‘Immaculata’, the fact that this decision was made on the feast of the Immaculate Conception was of great significance. 75 In the meantime Niepokalanów not only provided a place of refuge for those wounded in the war, it also sheltered Polish inhabitants of the western provinces that been expelled from their homes as a result of Nazi Germany’s annexation policy. Polish Jews were included in their number. To all intents and purposes, Niepokalanów had become 383

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an internment camp, albeit without the barbed wire and look-out posts, with Kolbe at the helm. He gave conferences and sought contact with the Jews; some he tried to convert. An estimated 2,000 to 3,000 refugees were housed in Niepokalanów. The other community members returned in 1940, swelling their number to 350 lay brothers and 17 priests. On 17 February 1941 the Gestapo invaded the complex. Kolbe was taken away for interrogation together with four other priests and locked up in ‘Pawiak’ prison in Warsaw. Given the fact that he had a German father, Kolbe could have opted for a prominent place on the German Volksliste but he refused to do so. He considered himself a Polish citizen. He was transferred to the concentration camp at Oświęcim (Auschwitz) on 28 May 1941 where he joined other Polish prisoners (of war). He was put to work at first on the construction of a new crematorium and then forced to chop and transport wood. It did not take long before he found himself in the infirmary on account of a lung complaint. The camp commandant had established a rule stating that for every successful escape attempt, fifteen – later ten – prisoners would be selected, locked in a bunker and left to die of hunger and thirst. After an escape at the end of July 1941 ten prisoners were selected, among them Frans Gajowniczek, a sergeant in the Polish army, who wept at the thought of leaving behind his wife and children. Kolbe offered to take his place and he was locked in the bunker with the nine others. He prayed with and encouraged his fellow prisoners as they died one after the other. At the end of the third week, the door was opened and four of those originally locked up were found to be still alive. Kolbe was one of them. The infirmary doctor administered a lethal injection of carbolic acid. According to the guard, Kolbe offered his arm and died sitting with his back to the wall on 14 August 1941. His face, it is said, radiated tranquillity, ‘in contrast to the others, who lay soiled on the floor, their faces contorted with pain’.76 His body was burned in the crematorium the following day, 15 August 1941. The ecclesial canonization process commenced in 1948. Maximilian Kolbe was beatified by Pope Paul VI on 17 October 1971 and was given the title ‘Confessor’. Eleven years later, on 10 October 1982, the Polish Pope John Paul II canonized him under the title ‘Martyr’ of the Catholic Church. He features in a series of statues depicting ten twentieth-century martyrs located above the western door of Westminster Abbey in London. Mother Élisabeth Rivet is often portrayed as a female counterpart to Maximilian Kolbe. She was mother general of the congregation at Notre Dame de Compassion in Lyon and she was arrested on 25 March 1944 charged with concealing – or providing room for – ten tons of munitions in her monastery. She was deported to Ravensbrück concentration camp where she died in the gas chambers on 30 March 1945 (Good Friday). According to a Swedish source, she encountered a truck carrying women and young girls to the gas chambers. ‘She had joined them, inspired by an exalted desire to share the final sacrifice with her companions.’77 Additional confirmation is not available in the literature. 384

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Figure 19 Statue of Maximilian Kolbe (left) in the western entrance to Westminster Abbey, London. Gallery of twentieth-century martyrs.

2 Orthodoxy and the persecution of the Jews 2.1 Russian orthodoxy Within the historical concept of the Bloodlands – the countries in Central and Eastern Europe in which the mass murders were concentrated – two variants of Christianity are important and relevant in numerical terms and with respect to their social significance: the Roman Catholic Church in Central Europe and the Eastern Orthodox Church in Eastern Europe. Poland provided an example of a Catholic reaction to the persecution of the Jews. Further eastwards, the national Orthodox Churches could and should have reacted to what was going on around them: deportations, starvation and mass murder. The largest Church in this part of Europe was the Russian Orthodox Church. As we observed above, the Russian Orthodox Church was enjoying a revival in both the core nations of the Soviet Union and the occupied western regions. In the former it served as a driving force behind the war effort. Stalin permitted this revival because he needed the Russian Orthodox Church’s contribution to the war effort and to the process of Russification in newly conquered territories. His policy was part of a long tradition dating back to tsarist Russia. The Orthodox Church encouraged its believers to defend both the Russian fatherland and the Church with all their strength. In line with the 385

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prevailing Soviet ideology, no distinction was made in terms of ethnic origin of those who fell in battle and of the victims of mass executions. The Einsatzgruppen that followed the Wehrmacht were given orders to execute communist agitators, partisans and Jews and initially they likewise made no distinctions. According to estimates, this shooting led to the deaths of half a million Soviet prisoners of war. Hundreds of the latter were gassed in the concentration camp at Auschwitz in September 1941, presaging what was later to happen to the Jews. In the other camps that had been hastily established in the newly conquered territories, 2.6 million Soviet soldiers died of starvation or violence in the course of the war. The Einsatzgruppen were far from precise in their selections, killing many who did not fit the criteria. The only realistic selection criterium as far as the Jews were concerned was circumcision. ‘Very occasionally Jews survived by claiming to be circumcised Muslims; more often circumcised Muslims were shot as Jews.’78 An occupying regime took the place of the Wehrmacht in the newly conquered territories, which ultimately put a de facto end to the Stalinist persecution of the church. The Orthodox Churches were once again able to assert themselves to the extent that the Nazis accorded the necessary leeway. A segment of the clergy and the laity thus welcomed the occupiers as liberators. During the occupation, protest against the persecution of the Jews was not an issue open to free discussion. We can assume that some ordinary priests in towns and villages will have offered personal help to individual Jews in need, although such assistance was subject to severe punishment. In the summer of 1941, the German Wehrmacht’s advance through Belorussia and the Ukraine also reached the Shtetl, the ‘heartland’ of the Ashkenazi Jews who had been forced to settle there under the tsars. In the newly conquered territories, what had initially been a mass execution of Soviet soldiers and local citizens focused itself on the killing of Jews. New forms of mass murder were put to the test. At the end of August 1941, all the Jewish refugees in the Ukrainian city of Kamianets-Podiskyi, which had been taken in the German advance, were killed. In September 1941, a plan to systematically eliminate all the Jews living in a given city emerged for the first time and was implemented in the Ukrainian capital Kiev, where during two days 33,711 men, women and children were executed in the ravine, called Babi Yar.79 As far as we know, the Russian Orthodox Church did not speak out explicitly concerning the persecution of the Jews. Almost half a century after the war – and several years after the dismantlement of the Soviet Union – a church discussion was instigated on the issue. In January 1997, the ‘St Petersburg School of Religion and Philosophy’ organized an international conference on Theology after Auschwitz and the Gulag and the Relation to Jews and Judaism in the Orthodox Church in Communist Russia. One of the speakers at the conference was the priest Georgi Mitrofanov, lecturer in church history at the St Petersburg Theological Academy. While his primary theme was the Stalinist persecution of the Church, he also alluded within the said framework to the position of the Russian Orthodox Church with respect to the Jews.80 Mitrofanov drew his audience’s attention to what he called the identification of emancipated and secularized Jews with the Bolshevik revolution. It is relevant here that 386

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the word ‘Zyd’ (‘Yid’) had been forbidden in the Soviet Union since the 1930s as a designation for Jews because of its negative connotations. The word ‘Evrej’ was used instead. The Jewish intelligentsia, he argued, played an important role in the development of a political radicalism in Russia and in the establishment of the Bolshevik regime. They did so, moreover, within the broader context of Russian intellectuals who had presented their social utopias as an intellectual alternative to Christianity and to some extent as its intellectual antithesis. ‘To be a socialist was to be anti-Christian, not just anti-clerical.’ It was significant, Mitrofanov observed, that so many of the ideologues of Russian socialism came from priestly families. ‘While their religious thirst for truth was unquenched within the Russian Orthodox Church, it was satisfied by the ideas of social utopianism.’81 The church historian had already mentioned the names of Bolsheviks who had been actively involved in an administrative capacity with the separation of Church and state in the years after the Revolution and with the offices of the Secret Police who were charged with combating and persecuting the Russian Orthodox Church. The said names included a relatively large proportion of Jews, from Trotski (Bronstein) to Kamenev (Rosenfeld). According to Mitrofanov, it was equally far from coincidental that Patriarch Tikhon warned of a White Terror against the Jews in the civil war that followed the October Revolution in 1917. He states also that the White Guard – the anti-Bolshevik forces – did not indulge in such reprisals, but the ordinary rank and file were an exception in this regard and spontaneous pogroms arose. In his presentation, the church historian located the relatively large number of Jewish intellectuals in the workers’ movement and in the emergence of the Bolshevik regime within a religious narrative with its roots in the Hebrew Bible in which he discerned an explanation for the attractiveness of ‘social utopianism’ to secular Jews. ‘Undoubtedly, perceptions of Christianity raised over many centuries on Talmudic Judaism, as an element fundamentally hostile to Jewry, has led to the fact that Jews became actively involved in the secularisation of Christian culture.’82 Mitrofanov spoke earlier in his presentation about the ‘genocide’ of Orthodox Russia; the killing of dozens of bishops and more than 100,000 lower clergy in the two decades following the October Revolution of 1917. At the end of his presentation, he endeavoured to point to and name the guilty parties. In his opinion, the Russian people themselves were primarily responsibility for the ‘genocide of the Church’ that took place: ‘for they permitted this terrible occurrence in their country. But in addition, it is impossible to pretend that these events were not connected in any way to members of the Jewish radical intelligentsia.’83 Church historian Mitrofanov added at this juncture: ‘Therefore, when we rightly reflect on the issue of what responsibility German Christians held for the Holocaust, we should also, in all fairness, ask ourselves the question: to what extent was Russian Jewry responsible for the policy of Church genocide, for which there is no comparable event even outside of the 20th century?’84 Archpriest Mitrofanov’s line of argument ignores the fact that all religions were contested in the Soviet Union after 1917, including the Jewish religion. Almost all the synagogues and schools for training rabbis were closed; religious rites and festivals 387

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together with circumcision and other ritual requirements of the Mosaic law were forbidden.85 It is clear, nevertheless, that Russian Orthodoxy’s interpretation of Stalin’s persecution of the Church assigned a degree of culpability to secularized Jews. This fact serves to explain the Russian Orthodox Church’s supposed silence on the Holocaust. The Church generalized its perspective on suffering to include all civilian victims and soldiers, but its position of seniority in Slavic Orthodoxy meant that it had a significant influence on Russia’s neighbouring Slavic states. In an alternative source, dating on this occasion from the period in question, a similar line of argument can be discerned. Sergii (Voskresensky), the exarch expected to revitalize the Russian Orthodox Church in the occupied Baltic States and deal pragmatically with the Nazi regime, made a statement on the persecution of the Jews in 1943. The bishop was later quoted (29 November 1943) in a report to the Commander of the Sicherheitspolizei in the Reichskommissariat Ostland. He claimed that Bolshevism did not have its roots in Russian sources but was rather an experiment imposed on Russia by the European democratic civilization, or in short by European Jewry. According to the exarch, the Jews were prominent in the said democracy. Democracy, the fruit of the Enlightenment, and Bolshevism only differed by degrees from the secularization process and both were characterized by ‘irreligiosity’. The latter, he argued, was alien to true Russian culture as he saw it. According to Bishop Sergii, the universality of pan-Slavism had been replaced by the Communist Internationale. But the war had made it clear, he continued, that the Bolshevist experiment had been a failure and that the Russian people would never allow themselves to be forced into an alien straightjacket. Stalin had been forced to make many concessions to the Russian soul in the Great Patriotic War. If he were to go back on them there would be a revolution in Russia. As far as Bishop Sergii was concerned, this revolution would already have taken place in 1941 had it not been for the fact that the German occupier had introduced a different ‘Ostpolitik’ with respect to the Orthodox religion and Church.86 2.2 Orthodoxy and the persecution of the Jews: Belorussia and Ukraine The identification of Jews with Bolshevism can also be found in regions of the Ukraine and Belorussia in which the Nazi regime had become lord and master. The seeds of Nazi propaganda were planted in uncommonly fertile soil. Ukrainians and Belorussians of the older generation remembered the time of the ‘Yid-commissars’, when Jews played a disproportionally large role, as they saw it, in the revolution and civil war. The numerous Jews in the new Party and state governing bodies of the 1920s also confirmed the thesis of ‘Judeocratia’.87 ‘But it was fear that made the majority of the population abandon the Jews to their fate, it was fear that most frequently made non-Jews close their doors to Jews seeking refuge, and it was fear that made them drive the Jews from the villages or to give up refugees from the ghettos.’88 Traditional anti-Semitism also played a role. The same people who refused to give refuge to Jews gave it freely to escaped prisoners of war and 388

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Soviet soldiers who had been surrounded by enemy troops and were forced to live illegally in the occupied territories. The punishment for this was no less severe than that for harbouring Jews. The last and perhaps most horrible factor affecting the fate of the Soviet Jews was the indifference of the surrounding population. ‘In the Russian popular consciousness, the notion of the intrinsic value of human life was absent. It looks as if for the average Russian, there was nothing extraordinary about the act of murder.’89 No public intervention is known to us on the part of senior church functionaries of the Belorussian Orthodox Church, which sought independence in its revival under a German regime. In the Ukraine, the bishops of the Autocephalous Orthodox Church – marked by Ukrainian nationalism – did not condemn the mass execution of Jews, but focused their condemnation on ‘Jewish Bolshevism’. They had a close relationship with the Ukrainian militias who assisted the Einsatzgruppen of the SS in perpetrating mass murder. In June 1942, Archbishop Polikarp (Sikorsky) issued a statement describing his hostility towards ‘Muscovite Jewish communism’, and after the German defeat at Stalingrad he called on the faithful to help the Germans in their struggle against the ‘communist Muscovite-Jewish state’. In his mind, the Jews were the enemy of Ukrainian nationalism. In a letter to Hitler on the occasion of the first anniversary of the German invasion of the Ukraine in 1942, Bishops Nikanor (Abramovic), Mstyslav (Skrypnyk) and Sylvestr (Haievsky) wrote that they were praying for a successful conclusion to the Führer’s mighty struggle: the defence of the honour of the German people and the liberation of humanity from an atheistic Jewish-communist slavery.90 In the other Ukrainian church, the Autonomous Orthodox Church (traditionally linked with the Moscow Patriarchate), Bishop Panteleimon (Rudyk) reacted to a Soviet air attack by issuing a statement in May 1943 in which he accused the Jewish people – once chosen by God – not only of having crucified the Son of God, but now of providing the perpetrators of a fratricide. ‘Through criminal deceit and violence and under the cover of Bolshevism, the sons of the devil seized power over our land and flooded it with the blood of millions of innocent people.’ The faithful of his Church were called upon to support the German forces in the destruction of a satanic regime.91 A greater variety of perspectives is evident among the lower clergy, however. Examples include a priest by the name of Aleksej Glagolev, the son of a Hebraist at Kiev Theological Academy, who provided a Jewish woman with a baptismal certificate and later found protection for her in the countryside. As a ‘relative’ of the parish priest, she was expected to act like a Christian in the village and during one local procession she carried an icon of the Mother of God. When Ukrainian nationalists found the local parish priest, his family and the Jewish doctor they had taken into hiding brutally murdered in a neighbouring village, the priest and his wife were moved to a place of safety in a monastery.92 Anti-Semitism among the population together with the ‘the culture of denunciation’ and the penalties attached to concealing Jews – ‘the virtual certainty of the death penalty’ – led to the fact that only a few were willing to offer a place of hiding or provide details of a safe house.93 There are reports of Poles offering assistance, with Polish priests and Polish railway workers and farmers being mentioned for rescuing Jews. It is probable 389

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that Poles were considered third-class citizens in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine (after the Germans and the Ukrainians), which would perhaps have made it easier for them to show solidarity towards the persecuted Jews. There are also reports of Jews wearing crosses, something that was not unusual among the Ukrainian population and as a result not treated with suspicion. Some managed to escape capture in this way, both provisionally and permanently. In relative terms, the small communities of Baptist and Lutheran Christians in the Ukraine were most active in assisting the Jews. ‘In Volhynia alone, they apparently saved hundreds. These Protestants felt that their Christian faith allowed for nothing else. Also important was that they were a community in which mutual trust prevailed, so that they could quickly pass Jews from one locality to the next.’94 The reason for Baptist willingness to assist had its roots in that fact that they lived – more or less – in their ‘own’ villages and were close to biblical Judaism in some of their faith convictions, e.g. the observation of the Sabbath. A report exists of a Ukrainian farmer in the neighbourhood of Lućk who fell to his knees when he caught sight of a Jewish refugee and thanked God for ‘granting him the privilege of meeting a son of Israel’.95 An exception of a different order was the stance of Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky, the spiritual leader of the Greek Catholic Church in Galicia. As mentioned in Chapter 4, the profoundly pessimistic metropolitan issued a pastoral letter in November 1942 in which he condemned killing and murder in his Ukrainian surroundings and among the faithful of his church on the basis of the fifth Commandment: ‘Thou shalt not kill!’ He did not mention any of the victims by name, neither the Jews nor those who lost their lives in a growing civil war between Ukrainian and Polish nationalists. Give the context of his letter, however, it is clear that he was condemning the killing epidemic that was confronting Galicia. ‘Sheptytsky seems to have been preoccupied with the fear of what he defined as “murder addiction”.’96 He later presented a copy of his letter to Rabbi David Kahane when the latter was forced to seek refuge and a place of hiding in the residence of the Metropolitan. Some interpret this as an indication that his pastoral letter was ‘a Jewish-related appeal’.97 Sheptytsky had a multinational – Habsburg, Polish and Ukrainian – life history. ‘ “I am like St. Paul, who was a Jew to the Jews, and a Greek to the Greeks, and to all he was all to redeem all.” ’98 But he was constantly confronted with the sometimes brutal reality of nationalist passions of various sorts. During his priestly formation he developed a concrete interest in Jewish culture. At the age of 20, he learned Hebrew while following a course of treatment in the Polish town of Zakopane in the foothills of the Tatra Mountains. It is also known that he spoke to a delegation of the Jewish community in Hebrew during a tour of Galicia. The Lviv-based Jewish newspaper Chwila also published its best wishes on the occasion of the metropolitan’s 70th birthday. Sheptytsky’s preference for Jews and their culture was not without blemish. In the post-war turbulence of 1920, when an attempt was made to establish a Soviet republic in Galicia, he critized it severely and maintained that it was organized by a ‘Jew-dictator’.99 The annexation of Galicia in the Soviet Republic of Ukraine in 1939 occasioned critique on his part. At the end of that year he wrote to Cardinal Tisserant in Rome about the 390

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‘immigration of an enormous number of Jews’, who were making life more difficult than before. The numbers in question ran into the tens of thousands, refugees fleeing the Nazi occupation of Poland and attempting to settle in Lviv. Jews, he observed, had forced their way into the Galician economy ‘and gave the activities of the [Soviet] authorities a character of sordid avarice which one is accustomed to see only among Jewish petty merchants’. In another letter to the Holy See, Sheptytsky lamented the hold the Soviet state had on the schools in Galicia: ‘Principals of these schools were often Jews or atheists.’100 In his opinion, Jewish and communist youth who had emigrated from Russia into western Ukraine were a bad example to their Ukrainian counterparts.101 In the summer of 1941, Chief Rabbi Jechzekiel Lewin asked the metropolitan to speak out in public against the pogroms, the ‘spontaneous’ and less spontaneous consequences of the German occupation of Galicia. He did not do so. He was preoccupied at the time with the establishment of Ukrainian autonomy under German occupation. In February 1942, however, Sheptytsky became actively critical of the situation. He is said to have complained in an unpublished letter to Himmler about the treatment of the Jews and about the deployment of Ukrainian auxiliary police in pogroms and deportations. In another letter to the Holy See, the metropolitan made it clear that he was disappointed in the German dictatorship and that he considered it worse than the Bolshevik equivalent; it was almost satanic in character. In August 1942 he managed to reach Pius XII with reports about the killing of Jews on the streets of Ukrainian cities ‘in full view of the entire population and without remorse’. Estimates suggest that around 200,000 Jews were murdered in the Ukraine. ‘I think,’ the metropolitan observed, ‘that many among the souls of the murdered Jews must have turned to God, since they have not been so confronted with the probability of a violent death for centuries, sometimes even months before that perspective became a violent reality.’102 On 21 November 1942 Sheptytsky issued his – later celebrated – pastoral letter ‘Thou shalt not kill’.103 This was followed by the publication of a draft ecclesial decree on the Fifth Commandment, which was discussed on 3 December 1942 at the preparatory sitting of the Sobor, an archiepiscopal synod of the Greek Catholic Church, and read out during the plenary assembly on 10 December 1942. ‘The archiepiscopal Sobor instructs the clergy to dedicate themselves wholeheartedly to healing the serious wounds inflicted on the organism of our Church and our People by the numerous acts of violence against human beings perpetrated by our faithful.’104 The statement decried the unparalleled lust for blood that had taken hold of the population of Galicia. Jews had fallen victim to this lust in large numbers although they were not its exclusive target. Sheptytsky clearly took concrete measures to help rescue Jews from deportation. On 2 July 1941, he offered Chief Rabbi Lewin protection in his residence, but the latter is said to have refused. Although Lewin himself was later murdered, the metropolitan arranged for his two sons to be brought to safety in a monastery. The aforementioned Rabbi David Kahane, who had served in Lviv in the 1930s, also found refuge in the archiepiscopal palace where he worked in the library and taught the monks Hebrew. His identity was thus known to several people. Kahane’s wife acquired papers from the abbess of a 391

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monastery stating that she was ‘Ukrainian through and through’. The metropolitan also offered protection to the two sons of the former Rabbi of Katowice, Zvi and Leon Chameides. According to estimates, roughly 150 people went into one or other form of hiding in an ecclesial institution under his supervision. Other Greek Catholic priests likewise provided places of hiding for Jews in Lviv.105 ‘Rescued children were given false baptismal certificates, Ukrainian-sounding names, and then were delivered to monasteries, convents, and orphanages.’ Sheptytsky declared to Kurt Lewin (son of the murdered chief rabbi) that he wanted to save the Jewish people and that he expected neither conversion nor anything else in return. ‘When the war was over they were returned to what was left of the Jewish community.’ Monks of the Studite Brethren helped Jews cross the border into Hungary and Romania, assistance that did not go unchallenged within their own circles. ‘It seems that a “network” of the most trusted, moral, and courageous among the ecclesiastical personnel were mobilized by Sheptytsky to perform the complex and dangerous task of rescue. They were exposed not only to the external threat of the German authorities but also to criticism and opposition from within.’106 Metropolitan Sheptytsky’s complex personality embraced both critique of the Jews as well as the compulsion to offer them help. As we already noted, he gave his indirect approval to the establishment of the SS -Volunteer Division ‘Galician’ in April 1943, by supporting the 30,000 men who were part of the division and by placing five chaplains at its disposal, among them Father Laba, a member of his episcopal staff. Himmler, who was aware of his protest against the persecution of the Jews, accepted the metropolitan’s help.107 Sheptytsky endeavoured to build bridges in a context of all out war while publicly exposing and condemning the execution of Jews. ‘In Eastern Europe, he represents a humane minority who desired to be a shepherd to his brothers and earned the right to call himself such.’108 In a conversation with an official of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs in September 1943, the metropolitan declared that he considered Nazi Germany a greater evil than Bolshevism. ‘Sheptytsky reproached the Germans mainly for “their inhumane behavior” towards the Jews. The Germans had killed 100,000 in L’viv alone and “millions in Ukraine”. A young man had confessed to “having himself murdered seventy-five people in L’viv in one night alone”. The Nazi diplomat replied that Judaism was a “mortal danger for Christianity”, and noted, that “the Metropolitan admitted that this was correct, but insisted that the extermination of the Jews was not permissible.” ’109 While Rabbi Kahane was in hiding in the archiepiscopal residence in 1943, he and Sheptytsky discussed the reasons behind the inhuman hatred towards the Jews and their persecution in their city and country. The metropolitan introduced a passage from the gospel of Matthew into the conversation in which the Jews assembled in front of Pontius Pilate responded: His blood be upon us and upon our children. Shortly thereafter he apologized for his words, which alluded to the ancient Christian claim that the Jews were responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus. ‘In this grave situation, when the Jewish people is bleeding profusely and bearing the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of innocent victims, I should not have mentioned this subject. Please forgive me.’110 392

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2.3 Persecution of the Jews in Serbia Serbia enjoys the dubious reputation of being the first occupied European country to be declared ‘judenfrei’ by the Nazi regime. Its Jewish population had already been executed or deported on a grand scale in 1941, such that a senior police functionary was able to report to Berlin in May 1942: ‘Serbien ist judenfrei.’111 The executions were ordered in the first instance in the broader hostage context. The rule stated that for every German soldier killed, one hundred Serbians would pay with their lives, and for every wounded soldier fifty. Bearing in mind that resistance organizations – both ‘Chetniks’ and partisans – were active in Yugoslavia from the early days of the occupation, the murder of civilian hostages was a frequent phenomenon. The Nazi regime imposed this measure by preference on Jewish and Roma men. As noted in Chapter 4, the occupying power in Serbia was of the Austrian model. The commanding officers had served in the former imperial army and were motivated by a hatred of Serbia rooted in the fact that it had ushered in the fall of the Austro-Hungarian dual monarchy after the First World War. They considered it a land of conspirators. Serbian Jews and communists were their first targets. On 19 April 1941, two days after the capitulation, both groups were required to register themselves. On 5 July 1941, the first Jewish males, together with a few communists, were executed as hostages. The Wehrmacht’s role in the killing of Jews in occupied Serbia was also significant. Between October and December 1941, estimates of around 25,000 people were sacrificed to their policy of reprisal, among them at least 6,000 men from the Jewish population and from among the Roma, in so far as the latter were ‘non-residential’.112 While the punitive expeditions focused in the first instance on Jews and communists, the German commanders also ordered random killings in order to meet their quotas. The persecution of the Jews in Serbia was thus broadened to a wide-ranging pursuit of hostages. Clergy were among their number. Between 19 and 21 October 1941, more than 2,300 citizens were executed by members of the Wehrmacht in the city of Kragujevac and its surroundings. The executions in question included 144 school children and a large number of their teachers. Eight Serbian Orthodox priests were also killed. On one given Sunday, German soldiers attacked a church in nearby Groznice, removing the pastor and the male participants in the liturgy to be killed.113 The Jewish women and children were interned in Sajmište concentration camp on the river Sava near Belgrade. They were gassed between March and May 1942, early victims of the German experimentation with a mobile gas van. The gas van drove through the streets of Belgrade where the Sajmište camp was clearly visible from the elevated centre of the city. At this juncture, the German authorities were clearly not (yet) determined to conceal their activities.114 The deportation of Jews in Serbia was witnessed in any event by village and city dwellers alike, including their clergy. The orthodox priest Gliska Babović is the most important source of information on the transfer of Jewish prisoners from Sabac concentration camp to Sajmište in Belgrade in the bitter cold winter of 1941–2. He describes their vicissitudes in his diary and must thus have witnessed the event in person.115

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It is known that Patriarch Gavrilo Dožić, who was immediately interned after the German invasion, had visited the synagogue in Vukovar in November 1939. The rabbi, Israel Cher, expressed his appreciation for the visit at a time in which Jewish communities across Europe were suffering discrimination. The patriarch responded that he condemned violence and religious persecution and that he and his Church supported the civil rights of Jews in Yugoslavia. These words, however, were not included in the press, which was subject to state censorship.116 It was also a remarkable gesture on the part of the patriarch since anti-Semitism was audible within the Serbian Orthodox Church in the form of a religious criticism of secular Jewry, which was considered responsible in part for the emergence of modern ideologies like liberalism and Bolshevism. The arrival in Serbia of Orthodox refugees from the Soviet Union, with their critique of the Jewish contribution to the October Revolution and the consequences thereof, was also important in this regard. The patriarch was not the only one to be silenced during the Nazi occupation. His substitute, Metropolitan Josif, and the other bishops – who had not been interned – were under continuous pressure from the occupying regime. They were either unable or unwilling to speak out against the persecution of the Jews or the mass execution in Kragujevac or the suffering in camps such as Banjica, Sajmište or in the city of Niš. This took place for the most part during the first year of the occupation, when the terror was at its most intense and open criticism was equivalent to suicide. A small number of individual rescue operations have been reported. In 2001, a letter surfaced from a Jewish woman by the name of Ela Trifunović-Najhaus, a resident of Belgrade. She declared that she and her mother had been spared deportation. Bishop Nikolaj Velimirović, who had made no secret of his critical stance towards modern Jewry in the Interbellum – as discussed in Chapter 6 – managed to save Ela and her mother from deportation by having them brought to the monastery of Ljubostinja, Ela in a potato sack, her mother dressed as a nun. They survived the war. The woman’s father, dentist Alexander Najhaus, was a friend of the bishop. The authenticity of the letter was confirmed by the Jewish community in Belgrade.117 2.4 Orthodoxy and the persecution of the Jews: Greece The Greek variant of the relationship between Orthodoxy and Judaism is variegated. There are examples of indifference with respect to the fate of the Jews in Greece, an indifference that can be explained by the identification of Jews with Bolshevism within Orthodox circles. There are also examples of a widespread and last minute attempt to save the Jews from deportation. Our description of the role of the clergy in the Greek civil war (see Chapter 7), moreover, makes it clear that the contrast between atheistic communism and Orthodoxy has to be nuanced. Jews had acquired the status of an officially recognized minority in the multi-ethnic Ottoman Empire. For this reason, they were not unanimous or immediate in welcoming the Greek war of independence. The fact that the Greek state identified itself so explicitly with the Orthodox Church meant that the Greek nationality and Christianity were 394

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intertwined. In the war of independence, this gulf did not only lead to the killing of the ‘sons of Ishmael’ (Muslim combatants), it also led on occasion to the killing of the ‘sons of Isaac’ (Jewish non-combatants).118 There is evidence in Greek Orthodoxy of an antiSemitism that was expressed annually on Good Friday when the Church recalled the crucifixion of Jesus. A widespread custom existed in which a straw figure representing the (Jewish) traitor Judas was burned. The Holy Synod of the Greek Orthodox Church had condemned the practice in no fewer than three encyclicals (12 April 1891, 10 May 1910 and 13 April 1918) because it had frequently occasioned pogroms. The Jewish population of Greece was divided into two specific communities: the Sephardim in and around Thessaloniki and the Romaniotes who tended to be concentrated in Athens. The term Romaniotes refers to the ‘Roman Jews’ who saw themselves as the descendants of Jewish immigrants who fled Palestine after the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 CE. In cultural terms they located their origins in the Byzantine world. Historically speaking, Athens was the Romaniotes’ city of choice; it later became the home to a secularized Jewish elite.119 The Jewish community in Thessaloniki was Sephardic in origin. They saw themselves as descendants of the refugees who were forced to flee the Iberian Peninsula at the end of the Middle Ages, settling in the Ottoman Empire where they rebuilt their lives, often with success. When Thessaloniki was annexed to Greece in 1912 as a consequence of the Balkan War, the Jewish community was forced to set aside its Ottoman identity and supplement its own language – Ladino – with a knowledge of Greek. The Thessaloniki Sephardim were larger in number, however, and when the region became part of Greece in 1912 the number of Jews in the country increased from 10,000 to 70,000. The Jewish community in Thessaloniki was the largest of all. The Romaniotes had long been familiar with Greek language and culture and were thus better prepared to accept the Greek state than the Sephardic community. This distinction between the ‘old Greece’ and the ‘new Greece’ is relevant for our analysis of the attitude of the Orthodox population to the deportations. In the original heartland of the Greek struggle for independence, Jews were seen as fellow citizens who could count – to a degree – on the understanding of their Orthodox neighbours. The northern city of Ioannina, for example, housed one of the oldest Jewish communities in Greece. The Jews of the city were not obliged to wear the yellow star during the war, nor were they immediately required to register themselves. They spoke Greek and had a good relationship with their Orthodox neighbours. The fact that something over 1,800 Jews from Ioannina were arrested and deported to Auschwitz in March 1944 had more to do with the attitude of the local rabbi than with their non-Jewish neighbours. He had urged his community to obey the orders of the (German) occupying regime.120 The large Jewish community in Thessaloniki, by contrast, was seen by its neighbours as ‘foreign’, a ‘millet – nation’ with its own language – Ladino – that was considered after 1912 as a relic of the (detested) Ottoman Empire. Large urban fires had ravaged the city in 1890 and 1917, with the lion’s share of the damage being suffered by the Jewish community. In 1917, after the October Revolution, the younger generation of Jews in Salonika felt drawn in large numbers to communism. The endorsement of a revolutionary 395

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ideology was clouded by the position of the Komintern on the independence of Macedonia after the First World War. The communists thus found themselves at odds with a Greek nationalism that laid claim to Macedonia. Nationalist accusations against the Jewish communists were twofold: they were Marxist and they were not patriotic. In the pogrom that took place in the summer of 1931 – known as the ‘Campbell riots’ after the Campbell district of the city in which the Jewish proletariat had sought and found refuge after the city fire of 1917 – the Jewish communists were opposed ‘as being mostly foreign subjects making money in Greece and cooperating with communists and comitadjiis [Bulgarian fighters]’.121 In April 1941, Thessaloniki found itself in the German-occupied zone. The first antiJewish activity started on 11 April with the destruction of Jewish cultural life. Forced labour was introduced for the Jews on 13 July 1942, and in addition to suffering under the shortage of food experienced by the entire population of occupied Greece, the Jewish community was forced by the Nazi regime into the isolation of a ghetto named after ‘Baron Hirsch’. In July 1942, Jewish men were summoned to Freedom Square, forced to stand for hours in the blazing sun and to engage in humiliating gymnastic exercises. Prior to the deportations, the Jewish cemetery in Thessaloniki was expropriated in December 1942. The graves were emptied and the (often marble) gravestones were used in the construction of new buildings and the reconstruction of existing buildings.122 The deportations started on 13 February 1943. Between February and August, roughly 50,000 of Thessaloniki’s Jewish population of more than 56,000 were deported, the majority to Auschwitz, crammed into cattle-trucks in groups of 60. Of the 48,974 Jews deported to Auschwitz, 38,386 were gassed on arrival. The Italian consul general observed to his minister on 11 August 1943 that the Jewish community of ‘Salonica’ existed before the discovery of America. It had ceased to exist, its economic wealth plundered. Its liquidation went hand in hand with horrendous crimes and cruelty.123 In comparison with Thessaloniki, the number of deported Jews in Athens was much smaller. Roughly 1,000 were arrested in March 1944 and transported in cattle-trucks to distant Auschwitz. The relative difference in numbers can be explained on the basis of the specific circumstances in Athens. The Jews of the city did not live in their own neighbourhood, and unlike the Sephardic community in Thessaloniki they did not speak their own language or Greek, for that matter, with a characteristic accent. They were integrated into Greek society, which, as we know, was dominated by an Orthodox culture.124 The leadership of the Orthodox Church did not sit back and do nothing. In February 1943, Metropolitan Gennadios of Thessaloniki raised objections with the occupying regime while the deportations were still being prepared, but evidently to no avail. In March of the same year – the month in which the deportations took place – he appealed once again to the authorities for clemency and urged his own Orthodox flock to show compassion to the Jews, referring in a pastoral letter to the expulsion of the Greeks from Asia Minor in 1923 that resulted in a wave of immigration of which he had first-hand knowledge. The metropolitan insisted that the deportations would inevitably result in the death of the majority of Jews, especially on account of their poverty.125 396

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Archbishop Damaskinos of Athens likewise put up a fight. On 23 March 1943, after the deportation of Thessaloniki’s Jews had already commenced, he sent a letter of protest together with 28 prominent Athenian residents to Konstantinos Logothetopoulos, the Greek prime minister. The letter underlined the patriotism of the Jews in Greece. They ‘shared in the common sacrifices on behalf of their Greek mother country, being among the first to join in the struggle of the Greek nation to defend its historical rights’.126 In a second letter to Gunther von Altenburg, the representative of the German occupying authorities, he drew attention once again to the loyalty of the Jews in Greece and in Greek society. They had always been ready to engage in genuine cooperation – including ‘self-sacrifice and self-abnegation’ – in times of crisis.127 In his own diocese, Archbishop Damaskinos urged his people to help the Jews in their efforts to go into hiding. He also instructed his priests and monks to provide Jews with baptismal certificates to allow them to present themselves as Christians. In September 1943 he turned to Panos Haldezos, the Mayor of Athens, and informed him of his decision to save as many Jews as possible, even if it meant placing himself in danger.128 According to estimates, he and Mayor Haldezos thus managed to assist 560 Jewish children to conceal their Jewish identity. ‘The Athens community’s history of friendly interactions with Orthodox Christians and the comparatively liberal nature of the Greek rabbinic establishment led many Athenian Jews to take advantage of such measures. While in Lithuania and elsewhere rabbis told congregants that under no circumstances – even in case of life or death – could a Jew save himself with a baptismal certificate, in Greece the rabbinic authorities not only allowed but encouraged the practice.’129 Estimates suggest that around 10,000 Athenian Jews were saved in this manner.130 A further striking example relates to the island of Zakynthos off the west coast of the Peloponnesos where all 275 Jews survived the war. When the German occupying regime instructed the island’s mayor, Loukas Karieras, to submit a list of Jews on the island, he and the Orthodox Bishop Chrysostomos listed only themselves; if the Jews were to be deported then they would go with them. While the two stubborn negotiators argued with the authorities, the Jewish families were accommodated by Christian families in safe houses across the island. Only the sick and the elderly remained in the island’s capital. As a result, the SS abandoned its plans to board the island’s Jews on a ship that was already carrying the Jews deported from Corfu.131 But three-quarters of the Jews on the island of Corfu were deported in June 1944, thanks in part to the assistance of the mayor. When the last group had departed – the last Greek Jews dispatched to Auschwitz – the island’s magistrate thanked the German occupier for removing ‘foreign elements’ from Corfu.132 Metropolitan Joachim of the city of Volos, on the other hand, urged the papades (priests) in his diocese to shelter Jews fleeing from Volos. In addition, the city council used delaying tactics that undermined the surprise effect of the arrests. Deportations in the Bulgarian-occupied zone of Greece followed a different trajectory. In March 1943, the Jews living in Thrace were arrested in a surprise round-up that gave them no time to seek shelter in the homes of their Christian neighbours, with whom they were on generally good terms. In Didymoteicho (Thrace), the Jews were assembled in 397

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March 1943 in readiness for deportation, under the supervision of the Bulgarian authorities, to German concentration camps. The Orthodox bishop of the city brought them water while they were waiting, but his faithful locked themselves up in their homes to avoid having to witness the tragedy.133 The Greek Metropolitans Damaskinos and Gennadios are exceptions to the general silence that characterized Orthodoxy in face of the deportation and mass murder of Jews. The Ukrainian Metropolitan Sheptytsky can be added to their number together with – as we shall see in the following pages – the Bulgarian Prelates Stephanos (Sofia) and Kirill (Plovdiv), both of whom appear to have been influential in preventing deportations, albeit in their own country. The majority of Slavic Orthodox bishops, however, witnessed the persecution of the Jews without intervening in any way. The Russian Orthodox Church faced Stalinist persecution during the war years and was inclined to identify (emancipated) Jews with Bolshevism. From 1941 onwards, the Church was involved in a total war. The belligerence of the Nazis affected the Russian nation as a whole, its victims (Soviet prisoners of war as well as ordinary civilians) running into the millions. The Orthodox Church was unable to make a particular distinction with respect to Jewish victims; Russians as such were victims. For this reason, it is not entirely surprising that the first echoes of resistance were to be heard in the periphery, in Greece and Bulgaria, and in the Greek Catholic Church in western Ukraine.

3 Baltic States and the persecution of the Jews The three Baltic States – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – experienced two occupations during the war years, first by the Russians and then by the Germans (and from 1944 once again by the Russians). Annexation by the Soviet Union resulted in the imprisonment and deportation of scores of citizens. When the Germans invaded in the summer of 1941, a segment of the population welcomed them as liberators. Revenge actions against actual and presumed sympathizers of the previous regime were particularly cruel. In 1940–1, under Soviet occupation, Jews managed to find their way into leading government positions for the first time. Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians thus considered them accessories to the destruction of their independent states. ‘Communist terror ripped apart the social fabric of Baltic societies and desensitised them to violence. Nazi propaganda deliberately conflated communists and Jews into a single enemy (“Judeo-Bolsheviks”).’134 The Jewish minority – considerable in Latvia and even more so in Lithuania – was judged and censured for its real or supposed preference for the Soviet state. The fact that so many of the indigenous population were accomplices to the Nazi persecution and murder of Jews cannot be explained on the basis of traditional antiSemitism in the countries in question. Jews had been able to live a respectable life in the Baltic republics, which in part explains why, for example, almost 3,000 Jews experienced solidarity in Lithuania and found places of safety with Lithuanian families during the German occupation. The double occupation – first Soviet, then Nazi – remains relevant, nevertheless, for the explosion of revenge. ‘The departure of one foreign ruler 398

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meant nothing more than the arrival of another. When foreign troops left, people had to reckon not with peace but with the policies of the next occupier.’135 The persecution of the Jews in what was called the Reichskommissariat Ostland – the German administrative system deployed in the three occupied Baltic States – can be divided into three phases. In the first (1941), Jews were executed at random on the heels of the German Wehrmacht as it advanced towards Leningrad and Moscow. The killings were not only carried out by local collaborators. The Germans had perfected their argument, that the liberation that they offered was from Jews and that local participation in such liberation was a precondition. In the Baltic states locals served as translators of this message: if they collaborated with the second (German) occupier, their first (Soviet) collaboration would be forgotten.136 Three-quarters of the Jewish community in northern Estonia (an estimated 3,000 people) managed to evacuate the area together with the Red Army, but this was exceptional. By the end of 1941, the majority of Baltic Jews had been killed. A relatively ‘stable’ period followed, which lasted until the spring of 1943. At that juncture Jews who had managed to survive the mass executions of 1941 were brought together into ghettos in Vilnius, Kaunas, Riga and other cities. In December 1942, Anthony Springovics, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Riga, reported to the Holy See that the majority of the Jews of Riga had been murdered and that only a couple of thousand remained in the city’s ghetto.137 The German occupying regime exploited their labour power. After the Warsaw Uprising (mid-1943), a third and final phase began. In June 1931, Himmler ordered the liquidation of the ghettos in the Baltic States and of their inhabitants. His orders were implemented from the summer of 1943 to the summer of the following year.138 A concentration camp was set up in their neighbourhood of Riga, Kaiserwald/ Mezaparks, while other ghettos were themselves transformed into concentration camps. The ghetto of Vilnius was liquidated in September 1943. Those who were still capable of working were deported to camps in Estonia and Latvia, the remainder were sent to Auschwitz. In response to the advance of the Red Army in the summer of 1944, Jewish prisoners were relocated to extermination camps in the west or shot dead on the spot. Between 1941 and 1945, 95 per cent of the Jews in Lithuania – almost 200,000 people – were killed. Of the 70,000 Jews in German-occupied Latvia only a few thousand survived the war.139 The Nazis also killed the Roma, but in much smaller numbers: 2,000 in Latvia and 500 in Lithuania and Estonia. In addition to the Jews and the Roma, 18,000 other citizens were killed in Latvia, 7,000 in Estonia and 5,000 in Lithuania. The majority were accused of collaboration with the ousted Soviet regime. Estonia – together with Serbia – was the first country to be declared ‘judenfrei’ by the Nazi leadership during the Wannsee Conference in January 1942. This was already a fact after the execution of 963 Jews who had remained in the country after the greater part of the Jewish community had fled eastwards with the Red Army. Chief Rabbi Aba Gomer did not want to abandon his community in Estonia and a number of pious Jews followed his decision. All of the 963 Estonian Jews murdered under German occupation were killed by Estonians, usually policemen. About the same time, as many non-Jewish Estonians were also killed by those same Estonian policemen.140 The Estonian population refrained 399

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from public displays of sympathy.141 Few if any reports exist of Estonians rescuing Jews during this time of persecution.142 In Latvia (and also in Lithuania), the Jewish population had little time to escape in June 1941 and large numbers thus found themselves caught in the snares of German as well as local Jew hunters. The Evangelical Church, a national institution in Latvian society, maintained ‘neutrality’ during the mass killings, ‘if one does not consider silence to be a sign of covert consent’.143 The staff of the Einsatzgruppen were able to report in September 1941 that the Evangelical Church had immediately acquiesced to the political situation brought about by the invasion of German troops and had demonstrated a general understanding of the situation.144 Evidence exists that Teodors Grīnbergs, the Lutheran Archbishop of Riga, protested against the discrimination of Jews and Roma in the ghettos. This appeared to achieve results to the extent that Jews in mixed marriages were no longer obliged to live in the ghetto. They were required, nevertheless, to submit to sterilization. In the given circumstances, assistance to Jews was the exception, its absence the rule. Examples exist of individual protests from Evangelical pastors, such as that of Lutheran priest Paul Rozenbergs who openly lamented the persecution of the Jews during a funeral service in Kokenhusen. He was arrested and questioned by the Gestapo and was fortunate to escape with his life, as did a fellow priest, who had delivered a similar sermon in Dignāja.145 In relative terms, more understanding for the persecuted Jews was evident among the lower Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox clergy. This can be explained against the background of the Nazi regime’s anti-Polish and anti-Russian policy in the Baltic States, which inspired opposition among the (Polish) Catholic and Russian Orthodox minorities. What help there was, however, came for the most part from Baptists and Seventh Day Adventists who were conscious of a biblical closeness to the Jews and whose religion had placed them in a similar (Protestant) minority position.146 According to a pre-war census (1935), only 325 of the 93,479 Jews in Latvia had been baptized as Christian. Readiness to submit to baptism increased, particularly in rural Latvia, after the first massacres in the summer of 1941. People believed or better hoped that their family would thus be spared, at least the children, but their hopes were on the whole to no avail. It was useful nevertheless when a local commissioner of police refused to be dictated to by Nazi racial dogmas and preferred to be guided by personal interests and convictions. In predominantly Catholic Letgale, a region of Latvia, a few Catholic priests facilitated such attempted rescues on their own initiative and without prior permission from the Catholic Bishop Jāzeps Rancāns. It is also possible that the bishop was tacitly aware of what was going on.147 Reports likewise exist concerning rescue actions by individual Orthodox priests. The German police archives make reference to a parish priest in Liepāja (Libau) by the name of Pawel Jankowitsch who supplied six Jews with baptismal certificates as evidence that they belonged to his community. Another report refers to the baptism of twelve children in Rositten by Jānis Rusanovs, the local parish priest.148 But such accounts tend to be few and far between, moments of humanity in an orgy of violence. In Daugavpils, the capital of the Letgale region, hundreds of Jews were murdered in a pogrom shortly after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, accused of starting a major urban fire. The city had a relatively large percentage of Catholic inhabitants, some 400

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of whom participated in the massacre. When 300 child residents of a home for the handicapped were killed, Aloizs Brokāns, priest and rector of the secondary school in Aglona, an important Marian sanctuary near Daugavpils, denounced the bloodlust among his people from the pulpit in December 1941 in a sermon on the Fifth Commandment: Thou shalt not kill. The priest was arrested and transferred to Struthof concentration camp near the Alsatian village of Natzwiller where he later died.149 In 1918, Lithuania was a multi-ethnic state similar to Poland and Romania. During peace negotiations in Paris in 1919 it was ordered to respect the rights of minorities, the Jewish minority among others, especially the Polish. The said rights, however, were ignored in the 1920s. From 1926, Lithuania was governed by a conservative and nationalist regime under the leadership of Antanas Smetona. This introduced an element of xenophobia into Lithuanian politics, and the reality on the ground was far from unequivocal in this regard: ‘Jews were the main competitors in the economic field; Poles had occupied Vilnius and were considered the old enemy because they had dominated the feudal class in Lithuania. The Germans were longing for the Klaipeda-Region (Memel), the Russians had tried to russify the country and the Bolshevik regime remained a threat.’150 The Jewish population of Lithuania numbered 200,000 in June 1941, similar in number to that of Germany. The community’s size and culture recalled the tolerance that characterized the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The twentieth century, however, was quite different. ‘When the Soviet Union took over in 1940 and annexed the Lithuanian state, the process of nation building was interrupted and apparently totally destroyed. The alleged enemies of the nation, the Jews, seemed to be profiting from the Soviet regime.’151 In reality, however, only a relatively small number of Jews became members of the Communist Party in Lithuania. An explanation for the severe pogroms that took place in the first months of the German occupation of the country was that ‘Lithuanians as a nation were erasing the humiliating, shameful past in which they had allowed their own sovereignty to be destroyed by the Soviet Union. The killing created a psychological plausibility with which it was difficult to negotiate: Since Jews had been killed they must have been guilty; and since Lithuanians had killed they must have had a righteous cause.’152 After the Sovietization of Lithuania, political exiles in Berlin had formed a ‘Lithuanian Activist Front’ (LAF ) that filled the vacuum in the first weeks of the German occupation with a Lithuanian government. ‘Non-Lithuanians in the ethnic respect, and especially Jews, were to be excluded from the state and the nation.’ The Front propagated the idea of a forced evacuation of ‘undesired minorities’, but this was not (yet) a call to engage in mass murder. Nevertheless, in July 1941, during the first days of the German invasion, 2,500 Jews met their deaths in a bloody pogrom, murdered by Lithuanian henchmen. The Nazi regime ultimately pushed the LAF and the provisional Lithuanian government aside. Two months after the invasion of the Wehrmacht, almost all of the Jews in the Jewish district of the capital Kaunas had been murdered; 4,211 in number. The cooperation of Lithuanian police officials was of crucial significance in this regard. ‘Even though it is true that Lithuanians could not have prevented the Holocaust, the implementation would have been different had they decided to refrain from becoming perpetrators.’153 401

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As we observed in Chapter 4, the Catholic bishops of Lithuania welcomed the German invasion as a liberation from Soviet occupation. But they also did not refrain from complaining about the persecution of the Jews. A group delegated by the episcopal conference consisting of the Archbishop of Kaunas, Juozapas Skvireckas, his auxiliary Vincentas Brizgys and Prelate Kazimieras Šaulys set out to present a declaration to the German commissioner general of Lithuania stating that the Jews were Lithuanian citizens and that killing them was at odds with every law. The commissioner refused to receive the delegation, arguing that policy with respect to the Jews was a question for Nazi Germany and not Lithuania. A report also exists that Archbishop Skiverckas was urged by priests of his diocese to protest the killing of the Jews, but that he left this to his subordinates.154 One day after the mass murder of Jews in the Kaunas ghetto (28–29 October 1941), auxiliary bishop Brizgys turned to a juridical authority in Lithuania, the assessor general Petras Kubiliūnas, and asked him to use his authority to prevent the mass killing of the Jews. None of these critical requests had any effect on the prevailing bloodlust.155 In a report from the Einsatzgruppen, reference is made to an individual Protestant protest. During his sermon in the Lutheran church in Varena on 11 September 1941, pastor Jonas Gylys spoke of innocent people being beaten by thugs and of the elderly and pregnant women being stabbed; the innocence of Jesus betrayed by Judas. Their blood was not yet dry when their persecutors stole all their property. According to the report, pastor Gylys had made his way without permission to the local synagogue to comfort and encourage imprisoned Jews.156 The Jewish Museum in Vilnius houses a list of 2,300 surnames of those who rescued Jews. The list contains not only Lithuanian names, but also those of Russians, Belarusians and Poles who lived in the multicultural state. ‘Among them are 237 representatives of the so-called intelligentsia (teachers, doctors, lawyers, writers, musicians and professors) and office employees, 120 priests, two seminaries, four monasteries. An additional 2000 were “simple” people from the villages and farms in the province.’157 Church assistance described in the Museum had two forms that had in the meantime become standard: the provision of baptismal certificates and the provision of safe houses. The list includes the names of priests who not only provided shelter to Jews themselves but also encouraged their parishioners to do so. Some Jews were baptized according to regular procedures, other were provided with baptismal certificates. The story is told of a Jewish woman who refused baptism for reasons of principle, in spite of her protectors’ insistence that it was only a formality that could secure her safety. She managed to join a group of partisans and ultimately survived the war.158 4 Persecution in Northern and Western Europe 4.1 Norway The Wannsee Conference of January 1942 also signalled the beginning of systematic deportation of thousands of Jews in Northern and Western Europe. But what led up to this Endlösung was different. The German occupying regimes in this part of the continent 402

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delayed the phase of discrimination because they strove initially for the peaceful Nazification of ‘kinfolk’. The final result – the deportations – is comparable with that of Eastern Europe, but not what led up to it. In occupied countries like Norway, the Netherlands and Belgium, for example, existing social institutions were given the chance – for the said political reasons – to continue to function within the boundaries of an unavoidable dictatorship. Church protest was thus louder and more frequent. Only 1,260 Jews were resident in Norway at the time of the German invasion, clearly fewer in number compared to other countries in Northern and – especially – Western Europe. But prior to 1851, Norway was not a focal point of Jewish emigration, and it was only in the said year that the state lifted its entry ban. Even after the lifting of the ban, few Jews opted to leave their land of origin in Eastern Europe for fear of pogroms or in search of better circumstances with Norway as their destination. As a result, the relatively small Jewish community was fairly well integrated into Norwegian society. Some time passed after the German invasion with no apparent discrimination, but in April 1941 the synagogue in Trondheim confiscated what and two months later a law was promulgated forbidding mixed marriages for Jews. The said ban also applied to marital partners from the native Sami people in the far north of the country. The Minister for Church Affairs, Ragnar Skancke, was responsible for this initiative, so Bishop Berggrav submitted a protest to the department in question. Other discriminatory measures included a ban on immigration for Jews and the obligation to wear the yellow Star of David. Part of the Jewish population had fled in the meantime to nearby Sweden; according to estimates they amounted to half of the 1,260 Norwegian Jews. When Norway’s church leaders were debating the document that was to separate the Church from the state – the Kirkens Grunn or Foundations of the Church (see Chapter 4) – a draft paragraph was on hand protesting against the discrimination of the Jews. The bishops and their advisors feared, however, that a condemnation of anti-Semitic National Socialism would only serve to drive Reichskommissar Terboven and Prime Minister Quisling closer together. This was not their intention as they hoped in fact to benefit from the discord between the two. The paragraph was thus excluded from the final text. Jews were deported from Norway in October 1942. A month later, on 10 November, the now free Norwegian Church addressed a letter to Prime Minister Quisling in which its authors stated that the confiscation of Jewish property and the arrest of the country’s Jewish men was equivalent to contempt for human rights. Jews had not been arrested because they had broken the law but simply because they were Jews. This was a violation of Paul’s words in the Letter to the Galatians, according to which no distinction should be made between Jews and gentiles. The bishops referred to a passage in the Norwegian Constitution which stated that the Lutheran faith was that of the state. The state was thus obliged to respect the principles of the Christian faith and laws or decrees that ran counter to this obligation were in essence illegal. The state was now acting in conflict with the said principles and the Church could not remain silent if it did not want to be considered an accessory.159 The Hebreerbrevet or Letter to the Hebrews was the initiative of Arnhold T. Øhrn, a Baptist and the chair of the Council of Dissenters. The document was also signed by 403

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representatives of the other Churches but not the Catholic Church.160 Jacob Mangers, the bishop, declined to sign because he was appealing to exclude some baptized Jews from the ordinances and did not wish to jeopardize their chances.161 For the majority of the 532 Norwegian Jews who were deported to Auschwitz, the church protest came too late. Only 32 survived the camp.162 4.2 Belgium Belgium can serve as an example of the effectiveness of ecclesial silence on the persecution of the Jews. No pastoral letters registering public protest were issued, rather relief measures were set up that required absolute secrecy. The memory of the (first) German invasion of Belgium in 1914 clearly defined the second on 10 May 1940. A general panic broke out since people remembered the ‘atrocities’, random executions and arson attacks that characterized the first weeks of the First World War. Many fled their homes in haste, including a few thousand of the estimated 66,000 Jews in Belgium at the time. The Belgian government, moreover, deported close to 4,000 Jews with a German passport as ‘hostile’ elements to France. The German military regime registered 10,000 fewer in occupied Belgium, around 55,000 Jews. The majority lived in the main urban centres, in and around Brussels, Antwerp, Liege and Charleroi.163 Only between 4,000 and 5,000 Jews in Belgium had Belgian nationality, almost 7 per cent of the total.164 The majority were from Eastern Europe, immigrants who had found themselves in the port city of Antwerp on their way to America – their initial destination – and had decided to stay. A pattern similar to what we observed in Greece also emerged in Belgium, namely a distinction in terms of both persecution and aid between the capital Brussels and the city of Antwerp. The majority of Belgium’s Jews were residents of one city or the other. The registration carried out in 1942 by the occupying military regime numbered the Jewish population of the towns at 29,134, namely 52.53 per cent of the total: 21,277 Jews lived in Antwerp, 38.36 per cent of the total. Brussels had the largest portion of Jews with Belgian nationality. They tended to be small businessmen and traders, the majority secularized. The latter is evident from the fact that the city now had independent Jewish schools. In Antwerp, on the other hand, where Jews constituted one tenth of the entire population, a Yiddish-speaking community formed after 1918, which made its living in the diamond, textile and leather trades.165 Antwerp not only had more religious schools and other Jewish educational institutions, it also had more synagogues. The port city was also home to a ‘very orthodox stream’ of Judaism, although its size should not be overestimated.166 The occupying military regime initially appeared to be in no hurry when it came to the persecution of Jews. The Secretaries General of various ministries – the highest authority in Belgium after the flight of the government – refused to implement orders issued by the German occupier to establish laws discriminating against the Jews. The military government thus took the task of excluding and deporting Jews upon itself, albeit at a relatively modest pace. The first measures leading to financial discrimination date from May 1941.167 The first deportation trains left the transit camp – the Dossin 404

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barracks in Mechelen – for Auschwitz on 4 August 1942. A total of 24,608 Jews were deported from Belgium, namely 44 per cent of the registered Jewish population.168 During the first phase of the deportations, Jews with Belgian nationality were exempt. This changed in September 1943, when a razzia was organized in Brussels and in Antwerp and 975 Jews were arrested. Their initial exemption was in line with the policy of the highest Catholic authority in the country, namely Cardinal Joseph-Ernest Van Roey, an authority who enjoyed considerable standing in occupied Belgium as a result of his intervention on behalf of King Leopold III (see Chapter 4). Van Roey followed a ‘lesser evil’ policy. As long as the military regime spared Jews who had become naturalized Belgians or who had converted to Catholicism, voices of protest within the Church were to remain silent. From July 1942, the archbishop was to witness the departure of Jews arrested and held for deportation at Dossin barracks in Mechelen. In September of the same year he considered formulating a public protest, but according to Albert Van den Berg, lawyer and supporter of Bishop Kerkhoffs of Liege, he decided not to do so for three reasons. The German occupying regime had focused its attention on Jewish immigrants from Greater Germany, Poland and the Ukraine. In his opinion, Belgian (and Dutch) Jews had less to fear. In addition, the occupying regime had paid no attention in the past to critical statements from the Belgian episcopate. Third, Van Roey was afraid the pulpit protest could have unwelcome consequences for Jewish children living in hiding in church institutions. He was aware of the relief measures the priests in his archdiocese had taken and preferred to give his flock complete freedom in this regard.169 Not everyone appreciated the cardinal’s silence, however. Some compared it with the public conduct of his predecessor Cardinal Mercier in the First World War and for Van Roey the comparison was clearly unfavourable.170 He received several petitions to intervene on behalf of the Jews, petitions that were recently studied in detail by historian Lieven Saerens. Between June 1941 and June 1942, they call for the protection of Jews against discriminatory measures; from July 1942 they address the deportations. Of the total – no fewer than 70 – the majority (46) call for clemency with respect to Jews who had converted to Catholicism or Jews in mixed marriages.171 The cardinal had his secretary Edmond Leclef or honorary canon Pieter Willem Van der Elst take care of the petitions and did not approach the German occupier personally. Of the 47 requests for exemption from deportation, 35 (67.3 per cent) did not receive a positive response. Saerens compared this result with the mediatory endeavours of King Leopold III and his mother Queen Elizabeth, both of who had remained in Belgium albeit under guard. Of Leopold’s royal interventions, 80 per cent were without result. Elizabeth, herself of Bavarian origins, intervened on behalf of 419 individuals, 187 (44.26 per cent) of whom escaped deportation.172 In a comparative study of the persecution of the Jews in France, Belgium and the Netherlands, historians Pim Griffioen and Ron Zeller have argued that factors such as the superior able-bodiedness of the Jewish community in Belgium and the fact that it had its own resistance organization were of considerable importance in escaping the deportations.173 Immigrants and refugees from the Interbellum tended to be cautious on account of their own (Eastern European) experience. In addition, communists and leftwing Zionists formed a Comité de défense des Juifs – Jewish Defence Committee in 405

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September 1942, which used its own resources to organize the provision of safe houses and places of hiding on a large scale. A further factor was also of significance, namely forced labour. This measure was announced on 6 October 1942: all men between the ages of 18 and 50 and all women between the ages of 21 and 35 could be ‘requisitioned’ for work in Germany. The Arbeitseinsatz boosted resistance among the population at large in a shockwave that also became tangible in the multiplication of safe addresses for Jews. ‘Jews in hiding found themselves sharing company with Belgians who now had a better understanding of what persecution implied.’174 It is against this background that we must explore the relatively small but nonetheless striking contribution of church-related individuals and institutions to the provision of places of hiding for Jews. In contrast to the silence of the Belgian episcopate, a variety of religious institutions offered help. False baptismal certificates were provided and on occasion actual baptisms were organized with the sole purpose of preserving the Jews involved from deportation. The provision of food vouchers and the organization of safe addresses required more work and effort. On some occasions help was offered to persecuted Jews or resistance fighters who needed to be smuggled across the border. Other instances of assistance were completely unprecedented: a nun from Turnhout, for example, arranged to marry a Jewish man in a civil ceremony to protect him from deportation.175 Viviane Teitelbaum-Hirsch has put together a list of 165 religious institutions that provided a place of hiding for Jewish children during the war. Based on this list, historian Lieven Saerens has observed that almost 70 per cent of the homes and communities were located in the Walloon provinces of Hainaut and Namur and the urban districts of Brussels and Nivelles. Only 15 per cent of the said institutions were located in the Flemish provinces of Antwerp, East and West Flanders and Limburg. In the Flemish context, the city of Leuven was the most important when it came to the provision of help (6.06 per cent of the total). Forty-five institutions were located in Brussels (25.45 per cent) while only one was located in Antwerp.176 These findings correspond with earlier studies. A survey conducted in the archdiocese of Mechelen in 1945, in the first year after the war, revealed that two of the five of the parishes in Brussels – for whom a survey form still survives – mention assisting Jews: the church of Our Lady in Laeken and the church of Saints John and Nicholas in Schaerbeek. None of the eleven parishes surveyed in Antwerp make such a reference. Another questionnaire that circulated among the 390 priests of the archdiocese revealed that of the 183 individuals in the province of Brabant 78 offered help to persecuted Jews, the majority in the form of active assistance (provision of a place of hiding). Of the 117 individuals interviewed in the province of Antwerp, only 15 offered help to persecuted Jews, nine of them providing a place of hiding. The others had provided food, offered indirect assistance, visited imprisoned Jews or converted a Jewish family to Christianity on the latter’s request.177 An example by way of illustration: Georges Meunier, parish priest of the church of Saint John and Saint Nicholas in Schaerbeek, a suburb of Brussels, was initially impregnated with religious anti-Semitism. Nevertheless, he was among the first priests in 406

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Brussels to concern himself with the fate of (convert) Jews. He and his assistant Armand Spruyt (from Antwerp) later received frequent requests from Jews for baptism, no fewer than 160 in the period between 1939 and 1944. Together with a few other priests (‘dedicated to the salvation of the Jews’), Meunier formed a group that met in the national secretariat of Young Christian Workers – Jeunesse ouvrière chrétienne (JOC ), and worked closely with the secular Jewish Defence Committee. They managed to secure a place of hiding for a total of 58 Jewish children. The JOC ’s programme of rural assistance for urban children placed a further 500 Jewish children in ‘safe’ institutions.178 Why were the church-based interventions in Antwerp so few when compared to Brussels? According to Lieven Saerens, it has to do with the relatively high level of antiSemitism in the port city whereby more courage was required on the part of those who came to the help of Antwerp’s Jews. And without the example of the clergy, the ordinary faithful were slow to act. In Brussels by contrast, ‘whole parishes’ sometimes participated in organizing safe houses and places of hiding. No such activities were evident in Antwerp. The distance between the Christian population and the Jewish minority was visible and tangible in Antwerp. Jews also lived in a specific area of the city, which the German police were able to cordon off with ease. Punishment for those caught helping Antwerp’s Jews, moreover, was also apparently more severe than, for example, in Brussels.179 The Bishop of Liege, Louis Joseph Kerkhofs, to whom we referred above in relation to his divergent position with respect to Cardinal Van Roey and his fellow bishops, proved himself to be the inspiration behind a campaign to provide safe shelter to Jews in church-run institutions. He acquired the support of Abbé André Meunier, professor at the Liege’s major seminary, and of the lawyer Albert Van den Berg. In September 1942, for example, the bishop assembled the deans and parish priests to discuss the persecution of the Jews and possible ways of providing assistance. According to Abbé Louis Célis, Bishop Kerkhofs was determined not to force anyone, bearing in mind the dangers to which his clergy might be exposed, but he wanted his priests to know nevertheless how proud he was of those who were ready to place their lives in the balance to save others.180 In the three months between July and September 1942, the first period of the deportations, many Jewish parents attempted to find places of safety for their children. The episcopal Collège Saint-Roch sheltered nine Jewish children, six boys and three girls. Joseph Lepkifker, cantor of the Jewish community in Liege, also went into hiding in the college where he was dressed in a soutane and given the name Abbé Botty.181 One of the monasteries that provided shelter to Jewish children and adults was in the village of Banneux. The bishop recognized a local devotion to ‘Our Lady of Banneux’ in 1942, thus transforming the village into an official place of pilgrimage. The hustle and bustle that resulted from the bishop’s action, however, did not endanger the safety of the Jewish children hidden in the village. Bishop Kerkhofs’ position attracted internal criticism. In January 1943, the aforementioned canon Pieter Willem Van der Elst cautioned Cardinal Van Roey on the potential dangers to which the Belgian population and the Church might be exposed on account of the Bishop of Liege’s opinions. In the canon’s humble 407

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opinion, the Bishop of Liege did not have a sufficient sense of the solidarity that united him with the other bishops.182 The question of (Catholic) identity was manifest in every effort to hide Jewish children in monasteries and boarding schools. The children in question were expected to renounce their Jewish background and assume a false identity. The Jewish Defence Committee, which was responsible for 2,000 children in hiding, reported at the end of 1943 that while such conversions were few and far between they continued to be concerned. On 2 May 1944, a few months after the liberation of Belgium, episcopal recommendations were circulated in which the chaplains of boarding schools and holiday camps were asked not to baptize children who had not yet reached ‘the age of reason’. They were also required to acquire the permission of the bishop and inform the local parish priest.183 The fact that such a circular was drawn up and distributed suggests that the rules of baptism were not being respected everywhere. Abbé Joseph André can serve as an example of concern and courage in this regard. He was a priest of the diocese of Namur and a teacher at the episcopal college in Floreffe when the war broke out, and he was appointed parish priest of the church of Saint John the Baptist in Namur shortly thereafter. He not only organized places of hiding for Jews in his parish, but also – with the help of the city council – provided them with false identity papers and food vouchers. A group formed around him that went by the name Aide chrétienne aux Israélites (ACI ) – Christian Assistance to the Jews – and consisted of priests, religious people (the majority), and lay people. He managed to save around 400 Jewish children from deportation.184 4.3 The Netherlands A remarkably large number of Jews were deported from the Netherlands and met their death in the camps: roughly 102,000 of the 140,000 resident in 1940. In terms of absolute figures and percentages, this is higher (75 per cent) than any other country in Northern and Western Europe.185 On the other hand, the church protest in the Netherlands was more assertive than elsewhere, a protest that squared with the decision of the church authorities to publicly champion faith and human rights. This decision led in July 1942, for example, to a collective protest – involving nearly all of the Christian churches in the Netherlands – against the persecution of the Jews. While the protest was an example of ecumenical unanimity and a powerful testimony, it also elicited exemplary reprisals on the part of the German occupier. The number of Jews living in the Netherlands prior to the occupation – 140,000 – was relatively high in Western European terms. This can be explained in part as a legacy of the Republic in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when Sephardic Jews from the Iberian Peninsula and later from Antwerp (after the city was taken by Spanish troops in 1585) were welcomed with open arms into the Netherlands. The immigration of Ashkenazi Jews from Central and Eastern Europe is a later phenomenon. Dutch society was highly segmented and the Jews thus formed their own population group, although the majority were assimilated as a result of secularization and 408

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urbanization and were to be found among the liberal and social democrat segments of the population. After the German invasion in May 1940, the occupying regime, which was dominated by Austrian Nazis such as Reichskommissar Arthur Seyss-Inquart, implemented its anti-Semitic policies on two fronts: gradually increasing discrimination against the Jews alternating with violence against Jews in public places. In Amsterdam, where the relative majority of the Jews lived, Dutch Nazis incited street fights. As a result, a strike was organized by the Communist Party in the city and a few nearby towns in February 1941, an open and until then unique protest against the pogroms in Amsterdam. The strike was violently suppressed, with nine deaths and more than 100 arrests. Of the 389 Jews who were arrested at the time, 348 were deported to Mauthausen concentration camp near Linz. They were put to work in a quarry and none of them survived.186 Death reports instilled a sustained fear within the Jewish population.‘Mauthausen’ became synonymous with ‘the obsession of the occupation’; with the death awaiting the Jews if they ignored the commands of the Nazi regime.187 Violence against the Jews in Antwerp also occasioned a complaint from the churches to the Netherlands’ highest authorities: the Secretaries General of the Ministries. Seven Protestant Churches protested against the erosion of the legal security of the Jews and insisted that this ran counter to ‘the demands of God’s Word’. Earlier, in October 1940, the Assembly of Protestant Churches had already expressed its criticism of the dismissal of Jewish civil servants. The occupying regime responded with the arrest of leading figures in the Assembly: Jan Donner, its chair on behalf of the smaller Reformed Churches, and Kuno Gravemeyer, its secretary, a pastor and secretary to the General Assembly of the Dutch Reformed Church. Although both men were quickly released, the Protestant Churches remained silent for some time. In the latter part of 1941, the Catholic Church established regular consultations with the Assembly of Protestant Churches. A delegation of three representatives requested a meeting with Reichskommissar Seyss-Inquart to protest against the discrimination of Jews and against the aggressive promotion of the National Socialist worldview. The audience took place on 17 February 1942, but not before one of the two Protestant representatives had been arrested. He had to be replaced, but consultations were unsuccessful. Two months later, all of the Protestant Churches in the Netherlands decided to issue a statement from the pulpit protesting against the ‘lawlessness, the cruelty towards the Jewish segment of the population and the enforcement of the National Socialist ideology’. The Catholic bishops reacted with a pastoral letter along similar lines. Several pastors were arrested as a result, among them the Secretary Kuno Gravemeyer for a second time. Senior Catholic clergy appeared to have been spared. ‘Compared with the Protestant Churches, Catholic born Seyss-Inquart still had a certain respect for the Roman Catholic Church.’188 A new initiative followed three months later, while the deportations were in full swing. The heads of the Protestant and Catholic Churches sent a telegram to the Reichskommissar stating that they had learned ‘with dismay’ about the deportation of the Jews. ‘The suffering that had thus been imposed on tens of thousands, the knowledge that 409

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these measures ran counter to the deepest moral awareness of the Dutch people, and above all the fact that the said measures flew in the face of the demands of righteousness and mercy given by God, occasioned their urgent request that the measures should not be implemented. As to the Christians among the Jews, “this urgent appeal” to the Reichskommissar was also inspired by the belief that deportation would prevent them from participating in the life of the church.’189 The telegram was signed by the heads of ten church communities; the largest number ever in the series of protests. The Nazi regime responded by agreeing to exempt baptized Jews from deportation. But the leadership of the Churches was not persuaded by this concession. The decision was made to have the protest telegram read out in churches on Sunday 26 July. The Nazi regime then threatened the immediate deportation of the baptized Jews if the churches were to proceed with their plan. The Dutch Reformed Church changed its mind, but the other Protestant churches and the Catholic parish churches went ahead. Ministers and priests read the telegram from the pulpit. Seyss-Inquart responded by issuing orders for the deportation of the Jews who had been baptized Catholic. Of a total of 694, 245 were arrested, the majority of whom were deported in haste to Auschwitz and ‘preferentially’ murdered. This time the Austrian Reichskommissar did not allow his Catholic past to hold him back. The Protestant Churches were satisfied – or blackmailed – with the exception: Jews baptized Protestant were exempt (for the time being) from deportation. By keeping these Konfessionsjuden in the Netherlands, Seyss-Inquart wrote a year and a half later to Martin Bormann, chief of the Nazi Party Chancellery, he had been able to defuse the Churches’ protest.190 Reports of protests and punitive responses found their way to the Vatican, albeit not immediately. On 9 October 1942, Rome-based Paolo Giobbe – the internuncio to the Netherlands who had been forced to abandon his post in The Hague after the German occupation – stated that he had received two documents from the Dutch episcopate; a pastoral letter and a protest telegram sent to Seyss-Inquart. As a result, all Catholic priests and religious sisters with a Jewish background were deported. Giobbe also observed that the ‘spirit of piety and discipline’ among Catholics had not been diminished thereby and that the behaviour of the bishops had inspired courage and unanimity among them.191 In her memoires published in 1983, Sister Pasqualina Lehnert, Pius XII ’s senior carer, wrote that the Italian press had reported that the public protest of the Dutch bishops had occasioned Hitler to order the night-time arrest and subsequent gassing of 40,000 Jews. When the morning papers were brought to the Pope he turned deathly pale as he read. At one o’clock, after the usual audiences, he returned to his apartments. But before entering the dining room, Sister Pasqualina informs us, he made his way to the kitchen – where the stove was to be found – with two densely written sheets of paper. ‘I want these pages burned as a protest against the horrifying persecution of the Jews. They were to appear this evening in Osservatore Romano. But if the letter of the Dutch bishops had cost 40,000 lives, my protest might cost perhaps 200,000. I can and must not be responsible for this. It is better to say nothing in public and continue to do whatever is humanly possible for these people in silence.’ The Pope watched until the documents were completely burned.192 410

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In contrast to the internuncio, Sister Pasqualina is not particularly exact in her description. Her memories are coloured by the commotion caused by the report concerning the Dutch bishops. When her memoires appeared in 1983, the bishops’ protest and its consequences were confirmed as the alternative in the international debate surrounding the silence of Pius XII; they represented an example of concrete intervention with all its consequences. The implications drawn by Pius XII and the Curia from German punitive measures in occupied Netherlands are of considerably greater importance. From then on, Church interventions on behalf of persecuted Jews were only considered effective and manageable if they took place ‘in segreto’. Public protest ran the risk of provoking unforeseen reprisals. In spite of this ecclesial protest – a further public critique of the decree that Jews in mixed marriages should have themselves sterilized followed in May 1943 – large numbers were still deported. A variety of reasons have been given for this: fear of ‘Mauthausen’, which led Jews to follow deportation orders, and a remarkable legalism on the part of the Judenrat in its treatment of such orders and of permitted (albeit provisional) exceptions. The cooperation of the Dutch police in the deportations is also striking, particularly the official Vrijwillige Hulppolitie, an auxiliary police force set up for the purpose of roundingup Jews for deportation. This makes it all the more extraordinary that the archbishop’s protest inspired 180 members of the Utrecht police force to refuse to round up Jews. Severe pressure within the corps, however, later reduced the number of conscientious objectors to 23, all of whom were forced to go into hiding.193 Estimates have been made with respect to the number of Jewish men, women and children who found a place of safety and hiding in occupied Netherlands. The most recent figures suggest a total of 28,000. A significant number were later discovered or betrayed and were ultimately deported. A maximum of 16,000 were to survive the war in hiding.194 Jews were initially dependent on individuals for finding places of hiding, and remained so for a considerable period of time. The organization of the process at a national level emerged after the strikes in April and May 1943, a collective protest against the transportation of Dutch prisoners of war to Nazi Germany and against forced labour in general. This was roughly eight months after the beginning of a similar shockwave in Belgium (October 1942) that gave rise to broad resistance and organization. The time difference is relevant, a period marked by large-scale round-ups. The need for safe houses became ever more urgent in both the Netherlands and Belgium; men who had managed to avoid transportation or forced labour needed to be housed. To provide the latter with food in a society in which food and drink was rationed, a Landelijke Organisatie voor Hulp aan Onderduikers (National Organization for Help to People in Hiding) was set up under Reformed Churches auspices (Chapter  7). The organization’s branches were located for the most part in parish rectories and within groups of devout individuals. The same was true for the Landelijke Organisatie van Knokploegen (National Organization of Combat Teams), which was responsible for armed assaults intended to bring disorder to municipal population registers and the offices administering the distribution of food. In the middle of 1943, moreover, there was 411

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also an organization working at capacity to provide Jewish children with a place of safety; at least 4,000 in total. Historians Griffioen and Zeller note that the post-war Israeli distinction of ‘Righteous Among the Nations’ was awarded to more than 5,000 Dutch men and women because they had risked their own lives to save Jews. This is second only to Poland, although in France, for example, many more Jews survived the war than in the Netherlands both in percentage terms and in absolute numbers. Griffioen and Zeller explain this on the one hand by pointing out that ‘for a considerable length of time, places of hiding were provided for the most part by individual non-Jews’ – whereby durable personal relationships also evolved – and on the other hand by stating that the vast majority of Jews in the Netherlands were highly integrated.195 An additional reason might be the possibility that statements from the pulpit inspired individual believers to offer help to their Jewish friends and acquaintances at a time when organized help did not exist. In August 1942, when the round-ups in Amsterdam were at their height, pastor François Kleijn suggested in the name of the (liberal Calvinist) Remonstrant Brotherhood that the New Church in Amsterdam – the city’s main Protestant church, used also for the investiture of monarchs – should be opened to persecuted Jews and that pastors and priests should welcome them in ecclesial garb and offer them protection. The suggestion was rejected by pastor Kleijn’s colleagues as ‘an expression of unrealistic romanticism’. Its implementation would have led in all probability to a raid by the German police and the deportation of both the Jews and the clergy, although it would have been a ‘demonstration of the greatest significance’. It is reasonable to assume that the pastors who rejected the proposal were influenced by the earlier deportation of Catholic Jews and feared the Protestant Jews would follow in the wake of such a protest.196 4.4 Edith Stein Edith Stein, perhaps the best known Jew to have been baptized Catholic, was arrested in 1942 as a result of an episcopal protest against the deportations, and was murdered in Auschwitz. Her death is symbolic in two ways: she was an example of a baptized Jew who was forced to share the fate of her people in spite of protest from ecclesial authorities, and she became a personal argument in the debate surrounding the question whether the church authorities should have said more or should have been silent altogether about what was happening to the Jews in front of their eyes. Edith Stein was born on 12 October 1891 – on the Jewish festival of Yom Kippur – in Breslau, the capital of Silesia. Her father was the merchant Siegfried Stein and her mother, Auguste Courant, also stemmed from a Jewish merchant family in the Silesian city of Lublinitz. Edith considered herself ‘a Prussian citizen and a Jewess’.197 She was the youngest of a family of eleven children, four of whom were to die in childhood. Her father died before she reached the age of two and her mother took responsibility for both the business – timber – and raising her seven surviving children. Edith was the first woman in Prussia to be granted the right in 1904 to register at the gymnasium. She only exercised her right in 1907, however, after spending a couple of 412

Figure 20 Bust of Edith Stein in the town hall of Wrocław (Breslau). Photo: the author. 413

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years helping her sister in Hamburg. She took her final exams in 1911 and then registered as a philosophy student at the university in Breslau. Her curiosity drove her towards the new philosophical trend, phenomenology, and to the centre where it was practised, the university in Göttingen. She was first introduced to this philosophical school in 1912 and it was to remain a focus of interest for the rest of her life. In Göttingen she attended classes given by Edmund Husserl, the founder of the new phenomenology whose students addressed him out of respect as ‘master’. Husserl exemplified the distinction and distance that befitted a nineteenth-century professor. She also studied under the philosopher Max Scheler, who was a visiting professor at Göttingen. After his death she wrote that the phenomenon of genius would no longer be so purely manifest to her. ‘The way Scheler scattered brilliant insights right and left without summarising them systematically had something dazzling and alluring about it.’198 Edith herself turned out to have a talent for admiration and adoration. The beginning of the First World War filled her with euphoria. She returned to Breslau to serve as a nurse for the war wounded, but since there was no shortage of nurses at the time she returned to Göttingen. The winter semester of 1914–15 was the happiest of her life, surrounded as she was by fellow students who shared her passion for philosophy. A relationship blossomed with fellow student Hans Lipps while she was studying for her teacher training certificate. But after taking her exams she decided nevertheless to leave Göttingen and offer her services as a nurse in a military hospital in MährischWeiβkirchen, run by the Austro-Hungarian army. After five months she was exhausted and needed rest. Movements at the Eastern Front forced the relocation of the military hospital and her energetic assistance was no longer required. In the summer of 1916, Edith Stein returned to the study of philosophy under Adolf Reinach, one of Husserl’s unsalaried lecturers, who drew her attention to his recent interest in religion and religious experience. But it was on account of Scheler, in the first instance, that she focused her attention on the latter phenomenon and it was under the supervision of Husserl that she defended her doctorate in July 1916 in Freiburg and graduated ‘summa cum laude’.199 Her friend Hans Lipps had little sympathy for Edith’s religious interests. He was completely absorbed by his experience of the war and asked what he would do with himself when peace finally returned.200 Edith continued her studies intent on writing her Habilitationsschrift under Husserl, but that meant she had to relocate to Freiburg where he had taken up his new post. She became his assistant, helping to prepare his writings for publication. But the work Husserl asked her to do did not satisfy her and she resigned as his assistant in February 1918. Husserl tried to convince her to return, but when his efforts failed he engaged a new assistant by the name of Martin Heidegger. She was later to engage with both Husserl and Heidegger in a lengthy debate on the philosophy of religion and about the then much talked about book by Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy. Her Habilitation was entitled ‘Contribution to the Philosophical Foundation of Psychology and the Human Sciences’, but in spite of the fact that she had fulfilled all the academic criteria, it was still impossible for a woman to acquire a Habilitation in spite of the constitution of the new Weimar Republic because the universities were slow to 414

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acknowledge the equal status of women. Edith Stein neither submitted nor defended her Habilitationsschrift. Four universities rejected her request. She had in the meantime become a member of the German Democratic Party, a left-wing liberal group in which she was active in the political struggle for women’s rights. Edith returned from time to time to Göttingen where she met Hans Lipps one final time. Her affection for him appeared to be unrequited, however their relationship did not end in marriage. In Göttingen she was able to comfort the widow of her teacher and mentor Adolf Reinach, who had died in Flanders on 16 November 1917. Edith Stein considered the way in which Anne Reinach came to terms with her husband’s death as pivotal in her own life. In her own words, the way in which Anne ‘offered sacrifice in the power of the mystery of the cross’ that was imposed on her by the death of her husband on the battlefield made a decisive contribution to Edith’s conversion to Christianity.201 In the summer of 1921, Edith read a recently published biography of Theresa of Avila, a Carmelite mystic. She decided to have herself baptized when she closed the book, but was not sure in which church: the Evangelical Church (like the Husserl and Reinach families) or the Catholic Church. Max Scheler’s influence inclined her more towards the latter and on 1 January 1922, the feast of the circumcision of Jesus, the Jew Edith Stein was baptized Edith Theresia Hedwig. According to Edith, her mother considered her conversion as ‘the worst thing I could do to her’. Her friend Hans Lipps had departed for Africa by this time as a ship’s doctor. His photo disappeared from Edith’s desk.202 Edith entered a new phase in her life in which she made her mark as a Catholic intellectual woman, active as she was in all three domains. She became interested in the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas and even approached Husserl in 1930 with the idea of exploring a synthesis between Thomism and phenomenology. Around the same time she found a spiritual guide in Raphael Walzer, the abbot of the Benedictine abbey of Beuron. Her intellectual interests were reflected in her choice of friends: she became part of the circle of philosophers surrounding Theodor and Hedwig Conrad-Martius – who referred to themselves with the Greek word Autostatos (extraordinary self-awareness) – in the Bavarian health resort of Bad Bergzabern.203 Stein also translated philosophical works written by friends such as Alexander Koyré and she was appointed lecturer in 1923 at a college of education run by Dominican nuns in Speyer. She also accepted a variety of speaking engagements, convinced as she was that the Catholic minority in Germany suffered from a so-called Bildungsdefizit, a lack of intellectual formation. On 30 April 1933, during evening prayer in the church of Saint Ludger in Münster, Edith Stein decided to embrace the fullest consequences of her baptism and enter the religious life. She chose the Carmelite Order (discalced) because it had its origins in the prophet Elijah and Mount Carmel (near the port city of Haifa). She presented herself at the Carmelite monastery in Cologne on 15 July of the same year having taken leave – albeit with great difficulty – of her family. Hitler had come to power and early discrimination against the Jews was already becoming tangible, forcing Jews to rely on their own resources. The Stein family had just begun to rediscover the Jewish values they had neglected, and on the last day of her visit with her family, Edith joined them at the synagogue for a service concluding the festival of Succoth.204 Her mother continued to 415

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find her daughter’s decision to enter a monastery incomprehensible. When she died in September 1936, it became evident that she had not included her youngest daughter in her will. It took Edith Stein four and a half years to complete the process of entering the monastery: from postulancy to taking the habit, and from novitiate and the temporary vows (poverty, chastity and obedience) to the moment she ‘took the veil’ and perpetual vows as a full member of the order. Many of her former colleagues from her philosophy days came to Cologne to attend her clothing on 15 April 1934 when she was given the religious name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. On the day of her final vows – 1 May 1938 – however, the number of visitors was considerably less. A number of her friends had fled Nazi Germany by this time. Edith had also been joined in the monastery by her sister Rosa. She had travelled to Cologne after their mother’s death and had been baptized Catholic on 24 December 1936. Rosa was never to leave her sister’s side. An activist on behalf of women and politics, Edith Stein lost her right to vote in 1935 as a consequence of the Nuremberg race laws. In 1938, after Reichskristallnacht, her personal situation and that of her sister became more precarious. They decided to emigrate in order to protect the other sisters and surprisingly enough were able to obtain their departure papers relatively quickly. The required residence permits for the Netherlands, however, were more difficult to acquire. They left Cologne in the afternoon of 31 December 1938, their destination the monastery of the Carmelite sisters in the Dutch village of Echt, near the German border in the southern province of Limburg. After the German invasion of the Netherlands on 10 May 1940, her position in the monastery came under threat once again. The Mayor of Echt, who knew the monastery well, followed official instructions from The Hague and had Edith and Rosa Stein included on the list of five Jewish residents in the village. A Carmelite monastery in Switzerland agreed to take them and efforts were made to acquire an entry visa, but the Swiss authorities rejected the application. In June 1942, the order celebrated the 400th anniversary of the birth of the mystic Saint John of the Cross and Edith Stein was involved in the publication of material related to the celebration. On 2 August 1942, a police car drove up to the gate of the monastery. Edith and Rosa were arrested, as were many more Dutch Jews who had been baptized Catholic. This was part of Reichskommissar Seyss-Inquart’s response to the fact that the Dutch episcopate had ordered the reading of a pastoral letter on Sunday 26 July 1942 protesting the deportation of Jews. Edith and Rosa were barely given time to pack. They arrived at the Polizeiliches Durchgangslager (Police Transit Camp) in nearby Amersfoort late the same evening and a few days later they were transferred to the Jewish internment camp in Westerbork. Edith had hoped for an answer from Switzerland, but it arrived too late (and was negative). In Westerbork she met a friend from Germany, Ruth Kantorowicz and her children. On 7 August all the Catholic Jews in the camp were put on a goods train destined for Auschwitz. All of them were gassed on arrival. At the same time – and for the same reason – three Trappist monks from the Abbey of Koningshoeve in nearby Tilburg were arrested together with an additional two 416

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Trappist nuns from the monastery of Koningsoord in Berkel-Enschot, also nearby. All five bore the Jewish family name Löb. George, Ernst and Robert Löb were arrested during Sunday mass. The two nuns – Lina and Dort Löb – were forced to leave the abbey church during Lauds. A third sister – Luise Löb – was overlooked. Like the Stein sisters, the five Trappists were transported to Westerbork and then to Auschwitz on 7 August 1942. The two sisters were gassed on arrival, while the three brothers were put to work for a time before meeting the same fate.205 Another Jewish religious sister to be arrested after the episcopal letter was Lisamaria Meirowsky, a member of the Dominican Sisters of Christ the King, who was to meet the same fate as the Löb sisters. She wrote a letter from Westerbork to her confessor in Tilburg asking him to inform Archbishop De Jong that she rejoiced ‘at being able to help him with our sacrifice. Let him be reassured and never be allowed to think that he caused us suffering.’ Sister Elsa Michaelis was informed by her assailants that the bishops were to blame for her situation. She is said to have thanked God ‘that we have such bishops’ and to have told her confessor that she rejoiced at their bold intervention.206

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CHAPTER 10 NATIONAL SOCIALIST MASS MURDER AND THE CHURCHES: ALLIES AND VASSAL STATES OF NAZI GERMANY

1 Introduction In this chapter we focus on those countries that were either allies of Nazi Germany or a vassal state. Within the framework of German rule, the latter had a substantial degree of autonomy. The persecution and mass murder of Jews or Sinti and Roma was a universal Nazi goal in this context of alliance and/or domination. This meant that the local authorities were expected to decide for themselves the extent to which they would ‘feed’ these Nazi demands. While certain criteria were imposed by Berlin, they nevertheless had some room for manoeuvre. If they complied with German demands they had to face critique from their own people and, in the second half of the war, a steadily increasing foreign opposition. An autonomous regime, whatever the degree of its independence, remained susceptible to such critique and opposition. One country in Europe, Albania, was more or less spared Nazi persecution of the Jews. The Italian occupation was substituted by German occupation in the latter part of 1943, but its military presence was limited as a result of its concentrated troop deployment in the Soviet Union. The Albanian authorities maintained a relatively high level of autonomy. There was a small Jewish community that had swollen to a few hundred in the war years with the influx of Jewish refugees. They managed to take care of themselves or were taken care of by bystanders. ‘In a final report on the German experience in Albania, a Wehrmacht official noted that there were basically no Jews in Albania in 1943 and that even had there been, nothing could have been done about them because of Albania’s independent status.’1 The picture was different in the annexed part of Kosovo. The region’s virulent Albanian nationalists not only provided a seedbed for the creation of an Albanian SS unit – the Skanderbeg Division – it was also a source of persecution. In May 1944, over 200 Jews were arrested in Pristina and deported to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

2 Persecution in Bulgaria Bulgaria was an ally of Nazi Germany and its army had participated in the occupation of parts of Greece and Yugoslavia in 1941. Among the consequence of this alliance was the introduction of discriminatory measures against Jews and their ultimate deportation. After the annexation of southern Dobruja in the summer of 1940, the parliament in Sofia adopted a ‘law for the defence of the nation’, which set restrictions on the occupation, 419

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wealth and place of residence of the country’s Jews. From October 1941, the German ambassador in Sofia started to increase the pressure on the Bulgarian authorities, insisting they strive for deportation as well as discrimination. The government faced immediate opposition from the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. When the said law was implemented, the Holy Synod turned to Prime Minister Bogdan Dimitrov Filov and the Parliament. While they accepted the need to protect the nation against concrete dangers, they did not think that the Jews as a group should be discriminated against in the process. The Synod also made a specific request for the protection for Jews who had converted to Christianity.2 Stephanos, the Metropolitan of Sofia, preached in 1942 on the Orthodox Feast of the Elevation of the Cross (9 September) that God had punished the Jews for crucifying Jesus by driving them from their land and not providing a new home for them. But he insisted that this did not give people the right to treat them with cruelty. ‘Especially Christians ought to see their brothers in Jews who had accepted the Christian religion and to support them in every way possible. He stressed several times in his sermon that truly it is in God’s hand to punish twice and three times, but it is forbidden for Christians to do such a thing.’3 A decree was implemented in June 1942 concerning the population in the ‘liberated territories’. The inhabitants automatically acquired Bulgarian citizenship, but the measure was declared inapplicable to the Jews in Thrace and Macedonia. This exception had fatal consequences. When Nazi Germany started insisting on the deportation of Jews from Bulgaria in the first months of 1943, the imposed target of 20,000 was substantially reached by using a list of 8,000 Jews from Macedonia and 6,000 from Thrace who were already destined for expulsion. Their deportation was carried out in March 1943. The Jews from occupied Greece were transported in ships that brought them via the Danube to Vienna and from there to Auschwitz. The Macedonian Jews were transported by train to Auschwitz and to Treblinka.4 Jews from ‘old’ Bulgaria – roughly 600 in number – were likewise arrested and ‘evacuated’ from their homes, especially in the capital Sofia. In face of protest from politicians, ordinary citizens and the Orthodox Church, however, the government was forced to ignore German insistence that the Jews in question also be deported to concentration camps in the Generalgouvernement. On 10 March 1943, Kyrill, the Metropolitan of the Bulgarian port city of Plovdiv, sent a telegram to Tsar Boris III in which he informed him of his intention to place his conscience above his loyalty to the crown. Should the planned deportations go ahead, he planned to lie down on the rails in front of the train transporting the Jewish martyrs. In May 1944, the same Metropolitan Kyrill visited the Jewish district in the city of Plovdiv to prevent the internment of 2,000 Jews as a reprisal for the fact that a group of five Jewish youngsters had joined the resistance movement.5 In the same dreadful month of March 1943, Metropolitan Stephanos witnessed the deportation of Jews from Thrace to various ports on the Danube. He turned in protest to the tsar, but was disappointed with his response and his apparent refusal to listen to church leaders. The metropolitan considered this sufficiently rare and extraordinary to include a reference in his diary stating that this was the only time he had encountered a royal silence and a royal disdain in the context of traditional and official contacts between 420

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the Church and the king.6 His Synod addressed a letter to the tsar dated 2 April 1943 that rejected the principle of racism, which led to hatred, violence and cruelty. ‘The law of God, which transcends all human laws, obliges without condition not to remain indifferent to the suffering of an innocent people, whatever their race.’ The Bulgarian Orthodox could not refuse to help the persecuted and the oppressed.7 The letter also called for the abolishment of the obligation ‘whereby Christians of Jewish origin wear both the Christian cross and the Jewish star, and whereby they pay taxes to the Jewish community’. The Bulgarian Church considered it a special obligation to stand up for Jews who had been baptized Christian.8 The intention had been to hand the letter over to Tsar Boris, but an audience with the king was not forthcoming and the vice-chair of the Synod – Neophit – decided to publish it. The audience with the king finally took place on 15 April 1943 with Stephanos, Neophit and Prime Minister Filov in attendance. The latter noted in his diary: ‘The conference with the bishops began at 10 A.M. His Majesty made a very good, detailed presentation of the Jewish problem, stressing that it was not ours alone but a problem in all of Europe. Neophit and Stefan took the floor after him and interceded mainly in behalf of Jewish converts to Christianity. On the whole, we were on the offensive, and the bishops practically had to defend themselves.’9 In May 1943, the Jewish inhabitants of Sofia found themselves under threat. ‘The few feeble protests addressed by non-Jews to the palace fell on deaf ears. The most courageous stand was that of the Church. In the light of subsequent events, one can speculate that Stephanos’ outspoken denunciation of the measure had some effect on the king.’10 An estimated 50,000 Jews living in the Bulgarian ‘heartland’ were thus able to survive the war in large part, although a large number were forced to do so in labour camps within Bulgaria itself.While the Orthodox Church allowed itself to be used as an instrument of ‘Bulgarization’ in Macedonia and Thrace, it continued nevertheless to stand up for Bulgaria’s Jews. International relations changed in 1943 after the Battle of Stalingrad. As an ally of Germany, Bulgaria became more cautious and less submissive. On 28 August 1943, a few days after a state visit to Hitler, Tsar Boris died. On his return to Bulgaria he had set out to climb Mount Musala, the highest in the country, but his condition deteriorated after the climb and he passed away at the age of 49. A regency council was set up to govern in the place of his son Simeon who was still a minor. Plans for the deportation of Bulgaria’s Jews were abandoned at this juncture. The government was no longer prepared to allow Bulgaria to function as a vassal state with respect to Nazi Germany. Jews slowly returned to Sofia from the labour camps, and shortly before the occupation of Bulgaria by the Red Army, the law for the defence of the nation was abolished. 3 Persecution in Romania 3.1 Endemic anti-Semitism While the Bulgarian Orthodox Church reacted with consistent outspokenness to the allied requests of Nazi Germany, the Romanian response was much less unequivocal. 421

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In an analysis of the persecution of the Jews in Romania, two factors are particularly relevant: the prominent presence of endemic anti-Semitism among Romanian intelligentsia and as a feature of Romanian populism during the Interbellum; and the striking social differences between the Jewish communities in the core regions of Romania and the territory added at the end of the First World War. Greater Romania of 1918 contained the third largest Jewish community (more than 750,000) in Europe after the Soviet Union and Poland.11 It had inherited a long tradition of discrimination from the principalities, the ‘Regat’, which formed the historical core of the country. The rights of Jewish citizens were restricted by law and newcomers among them likewise faced legal limitations in terms of settlement. These juridical restrictions had to be rescinded to a certain degree when Romania acquired additional territory after the First World War. The Paris peace accords of 1919 obliged the government to protect minorities and to grant civil rights to the Jews living in the newly acquired territory. This stipulation was recognized by the 1923 constitution. In 1899, the Romanian heartland numbered 266,652 Jews (4.5 per cent of the population) of whom almost three quarters lived in the principality of Moldavia; 60,760 Jews were resident in the principality of Walachia, almost 44,000 of them in the capital Bucharest. A significant number of this group were Sephardic Jews. They tended to be more assimilated and western relative to their Moldavian counterparts. After the First World War, three regions were added to Romania: Transylvania with 193,000 Jews (3.5 per cent of its population), Bessarabia with 207,000 Jews (7.2 per cent) and Bukovina with 93,000 Jews (10.9 per cent). These three regions differed considerably from one another in terms of economic and cultural development, differences that were even more prominent within the Jewish segment of the population.12 Romania’s politicians saw themselves facing a number of obstacles to their cultural nationalism. In Bessarabia, which had been part of the Shtetl (Pale of Settlement) in tsarist Russia, the majority of the Jews belonged to the lower classes. They spoke Yiddish and often insisted on doing so. The intelligentsia, on the other hand, was Russified and oriented towards the Black Sea port of Odessa. Romanian rule after 1918 was an inconvenience to them for two reasons: they had to find different trade routes – the new boundary located Odessa outside the country; and they were obliged to accept a conscious policy of Romanization. The latter failed to succeed. The Jewish minority continued to speak Yiddish and align itself with Russian culture. The Jewish minority in Bukovina was also broadly proletariat. By contrast, the middleclass inhabitants of Czernowitz, the former Habsburg capital of the region, tended to be emancipated and oriented towards Vienna. The same can also be said for the Jewish population of the city. The university that evolved from the Orthodox theological faculty was an important factor in this regard. In the cities in multicultural Transylvania, the bourgeoisie tended to be focused on Budapest, and those who were of ‘Saxon’ origin focused on Germany. The latter tended to favour the Magyarization of the region rather than its Romanization.13 Endemic anti-Semitism returned – after a period of international control and restraint – with the rise of fascist factions in Romania. With the accession to power of a right-wing 422

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authoritarian government in 1938, discrimination became a guiding principle in matters of legislation. The concept of ‘ethnocracy’ was resurrected with a view to the ethnic homogenization of the Romanian state.14 As a result, one-third of the Jewish population lost their Romanian nationality. As we observed in Chapter  2, this was a form of discrimination that had its roots in the political concept of ‘Romanian blood’, i.e. a biological concept of nationhood. ‘In most East-Central European societies agrarian, pastoral, neo-romantic visions of ethnic purity are used to oppose the project of modernity and blame its proponents as “rootless cosmopolitans”.’15 The collective projection of xenophobia on the Jews, moreover, led to an additional stereotype: the Jews as Bolshevik. This was not only nourished by the fear of a Bolshevik revolution and of national communist parties that offered their services to the Komintern, the failure of a radical ‘Romanization’ of the new regions was blamed to a considerable degree on a Jewish fixation on revolutionary Russia and on Russian culture. The said projection even survived the war and the persecution of the Jews. ‘The salience of Jewish militants in the communist parties further strengthened the appeal of a stereotype portraying Jews as perennial evil-doers and carriers of anti-national feelings and actions.’16 3.2 Pogroms in war During the hasty withdrawal of the Romanian army from Bessarabia and the northern portion of Bukovina in June 1940 – both territories were annexed by the Soviet Union – pogroms emerged in a number of places. The bloodiest took place at the beginning of July 1940 in Doroboi and it went ‘according to plan’.17 This meant that rumours were spread about Jewish inhabitants who had celebrated the arrival of the Red Army and shot at retreating Romanian soldiers. The doors of non-Jewish households were painted with a cross so that they could be distinguished as ‘Christian’, after which the inhabitants withdrew to allow Romanian infantrymen to turn on the Jews. Almost two hundred Jews lost their lives. Soviet sympathizers also numbered Jews among their ranks, people who placed their hope in a revolutionary society without discrimination. These individuals were hunted down and slaughtered as a collective scapegoat.18 The government that came to power after the constitutional crisis in September 1940 was dominated by the leader of the Iron Guard, Vice Premier Horia Sima. The Guards not only sought revenge against politicians and civil servants they considered to be responsible for the execution of their leader Codreanu, they also indulged in violent acts against Jewish citizens. During the revolt of the Iron Guard that followed the establishment of a new regime under Marshal Ion Antonescu, no fewer than 136 Jews were killed.19 A period of relative calm followed, however, that was to last a few months. But the calm was deceptive. The new government prepared itself for the expulsion of the Jews from Moldavia; an operation intent on the ‘purification of (Romanian) soil’ from Bessarabia and Bukovina to the Romanian heartland, Moldavia. A written report of this debate has never been found and probably never existed, but an ‘unwritten general plan’ was ready by mid-1941. It was conceived at a time in which both the Conduc˘ator, 423

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Marshal Ion Antonescu, and the Prime Minister, Mihai Antonescu, believed in an alliance with Nazi Germany and in the latter’s Endsieg, its final victory.20 What poets and thinkers in Romania had discussed and described during the Interbellum resounded throughout the plan: for the Romanian nation, the presence of Jews was a catastrophe.21 On 12 June 1941, Marshal Antonescu met with Hitler. Having already been informed that Nazi Germany was preparing for the invasion of the Soviet Union – albeit without knowing the date – he was presented with Hitler’s plan for the physical destruction of Eastern Europe’s Jews during the meeting. Immediately thereafter, the Conduc˘ator gave orders to crack down on the Jews in Iaşi, the Moldavian capital. On 26 June 1941 – four days after the beginning of Operation Barbarossa – Iaşi was bombed by the Russian air force. Rumours were then spread throughout the city that the Jewish citizens had given signals to passing Soviet airplanes and organized secret meetings. Following a familiar pattern crosses were then painted on the doors of Christian households, after which the Siguranta, the Romanian secret service, organized violent attacks against Romanian soldiers and rendered the metropolitan police inactive. On the morning of 29 June, a bogus German air attack was signalled with a number of flares being fired into the air. In reality they signalled the beginning of a pogrom.22 The rounding-up and murder of Jews was performed by Romanian policemen and members of the secret service, although infantrymen and members of the Iron Guard were also involved. In the days that followed the pogrom, thousands more Jews were deported in ‘death trains’. Estimates of the numbers killed in and around Iaşi vary considerably, but reliable sources suggest 13,266

Figure 21 Romanian dictator, Marshal Antonescu, takes the salute in Bucharest on the occasion of the New Year 1941. Prelates and leaders of the different Churches in Romania remain in the background. Photo: SOMA , Brussels. 424

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Jews.23 This pogrom was Romanian in terms of initiative and implementation.24 During the invasion of the Soviet Union that followed, troops were deployed to hunt down Jews behind the Romanian front with the help of German Einsatzgruppen. Jewish inhabitants and refugees in villages in Bukovina, Bessarabia and Transnistria were taken hostage and murdered, some in individual actions, others in group executions. Estimates suggest that more than 10,000 Jews lost their lives during this German/Romanian military campaign.25 Romania remained an ally of Nazi Germany until 1944. This implied that the Romanian government enjoyed relative independence in its decisions concerning the persecution of the Jews, although its National Socialist ally did not fail to insist on the matter. During Operation Barbarossa, for example, this meant that Jews from Bukovina and Bessarabia were deported in large numbers to camps in the Transnistria region, i.e. territory captured from the Soviet Union. According to post-war estimates, they numbered around 120,000. Thousands of Roma and Sinti were also deported here from the Romanian heartland, between 25,000 and 30,000 souls. Shortly after the capture of Odessa, partisans launched an attack on the headquarters of the Romanian armed forces: 61 Romanian and German soldiers lost their lives in the incident, including the commander of the city. On the orders of Marshal Antonescu, 200 Jews were executed for every dead officer and 100 for every dead soldier. Close to 19,000 Jews were shot dead in Odessa’s harbour. The remaining Jews were rounded up in a ghetto and then also deported to camps in Transnistria.26 Up to this point, the persecution of the Jews in Romania had always been in response to an incident and never systematically organized. ‘Indecision, contradictory orders, bureaucracy (in all the negative senses of the word) and the conflicting interests of a variety of instances and figures, as well as the personal motivations of thousands of individual predators, all combined to bring an element of outright chaos to the Romanian Holocaust.’27 3.3 Church, priests and the persecution of Jews During the pogrom phase in Romania, reports of help being offered by Orthodox priests are few and far between. On the contrary in fact, many Orthodox priests had called for reprisals after the Soviet Union annexed Bessarabia and the northern part of Bukovina in 1940. The annexation resulted in the persecution of Orthodox believers and the clergy pointed the finger of responsibility at the Jews. Hundreds of priests and religious people must have witnessed the pogroms, but precious few accounts of protest have survived.28 During the killing campaign in the city of Iaşi, a priest by the name of Razmeritja is reported to have made an attempt to save the hounded Jews, but he was shot dead in the street for his efforts.29 An additional case is known of a priest called Stefanovici, an Orthodox village pastor in Banila in Bukovina, who refused to preside at the liturgy on Sunday after his parishioners had murdered fifteen local Jews in July 1941 on the insistence of the village mayor. He made it clear to his parishioners that he was too ashamed to enter the church in response to their misdeeds.30 In a village in the district of Orhei, the village pastor attempted to offer asylum to a Jewish couple and their young 425

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daughter, hoping that they would accept baptism. Romanian police arrested them nonetheless and murdered them.31 A more organized pursuit of Jews came into view in 1942. In the summer of that year they were to be deported, beginning with those living in the territory acquired in 1918, namely from Banat and from the south of Transylvania. When news of this plan began to spread in wider Romanian circles, a delegation of Romanian citizens from Bukovina paid a visit to the Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church (and to the German embassy) to protest the treatment of their Jewish neighbours and fellow Romanians. There is no record of a response to their protest.32 The Romanian Chief Rabbi Alexandru Şafran managed to unite large numbers of people from Romanian public life in a petition to Marshal Antonescu; among them Elena, the queen mother. In response to a report that Jews were to be deported from Bucharest she is said to have informed her son that she would leave the kingdom immediately should the measure be implemented. The young King Mihail managed to persuade his government to cancel the planned deportation. At the end of 1942, Marshal Antonescu’s fidelity to German orders or ‘urgent recommendations’ started to weaken. In 1943, after the Germans met defeat at Stalingrad, independence ambitions grew even stronger, in spite of Allied pressure to the contrary. As a result, the lives of almost 300,000 Jews in the Regat – Walachia and Moldavia in the Romanian heartland – were spared (although discrimination continued undiminished in the form, for example, of forced relocations). Religious leaders such as the papal nuncio Andrea Cassulo (also dean of the diplomatic corps) and the Orthodox Metropolitan of Transylvania Nicolae Bälan, were also invited to intervene by Rabbi Şafran. The chief rabbi warned the latter that the death of all the innocent would weigh heavily on the Day of Judgement. In response, Bälan tried to persuade the Condu˘cator to postpone the deportations during a shared dinner.33 According to the chief rabbi’s notes, the appeal of the metropolitan and the nuncio was the deciding factor in the cancellation of the deportations. ‘Perhaps, it was actually the intervention of all these parties that influenced Antonescu’s decision.’34 Nicolae Bälan was a prominent theologian in the Romanian Orthodox Church prior to his appointment as Metropolitan of Transylvania with his seat in Sibiu. He had acquired renown within the country for the revival of the Orthodox monasteries in his diocese and was known abroad for his work with the international ecumenical movement. When questioned by an American diplomat about the persecution of the Jews in 1941, he is said to have expressed his shock at their violent treatment and murder. He had also been a supporter of the plan that had circulated at the beginning of 1941, proposing that the Jews should be made to emigrate to a new country (Madagascar) in Africa where they were to be re-educated.35 In any event, he – and not the patriarch himself – was the one who had stood up for the Jews within the Roman Orthodox Church. Another church leader who was responsible to a certain degree for preventing deportations was the nuncio Cassulo who had some authority in a south-eastern European country that was Orthodox as well as ‘Latin’ and valued good relations with Rome. The first issue that drew his attention was the rights of Jews who had been baptized Catholic. On 2 December 1940 he submitted a request to Marshal Antonescu to allow 426

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children of baptized Jews to register in Catholic schools.36 His intervention was successful. On 30 March 1941, the Conduc˘ator did indeed sign a decree stating that Jewish children who had been baptized as Christians were permitted to attend Christian schools. Only evidence of baptism in the Catholic Church was recognized, however. An attempt to acquire similar privileges by Ernst Tökes, a Calvinist minister and the president of the Hungarian Reformed Church in Romania, was rejected and Tökes was exiled to Hungary.37 The question of the rights of baptized Jews continued to preoccupy the nuncio. On 22 December 1941, he wrote to Cardinal Maglione that the number of Jews seeking baptism in the Catholic Church was growing fast. The Roman Catholic archbishop informed the nuncio that he had had his reservation in the past, but the urgency of the situation was great and he believed that the usual six-month period of instruction prior to baptism should be reduced. The nuncio exhorted him to continue to respect the provisions of canon law, but businessmen and Jews from other professions presented themselves for lessons in the teaching of the Catholic Church regardless of day and hour. The nuncio was to continue to express his concern about the fate of baptized Jews until the end of the war, but a more important initiative captured his attention in 1943. The papal diplomat tried to visit prison camps in Romania and the occupied territories in the Soviet Union. On 31 December 1942 he reported that he had finally been granted permission. During Holy Week of 1943, the nuncio visited concentration camps housing prisoners of war near Odessa and, on his way back, in Northern Bukovina where he distributed emergency supplies from the Pope. On 9 May 1943 he also reported seeing a concentration camp that housed ‘non-Arian citizens’. The Romanian government was doing what it could, but the facilities were limited. Here too he distributed emergency supplies from the Pope. ‘In the faces of many I caught a glimpse of genuine joy and great satisfaction.’38 From Odessa he travelled to Chisinau, the capital of Bessarabia. Prior to the Soviet invasion of 1940 the city had a population of 130,000, most of them Jews. Now, according to his report, only 50,000 remained. ‘All the houses that had been lived in by Jews had been plundered and destroyed.’ He had been informed that the owners of the said houses had set fire to their property before leaving with the Red Army. He then travelled to Cernăuti (Czernowitz), where a number of ‘civilian’ concentration camps had been set up, although they were far from the city and difficult to reach. Once again he distributed emergency goods from the Pope.39 He reported that he had addressed the suffering inhabitants of the camps in an effort to lift their moral spirits. At the same time he cooperated with the government in its efforts to find a solution in difficult situations and to meet the demands of the moment.40 The intensity with which the Jews in Romania faced persecution waned in 1944. Chief Rabbi Şafran visited the nuncio at this juncture to discuss the situation of 4,000 orphans in Transnistria on account of the high mortality rate in the region. Their removal to Romania’s heartland (the Regat) was a possibility, because such an internal repatriation would not raise political questions and the Jewish communities in the region had offered to receive them. Diplomatic activities were also set in motion to allow Jews to emigrate 427

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to Palestine. From his place of exile in Germany, however, Amin al-Husayni, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, managed to manipulate the Nazi government into stopping this child immigration. Under pressure from Germany, moreover, the Turkish government also withdrew permission to access its territory. Some, nevertheless, managed to board ships heading for Istanbul – one with fatal consequences – whereby the nunciature in Bucharest and a certain Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, the Apostolic Delegate in Istanbul (and later Pope John XXIII ), did their best to arrange permissions and entry visas. On 23 August 1944, Romania accepted the conditions for a cessation of hostilities. A government of national unity was formed under the auspices of the Soviet Union. Marshal Antonescu was forced to resign and was brought before the courts. The nuncio reported in December 1944 that some Jews, now freed from persecution and discrimination, had joined forces with the communist party. In Moldavia they had even seized power. He had turned to the chief rabbi who had assured him that calm would return as soon as the antiSemitic laws had been repealed. Cassulo wanted to work with the new government towards the establishment of a ‘concordia fraterna’, but he feared that part of the ‘Jewish element’ were under the of influence unspecified ‘subversive ideas’.41 The diplomatic representative of the Holy See in Romania is the first in a series of individuals who were able to exploit their function to put pressure on their governments and in so doing moderate the persecution of the Jews, albeit to a certain degree. A constant priority in the context of the Vatican-based interventions was the fate of Jews who had been baptized as Catholics. If not the others, then at least the baptized should be saved. Cassulo was able to take advantage of the fact that Romania was a ‘Latin nation’ that continued to give ear to the representative of the Pope in Rome, although Romania was itself for the most part Orthodox. The fact also that the nuncio was able to visit the concentration camps remains exceptional, although his visits amounted to little more than an endeavour to bring courage to the suffering and distribute otherwise unspecified emergency aid. 4 Clerical Slovakia 4.1 ‘Judenkodex’ Slovakia, which became an autonomous state in 1939, a Schutzstaat of Nazi Germany, and Croatia, which was granted independence in 1941 by Hitler and Mussolini, are comparable with one another to a certain degree since their system of government had its roots in fascism, with a Catholic accent. Jews were persecuted in both states, based on both innate anti-Semitism and on urgent exhortations, if not orders, from their National Socialist ‘supervisors’. Both factors contributed equally at the start, but as time passed, orders and impatience on Berlin’s part gained the upper hand. Nazi Germany obliged its vassal state Slovakia to persecute its Jewish population. Those who implemented the persecution constituted a government in Bratislava that was inspired by a clerico-fascist ideology and a president who was an ordained priest (and continued to be a village pastor in Bánovce). The clerical aspect of the regime 428

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inspired the Vatican to follow the politics of Father Jozef Gašpar Tiso with uncommon interest. In the words of Vatican delegate Giuseppe Burio written in 1940, however, the question remained as to how far Tiso’s ‘political convictions and especially his conscience as a priest let him march hand in hand with the National Socialist masters’.42 It would appear – at least in 1943 – that senior ministers Vojtech Tuka (Prime Minister) and Alexander Mach (Foreign Affairs) needed no encouragement when it came to the persecution of the Jews. More discussion exists, however, on the policy of President Tiso and what motivated him. The ‘židovská otázka’ or ‘Jewish Question’ was not a product of the Second World War in Slovakia, but a phenomenon that had already become a theme in debates on nation building as early as the nineteenth century. The Slovakian authorities thus announced discriminatory measures against the Jews of their own accord. In 1938, when CzechoSlovakia was still a constitutional unity, the regional government in Bratislava limited freedom of movement for the Jews. One of the reactions in Jewish circles was to seek baptism and thereby increase one’s chances of survival in Christian Slovakia. In November 1938, Tiso – then still Prime Minister – wrote a letter to the bishops reminding them that priests were expected to evaluate potential converts on the basis of their religious motivation and strictly apply the church’s canonical regulations governing the baptism of adults.43 After March 1939, anti-Semitism became a public feature of the new states policies. The first instances of discrimination quickly made their mark: a definition of the concept Jew and numerus clausus for Jews in certain professions. Of Slovakia’s 135,000 Jews (roughly 4 per cent of the population) a relatively large number held academic positions or were active in industry. In Bratislava, however, the religious definition of what it meant to be Jewish was maintained and this implied a rejection of the National Socialist race laws. Two years later, however, the government incorporated the provisions of the Nuremberg race laws into its own statutes, and this became known as the ‘Judenkodex’.44 In response to the ‘Judenkodex’, the Catholic bishops of Slovakia turned in the first instance to the Prime Minister on 7 October 1941, arguing that its racial doctrine ran counter to the principles of the Catholic Church. Baptism, they insisted, with all its rights and obligations, was what made an individual a person within the Church; the Church did not account for race. They admitted nevertheless that ‘a few Jews who had become members of the Church for the sake of convenience had not changed their former nature’. The bishops did not approve of this option, but they did support ‘those who lived in truth according to the commandments of their new faith’.45 In August 1940, the Slovakian government agreed to Nazi plans for the transfer of Jews to labour camps and ghettos, first in Poland and later in Slovakia itself. This implied the internment of 50,000 Slovakian Jews and the forced confiscation of their property. There is some discussion as to whether Tiso – head of state, party chair and commanderin-chief of the army and the Hlinka Garde – passively acquiesced to discrimination and the persecution of the Jews. His (sporadic) declarations on the ‘Jewish Question’ in Slovakia may point in this direction. Perhaps he was surprised and even to a certain extent shocked by the energy and rive of his Prime Minister Tuka in this regard. ‘Tiso 429

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was faced with a complex political and psychological dilemma on this matter: whether to act as a statesman and politician or to follow the principles of the Christian religion, which he served as a priest. In spite of the fact that he attempted to find some sort of compromise, the results of his actions show that he chose the first route.’46 The said option is also to be found in German sources on the persecution of Jews in Slovakia. On 20 and 21 October 1941, President Tiso and his senior ministers, Tuka and Mach, paid a visit to Hitler’s headquarters. Himmler was also present to receive them. The Germans were satisfied and even slightly surprised at their Slovakian partner’s thoroughness. Berlin’s propaganda machine was happy to boast that Slovakia, under the leadership of a Catholic priest, was the first country in Europe to approve and implement the deportation of its Jews. Even Hitler is said to have been impressed: ‘wie so ein katholisches Priesterlein – Tiso – uns die Juden zuschickt!’47 Vatican delegate Burzio did not resign himself to the situation. He enjoyed a unique position in clerical Slovakia as representative of the Holy See. In a report to Cardinal Maglione, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, dated 5 September 1940, he alludes to antiJewish discrimination in the new state. Jewish children, he observes, even those who had been baptized Catholic, had been removed from their schools and placed in alternatives reserved for Jews only. Burzio also makes reference to a meeting he had with Tiso in which the latter had informed him that he was convinced that he would succeed in ‘making the best of the situation, and that the implementation of National Socialist procedures would not be carried out to the extremes’.48 The ‘Judenkodex’ was the following subject of diplomatic concern. On 12 December 1941, Burzio protested against the law, condemning the principle of race in the policies of the government as unchristian. He addressed specific criticism to the prohibition against mixed marriages and the exclusion of Jewish children from the educational system. The Slovakian government remained silent in response. President Tiso declared later to a journalist that what was happening to the Jews in Slovakia was in complete agreement with the Christian perspective.49 4.2 Deportations from Slovakia The first deportation from Slovakia took place in the first half of 1942. In the meantime, the government in Bratislava had lowered the deportation age from 18 to 16 and insisted that entire families be removed in order to avoid having to provide for the maintenance of family members left behind as had been the case when Jewish adult males had been detained and sent to labour camps. The first trainload of deported Jews left the country at the end of March 1942, a thousand or so young women and girls from the district of Šariš. It arrived in Auschwitz in the course of the following day. In the days thereafter, six transports carrying 5,969 Jews were despatched to Poland. The deportations caused something of a panic among those who had been left behind. Some Jews tried to escape to Hungary or go into hiding. Others had themselves baptized in relatively large numbers, hoping (alas mistakenly) that the clerical regime would take this into account. Catholic and Evangelical clergymen also pre-dated certificates of 430

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baptism in an effort to assist people under threat.50 In the lead-up to the deportations, President Tiso organized a meeting of the leadership of the Slovakian People’s Party on 17 March 1942 with the topic of deportations on the agenda. The question of baptized Jews was also discussed. The meeting, however, limited itself to stating that the Jewish question needed to be solved in harmony with Christian morality.51 The Council of State and the Slovakian parliament were obliged to approve the policy of deportation. Two church representatives intervened during the meeting of the Council: Bishop Bohuslav Klimo of the Evangelical Church and Roman Catholic Bishop Ján Vojtašák. The former insisted that the president should make every possible use of his right to grant exceptions. The Catholic bishop was satisfied with the government’s promise that baptized Jews would be given their own homes and schools in the camps and that they would receive pastoral care to allow them to practise their faith in peace without being exposed to criticism or abuse from their ‘coreligionists’.52 In April 1942, Reinhard Heydrich visited Slovakia to further pressure the Slovakian government to meet the quotas established at the Wannsee Conference. He left with an agreement signed by Prime Minister Tuka. ‘In 1942, the Slovak state had already deported two-thirds of its Jewish inhabitants, and paid the Reich a considerable amount for doing so. At this time, no other state controlled but not occupied by the Nazis had done as much as the Slovak Republic to fulfil the Nazi wishes for the deportation of Jews, and with its own security and administrative forces.’53 Burzio was quick to raise questions concerning the true purpose of the deportations. Slovak officers and soldiers serving at the Eastern Front had observed, when they returned on vacation, that Jews were being murdered on a grand scale. In February 1942 he sent a note to Prime Minister Tuka warning him that he would be wrong to believe that the Jews were being sent to Poland to work. In reality they were being physically liquidated.54 Burzio also informed the Vatican on 9 March 1942 that 80,000 Slovak Jews had been deported to Poland and handed over to the Germans. A large number of them faced certain death. A few weeks later, Angelo Rotta, the papal nuncio in Hungary, confirmed this news.55 A letter of appeal addressed to Pope Pius XII from the Slovakian Jewish community was added in which the Pope was asked to exercise his influence on the priest-president of Slovakia.56 The Vatican also reacted to the clerical government’s decision to begin deportations. Cardinal Maglione presented a note to the Slovak ambassador Karol Sidor (on 14 March 1942 – Slovakia’s national day) in which he expressed the concerns of the Holy See with respect to the racist principles of the ‘Judenkodex’. He wrote that a country that claimed to be inspired by Catholic principles could not permit such deportations. Burzio in turn received instructions to present himself to the president in person and appeal to his sensitivities as a priest.57 On 26 March 1942 Cardinal Maglione summoned the Slovak ambassador for a second time. Sidor tried to solicit a response from the Slovak government but to no avail. Instead, Alexander Mach, Minister of Foreign Affairs, announced on the radio on 1 April 1942 that no foreign interference in state affairs would be able to prevent the government in Bratislava from ‘liberating Slovakia from the Jews’.58 Burzio reported to the Vatican that President Tiso’s position had weakened, that 431

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of Minister Mach had been reinforced.59 Prime Minister Tuka is said to have informed him that his confessor had expressed no objections to the deportations because they were for the good of the Slovak nation.60 The interventions of Burzio were evidently significant when it came to the position of the Slovak episcopate. Pavol Jantausch, the Bishop of Trnava, protested in person to President Tiso against the deportations. On 26 April 1942, the Catholic bishops of Slovakia addressed the faithful, intent on reacting to rumours that priests had been baptizing Jews in large numbers, and responding to critics who asked themselves how it was possible that bishops and priests could stand by in silence in the face of such inhumanities as the deportation of the Jews. The public reading of their pastoral letter was banned by the Minister of the Interior, although the text itself was published in the newspaper Katolícke noviny as stemming from ‘competent ecclesiastical circles’.61 On 27 April 1942, Burzio reported to Rome that the bishops had been forced by the government to scrap two passages: a critique of the deportation of Jews beyond Slovakia’s borders and a critique of their lack of financial rights and the disruption of families by the deportations.62 The document of the Slovak bishops testifies to Catholic attitudes towards the Jews. The bishops defended themselves against the critiques that Jews were being baptized en masse and insisted that only the Church had the right to judge whether someone was suitable for baptism. The bishops wanted to stand up for those Jews who were willing to live a Christian life and fulfil their religious obligations. They upheld the traditional Christian argument, namely that the Jews had refused to recognize the Redeemer and that their punishment after the fall of Jerusalem had been scattering and dispersion. They had not changed their hostile attitude to Christianity. In recent times, moreover, they had played a significant role in the persecution of Christians in Russia and in Spain. The Church should have nothing against the state introducing measures to combat the damaging influence of the Jews. But deportation was the limit. The state had to realize that Jews were also human beings and that they had to be treated as such.63 A month later, in May 1942, the bishops of the Evangelical Church of Slovakia also issued a pastoral letter protesting the deportations, which they considered to be in conflict with the principles of humanity and the principles of Christianity.64 In an official reaction, the government responded that the Slovak nation had a historic task to fulfil with respect to the Jews. In its 30 April edition, Gardista, the newspaper of the Slovak People’s Party, was a little more guarded, stating that competent Catholic ecclesial authorities in Slovakia ‘do not all oppose us when we solve the Jewish problem once and for all. While the bishops had some reservations, we observe on closer inspection of the text that they only make observations concerning a number of rights belonging to the Catholic Church, which we understand and respect.’65 The Slovak government only officially responded to the critique of the Vatican representative on 8 May 1942. It stated that the deported Jews enjoyed good living conditions. The government and parliament, moreover, had approved a law in the meantime in which the deportation of Jews was legitimized. Three groups were exempted from deportation: Jews who had converted to Christianity before Independence Day 432

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(14 March 1939); those who had entered into mixed marriages prior to 10 December 1941; and those who had submitted an official request to the president to be exempted from the obligation to deportation. ‘The Vatican representative was deeply disappointed that none of the priests with seats in the parliament had voted against this draft legislation. Some had abstained, others had approved.’66 There were also contrasting voices. Father Augustin Pozdech, a priest from Bratislava, wrote a letter – in French – to the president of the Jewish community in Budapest expressing his distress at the horrendous suffering being imposed on his Jewish neighbours, fellow Slovak citizens. The letter reached Rotta, the nuncio in Budapest, and via him the secretary of state: ‘I revolted from the depths of my being . . .’ against the fact that human beings with no other failing than that they were born Jews, are being robbed of their possessions and of the personal freedom to be transported as slaves to a foreign land.67 Pavel Gojdič, the Greek Catholic Bishop of Prešov and pastor of the Greek Catholic Ukrainians bordering the Carpathian Mountains, informed the Vatican representative that the Hlinka Garde had helped with the deportation of the Jews in the east of Slovakia. ‘The barbarous measures being imposed on this unfortunate people surpass every possible inhumanity and are reminiscent of the misdeeds of the Bolsheviks and communists in Russia, Spain and Mexico.’68 Margit Slachta, the Hungarian foundress and mother superior of the Society of the Sisters of Social Service (‘Szociális Missziotársulat’) – known as an energetic champion of the rights of interned Jews in Hungary – began drawing attention to the deportation of Slovakian Jews from her base in Budapest. In March 1943 she visited the Vatican, not in relation to her congregation but ‘purely to allay her personal conscience’. She was granted an audience with the Pope and Cardinal Maglione, the Secretary of State. As a result, the latter instructed the apostolic representative – Burzio – to redouble his efforts to prevent the implementation of planned deportations. Burzio replied by return that the Slovakian authorities were evasive in their response to his requests. Mother Slachta was (at least provisionally) reassured by the speedy and vigorous intervention of the Vatican’s diplomatic corps. On 17 August 1942, President Tiso himself made a statement on the issue of deportations. In a speech delivered in Holíč, he asked himself whether it was Christian for the Slovak nation to want to rid itself of its enemy, the Jews. No one, he claimed, needed convincing that the Jewish element was a constant threat to Slovakian life. ‘It would have been worse if we had not stood up in advance to purify ourselves of them. And that is what we did according to the command of God: Slovak, go and rid yourself of your enemy!’69 As was his custom, Tiso did not read his speech from a written manuscript, and as a result, the text itself was later subject to dispute. But during his trial in 1946 – after the liberation of Czechoslovakia – Tiso declared that the consolidation of relationships within the Slovak state would not have been possible if the ‘Jewish problem’ had been left unaddressed.70 In February 1943, Rotta, the nuncio to Hungary, informed the Holy See that a new deportation of 20,000 Jews was being prepared in Slovakia and he called on the Vatican to intervene. Maglione instructed Burzio to protest. The latter had already visited 433

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President Tiso to express his concern about a speech delivered by Minister Alexander Mach. Against his expectations, he found President Tiso less than generous in granting the ‘exemptions’ he had been empowered to grant. Civil servants granted such exemptions nevertheless after payment of a sum of money since the Jews were willing to pay any price to escape deportation.71 The Vatican’s diplomatic corps tried anew to urge the Slovakian bishops to intervene. On 8 March 1943, they published a pastoral letter which in this instance was to be read out in all the churches. The letter stated that the constitution applied to everyone and that no Slovak citizen should be persecuted without legal grounds. In addition, all those who genuinely desired to convert to Christianity should be baptized. Above all, the bishops rejected the argument offered by the Slovak state claiming that the Jewish community carried a collective burden of responsibility and that measures taken against the community as a whole were thus justified. According to the Slovakian constitution, they insisted, every citizen without distinction had the right to enjoy protection of life, freedom and property. Every era has its problems, the bishops argued, but such problems had to be solved in a spirit of justice and charity.72 In his report to the Vatican, Burzio added that the president of the Republic – i.e. Tiso himself – had read out the bishops’ letter in his function as pastor of Bánovce.73 Guiseppe Burzio refused to desist. On 7 April 1943 he was received by Adalbert Tuka, the Minister of Foreign Affairs. The conversation took an unexpectedly aggressive turn. The minister expressed his surprise at the Holy See’s interventions on behalf of the Jews of Slovakia and he rejected such diplomatic endeavours. He insisted that it was the mission of the Slovak government to rid the country of this plague, this band of gangsters and thugs. Burzio replied that it was not right to force thousands of women and innocent children to pay the price by deportation: ‘Your Excellency is clearly aware of the reports that have been circulating about the horrendous fate of the Jews who were deported to Poland and Ukraine?’ Tuka replied that such horror stories had been disseminated as Jewish propaganda and that the Vatican, he was sad to say, had not been entirely immune to its influence.74 In May 1943, after the deportation of more than 60,000 Jews from Slovakia, the transportations came to a provisional end. Those who remained behind or had been able to escape deportation were now subject to detention in Slovakia itself, in labour camps and labour centres associated with companies and businesses. Baptized Jews and ‘nonArian’ spouses in mixed marriages were assigned to the (better) labour centres.75 At the end of December 1943, Edmund Veesenmayer – a notorious German Jew hunter and Nazi – asked for an appointment to speak to President Tiso (‘Fraktur reden’) and urge him to have the remaining 16,000 to 18,000 Jews deported from Slovakia in the short run. Tiso assured Veesenmayer that there was no question of delaying tactics,76 but he appeared nevertheless to be in no hurry to respond to the German demands. In the meantime, Burzio was slowly gathering information on what the deported Jews could expect. In the spring of 1944, two young Slovakian Jews who had been arrested in 1942 managed to escape from Auschwitz. They returned to Slovakia (which is not far from Auschwitz) and put together a report that came to be known as the Auschwitz 434

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Protocol. They stated that up to the time they managed to escape the camp 1,765,000 people had been gassed. On 22 May 1944, Burzio sent a long description of Auschwitz – 29 pages, single spaced – to the Vatican. He made no further comment, except to observe that the senders had asked that it be treated as confidential. In June 1944, part of the Protocol was published via different channels in an international forum. In November of the same year it was published in its entirety by the War Refugee Board, a US agency. Burzio consistently refused to reveal the identity of its authors.77 Up until September 1944, the Slovakian president had managed to resist German demands for further deportations. At this point, however, the Slovak Resistance launched a revolt. Not only were German troops deployed to suppress it, but the SS exploited the opportunity to deport a further 9,563 Jews from Slovakia. Himmler instructed the German supreme commander in Slovakia to arrest as many Jews as possible and to pay no attention to the interventions of the Slovak government. A total of 13,500 Jews were thus deported between September 1944 and March 1945, the majority to Auschwitz. Jews fleeing from Hungary were also included and exemptions were no longer respected. More than half of those deported lost their lives.78 Burzio wrote the following concerning President Tiso on 6 October 1944: ‘He considered the Jews to be the source of all evil and defended the measures deployed against them by the Germans as imposed by the war and its extreme demands.’79 On 26 October 1944 he reported that the government and president of Slovakia had become servile puppets of the occupying authorities. ‘Good Catholics’ are ‘disgusted’ by the subservience of the president and are asking themselves why he has not yet submitted his resignation. The government has yielded to German pressure and handed over the Italian diplomats to the neo-fascist Italian authorities.80 Pius XII intervened in person on 29 October 1944. He contacted Burzio via the nuncio on Bern and asked him to inform Tiso of His Holiness’s profound sadness at the suffering of so many people – against every principle of humanity and justice. He also asked him to remind the president of his priestly dignity and conscience. Tiso the priest responded to the Pope’s intervention in his own hand and in Latin. His defence was nationalistic. Rumours concerning the violent treatment of Slovak citizens by the government on the basis of nationality or race were a form of hostile propaganda. In the five years his government had been in power not a single death sentence had been pronounced. The Slovak state had been proclaimed without bloodshed. It was not a crime for Slovakia to take measures against the Czechs or despatch the Jews to work in Germany where it had also sent many Slovaks. Such measures were not inspired by race or nationalism; their goal rather was to resist the pernicious influence of certain elements that the country had been forced to endure for so long.81 ‘Little Slovakia’ had been unjustly attacked in the Revolt of the autumn of 1944 and had been obliged to ask the German army for assistance, Tiso continued in his response to the Pope. We owe the Germans a debt of gratitude and fidelity, not only for the fact that they recognized our right to independence, but in addition because they offered us help against the Czechs and the Jews, the enemies of our people. Tiso concluded that ‘it brought Holy Mother Church the greatest respect that she alone permitted her priests to 435

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serve the smaller nations, over which she alone kept guard, unwilling to hand them over as easy prey to wicked wolves. It went without saying that the priest as shepherd and caretaker (operarius) of his people would stand in the way of those who desired to devour and rob smaller nations.’82 This was the ideology of all the priests who had served Slovak nationalism as members of the People’s Party at the beginning of the twentieth century. But the extreme consequences thereof – the murder of so-called ‘aliens’ – had not been avoided.

5 Persecution in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina The history of the Second World War in autonomous Croatia was, and continues to be, dominated by a specific corm of ‘ethnic cleansing’: the persecution and expulsion of the Serbian minority. Of the 36,000 to 40,000 (Ashkenazi) Jewish inhabitants of independent Croatia, 30,000 – more than 80 per cent – were murdered, the majority by the Nazis and members of the Ustaša, the local fascist movement. The gypsy population of Croatia, which is estimated to have been between 25,000 and 40,000, was almost completely wiped out by the Germans or members of the Ustaša; the latter’s relentlessness was particularly evident in 1942 when it exceeded that of the Nazis.83 Of the 14,000 (Sephardic) Jews in Bosnia, almost 12,000 were murdered, the majority in concentration camps located within Croatian state boundaries, particularly in Jasenovac. Smaller numbers fell victim to the SS Handžar Division, which was made up of Muslims. As a result, the Jews – the fourth largest population group – had more or less vanished from the Bosnian landscape in the first year of the occupation. Muslim civilians helped Jews into hiding on occasion and some were able to escape by pretending to be Muslim, one literally hidden under a headscarf. Muslims certainly helped their fellow Muslim Roma.84 But the Mufti of Jerusalem supported the persecution of Jews from his exile in Berlin and objected when there were reports of Jews from Romania, Croatia and Hungary being exchanged or allowed to travel to Palestine via Turkey.85 Where the persecution of the Orthodox Serbians was a specifically Croatian initiative, that of the Jews, Roma and Sinti was also by order of Nazi Germany. In the southern provinces, on the other hand, the Italian regime left the Jews alone or put an end to their persecution by members of the Ustaša. By both legal and illegal means, thousands thus tried to reach this occupied region in Dalmatia as well as Slovenia and in the annexed province of Fiume (Rijeka). In October 1942, however, the Italian authorities gave in to German pressure. The rule was established that Jews were to be ‘separated’ from society ‘but not eliminated from it’.86 An estimated 3,000 Jews were transported to the island of Arbe (Rab) near Fiume. The fascist authorities continued to resist Croatian and especially German demands to hand them over for deportation. The primary motivations for this Italian restraint were a powerful desire for independent policies (not to be a subservient ‘junior partner’ to Nazi Germany) and a growing awareness of and disgust at what awaited Jews who had been deported. When Italy was occupied by the Wehrmacht in the middle of 1943, many managed to escape from Rab. 436

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Papal diplomacy was deployed to dissuade Mussolini from acquiescing to German demands, but at the outset it was sotto voce. The internment of Jews in Dalmatia, however, also caused genuine concern in the Vatican because it appeared to herald their extradition to Croatia and – even worse – Nazi Germany. In November 1942, the Italian ambassador to the Holy See reported to his minister that the office of the Secretary of State (Cardinal Maglione) had asked him to intervene in order to prevent such an extradition. In the spring of 1943, both the Cardinal and his deputy Secretary of State Montini spoke out on the issue. In addition, the liaison between the Vatican and Mussolini, the Jesuit Pietro Tacchi Venturi, was called upon to offset German pressure on the Italian dictator. The internment of Jews on the island of Rab thus appeared to be an acceptable solution.87 The picture in the northern provinces of Croatia and Bosnia was quite different. Under German supervision, racist legislation was implemented and Jewish citizens were arrested. The majority of the Jews also lived in the said provinces: 12,000 in Zagreb and 8,000 in Sarajevo.88 The Croatian government obeyed German orders and set up labour camps, the best known being that of Jasenovac. The camps were not only intended for Jews but also for Serbians and Croatians who behaved ‘incorrectly’.89 In the early days, Ustaša supporters were involved in the killing of individual Jews. In May 1942, the Croatian authorities were apparently willing to hand over 12,000 Jews to Nazi Germany. Exceptions were made for Jews who were considered to have made a contribution to ‘Croatian independence’ and who could thus be declared ‘honorary Arians’. In March 1943, Himmler travelled to Zagreb in person because he was dissatisfied at Croatia’s ‘ineffectiveness’ in implementing the required deportations as well as the granting of ‘honours’ to Croatian nationalists among them.90 There are reports of Croatians who helped individual Jews and of religious communities (monasteries) who took in Jewish children. A priest by the name of Dragutin Jesih, is also mentioned in this regard, the pastor of a parish in Šćitarjevo not far from Zagreb. The man was executed because he had protected Jews, although it is unclear whether the execution was carried out by members of the Ustaša or by German troops. Janko Šimrak, the Bishop of the Greek Catholic Church in Croatia, risked his own life by concealing two young Jews in his seminary. The young men were later brought to a place of greater safety in Archbishop Stepinac’s car. Klement Kvirin Bonefačić, the Bishop of Split, helped Jews fleeing from the German-occupied zone to the Italian-occupied zone, who thereby found themselves in his city on the Adriatic coast. One of them was Rabbi Hinko Urbach.91 The Catholic Church in Croatia enjoyed a unique position on account of the number of believers and the role of Catholicism in the national ideology. As observed in previous chapters, Aloizije Stepinac, the Archbishop of Zagreb, used his influence to support the independence of the state – the most compelling reason to explain his silence – but he also insisted that politicians should recommit themselves to the demands of proper government. He likewise endeavoured to steer the government on the issue of Jewish persecution although he was half-hearted on occasion and sometimes reluctant. On 23 April 1941, he wrote to Andrija Artuković, the minister of foreign affairs, asking that Croatia’s new race laws account for baptized Jews. He considered the race laws ‘necessary’ 437

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(under German pressure) but called for clemency of Jews who had converted to Christianity. The government promised that race measures would not be applied to this group. A month later, the archbishop complained once again to Artuković about the requirement for Jews to wear a yellow star. While he considered it a duty of the government to protect the public interest, discrimination of Jews – and effectively robbing them of the necessary means to existence – and forcing them to wear a symbol of criminality – a yellow star – was a matter of humanity and morality. According to the bishop, moral laws also applied to the state. He saw the obligation to wear a star to be an act of injustice because those who wore it had not committed a crime and because it branded them on grounds of race. The archbishop reminded Artuković that he supported baptized Jews and would be obliged ‘to tell the Jewish Catholics not to wear those insignia in order to avoid trouble and difficulties in the church’.92 In reaction to news of a further deportation, Stepinac turned once again to Minister Artuković, writing him a letter on 7 March 1942 insisting that unjust measures against people who had not committed a punishable crime had to be stopped. At the same time, he stated his awareness of the fact that the government of Croatia did not have the power to do much on behalf of its Jewish citizens.93 In October 1942, on the feast of Christ the King, the symbol of Catholic social teaching, he explained in a pastoral letter that all people and all races were the ‘children of God’ and that the Catholic Church condemned every form of injustice and violence committed on grounds of class, race or nationality. ‘One cannot exterminate Gypsies or Jews because one considers them of an inferior race.’94 Kaptol (the archdiocese) was able to arrange transport for 200 Jewish children for whom the Jewish Council in Zagreb had made a particular effort. They finally managed to leave for Turkey in February 1943 after mediation by both Stepinac and Cardinal Maglione. Miroslav Šalom Freiberger, the Chief Rabbi of Zagreb, accompanied the transport.95 His secretary stated that the archbishop was personally involved in the provision of places of safety for Jews and contributed financially to their upkeep.96 On 6 March 1943, Stepinac wrote to Ante Pavelić, the Croatian head of state, that he felt obliged to protect the Jews. The archbishop’s argument was a personal one: neither Pavelić nor a number of other members of his government had applied the ‘Arian legislation’ – including the berufsverbot for ‘non-Arian’ – to their own family. ‘Pavelić’s wife and the wives of his Ministers Slavko Kvaternik and Milovan Zanić were Jewish. Vilko Lehner, Robert Vinček, David Karlović and David Sinčić, all high officials in NDH and members of the Ustaše, were Jewish.’97 The closest Stepinac ever came to a public break with – and open condemnation of – the Croatian authorities occurred in October 1943. In a sermon he said that the Catholic Church explicitly condemned racism and that the policy of shooting hundreds of hostages for a crime was ‘a pagan system which only resulted in civil war’.98 As we observed in an earlier chapter, the Holy See did not despatch the requested nuncio to the new Croatia in 1941, but an apostolic visitator: the Benedictine abbot Giuseppe Ramiro Marcone. The latter wrote to Cardinal Maglione on 1 December 1942 that he had been informed in meetings with the Poglavnik (Pavelić) and Croatian police 438

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authorities that the Jews were expected to leave Croatia but that the government did not have the intention of subjecting them to harsh treatment. When a new chief of police was appointed, he informed the visitator that he regretted the excesses to which the Jews in Croatia had been subjected, but admitted in all openness that he could not make any substantial change to the measures deployed against these unfortunate people. Sooner or later they would all have to be deported to Germany.99 On 13 March 1943, the abbot stated that he had appealed on behalf of baptized Jews and those in mixed marriages to the head of state, the ministers and the chief of police. Siegfried Kasche, the German ambassador – Nazi and Protestant – took the abbot’s intervention to be a challenge in the struggle for influence in Croatia. ‘Let’s see if he wins this time or me.’ The church emissary maintained his appeal but was forced to report on 24 May that all the Jews – except those married to Catholics – had been deported to Germany. Among them was Rabbi Freiberger. He was sent to Auschwitz, despite the efforts of the archbishop to save him from deportation. He was killed at the entrance to the camp when he protested against the inhumane procedures being inflicted on the members of his community. Neither the Vatican emissary’s interventions nor the sermons and letters of protest from the Archbishop of Zagreb were able to prevent the deportation and murder of Croatian Jews. They were likewise unable to reverse the influence of Nazi Germany in Croatia, which had completely submitted itself to its German protector.100 As a result, the Catholic character of the state was also sullied, albeit indirectly.

6 Persecution in Denmark In the North and West of Europe, Nazi Germany managed to acquire two important allies in 1940: the Kingdom of Denmark, which capitulated immediately, and the French state, which signed an armistice and was able to continue with its base in Vichy. Occupying forces were despatched to both states, but they retained their autonomy to a certain degree. This is clear from the way in which each state responded to German demands concerning the discrimination and deportation of Jews. Until the middle of 1943, the 8,000 Jews in Denmark had considered themselves relatively safe because the Danish government had shielded them against German plans to deport them. It should also be stated that Werner Best, the senior German overseer, likewise did little to implement demands for deportation. On the contrary. In November 1942, the government of Prime Minister Erik Scavenius endorsed legal forms of discrimination against the Jews. In October 1943, Himmler gave orders for the Jews to be deported from Denmark to the concentration camp in Theresienstadt. But the vast majority were able to avoid the round-up. Their most important port of safety was Sweden. On the night of 1 and 2 October 1943 – the Sabbath – only 202 Jews were arrested in Copenhagen and a further 82 in the provinces. The attempted round-up of Jews in Denmark acquired international renown on account of its failure. The plans were leaked in advance because the German overseers 439

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had been in no hurry and had discussed the details of their planned arrests and deportation with the Danish authorities. Christian X, the Danish king, had instructed his officials to obey German orders. The round-up was executed by older policemen. They did not barge in to people’s homes and they left a hospital in which a relatively large number of Jews had sought safety untouched. The Swedish coastguard had been informed in advance, allowing boats full of refugees to cross the Øresund without much interference. In 1940, neutral Sweden would not have been a hospitable place for Jews. In 1943, the invincibility of Nazi Germany was an illusion and the reception of refugees correspondingly generous. This did not alter the fact that some fishermen insisted on large sums of money for the use of their boats by Jewish refugees.101 The Danish State Church had a prominent role to play in the mobilization of public opinion against the deportations. The Bishop of Copenhagen, Hans Fuglsang-Damgaard, was cautious of the (Danish) authorities from the outset and expressed his criticism of legal discrimination against the Jews. At the end of August 1943, when rumours had been circulating of a possible deportation, he sought information from a senior official at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who assured him that the ‘Jewish Question’ had not been discussed and that there were no plans to arrest anyone on account of their race or religion. Werner Best is also reported to have made similar statements.102 On 29 September 1943 – in the lead-up to the intended deportation – the bishops wrote a letter of protest to the Danish authorities, signed and initialled by Bishop Fuglsang. The letter was passed on to the German overseers via the Danish government ministries. The bishop alluded not only to the unique place of the Jews in biblical history and the origins of Christianity, he also pointed to the fact that freedom of religion and civil equality was part of the Danish constitution. In the final paragraph the Danish bishops admit that they have a duty to obey the civil authorities, but that they also have a duty of conscience to protest against violations of the law. For this reason they acknowledged the statement: ‘we must obey God more than human beings’.103 For this Lutheran Church these words were a remarkable statement concerning the right to resist, but the bishops had also clearly assimilated the example of the Norwegian Church. The day after the round-up finally took place, Sunday 3 October, the bishops’ letter of protest was read out in every church in the form of a pastoral letter. In the church in Copenhagen where Bishop Fuglsang himself took to the pulpit, those present rose to their feet as he read the letter, thereby expressing their approval of its content.104 The rescue of so many Danish Jews has occasioned debate among historians. Some presumed that the German overseers had a cynical reason to avoid endangering the construction of a satellite state in ‘their’ Denmark any further. It looked as if they were following a command from Hitler in the knowledge that it would fail. While endemic anti-Semitism was not completely absent in Denmark it was far from vigorous. The majority of the Jewish community lived and worked in Copenhagen. They were integrated in Danish society and there were comparatively few immigrants from Eastern Europe or refugees from Nazi Germany among them. The ‘cynical’ interpretation is rejected by other historians. The rescue operation in October 1943 turned out in hindsight not to be a danger-free or less dangerous 440

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undertaking for those who had participated in it. The Gestapo, for example, are known to have fired on ships in the Øresund, leading to the death of one Jewish refugee and an escort. ‘The spontaneity with which the Danes acted against the crime, out of democratic and humanistic interests, turns the rescue operation – irrespective of its happy landing – into a symbol of hope and light in the darkness of the Holocaust.’105

7 Persecution in France 7.1 The internment camps Two anti-Semitic moments during the French Third Republic preceded the persecution of the Jews in France as a consequence of German occupation. The first was an unpleasant result of political polarization that emerged after the formation of the Popular Front government led by the socialist Léon Blum. The right-wing opposition also employed anti-Semitic language and raised the spectre of a Jewish vanguard fronting this cooperation between socialists and communists. The second moment was the arrival of political refugees in democratic France in a stream of Jews from the east and from Nazi Germany. The first wave – in 1936 – was made possible by the generous admissions policy of the Popular Front. The second wave – after the dismantlement of Czechoslovakia and Reichskristallnacht in 1938 – was blocked by legal limitations introduced by the Daladier government and ended in internment camps. In the spring of 1939, moreover, an additional stream of political refugees arrived from the south, a consequence of the victory of General Franco’s nationalist troops in Spain and the end of the Spanish Civil War. At the outbreak of the war with Nazi Germany – September 1939 – internment had been recommended for German nationals in France. After the June 1940 Armistice, Marshal Pétain and his government thus inherited not only existing camps but also a system whereby citizens could be locked up, who for one reason or another had to be made invisible in French society. The public was aware that foreign residents – including those of Jewish origin – could create problems for French society.106 The government in Vichy – the unoccupied part of France – was very much its own master, but it also wanted to have as much of a say as possible in the occupied part of the country where it had to share the initiative with the German occupying authorities and in particular with the German ambassador Otto Abetz. ‘Vichy’s phobic determination to symbolize French sovereignty in the occupied zone’ led to it embracing the Nazi goal of the deportations and then to put a check on them.107 In the annexed regions of Alsace and Lorraine, on the other hand, Pétain’s government had no influence on German policy. As noted above, the occupying authorities immediately expelled the Jewish inhabitants, sending them to France. By contrast, the Jews in the eight departments in the south-west of the country that had been assigned to an Italian occupying authority appeared to enjoy relative safety. The Italian regime refrained from deporting, at least until September 1943 when the Germans took the region under their own control. 441

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Both the German and the Vichy administrations tried to trump one another in the second half of 1940 in the implementation of anti-Jewish measures.108 The German ambassador Otto Abetz took the initiative in the occupied part of the country. The first measure was a form of discrimination: an entry ban on Jews from the unoccupied zone and a campaign intended to register Jewish names and Jewish companies. This was followed from October 1940 by an ‘arianization’ of Jewish enterprises, including the renowned financial institutions of Rothschild and Lazard Frères. The first measure in the unoccupied zone was a law – signed by Marshal Pétain on 22 July 1940 – withdrawing French citizenship from ‘undésirables’ (unwelcome foreigners; immigrants who had been naturalized on the basis of the law of 1927). The law related also, but not exclusively, to Jewish refugees. At the beginning of October, the Vichy government promulgated a Statut des Juifs in which a definition was given of what made a Jew a Jew and in which restrictions were announced relating to Jewish access to jobs in the civil service and certain professions. Since ‘religion’ could no longer be used as a result of the law on the separation of church and state (1905), an extensive jurisprudence had to be developed concerning descent and parentage. A second Statut des Juifs dating from June 1941 meant that Jews were no longer free to practise certain professions. French anti-Semitism had its own traditions: it was juridical in essence and intended to dismantle the emancipation of the Jews that was a consequence of the French Revolution and reimpose second-class citizenship.109 Legal discrimination of this sort primarily affected Jews with a French passport. A far-reaching measure, that of internment, affected foreign and stateless Jews.110 In May 1941, almost 4,000 were interned by the French police in camps in Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande, both in the occupied part of the country. The policies of the Vichy government also led to camps being filled in the unoccupied zone, particularly in the south. In January 1941, internees numbered roughly 55,000, among them an estimated 28,000 foreign Jews. In March 1941, an official instance charged with deportations was established in the unoccupied zone: General Commissariat for Jewish Affairs (Commissariat Général aux Questions Juives). Its general secretary was Xavier Vallat, an Action Française supporter. ‘Vallat was intent – in his own way – on the complete elimination of Jewish culture from France; foreigners via emigration, French Jews via social and economic exclusion, and “half-Jews” by assimilation.’111 But he found the German measures excessively brutal and was convinced they would inspire sympathy for the Jews among the French population. He was forced to step down under German pressure at the beginning of 1942. The persecution of the Jews was intensified in 1942 as a consequence of the Wannsee Conference. In May of that year Jews in the occupied zone were obliged to wear the yellow Star of David. A police department was established in the same zone and instructed by Heydrich and Eichmann to prepare for deportations. The deportations themselves commenced after an, in hindsight, memorable event. In the early morning of 16 July 1942, Jewish citizens were taken from their homes in the various districts of Paris and herded together in the Velodrôme d’Hiver, the winter palace of the professional cyclists near the Eiffel Tower. The manhunt continued on 17 July. Thirteen thousand 442

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foreign Jews were arrested, among them 4,000 children. They were transferred to the camp in Drancy and later deported. The Vichy authorities first ‘delivered’ the 5,000 foreign Jews who had already been interned and then arrested a further 7,000 foreign Jews in August 1942. Two aspects of the round-up were characteristic of the French variant of Jewish persecution: the French police were responsible for the arrests up to and including detention in Drancy and foreign and stateless Jews were the focus of the manhunt. The explicit deployment of the French police was not only a consequence of the relatively small German police presence in France – which had its hands full dealing with the resistance – it was also a deliberate policy on the part of the Vichy government and in particular its prime minister Pierre Laval. In exchange for police involvement in the deportation of foreign Jews, he endeavoured to spare those who were in possession of French citizenship. Vichy also tried to maintain its advantage in another way. Under the influence of foreign Protestants and American diplomatic pressure, further deportations were suspended from September 1942 onwards. After the Allied landings in North Africa (November 1942), German forces marched into the southern zone of France, in the first instance for military reasons. The French police then organized further round-ups in February 1943. As a result of Marshal Pétain’s refusal to accept a draft law that would allow for the swift confiscation of the passports of French Jews, French–German cooperation came to an end in 1944. The Germans seized control under protest from the Vichy government. German police teams supplemented by members of French fascist splinter parties, and on occasion members of the Milice française (successor to the Legion subordinate to Vichy), continued to round up Jews – both foreign and French – up to two months after the Allied landing in Normandy (June 1941). The so-called ‘safe’ departments on the Côte d’Azur also came into range at this juncture. In the last analysis, more than 80,000 Jews were deported from occupied France. This amounts to 25 per cent of an estimated total of 300,000 Jews. Of this number an estimated 24,500 – or 30 per cent – were in possession of French nationality and were arrested in the latter part of the war in random German manhunts. The remaining 56,500 – or 68 per cent – were immigrants and refugees without a French passport.112 7.2 Church reactions In August 1940, Cardinal Gerlier, the Archbishop of Lyon, was granted an audience with Marshal Pétain, a man he revered. He returned from the meeting aware that discriminatory measures were being prepared against the Jews. The issue was raised during the first Assembly of Cardinals and Archbishops in the unoccupied zone, not long after the said audience, but the assembled church leaders decided at the time to support the new government – that favoured the Catholic Church – and thus remained silent on the question of discrimination. They were of the opinion that the state had the right to exercise an active vigilance (‘vigilance active’) with respect to foreigners, including the Jews among them. In addition, it was important for the Church to abstain from adopting 443

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a political stance. At the same time, they expressed their support for personal rights and freedoms and rejected racism and attacks on the Jewish religion.113 French Protestantism was more resolute in its response. In October 1940 – the month in which the first Statut des Juifs was promulgated – Pastor Marc Boegner, the president of the Protestant Federation of France, took steps to inform the Vichy government about the general alarm being caused by the measures taken against the Jews. In March 1941, the National Council of the Reformed Church sent a letter to the Chief Rabbi of France in which it expressed its sadness (‘douleur’) at the discrimination and alluded to the common bonds between Jewish congregations and the churches of the Reformation. In a second letter, addressed in this instance to Admiral François Darlan, Vichy’s second in command, the Council expressed its desire that the problem of Jewish immigration would be solved with respect for persons and with concern for just treatment. The first letter – to the chief rabbi – was made public, the second letter was not. French Protestantism’s head start in criticizing (initial) Jewish discrimination was driven by two reflexes: spontaneous solidarity between minorities who had both experienced persecution in their French past, and spiritual kinship between readers of the Old Testament. Protestants were not at liberty to remain silent in the face of a threatened eradication of the Bible’s ‘chosen people’.114 Catholic voices were also raised against the first discriminatory measures – e.g. Emmanuel Mounier, the editor of the Catholic journal Esprit – but they tended to be few and far between. In the court case against the resistance militants related to the illegal journal Combat, Mounier declared: ‘in spiritual terms we are Semites’. Mounier’s lawyer immediately got to his feet and declared in turn that ‘his client’s’ words were from none other than Pope Pius XI .115 Jesuit Pierre Chaillet later observed in the Christian resistance journal Témoignage Chrétien that 26 laws, 24 decrees, 6 regulations and a set of rules were published between 8 October 1940 and 16 September 1941 in the Vichy book of statutes. ‘France has clearly not been on strike (On n’a pas donc chomé en France).’116 This could also be read as an implicit criticism of an apparent indifference on the part of the French Catholic Church with respect to the said discrimination. The camps in the south of France in which foreign Jews had been interned were visited in the meantime by Protestant scouts and observers, the Comité inter mouvements auprès des évacués or ‘Cimade’. As noted in Chapter 4, the committee was established in October 1939 and brought together a variety of Protestant youth organizations to offer combined assistance to people who had been evacuated. In those days the ‘evacuated’ meant French men, women and children who had been expelled from occupied Alsace and occupied Lorraine. The Cimade quickly organized assistance in the internment camps for Jews and Republican refugees. Catholic assistance was still scarce at the time and on a strictly individual basis. It was only later that a committee was formed to coordinate a variety of Catholic initiatives. The so-called ‘Comité de Nîmes’ included two Jesuits representing the Archbishop of Lyon, one of whom was Pierre Chaillet, the founder of the Catholic resistance journal Témoignage Chrétien. Chaillet was particularly critical of the laxity of this form of Catholic charity. The other Jesuit was Fr Lagarde, who was later deported to Dachau 444

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concentration camp. In September 1940, Cardinal Gerlier despatched the secretary of the episcopal conference to Vichy to inform the government about the poor conditions in the overcrowded camps and to warn them against any violations of the rights of human persons. There is no evidence that the secretary’s mission bore fruit. The second Statut des Juifs dated 2 June 1941 inspired Pastor Boegner to register a second protest with the Vichy government, although in this instance it was not a public protest. He also met with Cardinal Gerlier at the time, who promised him he would raise the issue of racist laws at his next meeting with Marshal Pétain. The meeting took place on 28 September, on the occasion of the opening of the ‘Foire de Lyon’. In the occupied zone, the cardinals and archbishops of northern France assembled on 24 and 25 July 1941. They drafted a declaration on respect for human persons and the rejection of every form of injustice and every excess. These were general expressions, but in the context of anti-Semitic legislation their message would have been clear to the informed reader.117 The Faculty of Catholic Theology in Lyon published a declaration stating that the persecution of Jews on the basis of their religion ran counter to the French tradition that had been established 150 years earlier, thus dating back to the French Revolution.118 The government in Vichy then opted to make its own analysis of the Catholic Church’s attitude towards discrimination against the Jews. At the beginning of August 1941, Marshal Pétain gave orders to Léon Bérard, his ambassador to the Holy See, to gather information concerning the Vatican’s thoughts on the French Statut des Juifs. Bérard was able to respond with relative speed. It would appear that he consulted Louis-Marie Gillet, the Master General of the Dominicans, who pointed him in the direction of the Dominican theologian Thomas Aquinas and the distinction between a general church condemnation of racism and the legitimacy of measures intended to limit the activity and influence of Jews in society. The condemnation of racism was an immutable thesis, the hypothese (measures taken against the influence of the Jew) was a practical arrangement.119 According to this explanation, Catholics were obliged to be tolerant towards the Jews and not baptize Jewish children without the approval of their parents. On the other hand, it was considered unreasonable in a Christian state to hand over authority to the Jews and thereby diminish the authority of Catholics. It was thus considered legitimate to refuse them access to public functions and to limit their access (with a numerus clausus) to university education and the professions.120 Bérard concluded that someone in authority – probably one of the assistant secretaries of state, Montini or Tardini – had told him: ‘we do not intend to make an issue of the Statut des Juifs’.121 The diplomatic nota was despatched at the beginning of September 1941. When Valerio Valeri, the nuncio in Vichy, expressed critique of the Vichy legislation concerning the Jews at a reception given by Pétain, the marshal responded that the Holy See had not been critical, although it considered certain stipulations to be hard and lacking in humanity. The nuncio insisted that the Holy See had already made its ideas about racism public and that Ambassador Bérard could not possibly have spoken in such simplistic terms. Pétain replied that the nuncio might not share the same opinions as his superiors. A few days later Pétain sent him the nota. Valeri also consulted Cardinal Maglione on the matter and was informed that Bérard had met with either assistant secretary Tardini or 445

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assistant secretary Montini. It was clear to Maglione nonetheless that he had not understood their comments. The Cardinal himself considered the Statut des Juifs to be an inauspicious law (‘malaugurata legge’).122 The tenacity exhibited by the bishops in their defence of the interests of the Church over and against the political demands of Vichy formed a contrast with the reticence in their reactions to the discriminatory measures against the Jews and their internment. The same reticence was to last until the summer of 1942 when a massive round-up that took place in Paris spurred the leadership of the Catholic Church into action, albeit in a limited fashion.123 Shortly thereafter, the cardinals and archbishops of the northern occupied zone assembled for a (scheduled) meeting. They put together a declaration of twelve lines on the ‘inviolable rights of the human conscience’ and on the ‘demands of Justice and the rights of Charity’. A letter containing the declaration was handed over to Marshal Pétain by Bishop Henri Chappoulié, the liaison between the bishops and the government. Its content was also to be shared with the priests, but no public protest was foreseen.124 It was this letter that inspired Nuncio Valerio Valeri to inform Rome that episcopal protest in France was very respectful towards Marshal Pétain and also relatively ‘platonic’ (‘piuttosto platonica’). It was not made public out of fear that the freedom of movement afforded to Catholic Action – tacitly tolerated until then – would be limited.125 The nuncio himself had raised a finger of protest during an audience with Pierre Laval. When the latter accused the Jews of still being involved in black market activities, Valeri responded that those were causing harm to France were not locked up in concentration camps and that a considerable number of political refugees and Catholics could be numbered among the prisoners. ‘But I realised that every argument was useless and that the most we could achieve was to save individuals, as I have already endeavoured to do with some success.’126 In the unoccupied zone, letters were sent by Pastor Boegner in the name of the Protestant Federation and by Cardinal Gerlier in the name of the archbishops of the free zone. The former assembled the National Council of the Reformed Church in the Musée du Désert – established in memory of the persecution of the Huguenots – on 22 September 1942. A communiqué was drafted that was to be read out in every Reformed church on 4 October 1942. ‘A Christian Church will have lost its soul and right to exist if it does not uphold – for the salvation of the nation in which God has placed it – divine law above all other human interventions. And this law does not permit families, willed by God, to be torn apart, children to separated from their mothers, the right to asylum and compassion to be denied.’127 Pastor Boegner later explained that the church’s protest had taken such a long time to emerge because he had to convince fourteen Council members of the desirability of such a gesture. In May 1943, the National Synod was obliged to point out that messages from the Council had to be read out in public.128 7.3 Concrete protest While the bishops as a collective avoided public protest, a number of individuals were not so reticent. The first of five bishops to express open critique was Jules-Geraud Saliège, 446

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the Archbishop of Toulouse. On Sunday 23 August 1942 he had a letter read out in his diocese in which he protested the deportation of women and men, mothers and fathers, as if they were cattle. ‘We have been confronted in our day with this sad spectacle. Why has the right to asylum in our churches disappeared?’ The Jews are our brothers and sisters, the archbishop continued, and Christians should not forget it. He concluded with a patriotic appeal: ‘France, beloved Fatherland, France, that carries forward the tradition of respect for human persons in the conscience of every child, France, gallant and noble, I have no doubt whatsoever that You are not responsible for those mistakes.’129 The 72-year-old archbishop was unable to read out the letter himself on account of aphasia.130 The document was read out in the majority of churches in the archdiocese, but not all, requiring the archbishop to admonish a number of unwilling pastors. The text was passed from hand to hand and caused something of a stir. The prefect of the department found it pointless to forbid its distribution.131 In his church newsletter, the archbishop went on to remind his priests that the pulpit was not the place to spread propaganda on behalf of certain political goals. Christian pulpits had to remain Christian pulpits and priests apostles and not propagandists.132 He wanted to avoid his words being appropriated by the communist resistance and his loyalty to Marshal Pétain being undermined and he was willing to make this known in the public arena. Shortly after the letter was read out in the archdiocese of Toulouse, Prime Minister Laval summoned the nuncio. The latter was ill, however, and the meeting took place instead with his secretary, Carmine Rocco. Laval was enraged by Archbishop Saliège’s pastoral letter and shared his opinion that the Vatican should insist he take a leave of absence. He pointed out that the letter would be exploited for propagandist purposes should it fall into the hands of the British and that Vichy would have to account for it should the German occupier learn of its existence. He repeated his decision to allow all non-French Jews to be deported. He warned that those who had been given refuge in religious institutions would be removed with violence. The Jews in question were to be transported to a sort of ‘mother house’ in Poland. At the end of the meeting Laval added that anti-Jewish measures were nothing new for the Church since it was the Pope himself who had introduced the wearing of the first yellow star as a means to identify Jews in medieval Rome.133 The Sunday following 23 August was to witness public protest from Pierre-Marie Théas, Bishop of Montauban. Théas had presided at the funeral of the philosopher Henri Bergson in January 1941 and had alluded to Bergson’s Jewish roots in his eulogy. On 30 August, he had a statement read out from the pulpits of his diocese insisting that the Christian conscience demanded protest against the lamentable and sometimes horrific events that France had witnessed ‘for which France is not responsible’.134 Cardinal Gerlier of Lyon, Jean Delay, the Bishop of Marseille, and Jean-Joseph Moussaron, the Bishop of Albi, also spoke out in public. On 6 September 1942, the cardinal had a statement read out in which the Church proclaimed the sacred character of the family, the inviolability of the right of asylum and the demands of charity.135 In the occupied coastal region, public protest was heard from Edmond Vansteenbergue, the Bishop of Bayonne. Given the German military presence in the region this was exceptional.136 Gerlier and Delay 447

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prided themselves in their respect for and dependence on Marshal Pétain.137 Pastor Boegner’s critical reaction also made an effort to recall the positive significance of the constitution that Pétain wanted to give to France. The silence of Archbishop Liénart of Lille, France’s third cardinal, is particularly striking. He wrote no letters of protest and did not speak out against the persecution of the Jews in his preaching. Historian Danielle Delmaire offers three reasons for this. In like fashion to his Belgian neighbour Cardinal Van Roey, Liénart closed his eyes to the activities of priests who offered places of hiding to Jews, but preferred not to react in person because he knew that the occupying authorities were keeping a close eye on him. An open condemnation would not have had a positive effect on rescue operations in the occupied north of France. He did not remain silent, however, when it came to begging for clemency on behalf of those condemned to death or on behalf of young women from Lille being sent to work in Nazi Germany. A second reason was the cardinal’s profound respect for Marshal Pétain, under whom he had served in Verdun during the First World War. Third, the war veteran’s nationalism prevented him from condemning a persecution that was focused in the first instance on foreign Jews.138 The Jesuit Henri De Lubac added that the cardinal appeared to be a resistance fighter when he declared that forced labour in Nazi Germany was not binding on a person’s conscience. None of the other bishops, however, was more ‘Marechalist’ than Liénart, and none was more sensitive to the threat of Bolshevism that emanated from a potential domestic civil war.139 After the summer of 1942, public protest from the cardinals and archbishops and from the Reformed Church was no longer in evidence. They seemed to have had resigned themselves to the situation out of fear of reprisals against church institutions. In 1979, they found an advocate in Jean-Marie Mayeur, the renowned religious historian. According to Mayeur, an overly critical condemnation would be an ‘anachronism’ and would not be an adequate representation of the feelings of their contemporaries. The vehement and hostile reactions from anti-Semitic circles, the public revulsion evoked by their declarations in Vichy France, mentioned in the reports of police instances charged with the ‘Jewish Question’, demonstrate the importance of the church authorities. It is also striking, Mayeur observes, that the bishops’ reticence did not create the same disappointment and opposition that the church’s policy on forced labour had evoked.140 Why then did they fall silent in the first years of Vichy? In addition to the nation’s defeat and public support for Marshal Pétain, Mayeur refers in this regard to the widely held opinion that the state had to do something about the influx of foreign Jews into France that had taken place during the Interbellum. Furthermore, the bishops who found themselves in the unoccupied zone were, for the most part, the ones who took a stand. The nuncio provided the reason for the silence of the prelates in the occupied zone: fear that the German occupier would instigate measures against Catholic Action. After the summer of 1942, however, none of them took a stand because they were convinced that it would have no significant effect on a government that had ultimately proven itself to represent a satellite state of the Third Reich. According to Mayeur, historians need to empathize with thoughts and experience of the day if they wish to form an appropriate judgement.141 448

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7.4 Assistance and the provision of places of safety With hindsight, the hunting down of (foreign) Jews and their imprisonment in the Velodrôme d’Hiver in Paris in July 1942 turned out to be a signal initiating private relief actions. Catholic and Protestant individuals volunteered to provide places of safety. In contrast to the reticence of their ecclesial leaders, there is evidence of forms of support and resistance at the local level when it came to the persecution of the Jews. But assistance was also offered in the secular tradition of the Republic. Hundreds of teachers, for example, did their best to hide Jewish pupils in their schools or offer them some level of protection. The occasional word of protest was to be heard during the liturgy, For example, during midnight mass on Christmas 1942, Abbé Jean Flory, the Pastor of Montbéliard, organized a procession in which the infant Jesus was accompanied to the crib bearing a yellow star. Mary and Joseph awaited him in the crib, likewise bearing the yellow star. Camille Pic, Bishop of Valence, whose secretary during the years of the war was of Jewish origin but was dressed in the garb of a seminarian, gave a sermon of the feast of Jeanne d’Arc in May 1942 in which he declared to the civil authorities that he was prepared, for the sake of the fatherland, to hold out a hand to the sons of Calvin and even to the sons of Israel, because the vast majority of them had French blood in their veins.142 An additional form of assistance was the distribution of baptismal certificates to Jews, for which some priests were reprimanded or imprisoned. In September 1942, Cardinal Suhard wrote a letter to a pastor in which he announced that a severe punishment was to be dealt out to two chaplains who had counterfeited baptismal certificates. The first was deprived of his title as ‘vicaire honoraire’ (honorary chaplain), and the second – a ‘vicaire auxiliaire’ (assistant chaplain) was removed from his job. The archbishop’s only intention in deploying such punitive measures was the preservation of ‘the honour of our priests’.143 Monasteries and boarding schools offered places of safety to Jewish children. One congregation of sisters stands out in this regard: the Congregation of Our Lady of Sion, founded in 1843 by two Jewish brothers who had converted to Catholicism. Their initial purpose was to pray for the conversion of the Jews and to offer support to Jewish families, especially those of foreign origin. In the course of the years, however, the sisters had focused their efforts more and more on education; the male branch of the congregation remained relatively insignificant. During the Second World War, the sisters – and to a lesser extent the fathers – played an active role in providing places of safety and education to Jewish children. A number of the latter were baptized, whereby the congregation reverted in a sense to its original goal.144 Stories of the (successful) provision of places of safety to persecuted individuals seeking refuge in villages in the provinces are part and parcel of the collective memory of resistance during the Second World War. Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, in the department of Haute-Loire, is perhaps the best known Protestant example in this regard. In 2004, French president Jacques Chirac chose the place as the podium from which he was to deliver a personally tinted speech against racism, anti-Semitism and intolerance in

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France. Those who found refuge in the village included resistance fighters, Jewish citizens, and even German opponents of the Nazi regime. After the war, the number of Jews saved in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon had grown in the popular imagination to 5,000. In 1990, however, a scientific colloquium established that the 8,000 inhabitants of the village had managed to accommodate between 500 and 800 French and foreign Jews. The region around Dieulefit in the Drôme became a similarly successful refuge thanks on this occasion to cooperation between Catholics and Protestants.145 An ecumenical organization providing safe houses was active in Lyon under the name Amitié chrétienne, a group that brought together Catholics and Protestants with the intention of offering assistance to persecuted Jews as well as political resistance fighters. The initiative had its roots in circles surrounding the Jesuit Pierre Chaillet. Abbé Alexander Glasberg (of Jewish and Ukrainian origin and a priest of the church of Saint Alban in Lyon) was also associated with the group. Victims of the Nazi Regime and of the National Revolution were to be helped to find false identity papers, safe houses and even evacuation outside France. From 1942, however, the organization itself was forced to go underground. After the Liberation, it was discovered that the Amitié chrétienne had managed to issue 30,000 identity documents, 50,000 food coupons and thousands of other documents issued in a variety of French and German instances. It goes without saying that the precise number of Jewish and political refugees assisted by the Amitié chrétienne remains unknown; estimates run from a few hundred to perhaps a few thousand.146 8 Persecution in Southern Europe 8.1 Occupied Italy From 8 September 1943, when the Wehrmacht marched on the country and Mussolini declared the fascist ‘Repubblica Sociale Italiana’ in Saló, Italy’s status changed from ally to occupied nation. This had serious consequences for the Jews in the country. All the regions and islands under Italian jurisdiction were taken over by the Nazi regime in one fell swoop, and the Jews who lived or had sought refuge in them suddenly became prey to German persecutors. The same was also true of Italy itself. As discussed in Chapter 2, the fascist regime in Italy did not focus on an anti-Semitic legal agenda in its early days. This changed in the winter of 1938, however, with the socalled ‘laws for the protection of the Italian race’, the beginning of a discrimination that came to be legalized step by step. When Italy went to war with France in June 1940, all foreign Jews in the country were interned in fifteen camps. The best known of these was the camp in Ferramonti Tarsica near the city of Cosenza. It housed, among others, 500 Jews of Slovakian extraction who had been shipwrecked off the coast of the then Italian island of Rhodes on their way to Palestine. Internment offered foreign Jews a degree of protection against requests for extradition to Nazi Germany. In addition, the camp director and the chaplain, a Capuchin Franciscan by the name of Callisto Lopinot, did their best to make the circumstances in the camp bearable. 450

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The situation changed dramatically on 8 September 1943. In the south of the country – which was under Allied authority – the internment of Jews was discontinued. Roughly 4,000 Jews managed to reach the southern provinces and between 5,000 and 6,000 succeeded in crossing the Swiss border, although not all of them found what they were looking for.147 Those who remained in the centre and north of the country – an estimated 33,350 Jews – faced the threat of a sinister end. From 1943 to 1945 between 8,028 and 8,128 were deported or killed, representing 20 per cent of the total.148 In relative terms, therefore, a considerable number were spared. The danger continued in Rome until early June 1944 when the city was liberated by Allied forces. The Wehrmacht retreated from Florence in August 1944, but the occupation in the north was to continue until May 1945, ‘the very end of the war’. The last transport of Jews left Trieste on 24 January 1945 destined for Auschwitz, but were rerouted to Ravensbrück after the latter was liberated by the Red Army and finally ended up in Bergen-Belsen. 8.2 The Nazi regime in the occupied territories A change of occupying power took place on the Côte d’Azur on 9 September 1943: German forces and administrators took over from the Italian regime that had hitherto protected the French department on the Mediterranean from deportations. As a result of the Italian presence, these coastal regions became a place of refuge for Jews fleeing persecution elsewhere and their numbers had grown to 30,000. Fear intensified among them in the summer of the same year as the Italian army started to concentrate its efforts on the defence of the fatherland. From September onwards, the protection the Jews had enjoyed was no longer available or vanished. Using its own – limited – resources, the German regime engaged in improvised manhunts, albeit without the help of the French police. The government in Vichy considered the arrangement with the Nazis to have been violated by their pursuit of French Jews. French Nazis, however, readily offered their services for a fee. When the SS unit in Nice decided to hunt down the Jews in the area, a number of monasteries opened their doors as safe houses, among them monasteries of the Jesuits and the Salesians, together with a boarding school for girls and a few Catholic holiday camps. A socially minded Catholic, Paul Rémond, the Bishop of Nice, spoke out against the persecution of the Jews in Germany in 1933, but in 1943 he preferred to offer discrete protection. He permitted his diocesan clergy to participate in Jewish rescue operations led by Syrian Mossa Abadi, who had been informed about the extermination camps by a chaplain serving Italian troops on the Eastern Front.149 Among the clergy of his diocese, none acquired the reputation of ‘ministering angel’ to the extent associated with the French-born Capuchin father Marie-Benoît. Baptized Pierre Péteul in Bourg d’Iré in 1895, he entered the Capuchin order in 1913 and later studied theology in Rome. He was forced to escape to Marseille when Mussolini declared war on France, and it is in Marseille that he commenced his rescue operations. He helped Jewish refugees who had travelled from Northern and Western Europe to the French port city to make their way to Spain. The monastery had its 451

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own printing facilities and these were frequently employed to produce false identity papers. When the Wehrmacht advanced on the hitherto unoccupied zone of Vichy France in November 1942, Marie-Benoît fled to Nice. He visited Guido Lospinoso, the Italian commissioner for Jewish affairs, and made his own personal contribution to the fact that the 30,000 Jews on the Côte d’Azur were left undisturbed. In July 1943 he had an audience with the Pope during which he handed over a list of requests. One of the said requests was that the Holy See would intervene with governments in Washington and London to allow for 50,000 Jews to be saved via emigration. Capuchin Marie-Benoît’s personal vision – which was in many ways close to sacred – was that the Jews should emigrate to North Africa, and he sometimes succeeded in making this a reality.150 In September 1943, however, the war caught up with him as the Wehrmacht advanced on the Côte d’Azur. Marie-Benoît was summoned to Rome where he changed his name to Maria Benedetto but did not change his activities. After 8 September, the persecution of the Jews was extended to the principality of Monaco where the Wehrmacht had likewise taken over from the Italian regime. A general in the French army, Prince Louis II and his government were left unharmed. Monaco became important to the German Reich as a focus of financial transactions and Louis cooperated with the German military commandant. While the Italian occupier had more or less left the Jews to their own devices in Monaco, the Germans had other plans. The government of Monaco tried to protect its ‘own’ 237 Jewish residents, but handed over refugees. Of the Jews thus registered, 42 were deported to Auschwitz and only two of them survived the war.151 Approximately 250 religious people (priests, monks, nuns, sisters) were active in the principality and one of their number, Abbé Jean Boulier, parish priest of the Church of Sainte-Dévote, the patroness of Monaco, expressed his indignation early and in public at the persecution to which the Jews were being subjected. Occasioned by the screening of the film Jud Süss, he criticized the spectacle in his sermon on 26 October 1941 as a challenge to the soul, encouraging ‘shamelessness, cruelty and racial hatred among the citizens’. The authorities of the principality decided to exile the priest – who was a French national – but his parish protested. Bishop Pierre-Maurice Rivière, however, a supporter of Marshal Pétain, appeared to agree with the authorities. To avoid attaching political significance to the priest’s exile, the government also expelled another priest on grounds of indecency. The parishioners turned to Marshal Pétain, but he refused to reverse the decision.152 Father Boulier acquired a reputation in France as a ‘red priest’ with sympathies for the Communist Party. In the Italian-occupied zones to the east of Italy, Jews likewise came under threat of deportation from September 1943 onwards. In Croatia, for example, the Italian army had interned roughly 3,000 Jews in the spring of 1943 in an existing camp on the island of Rab. When the armistice was agreed in September of the same year, the majority managed to escape to safety by seeking the protection of Tito’s partisans. Others crossed to southern Italy. The 200 who had remained on account of sickness and old age were deported by the Germans in March 1944.153 German troops landed on the island of 452

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Rhodes in July 1944. Part of the island’s Jewish population had already fled – some to Palestine – and the rest were interned. Only Jews with a Turkish passport were spared. The Orthodox bishop protested but to no avail. A total of 2,780 Jews were deported, of whom only 140 survived.154 The German regime also adjusted international borders. The north-eastern provinces of Italy, Venezia Giulia, which had belonged to the Habsburg Empire until 1918, were combined with the regions of Slovenia that had been under Italian occupation until September 1943 to form a special zone, the Litorale Adriatico or the Adriatic Litteral, with an Austrian Gauleiter at the head of the German administration. The SS and the police were headed by Odilo Lotario Globocnik, who had acquired a sinister reputation for the organization of the mass killing of Jews in the Polish district of Lublin. Other extermination camp commandants were among his staff. Globocnik had a concentration camp constructed in a former factory complex entitled ‘La Risiera di San Stabbia’ in Trieste where at least 2,000 individuals were killed and cremated, the majority partisans from nearby Yugoslavia.155 Antonio Santin, who had been appointed Bishop of Trieste in 1938, quickly became a fearless critic of Mussolini and his anti-Jewish laws. ‘There is no Jewish problem in Italy’, he informed Mussolini. When the first round-ups were organized in the autumn of 1943, the bishop chose the feast of Saint Justus, patron of his cathedral, to make a public statement against the persecution. In the presence of prominent Nazis and fascists, he declared that Saint Justus represented the virtues of humanity and concern for all. ‘As pastor of this diocese, I am asking for this law of humanity in the name of Christ, also for the sons and daughters of that people from whose womb He came as a man and in whose midst He lived and died.’156 His words were remarkable to say the least, but the bishop was not involved in further actions or measures to protect the Jews such as the provision of places of hiding. His position on the issue was clear nevertheless to the priests and people of his diocese. Among those who helped save Jews from deportation in the Litorale Adriatico was a policeman in Fiume by the name of Giovanni Palatucci. According to the popular imagination, he is even attributed with facilitating the escape of no fewer than 5,000 Jews, for which reason he was posthumously awarded the honour of ‘Righteous Among the Nations’ by the state of Israel in 1990 and a beatification process was opened by the Vatican in 2002. Palatucci was hailed as heroic, an ‘Italian Schindler’, after the industrialist Oskar Schindler, who employed and ultimately saved hundreds of Jews in his factories in the Generalgouvernement and in Moravia. But in 2013 he was unmasked. Patalucci was born in 1909 in Avellino near Naples. In 1937 he became head of the Alien Police Department in Fiume (Rijeka), a port city that had belonged to the Hungarian part of the Habsburg Double Monarchy until 1918 and had ultimately become part of Italy in 1922. In this function, Palatucci had also monitored the passage of Jews who had been given permission to emigrate. He is associated in particular with the departure of 460 Jewish passengers on a Greek ship – the Hagia Zoni – that was able to cross to Palestine. From 1940, he expelled foreign or stateless Jews to an internment camp in Campagna in the southern province of Salerno where his uncle Guiseppe 453

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Palatucci was bishop. The said Jews probably numbered between 20 and 30 and were liberated as part of the Allied invasion in September 1943. In the same month, Fiume became part of the Litorale Adriatico and thus German territory completely under Nazi control. Palatucci, who had been promoted in the meantime to Questore or superintendant, lost many of his powers. His behaviour towards the Jewish community in Fiume was reasonable and he probably helped a few individuals to escape. But when the Nazis arrested him and deported him to Dachau it was not because he had been helping persecuted Jews but because he had maintained contacts with the Allies and had been accused of corruption. He died in Dachau in February 1945 and his heroic mythologization started at that point.157 8.3 The ‘Repubblica Sociale Italiana’ (RSI ) The anti-Semitic policies of the new fascist ‘Repubblica Sociale Italiana’ were dictated in reality by the German occupying regime, either directly or via its representative Giovanni Preziosi, a former priest and Hitler’s advisor on Italian affairs. The constituent assembly of the Republic met in Verona and made the following statement: Those who belong to the Jewish race are alien. And while this war lasts they are considered a hostile nation.158 Preziosi became the leader of the Direzione Generale della Demografia e della Razza – General Directorate for Demography and Race – in March 1944, which was charged, among other things, with organizing round-ups. His appointment was partly intended as a critique of Mussolini for what the German authorities saw as laxity in the implementation of deportations in the autumn and winter of 1943. The pretence of Mussolini’s control was maintained nevertheless since Preziosi was made subordinate to the chair of the Republic’s council of ministers.159 In central and northern Italy, the deportations quickly followed the German occupation. In October 1943 – only a month after the assumption of power – Bolzano in South Tyrol was designated the first city to be judenfrei. In the majority of places, the Germans themselves took responsibility for hunting down the Jews, in others making use of fascist accomplices. Some Jewish citizens came forward spontaneously, in response to posters hung in public places. Many believed that the excesses that had been witnessed in other countries could not happen in Italy: ‘Queste cose in Italia non avvengono.’160 After all, a modus vivendi had been achieved under the fascist regime. In Ferrara, for example, confidence (‘fiducia’) among the Jews was such that those who had been interned left their place of internment during an Allied bombing of the city only to return to it afterwards.161 More information on the actual destination of the deportations, however, came to light in the same period of 1943. Jewish organizations appealed to institutions like the Catholic Church with ever increasing frequency to prevent them. In Italy itself, an office was established prior to the war – the Delegazione Assistenza Emigranti Ebrei (DELASEM ) – Delegation for the Assistance of Jewish Immigrants, which later evolved into an organization assisting Jews to find safe hiding. In Genoa, for example, the chairman of DELASEM , a Jewish lawyer by the name of Lelio Vittorio Valobra, took the 454

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initiative to approach the archbishop via his secretary Father Francesco Repetto. Cardinal Pietro Boetto agreed to help: ‘They are innocent, they are in grave danger; we must help them regardless of all our other problems.’162 ‘The Jews asked for help,’ Susan Zucotti observes, ‘the Catholics, no matter how extensive and self-sacrificing their ultimate contribution to the rescue effort, did not offer it.’163 Nevertheless, the secretary to the Archbishop of Genoa was charged with the task of locating assistance for the persecuted Jews wherever he could find it. In July 1944, however, he was forced to flee. His work was taken over by another priest by the name of Carlo Salvi. In the meantime, the Archbishop of Turin had also been approached for help. Cardinal Maurilio Fossati likewise responded positively, instructing his secretary, Vincenzo Barale, to cooperate with DELASEM and to locate sources of help and places of safety. In November 1943, Cardinal Ildefonso Schuster, the Archbishop of Milan, was approached. He was known as a conservative and as a man on speaking terms with Mussolini, but he too was persuaded to offer assistance. Relief actions in Milan – a city with a large Jewish community – were organized by the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, a lay group dedicated to caring for the poor. An example of collective and rural Protestant protection of persecuted Jews is also to be found in Italy. The Waldensians, a small Protestant community in the north of the country, provided shelter and a safe haven in a variety of locations. It is reasonable to state that between 1943 and 1945 there was not a single Waldensian community in which Jews were unable to find hiding. During a fascist search, for example, a university professor (by the name of Ugo della Seta) found a hiding place in the organ-case in a Waldensian church, and Luigi Santini, a Florentine pastor, guided refugee Jews through the Abruzzo region on their way to safety in the south.164 In September 1943, the city of Florence was an important transit post for Jews on their way to Allied controlled territory in the south. The Jewish community organized an assistance committee for refugees that sought in turn the help of the archbishop and of the Catholic politician Giorgio La Pira, a man who enjoyed national renown and was later to become mayor. Cardinal Elia Dalla Costa agreed to help and delegated his secretary, Giacomo Meneghello, to make the appropriate arrangements. More than 110 Italian Jews and 220 foreign Jews were given shelter in monasteries, priests’ houses and in the homes of trusted parishioners, and not with a degree of risk. In November 1943, for example, SS units organized searches with the help of Italian fascists in three monasteries, including the monastery next to the church of Our Lady of Carmel, which was known primarily for the Brancacci chapel with its Tomasso Masaccio frescos. Of the thirty Jews sheltering in the said monastery only two managed to escape.165 Assisi, a national place of pilgrimage in which Jews had not settled prior to the war, became a place of refuge in the summer of 1943 for those fleeing the bombed cities in the north. The local bishop, Giuseppe Placido Nicolini, asked the cathedral musician, Aldo Brunacci, to organize a reception committee. In September 1943, Jewish refugees joined their number. The city of 5,000 doubled its population in a short period of time but was not equal to the influx. Brunacci’s committee was able to accommodate them on occasion in monastery guest houses and for this reason Brunacci himself was 455

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arrested in 1944. After an intervention by the Vatican, however, he was released.166 ‘Despite what is written in some exaggerated accounts of rescue in Assisi, Jews did not stay inside the female convents, in violation of the rules of cloister, except in one exceptional case.’167 The situation was not the same everywhere. When Jews were deported from Venice in December 1943, the patriarch, Cardinal Adeodato Piazza, appealed to the Italian authorities to exempt Jewish children who had been baptized Catholic together with the Jewish partners of Catholic spouses. While the said exemption was made, it was in response to orders issued by the RSI and not to the patriarch’s appeal. After the war, the archdiocese claimed that it had offered moral and material help to Jews arrested within its boundaries. When compared with relief actions in Genoa, Turin, Milan and Florence, Zucotti observed, ‘there is no evidence in the Patriarchal archives of Venice of a similar involvement of Cardinal Piazza in Jewish rescue’.168 8.4 Persecution in Rome, refuge in the Vatican City While open season had been declared in the hunt for Jews in the north in September 1943, Berlin was already preparing for the deportation of Jews from Rome. At the end of the same month, two prominent leaders of the Jewish community were summoned to the commandant of the German police and told that they had to supply 50 kilograms of gold if they wanted to avoid worse. The Vatican offered its assistance by lending the community the required amount of gold. The gold was thus delivered. The SS then went on to plunder the archives and library of the community. In the early morning of 16 October 1943, a sabbath, 1,259 Jews were removed from their home in the Roman ghetto and interned in the Military College. After excluding foreigners, those in mixed marriages and a citizen of the Vatican, the 1,023 remaining Jews were brought to the Tiburtina train station on Monday 18 October where they were loaded onto goods trains bound for Auschwitz. Within a week most of them had been gassed. It seems reasonable to assume that the Pope and his entourage would have heard rumours about the planned deportation. But on the morning of 16 October, a Roman aristocrat by the name of Princess Enza Pignatelli Aragona Corteste forced her way through to Pius XII – also of Roman origin – to inform him in person about the dreadful news. The new German ambassador to the Holy See, Ernst von Weiszäcker, was summoned to the secretary of state. Cardinal Maglione asked him to intervene to save the victims, insisting that it pained the Holy Father that people were allowed to suffer, even in Rome, for the sole reason that they belonged to a given race. When the ambassador asked how the Holy See would react should the deportations be carried out, the cardinal informed him that the Holy See did not want to be forced to make a public statement of condemnation.169 That same Saturday, the Austrian Bishop Alois Hudal – who had a positive interest in National Socialism that afforded him good contacts with the German regime – intervened with the chief of staff General Rainer Stahel insisting that the arrests should be stopped. Germany’s reputation demanded it, as did the possibility that the Pope might make an open 456

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protest. There is some discussion as to who inspired Bishop Hudal’s initiative. Some think it was the German ambassador, others Prince Carlo Pacelli, the nephew of Pius XII .170 Von Weiszäcker did not respond positively to the cardinal’s request and Pius XII – judged here in his capacity as Bishop of Rome and not as Leader of the entire Roman Catholic Church – did not openly protest the deportation, which took place ‘under the very windows’ of his papal residence.171 The Pope had two reasons for his reticence. He refused to be drawn away from the policy of prudence he had maintained in his relationship with Germany. But it also appeared – as is evident from a conversation with American diplomat Harold Tittmann – that he was worried at the time about public order in Rome and the resistance activities of small groups of communists. The German regime had thus far respected the immunity of the Vatican City and the property of the Holy See in Rome.172 Roman Jews fleeing the round-ups in the ghetto found shelter in a number of church institutions. A dozen ghetto refugees knocked on the door of San Giovanni Calibita hospital – better known as the residence of the Fatebenefratelli or the Brothers Hospitaller of St John of God – on the island in the Tiber on 16 October and were allowed in. Others were taken into the care of the Sisters of Our Lady of Sion. The historian Renzo Felice estimates that the number of those who were rescued amounted to 4,000, although he admits to the possibility that some were forced to relocate for their own safety and may thus have been counted twice.173 Susan Zucotti’s estimation is lower because she compared the 100 monasteries of religious women and 55 of religious males who offered shelter (including 11 parish churches) with the Roman total of 1,120 monasteries of women, 152 of men and more than one hundred parishes.174 Among the clergy who devoted their energies to rescuing Jews, Capuchin Maria Benedetto is easily the most remarkable. He had returned to Rome in July 1943 and continued the activities he had started on the Côte d’Azur as Father Marie Benoît. A ‘factory’ was set up in the international college of the Capuchins in Rome dedicated to producing counterfeit documents. The friar himself became a member of the board of DELASEM , the Jewish assistance organization. In November 1943, the Italian Immigration Office became aware that Father Maria Benedetto had been issuing false identity papers to Jews in Italy and the threat of arrest became a real one. The offices of the Vatican Secretary of State observed thereafter that he was repeatedly warned to be extremely careful in his dealings but did not listen.175 The Capuchin Franciscan friar is thus said to have saved 2,500 Italian and 1,500 foreign Jews.176 When Rome was liberated in June 1944, the city’s Chief Rabbi Israel Zolli organized a service of gratitude in the synagogue in Rome in honour of Father Maria Benedetto. A number of the church institutions that offered help enjoyed extraterritorial status in relation to the Vatican City, but this was not always respected. The German-Italian Pietro Koch, for example, raided the Lombard Seminary, the Institutum Russicum, the Pontifical Oriental Institute and the Pontifical Archaeological Institute with his fascist police unit – the ‘Banda’ Koch – on 21 December 1943. Several dozen people, Jews and resistance fighters, were arrested. The extraterritorial Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls and the adjacent Benedictine monastery also faced a raid in February 1944. A decision was then made in 457

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the Vatican to empty the basilica and abbey of refugees. The measure appears to have been disputed within the curia and to have led to internal conflict within the administrative machinery of the Church. Cardinal Rafaello Carlo Rossi, a member of the (civil) Commission of the Vatican City State made it clear that the decision had come from a higher authority. It may have been the Pope himself who had summoned him to an audience shortly after the invasion. Secretary of State Cardinal Maglione modified the measure: those who wished to leave were free to do so. Bearing in mind his preference for a more vigorous condemnation of the deportations, it is possible that Maglione took it upon himself to correct a papal decision.177 Numerous diplomats have argued that the Secretary of State may have followed the line set out by Pius XII , but never concealed the fact that he did not have the patience of his superior, who was always prepared to enter into dialogue no matter who the dialogue partner.178 According to an official nota from the Secretariat of State dated 2 June 1944, two days before the liberation of Rome, there were 160 refugees in the Vatican at that moment and 120 were living in the presbytery (Canonica) of Saint Peter’s Basilica. This number included roughly 40 Jews of whom 15 had been baptized. The majority observed Catholic rituals. According to one Church author, the spiritual guidance they had received had led a few to abandon thoughts of suicide.179 Male and female religious people of the Catholic Church in Italy made an essential contribution to the rescue of many of Italy’s Jews. According to historian Juliane Wetzel, they demonstrated in particular that the attitude of the clergy was a reflection of the outlook and conduct of the Italian population. They acted in the first instance as Italians and not under orders from the Church.180 One can add here that Church relief in Italy was more extensive than elsewhere for two reasons. The German occupation in September 1943 was experienced by many as a punishment after Fascist Italy agreed to an armistice. The expectation of a New Order that had been cherished in some parts of Europe in the first year of Nazi triumph had not materialized. On the contrary, the Allies had landed in the south of the country and the German Wehrmacht was on the retreat, both in Italy and elsewhere in Europe. Moreover, what the authorities had managed to keep secret in 1941 had become public international knowledge in 1943: the true nature of the extermination camps and the actual fate that awaited the deported Jews. While there may have been some evidence of credulity and naïveté, the majority of the persecuted Jews no longer had any illusions. The Vatican experienced a different consequence of this revelation: it was approached by both national and international instances to intervene, and with increasing frequency.

9 Holocaust in Hungary 9.1 Hungary under German occupation 1944–5 In Hungary, the deportation of Jews was also the immediate consequence of the Wehrmacht invasion. On 19 March 1944, Hungary’s alliance with Nazi Germany was 458

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transformed into an occupation. The Regent, Miklos Horthy, was allowed to stay in his post while a pro-German government was installed under the leadership of General Döme Sztójay. Members of the so-called Arrow Cross Party – Hungary’s National Socialists – were not allowed in the cabinet, but some officials in the Ministry of the Interior had contributed to discriminatory legislation against the Jews and were prepared to move on to the next phase: deportation. They were under the command of Adolf Eichmann, who had travelled to Budapest to organize transportations to Auschwitz. The reason behind the invasion was the need to be reassured that Hungary would continue to fight on the side of Nazi Germany. The Red Army was approaching its borders. Hungary had been rewarded at the beginning of the war with the return of a number of regions forfeited in the Treaty of Trianon, but now it was facing defeat and a new potential violation of its borders. Nazi Germany wanted to arm itself against such an eventuality. The post-war situation had already started to cast its shadow. As early as August 1943 – i.e. after Germany’s defeat at Stalingrad Kursk – Baron Vilmos Apor, Bishop of Györ, organized a meeting of church officials in his residence. They discussed the efforts of the Regent and his government to preserve the country’s independence, rejected a return to Hungary’s semi-feudal pre-war past, and opted for transition to a democratic state. The Catholic Church had charge of a large organization, the Catholic Agrarian Youth League (Katolikus Agrárifjúsági Legényegyletek Országos Szövetsége or KALOT ), which had half a million members. This and other Catholic associations were combined to form a National Catholic Social Movement with a programme covering land reform, industrialization and the democratization of education; post-war prospects on a democratic state. In October 1944, Horthy endeavoured to agree an armistice with the Soviet Union. This led to a National Socialist coup d’état. The Regent was deposed and interned. On 16 October 1944, an Arrow Cross Party government was installed under the leadership of Ferenc Szálasi, a practising Catholic. The Crown Council was convened to ratify the change of power. Cardinal Jusztinián Séredi, a member of the Council as Archbishop of Esztergom and Primate of Hungary, brought up the question of the legality of Szálasi’s appointment as Prime Minister and insisted on restrictions to his authority. When a draft bill outlining the jurisdiction of the Nemzetvezetö, the Leader of the Nation – i.e. Szálasi – was presented to parliament for approval without the amendments suggested by the cardinal, the latter left the Upper Chamber. He was not present when Szálasi took his oath in sight of the Holy Crown of Hungary in the royal palace in Buda.181 In the autumn of 1944, the Catholic Social Movement joined forces with the broader Hungarian Resistance against the aforementioned Machtübernahme. They received the approval of Archbishop Serédi, in spite of the fact that it was part of a wider organization in which communists participated. It was understood that a Catholic resistance movement could not be asked to carry out armed sabotage. Its primary activity was thus the organization of places of refuge and safe houses. ‘Thus, since the Gestapo did not keep so close a watch on Church personages and institutions as they did on known opposition politicians, the Catholics could easily move about, conceal people, carry news, and distribute illegal publications.’182 459

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Contacts between the Leader of the Nation and the Church authorities remained limited to requests for clemency on behalf of the condemned and for assistance to alleviate the hardships of war. In face of the Russian advance, Séredi called for the status of ‘open city’ for Budapest and Esztergom (his cathedral and residence). Hitler rejected the request, which had been passed on to him by Szálasi.183 By Christmas, the Hungarian capital was surrounded by the Red Army and Esztergom was cut off from the outside world. In a last desperate attempt to save what remained of Hungary from destruction, the bishops of van Transdanubia (the west of the country) asked the government to put an end to the futile conflict and to seek peace. The author of the memorandum was Józef Mindszenty, the Bishop of Veszprém. He was arrested for his trouble as was one of the other signatories, the Bishop of Székesfehérvár.184 9.2 Legal discrimination against the Jews In the midst of this political twilight, the persecution of Hungary’s Jews received a new impetus. The new authorities organized deportations, beginning in the provinces surrounding the city, then focusing on the centre of Budapest where the largest concentration of Hungarian Jews was to be found. More than any other country, this policy attracted the critical attention of organizations such as the World Jewish Congress and the War Refugee Board, set up by President Roosevelt to help the persecuted. The Hungarian government was faced with a flood of protest as was the Vatican, which was represented in Budapest by a vigilant and active nuncio, Angelo Rotta. In 1944–5, the world was well aware of what was awaiting the deportees. While the deportations were a consequence of German occupation, Hungarian society was already prepared for discriminatory legislation. This phase was heralded in 1938 by the so-called ‘First Jewish Law’ which established a limit – 20 per cent – to the number of Jews in the professions and in the business world. In the ‘Second Jewish Law’ that followed in December 1938, the said percentage was reduced from twenty to six. A draft ‘Third Jewish Law’ was introduced in 1941, its goal: ‘the protection of the racial purity of the Hungarian nation’. ‘It was universally acknowledged to be a “racial defence law” ’.185 The definition of a Jew was taken for a large part from the Nuremberg Race Laws. Mixed marriages between Jews and other Hungarians were made legally impossible. The bishops of the Roman Catholic and Calvinist Churches had a seat ex officio in the Upper Chamber of the Hungarian parliament and in this capacity they voted in favour of both the first and the second law. Having ensured exemptions for baptized Jews and Jews who had lived in Hungary for a considerable length of time, they decided to follow the majority. Convinced of the necessity to limit Jewish influence on the economy and culture of what they perceived to be a Christian Hungarian society, they argued that the laws were necessary to avoid the greater evil of a civil war or an attempted takeover by Hungarian National Socialists. The Calvinist Bishop László Ravasz, the first among his peers, argued in the Upper Chamber that the law was a historical necessity. ‘Just sit’, he asked his audience to imagine, 460

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‘in a third class train on the way to Nyíregyháza [a town in north-eastern Hungary], in which there are 60–70 Jews, with skullcaps and caftans, and Yiddish foaming on their lips, and ask yourselves: are these Hungarians?’ Only if they were ‘set free’ of their ‘Jewishness, fully assimilated and, most particularly, converted to Christianity, could Jews escape their utterly foreign culture and even hope to find their place among Christian Hungarians’.186 His Catholic counterpart, Cardinal Jusztinián Serédi argued along similar lines. Justice cannot be measured by degrees, and the divine law is all or nothing. Charity, on the other hand, can be measured: we have a greater duty of love towards our neighbour than to those to whom we are more distantly related – family, nation, religion. The cardinal included this statement in an appeal on behalf of baptized Jews.187 The Church leaders were no longer in a position to support the ‘Third Jewish Law’ because it dealt with baptism and marriage. Sexual contact or marriage between Jews and non-Jews was henceforth forbidden. The bishops had had problems in the past with the introduction of civil marriage in Hungary. Cardinal Serédi and Archbishop Gyula Glattfelder, the episcopal members of the Upper Chamber, now saw their critique confirmed as the state interfered in the sacrament of marriage and de facto forbad any relationship between Christians and (baptized) Jews. Other Christian members of parliament argued, on the other hand, that this legislation was necessary to preserve a ‘Christian Hungary’.188 Father Jószef Közi-Horváth, a leading figure in Catholic Action, voted against the law, but reminded his listeners nevertheless that ‘the Catholic clergy and those who first unfurled the banner of Christian politics have stood for decades for preventing Jewish spiritual and material expansion’.189 Other Catholic members of parliament had a different opinion on the matter. Count György Széchényi, a Catholic newspaper publisher, took a stand against the discriminatory legislation and criticized the Church for its silence in the face of racism. He died in 1938, but his role as a (loyal) critic of the Church was taken over by a group of Catholic intellectuals, some of whom were members of the so-called Holy Cross Society, a fraternity that sought rapprochement between Jews and Catholics. Public opinion made their work an uphill struggle.190 Protestant Hungary gave rise to the Good Pastor Committee, which was similar to the Holy Cross Society and offered legal and social support to Hungarian Jews. A debate had evolved in the meantime within the Reformed Church that was similar to the debate in which ‘German Christians’ had engaged in relation to a potential ‘Arian Paragraph’ in the German Evangelical Church. Should Jewish Christians be set apart within the churches? Should pastors to whom the Jewish laws applied still be allowed to lead services or teach religion? A Synod Commission discussed the issue and concluded that it was a complex matter consisting of theological, historical, juridical and political dimensions, thereby making it necessary to refer it to the General Synod.191 In the last analysis, the Reformed Church in Hungary decided not to adopt measures that bore any resemblance to the discriminatory measures adopted by ‘German Christians’ against fellow Christians of Jewish origin. Some church leaders even adopted a more radical position. Imre Révész, the new Bishop of the Transtibiscan Church District, published a declaration in 1939 stating that the Hungarian Reformed Church was obliged to protest 461

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the injustice being done to the Jews and that it should protect those who had converted to Christianity against terror ‘even at the price of serious disadvantage’.192 Angelo Rotta, the papal nuncio in Budapest, also distinguished himself in the parliamentary debate on anti-Semitism. He informed Rome in July 1941 that the ‘Third Jewish Law’ was a ‘vile symptom’ of Hungarian subservience to the Nazi Reich.193 He convinced Secretary of State Cardinal Maglione to pass on ‘preoccupations’ to the Hungarian ambassador to the Holy See on 10 August 1941. The law was in conflict on certain points with Catholic marriage law. The secretary of state hoped that mitigating circumstances would be applied in practice that tallied with the demands of a Catholic conscience.194 The historian Vera Ránki likewise employs Rotta’s reasoning, arguing that Hungary’s Interbellum anti-Semitic legislation was an attempt to curry favour with Nazi Germany and construct a path towards the dismantlement of the Treaty of Trianon, the primary goal of Interbellum Hungarian politics. From that moment a process of inclusion and exclusion was introduced into Hungarian society, whereby the Jews were excluded as it were from the Hungarian nation. Where Jews had found a place at the end of the nineteenth century as part of the ‘middle class’ in the process of modernizing Hungarian society, now they were seen as an over-privileged and self-satisfied socio-economic elite.195 An effect of the three laws was an increase in Jewish baptisms. During the ‘White Terror’ of 1919 and 1920, in which scores were settled with Béla Kun’s Bolshevist Republic, the number of Jews converting to Christianity rose from 527 to 7,146. A further 1,500 joined their ranks in 1938. The 1941 population census, in which the large Jewish communities in the annexed regions of northern Transylvania and Subcarpathian Ruthenia were included, it appeared that roughly 10 per cent of the 725,000 Hungarian Jews had become Christian.196 9.3 Hungary at war with the Soviet Union On 27 June 1941, Hungary declared war on the Soviet Union, following in the footsteps of Nazi Germany. Within the space of a couple of weeks, Hungarian troops had occupied parts of Ukraine at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains that had belonged to the Kingdom of Hungary prior to 1918. Jews in the occupied areas were interned, thus drawing attention to the thousands who had fled to Hungary when the Wehrmacht invaded Poland in 1939. The round-up of foreign as well as Hungarian Jews into the Kőrösmező internment camp near the Hungarian–Ukrainian border elicited protest. It was at this point that Margit Slachta – foundress of the Society of the Sisters of Social Service (‘Szociális Missziotársulat’) – emerged as one of the leaders of the protest movement. On 5 August 1941, she visited the camp with three of her sisters to witness what was happening there with her own eyes. She discovered that both Polish and Hungarian Jews were being held there under extremely poor conditions. In a memorandum, Sister Margit and her fellow sisters concluded that they were obliged as Hungarians and Christians to protest against the treatment of the Jews. ‘We 462

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know that right now we do not represent a popular view. But we consider it our responsibility to raise our voices in those matters where silence would be a sin according to our consciences.’197 The state ‘that calls itself Christian’ deserved to be criticized because it treated internees – the vast majority of whom were entirely innocent – in a manner that completely contradicted ‘those principles that it proclaims so pompously’.198 Slachta addressed two letters of protest to the wife of Regent Horthy. At the end of 1941, the Hungarian government sent the German Jews who had fled Poland in 1939 back to Nazi Germany. Alerted by his nuncio, Secretary of State Cardinal Maglione asked Cardinal Serédi, the Archbishop of Esztergom, for an explanation and urged him to intervene with the Hungarian government should the reports be confirmed. Serédi did his best. His government dialogue partner, the Minister of the Interior, informed him that the Jews in question were from Galicia and that refugee Jews who could prove their Hungarian nationality were exempt.199 A stop was put to these deportations at the end of 1941. 9.4 Deportations in 1944 Large-scale deportations were organized in Hungary in 1944 and implemented in two phases. The first phases focused on northern Transylvania and the provinces of Hungary proper. The second, from October 1944 onwards, focused on Jews in the capital Budapest. A total of 546,000 Jewish Hungarians were murdered, the majority – 440,000 – deported to Auschwitz or to another labour camp. Adolf Eichmann and his staff left Budapest on 22 December 1944. On 12 April 1945, the Red Army expelled the last German units from Hungarian soil. On 26 April 1944, Jews in Hungary proper were rounded up into ghettos, ten days after the Hungarian authorities had implemented similar measures in northern Transylvania and in Subcarpathian Ruthenia. Baptized Jews were not spared, and this led to renewed protest from Cardinal Serédi and from the General Synod of the Reformed Church. Deportations to Polish extermination camps commenced on 15 May 1944, in the first instance to Auschwitz. The Jews from northern Transylvania and Subcarpathian Ruthenia were the first to be deported, followed by those from the northern districts of the Hungarian heartland. Other areas were added, with the capital Budapest bringing up the rear. At the end of May 1944, information on Auschwitz extermination camp and the conditions met by the deportees when they arrived there were passed on via the nunciature to the Holy Cross Society and to the Protestant Good Pastor Committee. At this juncture, both Cardinal Serédi and Bishop Ravasz had a detailed description of the labour and extermination camp at their disposal. The Good Pastor Committee distributed the information it had received to Serédi, Ravasz, Sándor Raffay, the Lutheran bishop, and Ottó Komoly, the chairman of the Zionist League in Hungary (and to the daughterin-law of the Regent Miklós Horthy).200 Angelo Rotta, the Vatican nuncio, took immediate steps and submitted two protest notes, one addressed to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the other to the Prime Minister. 463

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He asked for exemption for baptized Jews and insisted that respect should be shown for human rights. Hungary, he wrote to the Prime Minister, is playing into its enemies’ hands by showing that that it is prepared to use the same methods it condemns among the Bolsheviks as enemies of God and of civilization. He hoped that the Holy Father – who, as apostolic delegate, had visited Budapest in 1938 on the occasion of the Eucharistic Congress – would not consider himself obliged as supreme shepherd of the Church, protector of all rights, and guardian of truth and justice, to raise his voice. On 24 May 1944, Rotta sent a telegram to Cardinal Maglione: ‘Some prompt action on the part of the Holy See could prove useful.’201 A month later, the Pope did indeed send a message to Admiral Horthy in which he called upon the noble and chivalrous Hungarian nation to do everything in its power to prevent the suffering imposed on so many unfortunate people on account of their nationality or race from getting any worse.202 On 24 June 1944, Rotta reported to Cardinal Maglione that many Catholic priests were outraged by the reticence of the bishops and the exceptional cautiousness. He urged the Holy See to spur the archbishop into action and thus endeavour to rescue the honour of the Catholic Church that had already been compromised enough.203 The first Catholic leader to turn against the measures being implemented against the Jews was Áron Marton, the Bishop of Transylvania. He publicly objected to the race theories from his pulpit in Koloszvár (Cluj), stating that he and his parishioners were shocked when they heard about restrictions on the freedom of the Jews and other measures being taken against them. The Minister of the Interior criticized the bishop for his statements.204 In reality, the Hungarian episcopate was divided on the need to take sides. The most important figure supporting intervention was Vilmos Apor, Bishop of Györ and president of the Holy Cross Society. Cardinal Serédi, on the other hand, was not convinced that the time had come for intervention. On 25 June, Cardinal Maglione, the Vatican Secretary of State, instructed the nuncio to urge the bishops to act. Two days later, Rotta sent the Hungarian cardinal a clear and unequivocal message: the bishops must speak out in public to defend Christian principles and to stand by Christians who are being persecuted on account of racist decrees. Serédi, in the meantime, had consulted Bishop Vilmos Apor and Gyula Czapik, the Archbishop of Eger. The latter warned the cardinal of the possibility of anti-clerical reactions from right-wing factions in Hungary and urged him to seek a balance between ‘compassion for Hungary’s Jews’ and ‘concern for the Hungarian nation’. He also asked the cardinal to raise a word of protest against the Allied bombing of Hungary. In the same month, Cardinal Séredi received a visit from Sandor Török, a Jewish citizen who had been baptized Catholic. Török suggested that the cardinal announce that priests in Hungary would refuse communion ‘to gendarmes, policemen, functionaries, or railroad men assisting Germans in anti-Jewish operations. Séredi replied: “If His Holiness, the Pope, is doing nothing against Hitler, what can I do in my narrow confines?” And angrily, he threw his biretta on the floor.’205 In the draft of what was intended to be a pastoral letter, it was stated that the Hungarian state was justified in dealing with the ‘Jewish Question’ because some Jews had had a disastrous influence on the economic and moral life of the nation. On the other hand, it 464

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was the duty of the Hungarian Church to ensure that the righteous did not suffer and that Hungarian citizens and Catholic believers were not humiliated on account of their origins.206 The letter was ready on 29 June. Serédi wanted to make its contents public, but the Hungarian government asked him not to do so. The cardinal agreed in exchange for a government promise that the deportations would stop and baptized Christians would be exempt.207 Protest from Protestant quarters likewise ended with the withdrawal of a draft letter. Two days after the first deportations, the General Synod of the Reformed Church debated a resolution in which the government was to be thanked for the exceptions it had already made and encouraged to exempt even more converted Jews. A pastoral letter was then prepared. In discussion with the World Council of Churches, Bishop Ravasz put together a segment in which he criticized the Jews for their greed and self-interest and raised questions concerning the conversion of Jews, i.e. were they genuine or opportunistic? He too wanted to avoid a Kulturkampf with Hungary’s right-wing factions on the subject, insisting it would burn bridges between national groups and involve the Church in a partisan war.208 The Protestant bishops were expected to sign the declaration, but a discussion evolved on the extent to which the letter should also protest the British and Russian bombings of Hungary. A number declared themselves against a statement that dealt exclusively with the situation of Hungary’s Jews. This was particularly the case for the Calvinist authorities in Transylvania who had found themselves within range of the Red Army in the summer of 1944. Count Miklós Bánffy suggested to Bishop Ravasz that the proposed declaration had to be a historic document and must thus be equally critical of the ‘inhumanity’ of the British and Russian bombing of women and children. Béla Kapi, Hungary’s Lutheran bishop, asked himself if it would not be better to draft an informative declaration rather than a critical one.209 In the last analysis, the bishops were unable to reach agreement on how to ‘balance’ their joint letter and none was issued. ‘By the time Reformed pastors were instructed to read a few meaningless lines during services, nearly 440,000 Jews had been deported to Auschwitz.’210 9.5 Final phase: twilight of the gods International protest was also in evidence and did not go unnoticed. On 7 July 1944, Regent Horthy decided to give in to international pressure and end the deportations. But now the Jews were facing atrocities on Hungarian soil. On the initiative of the nuncio, Angelo Rotta and representatives from four neutral nations (Sweden [the diplomat Raoul Wallenberg], Portugal, Spain and Switzerland) issued a joint protest on 21 August 1944 against ongoing persecution and continued deportations under the guise of forced labour. They called upon the Hungarian government to return to the country’s ‘noble traditions and Christian spirit’ and put a definitive end to the deportations.211 The Red Army was advancing in Hungary and closing in on Budapest. As noted above, the Regent’s call for an armistice at this juncture led to a coup d’état in which Hungarian Nazis – the Arrow Cross Party – then seized power. Rotta intervened once 465

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again with the ongoing support of the Vatican Secretariat of State, which was determined to show that the Catholic Church was intent on carrying out its universal mission whatever the circumstances.212 On 26 October the Pope sent a personal message to Cardinal Serédi expressing his support for the day of prayer and relief he had scheduled for Sunday 29 October. Pius XII referred to the countless appeals he had received, urging him to intervene in defence of human beings who were the subjects of violence on account of their religious conviction and race.213 When the Red Army surrounded Budapest and thus cut off the railway line to Auschwitz, members of the Arrow Cross Party took to the streets and terrorized the population. Their primary target was the Jews, the majority of whom had gone into hiding. Nuncio Angelo Rotta and the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg joined forces to save as many as they could. They provided passports and tried to negotiate places of safety. When the twilight of the gods descended on Budapest, an estimated 25,000 Jews were given shelter in monasteries, orphanages, hospitals and other institutions associated with both Churches. On 17 November 1944, Rotta and the Swedish special envoy presented a joint protest note to the (new) head of state Ferenc Szálasi. In his report to the Vatican, Rotta spoke of the barbaric acts that had been perpetrated against the Jews. Given the mentality of the Arrow Cross Party – with their religious ignorance and fanatical hatred of the Jews – he did not expect much in terms of concrete results.214 Jews were no longer deported to Auschwitz, but transported in trucks to Austria where the Nazis were still in control. A priest was despatched to offer solace on the border, especially to the Jews who officially enjoyed the protection of the nunciature. In a report to his superiors, the nuncio declared that it would take the pen of Dostoyevsky ‘to describe the atrocities that accompanied the deportations from Budapest to Hegyeshalom, the border station. In a truck he passed group after group of deportees, trying to stay upright, emaciated, frozen, thirsty, totally exhausted.’215 Individual priests and pastors offered help to the Jews in the form of counterfeit baptismal certificates, especially during the round-ups in besieged Budapest. Monasteries and Church-run hospitals offered refuge. Jószef Cavallier, the director of the Holy Cross Society, was arrested by members of the Arrow Cross Party and shot dead. In the meantime, his organization had provided hundreds of Jews with special identity cards, issued by the nunciature. After his arrest, the Society joined forces with the Protestant Good Pastor Committee and the Lutherans likewise supported this relief service. In the final days of the siege of Budapest, the Lutheran pastor Gabriel Sztéhlö managed to hide 30 Jewish children in his cellar, where he too was finally able to go into hiding.216 On 11 December 1944, the nuncio reported to Rome that the Arrow Cross Party had arrested Jószef Mindszenty (1891–1975), the Bishop of Veszprém. The party had earlier insisted that the Franciscans of Veszprém should offer a mass of thanksgiving for the deportation of the Jews from the city. The bishop had stated in response that there were many Christians among the victims of the deportation and he rejected the request for a mass of thanksgiving. The Arrow Cross Party increased the pressure to such a degree that a mass was finally celebrated, albeit without the requested Te Deum.217 The arrest of Bishop Mindszenty meant that the nuncio could not follow the government to Kemény. 466

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Angelo Rotta preferred to stay in Budapest to continue to be of assistance and to use his influence when the Allies arrived. The siege of Budapest by the Red Army continued until 12 February 1945. With total defeat in sight, head of state Ferenc Szálasi decided on 28 February 1945 to take full responsibility for the arrest of priests and religious sisters who had criticized the regime in church or had offered refuge to Jews. Four religious sisters were killed as a result, and several priests and sisters were maltreated.218

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CHAPTER 11 NATIONAL SOCIALIST MASS MURDER AND THE CHURCHES: THE CHRISTIAN DIMENSION OF RELIEF AND REFUGE

1 Themes In addition to the theme of pulpit messages, the assistance that was offered to persecuted Jews is also of importance. Details in this regard are lacking in historical precision, and for one clear reason: concrete reality had to be kept secret. Written documentation is thus scarce. An alternative form of transmitting historical knowledge, namely the oral interview, is frequently employed long after the event and, as a result, lacks the necessary systematic structure. Historical verification of frequency and scope can thus be a rare commodity. It goes without saying that the provision of assistance to the persecuted in the form of safe houses and places of hiding was not a Christian monopoly. The history of relief reflects a huge variety of different types and different sources: Jewish resistance actions, non-religious humanitarian relief, together with politically motivated assistance from communists, social democrats and liberals. Such efforts were ‘illegal’ per definition, and while explicitly Christian interventions were also illegal, they took place in a climate of occupation in which the churches sometimes enjoyed a certain freedom. In this chapter we will confine ourselves to an exploration of the religious aspects of the provision of places of safety. They serve as a further reflection on our primary theme, the attitude of the Christian churches towards persecution. To what extent was the church able to play a role in this regard? Two important questions arise at this juncture. Did the churches or Christians in general contribute to the provision of places of safety? And how did those in hiding and their protectors deal with the fact that Jews had to make their Jewish origins invisible? When we explore specifically Christian assistance in the provision of places of safety, the latter theme is often encountered. Jews in hiding were sometimes expected to adopt the Christian faith for their own safety and that of their protectors, or at least pretend to do so. This was particularly the case for children in Christian homes. Their Christian identity could be consciously provisional – until the end of the war – or it could be permanent. The questions of ‘conversion’ and ‘baptism’ gave rise to debate and conflict after the war, and on some occasions bitterness. But for the Christian Churches, the sacrament of baptism was irreversible and its administration far from relative.

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2 Church initiatives In countries and regions where the Roman Catholic or Orthodox Church was dominant, monasteries sometimes served as a place of refuge for Jews who wanted to go into hiding or were able to do so. Such possibilities also existed in predominantly Protestant regions in the form of orphanages and boarding schools, but here too we encounter another striking phenomenon: a concentration of people seeking refuge in rural regions that were predominantly Protestant; Protestant villages in Eastern Europe – ‘islands in an Orthodox sea’ – and typically Protestant regions in Western Europe provided many with a safe refuge. Several examples exist of such villages in the Ukraine in which a high concentration of Jews were given refuge. As a matter of fact, the small Christian communities in the said villages, such as the Baptists and the Lutherans, were to offer the most help to the Jews in relative terms. ‘In Volhynia alone, they apparently saved hundreds. These Protestants felt that their Christian faith allowed for nothing else. Also important was that they were a community in which mutual trust prevailed, so that they could quickly pass Jews from one locality to the next.’1 Examples of Protestant regions in Western Europe that offered refuge to the Jews can be found in France, of which the Protestant enclave of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in the department of the Haute-Loire is perhaps the best known. The enclave managed to provide a place of safety for roughly 5,000 Jews. In the Cevennes – a mountainous region with 40,000 inhabitants, the majority Protestant – between 800 and 1,000 Jews were provided with a safe haven. On the Vivarais-Lignon plateau, the 800 resident Protestants managed to protect between 500 and 800 Jews – French and foreign – from further persecution. Places like Dieulefit in the deparement of Drôme and Saint-Agrève in the Ardèche can be added to this list of ‘villages-sauveurs’, although Catholics were also actively involved in relief activities in Dieulefit.2 A similar concentration of safe houses was to be found in Protestant enclaves in predominantly Catholic Belgium, such as Pâturages and Quaregnon in the Province of Hainaut.3 One specific moment stands out in the collective memory of these rescue operations: the meeting in the Musée du Désert near the village of Mialet on Sunday 6 September 1942. It took place at the end of a summer in which French Jews had been deported in large numbers, and was marked by profound indignation at current events and by the exhortation of Pastor Marc Boegner ‘to be a good Samaritan to the Jews who are suffering so close to us’. After the meeting a confidential appeal circulated among pastors present to organize places of safety in their rectories and ‘in the simple farms of our communities and their members’.4 The successful provision of refuge in these compact Protestant regions can be explained on the basis of a number of facts. The relatively remote location and the explicit awareness of those living there that they constituted a (Protestant) minority clearly had a significant role to play as did the memory of the seventeenth-century Wars of Religion that had remained alive in these French Protestant enclaves. In the Cévennes, the villagers themselves were able to provide refuge for ‘their’ refugees via a network of family 470

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connections. This was seen as part of Protestant culture. One person bore the responsibility, but everyone knew that they could rely on an extended family within the community.5 On the other hand, a predominantly Protestant rural parish could be the place where villagers combined a Calvinist belief with active resistance, but the community ran the risk of being exposed to German reprisals.6 Secular reasons are also evident in support of this provision of a safe haven. In Le Chambon, for example, an organization welcoming (Protestant) children in the summer months, giving them the opportunity to enjoy the mountain air in holiday ‘colonies’ and in the homes of local farmers, had existed since the beginning of the twentieth century. This activity was now opened up to Jewish children.7 A (similarly secular) tradition within the farming community also proved its worth in these times of persecution. It was easy for outside labourers to find jobs and a place to stay during the harvest period, and once again this opportunity was extended to Jews as a means of ‘hiding’ them. A sense of biblical solidarity in Protestant circles with the people chosen by God also served as a motivating factor, but there were two sides to this biblical solidarity. Some Reformed Protestants in the Netherlands, for example, were of the opinion that the Jews followed a ‘false’ religion, while others were convinced that God would remain faithful to the Ancient People in spite of the fall of the Jews. The former may have considered discrimination against the Jews in Nazi Germany to be unacceptably violent, but they also saw it as an inevitable punishment for Jewish intransigence; the ultimate consequence of their response to Pontius Pilate: ‘may his [Jesus’] blood be upon us and upon our children’. The latter group were of the opinion that ‘God would never abandon his fidelity to this people, and that Christians must seek what is good therein’.8 When the deportations in the Netherlands were at their height – mid-1942 – this duality continued to exist. Some Protestants came to the conclusion that the Jews had to be helped because of ‘their will to live’. Others insisted that when it came to the Jews it was not about choosing between deportation or the provision of refuge, but between obstinacy or conversion. ‘True salvation, for eternity, is only to be found in Jesus Christ.’ For some Christians, the decision to offer help and provide refuge was a question of ‘spanning a gulf ’. For this reason, the Dutch Reformed pastor Leendert Overduin confronted his community in the city of Enschede with a proverb from the prophet Isaiah: ‘Make your shade like night at the height of noon; hide the outcasts, do not betray the fugitive.’9 A relatively large number of Jews thus managed to go into hiding in the town.10 Some Protestants had to overcome their own convictions and indeed themselves in order to offer help to the persecuted. Leaders were of particular importance in this regard, among them Helena ‘Riek’ Kuipers-Rietberg, a senior board member in the Union of Christian Reformed Women’s Associations who did her best to persuade her fellow Protestants to offer help and Pastor Frits Slomp, who preached all over the country on the issue. When the inner battle had been fought and the decision had been made to offer help this was experienced by some as a breakthrough; as a revelation of God’s will. The Protestant farmer Johannes Bogaard Jr, who provided a place of safety for a relatively large number of Jews, saw his actions as a response to a divine vocation: ‘He gave us the strength, and as Dutch men and women we could not refuse.’11 471

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Readiness to offer hiding places to Jews was encouraged by the positions adopted by Church leaders. Jules Saliège, the Catholic Archbishop of Toulouse, had a pastoral letter read out from the pulpits of his diocese on 23 August 1942 – as mentioned in Chapter 9 – in which he took a clear stand against the deportation of Jews: round-ups and deportations from the Velodrôme d’Hiver in Paris had taken place only a month earlier. The bishop’s statement offered both direct and indirect support to relief actions designed to provide places of safety. The Jewish resistance, under the leadership of George Garel, organized a network of safe houses and was able to take advantage of the positive consequences of the archbishop’s supportive statements. Convents and monasteries in his dioceses, such as those of the Poor Clares and the Sisters of St Vincent de Paul, opened their doors to Jewish children. A priest from the archdiocese by the name of René de Naurois organized escape routes to Spain for resistance fighters and for Jews. The archbishop encouraged him in his activities.12 The Faculty of Theology on Fourvière hill in Lyon, which was run by the Jesuits and was to become a cradle of innovative ideas during the Second Vatican Council, stood out for its critique of Vichy’s anti-Semitism and its efforts to reconnect the Church and its people with Christianity’s biblical origins. The editorial board of the resistance newspaper Témoignage Chrétien, the most important of its kind in France, likewise took advantage of the ‘spirit of Fourvière’. In June 1941, four professors of the Catholic faculty declared their intention to draft a document protesting the Deuxième statut des Juifs. They considered it discriminatory to set the Jews apart on religious grounds. It ran counter to the French principle that no one should be agitated in France on account of his or her religious convictions.13 The signatories were the Jesuit and later cardinal Henri de Lubac and three other professors. The draft was rejected by the leadership of the Faculty, however, and the protest statement was never published. The American historian Nechama Tec, who has Polish and Jewish roots, spent three years in hiding as a child in a Catholic family where she took on the identity of a Catholic girl. After the war she returned to her Jewish origins and left Poland with her parents to settle in the United States. In 1978 she returned to the land of her birth to conduct research into the provision of assistance and places of hiding to the Jews, what motivated people to offer such assistance and what motivated them to refuse it. She interviewed 308 Jewish survivors and 108 Poles who had offered assistance. The Jewish survivors, moreover, were able to provide adequate descriptions of 565 Polish men and women who had offered help.14 A number of the examples she provides of those who offered or refused to offer help for religious reasons are quite remarkable. After Sunday mass, an elderly farmer and devout Catholic who had hidden a group of Jews for more than a year, reflected on the appeal he had just heard from the parish priest. The latter had announced from the pulpit that it was the sacred duty of every Catholic to hand over Jews to the authorities. The Jews under his care were afraid and asked him what he planned to do. The farmer shrugged his shoulders and said with a smile: the devil always finds his way, even in the church. In Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, a Polish prisoner shouted without hesitation to his Jewish fellow prisoners: You Jews crucified Christ and that’s why you’ve 472

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been cursed with an everlasting curse. In another example, a Jew who had escaped from Majdanek concentration camp asked Polish people living nearby for help. They answered: If God has not compassion for your people, why should you expect us humans to have compassion for you? A third example tells the story of a Jewish survivor who asked his neighbour after the war why she had informed the Gestapo about the whereabouts of his mother. The woman responded without a moment’s hesitation that Hitler had not murdered the Jews, rather it was God’s will and Hitler was his instrument. How could I look on, she continued, and turn against the will of God?15 Some, however, reacted differently. In the village of Grubbenvorst in the Dutch province of Limburg, the pastor, Henri Vullinghs, was a man of ‘stature and aristocratic appearance’. He was later to die in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. He had Tea Warszawski, a young Jewish woman, at his side ‘as beautiful as most of the children of Sarah and Abraham’, and both walked arm in arm through the forest in the dark of night. ‘The silence in the forest was intensified by the barely audible rustle of the treetops over which the wind gently breathed. The pastor turned to his silent companion and said with a smile: “I imagine you never dreamed you would be walking arm in arm through the forest after midnight with a pastor from Limburg.” The dark-skinned beauty replied. “No, not in my wildest dreams, but I suspect you would likewise never have imagined making such a nocturnal excursion with a Jewess from Amsterdam.” ’ The Jew and the pastor continued on their way in silence. In 1960 – and in 2015 – a requiem for the pastor was performed in the church in Grubbenvorst; it was composed by Hans Lachman, the husband of the woman who had been saved in part by Pastor Vullinghs’ intervention.16 In Catholic and Orthodox countries, monasteries were often used as places of refuge. This implied, nevertheless, that the decision to offer such assistance had to be made by a community and not by an individual sister or monk. In some instances, moreover, superiors were obliged to ask permission of the church authorities before proceeding. Damaskinos, the Orthodox Archbishop of Athens, encouraged the monasteries in his diocese to open their doors to Jewish children. Cardinal Van Roey, Archbishop of Mechelen, did not speak out in public against the persecution of the Jews. One of the reasons he gave for his silence was that he did not wish to endanger the Jews illegally hiding in countless monasteries, convents and boarding schools in his diocese. Those charged with organizing a place of hiding for a Jew under threat of persecution sometimes met with refusal. Arnold Douwes, an active member of the Christian National Organization for Help to People in Hiding was asked to find places of safety for Jews in the Dutch province of Drente. In one village he visited a ‘Catholic Orphanage and spoke at length with the Mother Superior in an effort to convince her to take in Jewish children, but she refused. I tried to appeal to her emotions, her duty as a Christian, but nothing worked. I also visited the local parish priest’s whose house was big enough to accommodate a dozen people in need. But he claimed he had no room.’17 A counter-example stems from Lithuania: ‘Not far from Vilna stood a Benedictine nunnery. Seven nuns from Cracow lived there; a leader of the partisan organisation, Aba Kovner, stayed with them. He was hidden by the mother superior, Anna Borkowska (mother Bertranda). The same mother superior also established contact between the 473

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Polish underground and the Jewish fighter organisation. She wanted Poles to deliver guns to the Jews. When this could not be arranged, she personally smuggled arms into the Vilna ghetto.’18 In occupied Poland, the sisters of the Congregation of the Family of Mary were charged by their superiors – the congregations general Sister Ludwika Lisówna and its provincial Sister Matylda Getter – to save Jews.19 Monasteries in Warsaw and Lviv offered places of safety, but in many other cases the decision to take in Jewish children was made by local superiors who had difficulty maintaining contact in occupied Poland with the provincial authorities of their congregation. In one convent in Warsaw, the Superior Wanda Garczynska asked for the permission of each of her sisters. They all knew that two of the congregation’s sisters had been shot dead in Słonim for offering help to Jewish refugees. Other sisters in other convents decided to provide places of hiding for Jewish children on their own initiative and only to inform and seek support from the fellow sisters after the fact.20 In some instances, children were left behind on the street in the shock and confusion that surrounded deportation. On the point of being deported, fathers and mothers hoped that someone would take pity on their child. A boy of fourteen presented himself at a monastery during one of the round-ups and begged to be taken into hiding. A Jewish girl hid herself in the local Jewish cemetery and later presented herself at a nearby monastery. ‘Pale, and bearing little resemblance to a child, she seemed to be mere skin and bones. I had never seen anything like it. She was 11 years old. She threw her arms around Mother Superior’s neck and said; The Germans have just killed my papa and mama. Sister, you’ll be my mother now.’21 In clerical and fascist Slovakia, church refuge sometimes offered a unique form of inviolability. Encouraged by the Archbishop of Nitra, monasteries offered assistance to children in particular, among the sisters of the Catholic hospital in Bratislava and the Catholic orphanage in the same city. ‘Various dozen Jews found hiding places in the houses of parish priests or behind the walls of monasteries, since the German police or military units and members of the emergency units of the Hlinka Guard at least partly respected their inviolability.’22 It is also known that Pavol Jantausch, the Bishop of Trnava, allowed the local rabbi and his wife to drive around in his car until the round-up was over.23 There are examples in Poland of open hesitation on the part of the Jews and debate on the consequences of placing Jewish children in Catholic monasteries. A historical report exists, dated 14 December 1942, of a discussion among Jewish citizens in Warsaw concerning a large-scale project for the organized provision of places of safety for Jewish children in Christian institutions. Both orthodox and secular Jews had their objections: the children would be christened and be lost to the Jewish nation for ever. Would the Polish clergy, who had done little thus far to help the Jews, want to improve their reputation by participating in such relief actions? ‘It was argued that future generations would accuse them of not keeping up to the mark and of not teaching our children kiddush hashem (martyrdom of faith), in the name of which our forefathers died in the flames of the Spanish Inquisition.’ Counter-arguments were also expressed. ‘We must not 474

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take away the right to life of this new generation.’ The discussion did not lead to unanimity and no collective decision was made. Jewish parents had to decide for themselves.24

3 Religious identity For children, the transition from a Jewish upbringing to a Christian one was sometimes considerable. Language was the initial barrier. The language spoken by some Jews in Poland was Yiddish and this meant that their children had to adjust their accent if they did not want to stand out in the monasteries in which they had found refuge. In the town of Luboml, for example, the sisters had taken in a child who had been raised speaking Yiddish although she quickly learned to speak Polish. On the advice of the village elder, the sisters decided to hand the child over to the police. ‘The sisters dressed the child and took her to the appropriate offices. In the office a German soldier sat at a desk with a portrait of Hitler hanging on the wall behind him. During the sisters’ conversations with the soldier, the child, pointing at the portrait, said: Oh, it’s God! The soldier heard this and exclaimed that she could not possibly be a Jewish child as she mentioned God in Polish.’25 A Jew by the name of Pola Komaj started to refer to herself as Zofia Januszkiewic from Warsaw and found employment as a nanny in a Catholic orphanage. The winter – and thus Christmas – of 1942 was approaching, and there was a great deal of talk about Christmas Eve and the songs the children would learn for Christmas. Zofia quickly came up with the idea that she would teach the children a brand new song. She had no idea what it should be about because she was unfamiliar with Christmas songs, even the best known. She tried to make the best of the situation by telling the children that she had a bad memory. She thus managed to learn the Christmas texts from the children off by heart and managed to avoid giving herself away.26 In individual cases, pressure to take on a different identity could be particularly acute. A Jew in hiding in a Catholic family of Catholic institution had to acquire the necessary Catholic religious knowledge. ‘Familiarity with the Catholic religion was another important prerequisite to life as Poles. In Poland religious instruction extended to both home and school. Since few could escape the pressures and influence of the Church, religious ignorance was rare. Those suspected of being Jewish were subjected to rigorous cross-examination. Failure to pass such tests often led to death.’27 Jewish children hidden in monasteries and Catholic orphanages were obliged to adopt a Christian attitude to life. Some took this so seriously, and with such a strong desire to bury their (tragic) past that they gradually changed into genuine Christian children. ‘They reacted to and even internalized the contempt directed at Jews in Nazi Europe, and wished to embrace what seemed like a more appealing, not to mention safer, affiliation and self-identification.’28 This made it all the more difficult after the war when they were reunited with their fathers and/or mothers, in the first instance because both child and parent were among the few who had been saved. It was also problematic when 475

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such families were interviewed by Jewish social services. The youngest children who had been handed over as babies – sometimes by persons unknown – were not even aware that they had Jewish connections. In some instances, the sisters who had offered them shelter were likewise ignorant of their Jewish roots.29 In other instances, the situation was less dramatic. The Pontificio Seminario Lombardo, the seminary in Rome in which priests were trained for the Lombardy region, was considered an extraterritorial residence belonging to the Vatican City. Close to 100 Jews and resistance fighters were housed in the building, dressed as seminarians or priests and expected to adapt themselves to the ‘Norme di vita della Communità’, i.e. they had to abstain from ‘wrongful and dangerous lay behaviour’. The extraordinary circumstances promoted mutual tolerance between the diverse members of the seminary community, Catholics, communists and Jews. A mixed choir was formed for the liturgy and even the church organist was Jewish.30 In a monastery of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary in Kontich near Antwerp, Jewish children were offered refuge in a boarding school among Christian boarders. When it became clear in the course of the war that the parents of three Jewish children would not be returning to collect them, the children in question were educated in the Catholic faith. Some girls remembered the extreme anti-corporeality imposed by the sisters and the accusations that the Jews had murdered Christ. One of them described obligatory confession as a ‘lie’ because the sisters invited children who had nothing to confess to go first and thus obliged them to lie. A confusing aspect here was the conviction that children were innocent – minor sins notwithstanding – when compared to adults and thus deserved to be saved. The implication of this logic was that their parents must all have been guilty.31 Those kept hidden in the convent in Kontich had particular memories of the convent garden. During the weekend, when Christian children went home to their families and the sisters were in church for prayer, they described the atmosphere in the garden as a ‘Narrenfreiheit’ or Jester’s Privilege, and the garden as the place of adventure it had always promised to be.32 For the Jewish girls in the Belgian convent, a Catholic education in the rituals associated with baptism and communion was both a form of protection and a form of influence. It led in some instances to the most difficult situations, especially when the girls in question were reunited with their Jewish families after the war. The influence of religious statues, and in particular the cult of the Sacred Heart of Jesus with its iconography of bleeding hearts and visible wounds, left memories that lasted longer than their adopted Catholic faith. The ‘apostates’ among the children may no longer have attended church, but some continued to be influenced by the affective dimension of the cult of saints. One girl who later moved to Israel even kept statues of saints in her home.33 In so far as they were conscious of it, Jewish children in Kraków had painful memories of their life in separation and seclusion during the war and of their status as foreigners. After 1945, they no longer wanted to be excluded from society. Christianity with its rites and feasts thus exercised a genuine power of attraction. ‘All the Jewish girls wanted to take part in First Communion in beautiful dresses, just like their girlfriends. Christianity 476

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provided a sense of belonging and community.’ A girl by the name of Roma, who had spent the war in hiding among adults, went to a Catholic school after 1945. ‘She excelled in religious education classes, for she wanted very much to believe in Jesus. One day the children attacked her: “Roma is Jewish! She killed our Jesus. Jews killed him!” She returned home black and blue, with scratches. She was soon excluded from the religious education class, and ultimately ended up at a different school, where she developed a fascination with communism. The transfer from Catholic religion to socialist ideals was quite popular among Jewish youth.’34 Another girl by the name of Janina Katz had spent the war in hiding in a boarding school where she had been baptized. She did not have a baptismal certificate, however, and there was even a question as to whether it had ever been written. She survived the war and was baptized again a couple of days before her First Communion.‘Her fascination with the Christian religion was treated as a youthful fad. No one wanted to put pressure on a child who had lived through so much during the war.’ In post-war Poland she was introduced to communism. She imagined that its egalitarian ideology was in agreement with Christianity – that its goal was to help the poor, to improve their economic lot. ‘I belonged to the Pioneers (the communist youth organisation) and I was a Catholic – these two beliefs made me help the weaker elements in society.’35 Did the Christian faith motivate people to offer places of hiding to persecuted Jews? There is evidence that Catholic women who offered places of hiding to Jews confessed this to their parish priests. ‘In each case, the priest reassured her that she was doing a fine and noble thing.’36 But religious values did not appear to be interpreted in a uniform manner. ‘In the name of religion some Polish Catholics protected Jews, others remained indifferent to Jewish suffering, and others denounced Jews.’ Nechama Tec thus observes that ‘if religious convictions and involvement could lead to so many different interpretations and result in so many different actions, they cannot be seen as responsible for the rescuing of Jews. Doubt about the explanatory power of religious values is compounded by the fact that most rescuers did not see religion as occupying a central role in their activity.’37 It might perhaps be more accurate to suggest that those who offered help did not tend to be devout Catholics, but were more inclined to independent thought and were not particularly submissive towards the Catholic Church. ‘Therefore, it seems reasonable to conclude that it was these moral convictions rather than religion per se that made them rescue Jews even when faced with opposition from the clergy.’38 It is clear, nevertheless, that religious priests and sisters tended to focus on Jewish children when it came to offering help, and many such children escaped the war and persecution in monasteries and abbeys. Many of these children were baptized, and this led to the accusation that the Catholic Church’s primary reason for offering assistance to Jewish children was to ‘save’ their souls. This claim has been contradicted by devout men and women who offered help for genuine reasons, by a number of Jews, and in some instances by the facts themselves. In a number of instances it is clear that the conversion of children took place with the utmost caution and that exceptional permission was often sought from parents and other carers. Some children considered themselves ‘more 477

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Christian’ after baptism and thereby less in danger of standing out as Jewish or being ‘discovered’. ‘Adopting Christianity, converts synchronized their inner and outer selves, and also reconfigured their sense of their new religion and its meaning. The Christian faith, its symbols and texts, turned from alien and hostile – the religion of the pursuers – into protecting, accepting and comforting.’ This theme recurs in numerous memoirs.39 The majority of Jewish child survivors who were interviewed were convinced that they had ‘derived much comfort from the Catholic religion’, whether they had been baptized or not. According to Nechama Tec, however: ‘Still, it is impossible to settle the question of the clergy’s primary motivation.’40 The practice of baptism in occupied countries in Europe was explicitly understood at the highest level of the Catholic Church as a doctrinal issue related to a person’s freedom to accept baptism and the irreversibility thereof. The Congregation of the Holy Office issued an instruction advising against ‘forced baptism’ or ‘baptisms of compassion’ and forbidding them. A person’s freedom to choose baptism was not to be violated. It remains a question whether this instruction had much effect in the pressure of circumstance. The (infrequent) provision of assistance by the churches in the Ukraine has a different explanation. In the first instance, it seemed evident in the circumstances of the day – with persecution and mass executions – that but a few spared a thought for the ‘Jewish’ future of the children. After the war they would be orphans, and it thus made sense to baptize them without delay. Reasons of security and protection can be added here and it should also not be forgotten that religious priests and sisters who had devoted their entire life to God were firmly convinced that to baptize those in their care was to do them a great service.41 Some positive arguments can also be raised. Angelo Rotta, the nuncio in Budapest, who had done his utmost to prevent deportations from occupied Hungary, sent a nota to the Hungarian government on 5 June 1944 in which he explained the Church’s policy towards the Jews at that time. He rejected theories based on materialistic principles such as blood and race because they completely ignored the spiritual dimension of the human person in addition to the influence of goodwill and education. More than anything else, however, they ignored the role of divine grace in the formation of human character and personality. There were countries, the nuncio observed, that had announced the implementation of anti-Semitic measures, but had exempted – at least in part – Christian Jews. This was a sign of respect for the sacrament of baptism and an expression of appreciation for the Church and its strongly efficacious educational and formative activities, even in the national and patriotic sense. ‘It is a fact,’ he insisted, ‘that when Jews become part of the Church the strictly national elements begin to mingle with their personality in such a way that they are no longer to be distinguished from others after one or two generations.’42 Christianity was seen – to use contemporary language – as a means to integration within the national society. Abbé Joseph André represents a counter-example (as described in Chapter 9). He was pastor of the church of John the Baptist in Namur and was confronted with the question of baptism when he first started to search for places of safety for Jewish children. There are 478

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a few examples of Jews in Belgium who had themselves baptized in the hope of escaping deportation. But Abbé André, who was known for his respect towards the religion of the Jews – ‘Jesus was a Jew’ – consciously avoided exerting any form of Catholic influence on the Jewish children who were in his charge. On the Jewish festival of Passover – Pesach – 1944, he went out of his way to find a Jewish male adult who would prepare the ritual Seder meal. He wanted Pesach to be celebrated according to Jewish rites and customs. Shortly after the Liberation, the church hall was used for a Jewish service.43 Abbé André ultimately succeeded in saving close to 400 Jewish children from deportation. The problematic aspect of the baptism of Jewish children was to return after the war with a vengeance, but a detailed exploration of this question would take us beyond the framework set for the present book. The highest authorities of the Catholic Church considered it a problem that could not be solved with a wave of the hand. In January 2005, for example, an instruction was published that had been written by Angelo Roncalli on 23 October 1946 – when he was nuncio of liberated France – stating that Jewish children who had been sheltered in Catholic families during the war should not simply be handed over to Jewish social organizations without further ado. If questions were asked then the answer was to be given that the Church would evaluate each case individually. Children who had been baptized were not to be handed over without question to instances that would guarantee the eradication of the Christian education. The same could be said for Jewish parents intent on reclaiming their children. This was only possible if the child was not baptized.44 The experience of Father Maria Benedetto in Rome is relevant here. Benedetto tried in 1945 to draw the Church authorities’ attention to the fate of Jewish children who had found refuge in church institutions during the war. ‘If we pay no attention to this,’ he wrote, ‘we run the risk of ascribing an unpleasant (‘antipatico’) to the actions of the Church in support of persecuted Jews. Not every procedure can be approved to achieve the conversion of Jews.’ He suggested that the Congregation of the Holy Office should issue a monitum to clarify the ‘nature and conditions for the genuine conversion of Jews to Christianity’. This advice was not followed. On the contrary, the Holy Office stated that every possible means should be employed to resist orders to hand over children to competent instances and ultimately relay the implementation of such orders. According to Philippe Chenaux, the fact that such an authentic testimony to Christian love of neighbour towards the Jews could be disrupted in such a manner said something fundamental about the theology and mentality of the Catholic world at the end of the war.45

4 An example: Saul Friedländer Holocaust historian Saul Friedländer was born on 11 October 1932 in the city of Prague, where his everyday name was Pavel or Pavliček. His parents emigrated to France when the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia, but were later caught off their guard by a (second) German invasion. In 1942, when the danger of deportation approached, Friedländer 479

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writes in his memoirs, he was taken away by a priest – ‘a gentle and sensitive man’ – to a Catholic institution in Montluçon, a boarding school by the name of Saint-Béranger, a Benedictine monk. He became a different person: Paul-Henri Ferland, to which the name Maria was added to reinforce the name’s (Catholic) authenticity. He thus found himself ‘in a totally new world, a world of strict Catholicism, of royalist France, faithful in every way to Marshal Pétain and traditional anti-Semitism. He was under the protection of the ladies of the Sodalité, a lay organisation intent on saving souls, but the fact that the soul in question was of a Jewish child brought its risks.’46 Saul’s parents had officially instructed the boarding school authorities to have their son baptized and raised in the spirit and practice of the boarding school and its residents. This would offer him a future, were he able to resume an ordinary life at some stage. All memories of his childhood, of the first ten years of his existence, had to disappear, because it was impossible to reconcile ‘who I was and who I was expected to be’.47 His first experiences in this totally strange environment left him with memories of complete despair. He ran away from the boarding school and searched for the hospital where his mother was living, but his parents decided to send him back as they were planning to cross the border into Switzerland at Saint-Gingolph. Unfortunately they were arrested at the end of September 1942 and deported days later at the beginning of October. Saul was baptized in October 1942 in the church of Notre-Dame de Montluçon, making his first communion before leaving for a boarding school in Montneuf in the department of Indre. The place was more like a large farm than a monastery. In September 1943, he returned to Saint-Béranger. Paul had particular memories of the liturgy of Holy Week. In the passion according to John associated with Good Friday ‘we literally followed the footsteps of the Redeemer, imagined his suffering, mourned his death; and we rejoiced at the announcement of his resurrection. I had submitted to Catholicism body and soul. References to the misdeeds of the Jews during Holy Week did not embarrass me in the least.’48 In August 1944, French forces attacked Montluçon and the ensuing battle for the city lasted a week. La Sodalité was certainly not taken by the idea of a German victory, but the Resistance Movement, which was known to be communist and atheist, was likewise despised. ‘We were faithful to the Marshal and thus refused to sing a Te Deum, but we were concerned about what would happen to the victor of Verdun.’49 Shortly after the liberation, Paul was visited by a certain Mrs Fraenkel, a woman who had known his father when he had been admitted to hospital with a stomach complaint. Mrs Fraenkel came for a second visit in August 1944. On that occasion, he was informed that his parents were dead and this left him in a state of anxiety and shock. The ladies of La Sodalité tried to arm him against the dangers of apostasy by having him confirmed and recommending him to a Jesuit who visited Saint-Béranger on a regular basis to give a retreat. Paul met him at the beginning of 1946 in Saint-Étienne, but he explored the city first before knocking on the Jesuit’s door. The two visited a church and got into a conversation in a shadowy chapel about the fate of Paul’s parents. The priest asked: Weren’t your parents killed in Auschwitz? But 480

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what did the word Auschwitz mean to him? It soon became clear to the priest that Paul knew almost nothing about the extermination of the Jews. It was here in this gloomy chapel that he was to hear for the first time about Auschwitz, the trains, the gas chambers, the crematoria, the millions of victims. When they returned to the Jesuit college, the priest read from the autobiography of a Jewish historian in France about his experience of anti-Semitism. For the first time in his life, he felt Jewish; no longer in spite of himself or in secret, but with a sense of complete endorsement. He knew nothing about Judaism. ‘The attitude of the priest was very influential. I listened to him speak about the fate of the Jews with respect and emotion in equal measure, intent on consoling me. He did not want to force me to choose one way or the other – although he would perhaps have preferred that I remain Catholic – but recognised my right to choose for myself.’ When he returned to Saint-Béranger, he asked permission to use his old name and quickly became Saul instead of Paul – a reverse interpretation of the conversion of the Jew Saul who took the name Paul. Three or four months later he left the boarding school and went in search of his guardian and family, Eastern European immigrants from the ‘Shtetl’. He then moved to Israel. A quarter of a century later, however, he returned to the institutions in which he had been given refuge, this time with his ten-year-old son Eli. After his university studies in Paris, he had become a prominent historian of the Shoah and published a critical study of Pius XII and the persecution of the Jews.50 Saul Friedländer was later to ask himself if anything had remained from this Catholic period in his life. He concluded that he felt a certain embarrassment in his interactions with others, a reticence that could be traced back to his time in the boarding school and the Catholic taboos he must have internalized. In short, he was aware of a certain lack of ease that limited his spontaneity. At the same time, he was convinced that this also reflected a certain Jewish attitude, the attitude of those who had attempted to assimilate and live between two worlds. This, according to Friedländer, was the climate in which he and others found themselves.51

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1 The true Rome 1.1 Pope Pius XII In this chapter our attention will be focused on the senior leaders of Christianity in Europe and on structures with an ecumenical framework: the ‘patriarchs’ of the Eastern and Western Churches and the nascent World Council of Churches. None of these has been the subject of such criticism and praise with respect to his policy during the Second World War as Pope Pius XII , criticism and praise often expressed by committed and engaged authors. His election to the papacy took place in 1939, a year of crisis and war. The situation required him to steer a path between neutrality – a choice generated by and a consequence of the Lateran Treaty – and moral judgement. When Rome was liberated in June 1944, huge crowds formed on Saint Peter’s square to celebrate him. He had revealed himself to be a Defensor Civitatis, a defender of ‘his’ city. The praise lavished on him at this juncture paled thereafter in the critical debate surrounding his stance – his ‘silence’ – on the persecution of the Jews. As early as 1951, the French author and Nobel Prize winner François Mauriac wrote that the successor of Peter had not spoken about the ‘countless crucifixions’ of the ‘brothers of the Lord’ and that a crime of such proportions also reflected on those who had witnessed it and had remained silent for whatever reason.1 The discussion intensified when a theatre piece by the German Rolf Hochhuth entitled Der Stellvertreter (The Deputy) – focusing on the silence of the Pope on the persecution of the Jews – was premiered in February 1963 in West Berlin. The debate is still ongoing and has generated countless publications. 1.2 Pacelli’s election to the papacy Eugenio Pacelli became pope in 1939. His predecessor Pius XI died on 10 February of that year. As dean of the diplomatic corps, Diego von Bergen, the German ambassador to the Holy See, used the funeral eulogy in the Vatican to call for a pope who was able to understand the new times (and the new Germany). On 1 March, 62 cardinals assembled in conclave. Cardinal Pacelli attracted a majority of the votes in the first round and by the third round the required two-thirds had voted in his favour. The majority had thus given their vote to a candidate branded as a superior ‘church politician’ and known as a ‘pastor’. Eugenio accepted the result of the election without much visible emotion, almost as if he had been expecting it.2 He chose the name Pius in a gesture of respect to his twentiethcentury predecessors Pius X and Pius XI . 483

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The papal coronation took place on 12 March 1939 during an ostentatiously grand ceremony. Saint Peter’s square was used as a liturgical space for the first time since the Lateran Treaty and modern media such as radio and film were permitted to cover the event. The monarchical character of the ceremony was accentuated by the procession of the crown-bearing Pope on a sedan chair. According to Giovanni Battista Montini, his assistant Secretary of State (and later Pope Paul VI ), however, he was not the emotionless and isolated individual Hochhuth had portrayed in his play. On the contrary, he was refined and sensitive. A British journalist made the following observation when he saw the Pope pass: ‘With his ascetic frame, his tall stature, and the first sign of grey above his temples, his dark eyes and goldrimmed spectacles on his aquiline nose, he seemed ethereal, poised between the divine and the human.’3 According to the predictions of Malachy, the twelfth-century Irish archbishop and saint, the 262nd successor of Peter was to be the ‘Pastor Angelicus’, the angelic pastor, and Pius XII set out to promote this image of himself. In the summer of 1942, at the height of the war and the persecution of the Jews, Pius XII had a film made on the theme in consultation with Luigi Gedda, the president of Catholic Action in Italy. The film begins and ends with the image of the good shepherd carrying the lamb on his shoulders, and focuses on the buildings, rituals and monsignori of the Vatican. In one scene, the Pope greets a number of young girls making their first communion with lilies in their hands. ‘The brilliant white soutane amid the white communion dresses proclaims its message: the Pontiff is the fount of purity. He extends his arms in what Tardini called a gesture of “immolation”, blesses the adoring multitude.’ Only two scenes make direct reference to the war that was raging at the time: cannon fire and the sinking of a ship and images of the Vatican information office for missing persons with sisters attending to the war-wounded.4 The new Bishop of Rome was first and foremost a Roman. Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli was born in the city on 2 March 1876 and grew up in a family that had settled there in 1819 to serve the pope and if necessary protect him against ‘the spirit of the century’ such as liberalism and laicism. His grandfather, Marco Antonio, became Secretary of the Interior to the Papal States under Pius IX and was instrumental in the foundation of the Vatican newspaper Osservatore Romano. His father, Filippo Pacelli, was a specialist in Canon Law and dean of the Sacra Rota Romana, the church’s legal tribunal in the Vatican. In 1871 he married Virginia Graziosi, likewise from the Aristocrazía nera or Black Nobility who supported the papacy, and known in her day as a ‘saintly woman’. The young Eugenio was seen as a devout and artistic boy with a sensitive stomach and an ethereal disposition. He went to school at the state-run Ennio Quirino Visconti Institute, enrolled as a seminarian at the Almo Collegio Capranica and later studied at the Pontifical Gregorian University (following family tradition) and at the state university La Sapienza. He graduated in theology and both civil and canon law. He was ordained to the priesthood on 2 April 1899 and celebrated his first mass the following day at the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. Cardinal Vincenzo Vanutelli, a friend of the family, attended the ceremony, and it was Vanutelli who made it possible two years later 484

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for Eugenio to become a member of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, which became a subdivision of the Secretariat of State of the Holy See after 1908. He was able to intensify his knowledge and expertise in legal matters within the framework of two curial functions: secretarial support in the reform of the code of Canon Law that was completed in 1917, and the establishment of church competences and jurisdictions in the context of state and society in the form of concordats. The former was in the first instance an attempt to assemble and harmonize various laws in a new code of Canon Law. Pope Benedict XV officially promulgated the text in 1917. A direct result of this codification was that the Holy See, robbed of civil power, was able to appropriate greater central authority. In this uniform ecclesial legal order, which transcended local and national peculiarities, it was the Pope, for example, who had the right to appoint new bishops. The Curia then endeavoured to include this right in various concordats agreed with individual states. In 1917, Pacelli the canon lawyer was given a task that was to become his life’s work: he was appointed nuncio in Germany. As outlined in Chapter 2, he was instrumental in establishing a concordat with Nazi Germany. At this juncture, however, he was no longer nuncio but cardinal and Secretary of State. In this capacity he had already played a leading role in negotiations leading up to the Lateran Treaty and the concordat with Fascist Italy. From 1939 onwards, Germany remained a profound concern but also a predilection. The first diplomat to be received by Pius XII after his coronation was Diego von Bergen, the German ambassador to the Holy See. According to the latter’s report, the new Pope declared during the meeting that he intended to maintain the bond with the Germany he had come to know and respect in his time as nuncio. He hoped for peace between Church and state, and quoted, just to be sure, from the address he gave at the Eucharistic Congress in Budapest in 1938 in which he stated that the Church was not called to express a preference of one or other of the various systems and methods deployed by the state in order to gain control of contemporary problems.5 He personally corrected the German text that was to respond to Hitler’s congratulations on his election as pope and in which friendship and the desire for peace were underlined. 1.3 Papal peace initiatives in 1939 Pius XII ’s predecessor had let his voice be heard in the international crisis surrounding Czechoslovakia in 1938. The new Pope, however, was more reserved and diplomatic. In all his diplomatic decisions, he let himself be guided by a concern for the moral authority of the Holy See. He wanted to follow Benedict XV ’s example of openly striving after peace during the First World War, but he was careful not to expose himself to the accusations of prejudice and partiality that had plagued his predecessor. According to his secretary, the German Jesuit Robert Leiber, the Pope preferred to speak only in general terms about injustice, violence and mistreatment, irrespective of the occasion or the perpetrator. Such statements were intended to underline the impartiality of the Holy See. In a meeting with the new envoy from Lithuania on 18 October 1939, Pius XII 485

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formulated his position as follows: ‘Conscious of our duty as supreme pastor, our activity will always be focused on the salvation of souls and never on exclusively secular controversies or extend to territorial interests between states unless we are explicitly invited to do so.’6 The new Pope was confronted with an international crisis only three days after his papal coronation. On 15 March 1939, the German Wehrmacht invaded Czechoslovakia. Pius XII remained silent about the German annexation of Bohemia and Moravia. The German ambassador noted that the Pope and his staff did not consider it an occasion to interfere in a historical process in which the Church was not interested in political terms.7 In the same week, however, the Pope spoke openly on Radio Vaticana about the end of the Spanish Civil War and Franco’s ‘Catholic’ victory, supporting the latter’s presumed policy of ‘justice for crime and benevolent generosity for those who have been misled’.8 An additional priority for the new Pope was to endeavour to improve relations with Italy’s fascist government. Count Galeazzo Ciano, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, was informed during his first audience that the Pope wished to adopt a conciliatory stance towards Germany – although he had his concerns about the Nazi regime – but considered it necessary to this end to have a good dialogue partner in Rome.9 When the Italian army invaded Albania on 7 April 1939 – Good Friday – the Pope remained silent. In his Easter sermon he limited himself to a general appeal for peace based on the law and on respect for legitimate authority. He later explained to Simon Konrad Landersdorfer (OSB ), the Bishop of Passau, that in Albania the monarch did not have diplomatic relations with the Holy See. It was therefore impossible to follow a ‘paritas casuum’, a case of equivalence based on canon law.10 Tensions between Nazi Germany and Poland in the summer of 1939 concerning the semi-autonomous city of Danzig were a major preoccupation for Pius XII . He endeavoured to curb the mounting conflict by suggesting a new international conference of European powers: Munich 2. The Pope had Mussolini in mind for this task, aware that he had revealed himself to be the most important negotiator in Munich in 1938. In his view, Italy would once again play a leading role. Poland was to be the fifth power at the conference. Via the nuncio in Warsaw, the Vatican tried to put pressure on the Polish government to make concessions to Hitler. The Pope’s efforts were in vain, but when the Wehrmacht invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, the territorial integrity of the predominantly Catholic nation was not the subject of a public intervention on the part of the Holy See. The Pope remained silent, in spite of the fact that British and French diplomatic circles had urged him to speak. In response to the French ambassador’s request that he should offer a gesture on behalf of the Catholic Polish nation, the Pope answered that one should not forget that the German empire numbered 40 million Catholics.11 When Poland’s primate Cardinal Hlond came to visit the Pope in the Vatican on 21 September – initially on diplomatic reconnaissance, later as a refugee from his conquered nation – Pius XII shared his ‘compassion’ for the Polish people and urged the cardinal to have faith in divine Providence, which would make the resurrection of 486

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the Polish nation possible. Hlond also made a more impassioned statement on Radio Vaticana: ‘On these radio waves, which run across the world carrying truth from the hill of the Vatican, I cry to you, Poland, you are not beaten!’12 On 15 October 1939, Osservatore Romano published a headline article on the ‘indifference’ of Pius XII to the Polish tragedy being claimed in the international press. The article stated that the Holy Father had not forbidden himself the right to speak should the circumstances demand it, but that he preferred and insisted on using his own words. Pius XII reviewed and corrected the article in person.13 It was only in 1940, in the context of his first encyclical Summi Pontificatus, that the Pope was to express public sympathy for ‘our beloved Poland’. Poland had a historical reputation for enduring fidelity to the Church and for ‘the defence of Christianity and civilisation’, such that it now had a ‘right to the generous and fraternal sympathy of the entire world’.14 But did he later regret his reticence? In a conversation with the – retiring – Italian ambassador on 13 May 1940, he said that if he regretted anything it was perhaps the fact that he had been ‘too discrete’ with regard to what had happened in Poland in 1939 and was still happening.15 1.4 Insights and ideas of Pius XII The passage dedicated to Poland came in the concluding paragraphs of Summi Pontificatus, which can be seen as the new Pope’s ‘government policy declaration’. It was an eloquent treatise on the topic of Church and state. The introduction made reference to continuity with his predecessors, to the veneration of the Sacred Heart of Jesus – a piety offensive instigated by Pope Leo XIII – and to the feast of Christ the King, which Pius XI had established as the sacred apotheosis of a Catholic society. The date of the feast was also the date on which the encyclical was promulgated. In the process of writing, Pius XII appears to have been taken unawares by the outbreak of the war. ‘When We think of the wave of suffering that has come on countless people who but yesterday enjoyed in the environment of their homes some little degree of well-being, We are tempted to lay down Our pen.’16 He focused his critique on two themes in particular, which he branded the evil of modern times: the denial of the unity of humanity and the deification of the state. ‘Nor is there any fear lest the consciousness of universal brotherhood aroused by the teaching of Christianity, and the spirit which it inspires, be in contrast with love of traditions or the glories of one’s fatherland, or impede the progress of prosperity or legitimate interests,’ he stated. But precisely the ‘forgetfulness of the law of universal charity’ was a source of catastrophe for the peaceful coexistence of the nations.17 A further source of evil in the Pope’s mind was the absolute autonomy of the state. Those who separate the law of nations from divine law intent on basing it on the arbitrary will of state leaders demonstrate a ‘fatal drive of private interest and collective selfishness’. ‘The hour of victory is an hour of external triumph for the party to whom victory falls, but it is in equal measure the hour of temptation. In this hour the angel of justice strives with the demons of violence.’18 487

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It is striking that Pius XII often used the occasion of his Christmas message when he felt called to make a statement about issues such as war, ideology and post-war planning. This opportunity provided him with a wide audience via Vatican radio and guaranteed a religious context. His message of peace in 1939 included the precondition that every nation had the right to independent existence, but also underlined the need for a supranational instance maintaining international law and the need to respect the rights of minorities. In 1941, Pius XII justified once again the impartiality of the Holy See. In order to avoid any semblance of partiality he imposed an extreme form of restraint upon himself, although he considered himself obliged to speak out against hostile measures against the Church.19 Considerable value is attached at the international level to the Pope’s Christmas message in 1942, which was a thematic presentation of the social teaching of the Catholic Church and an explicit or implicit condemnation of dominant secular ideologies. At the end of the message, he listed five points that were to be considered the primary themes of Catholic social teaching. The first was the dignity and rights of the human person, namely the right to life, to religious education, to freedom of worship, to marriage and to work (as a means to maintain a respectable family life). The second theme was the defence of the family as a fundamental unity in society. To this he attached the right to – indissoluble – marriage and the right to a subsistence level existence. The third theme focused on the dignity of labour given expression in a just wage and in the right to property and social advancement. The fourth point addressed the restoration of the legal order and the fifth presented a concept of politics that was in line with Christian teaching; a government in the service of society, which respects the moral law and refrains from omnipotence and tyranny.20 At the end of his message, the Pope called upon all ‘generous and righteous individuals’ to steer society back to an ‘incontestable core’ in the service of ‘the human personality and its God-ennobled community’. He listed the duties to which humanity was obliged: to the dead on the battlefield, to widows and orphans, to the thousands of ‘noncombatants’ suffering from the war in the sky (‘against the horrors of which we have raised our voice from the outset on several occasions’) and ‘to the hundreds and thousands of people who are destined to die or to gradual extinction through no fault of their own, but on account of nationality or race’.21 It is remarkable that the final sentence makes reference to the victims in general terms but not to the perpetrators. In his 1943 Christmas address, the Pope addressed the Allies from a besieged Vatican and a Rome occupied by the Wehrmacht. Without mentioning states by name, he urged them to arrange the goals of war and programmes for peace in such a way that every state would be offered the possibility to align itself with ‘the great future international campaign of repair and restoration [. . .] in a dignified manner, without denying or destroying itself ’. His words, in short, were an appeal against the unconditional surrender that the Allies had imposed in the meantime on Nazi Germany, couched in religious and moral terminology. The future peace, according to Pius XII , should not be marked ‘by an unbridled desire for revenge and retribution’ but by ‘the dawn of a new spirit of global reconciliation’.22 488

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In 1944, and on the instigation of US President Roosevelt and his special emissary to the Vatican, Myron Charles Taylor, who had been able to travel to liberated Rome in the wake of the American army, Pius XII declared his readiness to recognize the significance of democracy. His Christmas message that year clearly testifies to this, albeit once again within the framework of a religious statement. The Pope observed that the ‘restless masses, shocked to their deepest layers by the war’, were convinced that the world would not have been ‘carried along in the catastrophic current of the war’ had ‘the possibility of intervening to regulate public authority’ not been absent or abolished. The people should thus create internal guarantees to ensure that the repetition of such a catastrophe can be prevented.23 Pius XII was ready to affirm those nations that had awakened ‘from a long sleep’, as it were, and were now demanding a system of government ‘in greater accord with the dignity and freedom of the citizens’. But he also called to mind the neutrality of the Church with respect to the various forms of government constitution and warned that the democratic state should not be abandoned ‘to the arbitrary will of the masses’ but should be governed ‘by righteous and solicitous individuals’.24 While the Vatican thus aligned itself with democracy – and with a Christian democratic contribution thereto – it did not depart from the principle of the neutrality of the Church with respect to different forms of government. 1.5 War policy In February 1940, Myron Charles Taylor – the aforementioned personal emissary of US President Roosevelt, and himself a member of the Episcopalian Church – presented his credentials. The Holy See considered this an important contact with a nation that was, in principle, secular. Taylor was thus received with the honours considered appropriate for an ambassador. During the said reception, the possibility of a compromise peace was discussed. Pius XII was in a position to state that the most senior commanders in the Germany military did not share Hitler’s policy of expansion. The Pope had in fact been informed of the first planned conspiracy against Hitler hatched within the circles of the Abwehr, German counter-espionage. The intermediary here was the Bavarian lawyer Josef Müller. Pius XII shared his prior knowledge with a British diplomat. The conspiracy was in fact an attempt to set aside Hitler and his fellow National Socialists and reconcile Germany with the Western nations in order to form a single front against Soviet communism.25 The conspiracy led to nothing. On 11 March 1940, Von Ribbentrop, Nazi-Germany’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, paid an official visit to the Pope. This appears in hindsight to have been the conclusion of any papal contribution to the German conspiracy. Pius XII discussed the critical situation of the Church in Germany with his dialogue partner, but did so inspired by a personal need to create a positive atmosphere. Unlike his predecessor, he was not looking for confrontation. Von Ribbentrop for his part – and in his customary arrogant manner – made it clear that Germany would enforce peace in Europe ‘before the end of the year’ (1940). The Vatican’s response was a final attempt to keep Italy out of the war.26 489

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On 10 May 1940, the Pope abandoned his usual reticence and sent telegrams to the queen of the Netherlands, the king of Belgium and the grand duchess of Luxembourg in a first sign of open protest against the German invasion of the nations in question. Pius XII lamented the violation of the freedom and independence of each state and declared that he would pray to God for restoration. The Pope’s action gave rise to discussion in both Italy and Germany, and discussion led in some instance to violence when people selling Osservatore Romano were assailed by fascist groups. On 13 May 1940, the Pope received the Italian ambassador Dino Alfieri in a farewell audience. The latter informed the Pope that Mussolini was upset by the Pope’s actions because he interpreted the papal telegrams as a gesture against his regime. This was at odds with the neutrality of the Holy See as defined by the Lateran Treaty (article 24). Pius XII appealed to his general sense of justice and declared that he had arrived at this protest in all serenity and was not afraid of being imprisoned in a concentration camp or falling into enemy hands as a result of it.27 The Pope returned to this conflict on 2 June 1940. In an address to the College of Cardinals he declared that he had wanted to avoid insulting the warring parties in an effort to maintain the integrity of his office. He wanted to help mitigate the consequences of the war and his pastoral affection went out to the German people – in whose midst he had spent many years of ‘our life’ – and to the Allied states (France and the United Kingdom); to ‘our beloved Poland’ and to other ‘noble nations’ whose need he prayed would be answered by the Almighty.28 At the end of June 1940, when Nazi Germany had imposed an armistice on France and Italy had entered the war, the Pope took the initiative of urging both countries together with Great Britain to seek a pragmatic peace. Pius XII was not the only one who considered accepting the status quo at the time – i.e. the dominance of Nazi Germany in Western Europe – but his initiative was not to succeed. On the contrary, it made further peace initiatives on the part of the Holy See impossible. In spite of his good intentions, Pius XII thus shared a defeat similar to that of his First World War predecessor, Benedict XV. In the course of the war, Pius XII endeavoured to maintain a position that he himself described as ‘impartial’ and explicitly not as ‘neutral’. Neutrality in his eyes was passive indifference and that was inappropriate for the head of the Church under such circumstances. As he wrote on 31 January 1943 to Cardinal Faulhaber, impartiality ‘for Us’ meant ‘judging matters according to truth and justice’. It was for this reason that he did not offer his public support for an anti-Bolshevik crusade after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, in spite of diplomatic pressure from Italy. It was for this reason also that he was unable to confirm his recognition of, and respect for, the Soviet Union to the Anglo-Saxon powers because such would have been impossible without the Soviet Union making substantial changes to its policy on religious freedom. In February 1943, Pius XII confirmed his disposition to the Hungarian Prime Minister. The Holy See had not turned a blind eye to the dangers of Bolshevism, but it was impossible to repeat a condemnation of communism without criticizing National Socialist persecution at the same time. This, however, did not prevent Vatican diplomats from making regular allusion to the ‘dangers of a Russian hegemony in Europe’ in discussion with their (Western) dialogue partners.29 490

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In his letter to the Bishop of Passau – quoted above – the Pope made an attempt to justify his policy. The religious mission of his office, he maintained, upheld the principle that the Holy See did not interfere in ‘worldly conflicts’ between different political camps. In the aforementioned telegrams he had spared Germany as much as he could and avoided any purely political options or an explicit relationship with the German side. In a further letter to the Archbishop of Freiburg, Pius XII insisted that what he had said about the war was based on moral conviction. The Pope was convinced that people would later come to recognize the far-reaching restraints he had imposed upon himself in order to avoid any semblance of bias or partiality.30 Impartiality was a consciously chosen option – it squared with the Lateran Treaty – but there was an additional element involved: an administrative consensus within the Roman Curia to remain detached. When Italy entered the war in June 1940 as Nazi Germany’s ally, the cardinals were preoccupied with the spectre of the potential bombing of Rome. Cardinal Eugène Tisserant, who was prefect of the Congregation for the Eastern Churches during the war, declared at a press conference in 1964 that the Curia was not interested in other aspects of the war. He himself had not been able to discuss matters at sufficient length with Pius XII and to determine if the latter had been influenced by those cardinals who were sympathetic towards Italian fascism and may thus have convinced the Pope to avoid critical statements about Germany.31 In a letter to the Archbishop of Paris, Tisserant shared his fear ‘that history would only accuse the Holy See of one thing, namely that it engaged in a politics of concern for itself and little else’.32 He lamented to historian Saul Friedländer that there was a lack of internal information within the Vatican during the war because the Secretariat of State had not issued a regular news bulletin to keep the cardinals up to date.33 Cardinal Tisserant was not a lonely opponent on the margins of the Curia. Pius XII appointed him dean of the College of Cardinals in 1951. 1.6 Pius XII and the persecution of the Jews It was already clear enough to his contemporaries that Pius XII did not explicitly mention the persecution of the Jews in his critique of National Socialism. But did he have his doubts about his decision not to condemn this mass murder in public and in concrete terms? Pius XII ’s biographer Philippe Chenaux quotes Angelo Roncalli in this regard, the Apostolic Delegate in Istanbul and the Pope’s successor in 1958. After an audience with Pius XII , Roncalli noted the following in his diary on 10 October 1944: ‘He asked me if his silence with respect to the misdeeds of Nazism had not been judged inappropriate.’34 An additional sign of inner unrest can be detected in his efforts to defend himself in an address to accredited diplomats to the Holy See more than six months after the war. He had done his level best to avoid speaking unjustly, and when he was obliged to offer judgement he had chosen his words with great care in order to prevent innocent people from having to suffer further reprisals at the hands of the oppressor. But if a question of faith or the foundations of Christian civilization had been at issue, the Pope insisted, no one could have counted on his silence.35 491

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The first question is the following: When was the Pope informed about the deportations and the actual purpose, the mass extermination of the Jews? Pius XII became pope in March 1939. At this point the phase of discrimination against the Jews had come to an end and the process of exclusion had begun; first in ghettoes and from the autumn of 1941 in concentration camps. As early as October 1941, Giuseppe Burzio, the Vatican’s representative in Slovakia (see Chapter  10) had exposed the true purpose of the deportations. When they were on holiday from the Eastern Front, Slovakian officers and soldiers had mentioned that Jews were being murdered on a large scale. Six months later, Burzio reported that 80,000 Slovakian Jews had been deported to Poland and handed over to the Germans. A large number of them faced certain death. A few weeks later, Angelo Rotta, the papal nuncio in Hungary, confirmed this news.36 An external source of information is also available. Gerhard Riegner, secretary to the Jewish World Congress in Geneva, drafted a report in which reference was made to the mass execution of Jews in Poland and Romania. The text is dated 18 March 1942 and the author used the word ‘extermination’, although he could not (yet) have known that it was being implemented in a systematic manner. Reigner’s report was handed over to the nuncio in Switzerland, Filippo Bernardini, who passed it on to the Vatican on 19 March. It was the same Gerhard Riegner who rang the alarm bell in August 1942. In a message to the American embassy in Bern he speaks of the extermination of between 3.5 and 4 million Jews. One of the means used to expedite this extermination was ‘prussic acid’.37 In addition to these reports we also have an eyewitness who informed Pius XII of the liquidation of the Jews in the East at an early stage. In October 1941, the Italian army chaplain Pirro Scavizzi (see Chapter 7) had travelled to the Ukraine on a hospital train organized by the Order of Malta to support Italian soldiers who were part of a multinational invasion force. He wrote in his diary about the numerous massacres of which he had found evidence on his travels. When he returned to Rome in November of the same year he was determined to go to the Vatican and report on what he had witnessed. He knew Eugenio Pacelli well, having been his student at the seminary in Rome, the Almo Collegio Capranica, and he was also pastor at one of the most important parishes in the city, the church of San Eustachio. Like so many priests of his generation, he was not free of anti-Semitic prejudice, but he managed nevertheless to have a ‘very long’ meeting with Pius XII . In February and March 1942, Scavizzi made a second trip to the Ukraine and he met Archbishop Sapieha (Kraków) and Cardinal Innitzer (Vienna) on the way. In May of 1942 he wrote from Bologna that the struggle against the Jews was pitiless and had taken the form of deportations and mass executions. The slogan in occupied Eastern Europe was: Kill them without mercy! The extermination of Ukraine’s Jews was complete and the intention was to do the same in Poland and Germany.38 Once again Scavizzi met with Pius XII . He later wrote that he had argued with his former schoolmate about the ‘silence’ of the Pope. ‘I saw him cry like a child and pray like a saint.’39 The second question is the following: what did the Pope do with the reports that reached him concerning the true nature of the deportations? As we observed in Chapter 7, the Holy See’s diplomatic apparatus was deployed to make protest and appeal for clemency. 492

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This was focused in practice on Nazi Germany’s allies where a Vatican representative was still recognized. The measure of ecclesial assistance to persecuted Jews can be related to the determination of such papal diplomats in the various European nations in which they served. Cesare Orsenigo, the nuncio in Germany, did not play a primary role in this regard. In the words of church historian Etienne Fouilloux: ‘In contrast to the characteristic weakness of Orsenigo, the nuncio in Berlin, who too often justified his silence by appealing to the futility of his previous steps, we have the militancy of Angelo Rotta, nuncio in Budapest, and in particular Giuseppe Burzio, a simple representative in Slovakia, of whom Victor Conzemius was able to write that his engagement exceeded his authority. Ramiro Marcone, the Benedictine apostolic visitator in Croatia, was closer to the former; Andrea Cassulo, nuncio in Bucharest, was closer to the latter.’40 On the other hand, a number of Western diplomats also urged the Pope to speak out openly against the terrors of National Socialism. Harold Tittman, the American representative to the Vatican and assistant to Myron C. Taylor, reported to the State Department on 30 July 1942 that he had continually mentioned in asides to his Vatican dialogue partners that the absence of official protest would damage the moral authority of the Holy See and undermine faith in the Church and in the person of the Holy Father. The response had not changed; the Pope had already condemned the war’s moral violations and specific statements only ran the risk of making the situation worse for the people involved. At the end of September 1942, Taylor handed over a much more powerful nota to the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Maglione. He appealed to a report from the Genevabased Jewish Agency for Palestine (30 August 1942) that mentioned the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto, the deportation and execution of its inhabitants, mass executions in Belzec concentration camp and near Lviv/Lemberg. Taylor was to report to the State Department that the Pope feared that open condemnation would lead to more deaths, certainly where Poland was concerned. Substitute Secretary of State Montini had informed him that a time would come when the Holy Father would feel obliged to speak out in public, in spite of the threatening prospects. Taylor also wrote that the Pope’s silence may well have been motivated by a more significant fear, namely that the German people might later accuse him – in the bitterness of defeat – of contributing, albeit indirectly, to the catastrophe. He had heard that the Germans had addressed similar accusations to Pope Benedict XV in the First World War. ‘If one bears in mind that Pius XII spent many years of his formation in Germany, then it is not unthinkable that he was particularly susceptible to such arguments.’41 The number of requests to Pius XII to publicly intervene increased, not only from foreign diplomats, but also from within the Church. In the same July of 1942 that the Dutch episcopate joined forces with the Protestant Churches to protest openly against the deportation of the Jews, a committee of Catholics turned to the Pope and asked him for forceful and effective assistance. They ‘prostrated’ themselves ‘with humility before the papal throne’ and appealed for ‘an exceptional reaction in exceptional situations’. Their goal was a joint appeal from all the governments with which the Holy See maintained relations, cooperation with the Red Cross in alleviating the burden suffered 493

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by those in prison, and the emigration of Catholic Jews to Latin America via Spain and Portugal. The Archbishop of Utrecht certified the document.42 The request was received, but there is no record of a response. Konrad von Preysing, the Bishop of Berlin, wrote to the Pope on 6 March 1943 concerning the wave of deportations of Jews from Berlin that had started a few days earlier. ‘Many thousands’ were involved. The Pope had already alluded to their probable fate in his Christmas message, broadcast on Vatican Radio in 1942: hundreds of thousand destined to die or be worked to death through no fault or crime of their own, for no other reason than their nationality or their race. Many Catholic Jews were among the deported. Would it not be possible, von Preysing asked, for ‘Your Holiness to try to intervene once more on behalf of the many unfortunate and innocent people? This is the last hope of so many and the profound prayer of every right-minded person.’43 Pius XII ’s response is known to us. On 30 April 1943 he referred the bishop – his former assistant in Munich – to the priests and lay faithful who had been obliged to pay for the words and deeds of their ecclesial leaders with imprisonment and worse. For this reason, the Pope insisted, he had left it to local pastors to determine whether and to what extent there was a danger of reprisals and other forms of pressure after and as a result of episcopal declarations. They themselves were free to decide if it was wise to – in spite of the appeals – to remain unresponsive ‘a maiora mala vitanda’ (to avoid even greater evil). ‘This is one of the reasons why We limit Ourselves in Our declarations.’44 Around the same time, Cardinal Innitzer wrote to the Pope in despair. He observed on 3 April 1943 that in the years 1941 and 1942 a total of 50,000 Jews had been ‘evacuated’ from Vienna to the East and 1,600 of their number were baptized Catholics. Only 7,000 ‘Nichtarier’ remained in Vienna, of whom 2,800 were Catholic. The Nazi authorities were preparing in the meantime to force people in mixed marriages to divorce, thus allowing for the ‘evacuation’ of the Jewish partner.45 The cardinal asked Pius XII to speak out against this reality. He received a letter from Cardinal Maglione pointing out ‘that the ordinary procedure was to write to him, not directly to the Pope himself ’ and that the Holy See was doing everything in its power to spare as many people as possible and in various different states the harsh fate of deportation. Concrete action was unforthcoming, however, or at least was not mentioned.46 Antonio Santin, the Bishop of Trieste in occupied Italy, asked the Pope in a controversial sermon delivered in his cathedral on the feast of Saint Justus to intervene on behalf of the Jews – all Jews, but especially baptized Jews – with the German ambassador in the Vatican. A couple of weeks later he travelled to Rome and was received by Pius XII . In a pastoral letter to the priests of his diocese Santin wrote that he had seen and experienced ‘the solemn silence of the spiritual holy offices’ in the house of the Pope. His message was ambiguous. ‘While the world is in flames, in the Vatican they meditate on the eternal truths and pray ardently.’ Nevertheless, he continued, the Pope’s considerable efforts to alleviate suffering and establish peace continue unabated.47 Pius XII spoke about such interventions in a secret address to the College of Cardinals on 2 June 1943. ‘Every word We address to [state] authorities in this matter and every statement we make has to be thought through and measured in the interests of those 494

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who are suffering, to avoid unintentionally aggravating their situation and making it even more unbearable. And as Jesus was forced to lament of his city: “How often have I tried? But you were not willing!” his Vicar on earth has demanded sympathy and a return to the simple norms of the rights of humanity, but has consistently found himself facing closed doors that no key can open.’48 Chenaux, Pius XII ’s biographer, has introduced a theme that might also be a key factor in explaining the Pope’s stance: the mysticism in which he sought refuge or took flight. On 13 May 1942, Eugenio Pacelli celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of his episcopal consecration (before leaving for Bavaria as nuncio). The anniversary coincided with the first appearance of Mary in the Portuguese village of Fatima. He had celebrated his first mass in a Marian church and he was fascinated by events in Fatima. In September 1940, the longest surviving witness to these appearances, sister Lucia Santos, revealed the secret content of Mary’s message in a letter to the Pope. ‘The dedication of the world to her Immaculate Heart with a special reference to Russia’ is said to have been its core. In a radio address to Portuguese Catholics on 31 October 1942, the Pope alluded to the said secret by declaring that Mary, ‘stricken by the prefiguration of this immense adversity, with which the world chastised the righteousness of God, already pointed in advance to prayer and penance as the way to salvation’.49 According to Chenaux, Pius XII familiarized himself with his message at a time when reports had reached him about the mass execution of Jews in Poland (via his schoolmate Scavizzi, the military chaplain). Instead of condemning these horrors, the Pope is said to have opted for a mystical dedication to Mary, the ‘Queen of Peace’ and the ‘Mediatrix of All Graces’. In the aforementioned radio broadcast to Portuguese Catholics, he not only dedicated the holy and suffering Church – ‘torn by mortal division’ – to the Immaculate Heart of Mary; the mystic, according to Chenaux, had eclipsed the diplomat. ‘The biography of Pacelli cannot detach itself from this other dimension of his person and the extent to which it offers a key to understanding his behaviour during the Second World War.’50 The conclusion is uncontested. Pius XII did not explicitly condemn the persecution of the Jews in public. When he was critical, he limited himself to general formulations that did not include the word ‘Jew’. He clearly struggled with the question of whether or not to speak out, however, and was urged to do so several times and from various sides. Doubts with respect to the efficacy of speaking out must be included in the catalogue of reasons for remaining silent, together with a fear of Nazi reprisals against the lower clergy, a degree of reserve with respect to his ‘beloved’ Germany, and a certain distance from those ‘outside’ the Church. The deportation and murder of Catholic Jews in the middle of 1942 that followed a public protest by the Dutch episcopate served to confirm his choice once and for all. If one were to measure Pius XII ’s behaviour against the standards of other Second World War statesmen – in whose number he himself must be included – then his silence is not exceptional. It is comparable to that of other Allied heads of state and prime ministers who prioritized a military victory against Nazi Germany and its allies, which included an end to the persecution of the Jews. If one had expected the Bishop of Rome 495

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of witness to the gospels in spite of diplomacy, then such a testimony was sorely absent. Or in the words of an Amsterdam student moderator, the Jesuit Jan van Kilsdonk: ‘If Pope Pius XII had pounded the doors of Dachau, Auschwitz or Theresienstadt with his pope mobile between 1938 and 1945, dressed in white and with his arms familiarly stretched wide, then many outside – and certainly inside – would have applauded with the words proclaimed by all to Pope Gelasius at the Synod of Rome in 495: Vicarium Christi te videmus! We see the Vicar of Christ.’51 1.7 The Pope and the liberation of Rome From the beginning of the Second World War, Pius XII revealed himself to be particularly concerned about the potential bombing of his episcopal city. Examples of aerial warfare were quick to emerge: Warsaw in September 1939, Rotterdam in May 1940. The Pope’s determination to shield Rome from such an attack was first expressed in June 1940 when Fascist Italy entered the war in Europe, thus making itself vulnerable to counter-attacks by the French and – in particular – British air force. In January 1943, Pius XII wrote to the American president from Rome, ‘the holy city, centre of the Catholic world and our episcopal see’ that he hoped for a return to peace. In that same month, Roosevelt and Churchill decided in Casablanca that the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany was to be the final goal of Allied operations. This was a positive gesture in the direction of their ally Stalin. The consequence was that total war was to be waged against Hitler and that the Soviet Union would not only play an important role in the conflict, but also in the occupation of Eastern Europe. This international turn of events confronted Pius XII with two additional concerns. The first was that he had to account for the growing power of a state whose communist ideology he condemned and whose sphere of influence he feared. The second was the increased danger of his city being bombed in the context of total war. The Pope responded by hoping for and insisting on a compromise peace and by endeavouring to bridle the resistance movement in Rome for fear of reprisals. In his first (and last) Christmas message delivered in 1943 in Wehrmacht-occupied Rome, he urged his clergy to refrain from every act of resistance that could only result in misfortune. On 5 July 1943, Ernst von Weiszäcker, the new German ambassador to the Holy See who had been dismissed as Nazi Germany’s State Secretary, presented his credentials. In the private audience that followed, Pius XII spoke of Germany’s struggle against Bolshevism. He referred to his experience as nuncio in the Bavarian Council Republic in 1919 and criticized the ‘spiritless’ formula of unconditional surrender that the Allies had imposed on Nazi Germany.52 In July 1943, Italy became a theatre of war in the literal sense as a result of the Allied invasion of Sicily. On 19 July, Allied planes bombed a suburb of Rome close to a goods station. The basilica of Saint Lawrence Outside the Walls was seriously damaged and the nearby cemetery – Campo Verano – also suffered. One of the tombs that took a hit was that of the Pacelli family. On the Pope’s initiative, he and Montini, the assistant Secretary of State, hurried to see the devastation with their own eyes. This was the first time he had 496

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left the Vatican since the beginning of the war. He spoke with the occupants of the district and made what was later to become a renowned gesture of dismay and comfort, his arms opened wide. He prayed the De Profundis from the liturgy of the dead as he stood in the ruins. His arrival at the scene of the catastrophe – before the king who arrived that same evening, and before Mussolini – left a great impression on the people of the city. A second bombardment followed on 13 August 1943 and once again the Pope visited the scene, spending time with the wounded in the basilica of Saint John Lateran. His white soutane was stained with blood and he called upon those present to follow the path of virtue and faith in God. ‘The Church came to play an increasingly important part in the daily lives of many ordinary Italians confronted with the continuous hardships imposed by bombing.’53 Hitler had initially planned for his army to march on the Vatican to ‘remove’ the diplomats as well as the ‘documents’. The latter included a presumed contribution by the Vatican to the armistice of September 1943 whereby Italy had distanced itself from Nazi Germany. Senior Nazi officials managed to persuade Hitler to abandon his plan. ‘The Pope’s only protection was the belief of several German leaders, including perhaps Himmler, that an unseized Pope could be useful in a negotiated peace.’54 Such protection was not watertight, however, and the Vatican was expected to ‘behave itself ’. The experience of Ambassador Von Weiszäcker appeared to be of great importance when the Wehrmacht occupied the city of Rome on 9 September. The Vatican closed its gates and the doors of Saint Peter’s basilica. German parachutists stationed themselves along the demarcation line on Saint Peter’s Square that separated Italy from the Vatican City. Von Weiszäcker was instructed by Hitler in person that he should reassure the Pope that the German occupying army would respect the territorial integrity of the Vatican. In the meantime, its senior citizen had documents from his archive burned.55 Resistance groups stepped up their activities in Rome. In the afternoon of 23 March 1945, members of a communist cell (Patriotic Action Groups) attacked a column of German police during a march along the Via Rasella in Rome. A bomb exploded. More than two dozen older soldiers (from South Tyrol) died immediately together with two bystanders. The final death count was 33. The German occupying regime responded with bloody reprisals. On Hitler’s personal command, ten prisoners were executed by firing squad for every German who died in the attack. The shooting took place in the Fosse Ardeatine, a gorge near the catacomb. A total of 335 Italians were killed in the massacre, among them dozens of Jews. This was five more than the number on which Hitler had insisted; an administrative error. The day after the attack, the Vatican newspaper Osservatore Romano published a critical commentary on terrorist actions with an indirect allusion to the attack on the Via Rasella. At the same time, the Secretariat of State was informed about the German reprisal by a city official. Osservatore Romano then repeated that the lives of innocent citizens should be respected and spared, but the Pope did not openly condemn the action. In January 1944, the Allied troops landed at Anzio in Latium. In the meantime, the Abbey of Monte Cassino, the oldest monastery of the Benedictine order, found itself on the frontline. It was razed to the ground. The Vatican tried to ensure that the other 497

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historical abbey of the Benedictines in Subiaco would be spared. But fear of destruction in Rome itself increased. On 31 May 1944 – the American 36th division was at the gates of Rome – Cardinal Maglione telegraphed the apostolic delegate in Washington, stating that the Holy See hoped that the Allies would avoid the ‘terrible responsibility’ of turning Rome into a battlefield. Pius XII added the words ‘and an unforgivable crime’. In an address to the cardinals on the occasion of his saint’s day (Saint Eugenius, 2 June 1944), the Pope stated that he had repeated out of a conscious sense of impartiality, but also from personal determination: ‘Whoever dares to lay a hand on Rome shall be guilty of matricide in the eyes of the civilised world and in the eternal judgement of God.’56 As the Allies approached the city of Rome in the spring of 1944, a statue of the ‘Madonna of Divine Love’ was brought from Castel del Leva, fifteen kilometres to the south of Rome, to the Church of Saint Ignatius inside the city. For the churchgoers a miracle took place. On 4 June, the last day of the rosary novena, the last German occupying troops left Rome. Conflict had been avoided on the Führer’s command. Hitler had ordered Marshal Albert von Kesselring ‘in extremis’ not to destroy the city on account of its extraordinary cultural significance. An American division marched into Rome on the night of 4/5 June. Early that morning Pope Pius XII appeared on the balcony of his Vatican apartment and again at 10 am. At six o’clock that evening he appeared on the balcony of Saint Peter’s. A huge crowd had amassed on the square to thank the Pope for his actions in support of the city. The man who had become the highest authority in Italy during the occupation – the Italian king was associated with fascism – was given the title Defensor Civitatis. ‘For the first time since 1860 the Pope had no competitor for the prestige of a head of State.’57 After the successful liberation of Rome, the Holy See was approached by diplomatic representatives to intervene on behalf of other cities that deserved to be spared on account of their historical significance: Kraków and Czestochowa, Leiden, Liege and Antwerp. On 18 December 1944, for example, the Archbishop of Utrecht passed on a request from the administration of Leiden University to the nuncio in Germany asking for the Holy See to intervene and spare the historical city with its wealth of museums and art treasures from the violence of war. The message was handed on to the warring parties. The British diplomatic mission to the Vatican responded on 13 April: ‘This appeal has been passed to the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force.’58 The city was not bombed. 1.8 Vatican relief measures and the Red Cross Administrators and diplomats in the Vatican took it upon themselves to support victims without discrimination during the Second World War. Their programme had a military dimension in the exchange of information on prisoners of war, in medical relief for wounded soldiers, and in the provision of graves for the dead. Vatican diplomats also did their utmost to acquire access to prisoner-of-war camps. This form of information and inspection also extended to civilian prisons during the war. Their number and the 498

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problems associated with them were greater than ever. The Vatican was even able to establish information posts in a number of warring countries. The provision of relief had its origins in the First World War, in an initiative of Pope Benedict XV dating back to 1914. After 1918, consultation within the League of Nations ascribed this task to the International Red Cross. International agreements in Geneva (1929) and Tokyo (1934) charged the Red Cross with the function of overseeing the situation of prisoners of war and of civilian prisoners. The Holy See profited directly and indirectly from the Red Cross’s new competences. In 1939, Pius XII reinstated the relief programme started by Benedict XV, whom he had met during the First World War as nuncio in Bavaria. The Vatican had been recognized as a sovereign state since 1929 and was thus in a juridically stronger position than had hitherto been the case. It had its own broadcasting station – Radio Vaticana – but the Holy See’s significance remained limited. The Soviet Union, for example, refused to cooperate at any level. After the German invasion of Poland, Pius XII stated his hope in an address to the new Belgian ambassador that prisoners of war would be treated humanely and would be granted access to the comfort of their religion without impediment. The Ufficio Informazioni, the office charged with providing information on prisoners of war, was established on 22 September 1939 with Deputy Secretary of State Montini at its head. Second in command was the Russian Bishop of the Greek Catholic Church in Rome, Alexander Evreinoff. In November 1939, cooperation between the Holy See and the Red Cross was confirmed. The Second World War became a total war and the problem of civilian refugees and persecuted people was acute. In response to this reality, a Pontifica Commissione di Assistenza Profughi (PCA ) was set up in November 1941, a commission offering relief to refugees. It was led by Ferdinando Baldelli, a prelate with considerable organizational talent, and placed under the supervision of Montini.59 The Vatican diplomatic service was used to collect messages related to refugees – including Jews in hiding and political opponents of National Socialism – and pass them on. The form of exchanging information became ever more difficult as the war continued. Towards the end of the war, when famine became a primary source of suffering, the provision of food also became part of the Vatican’s relief effort. Interventions on behalf of refugees were always considered confidential in the Vatican. A lesson had been learned after a Jewish couple visited the Pope subsequent to their conversion to Catholicism. The visit was reported in the press and the couple’s residence permit was later taken away by the Italian authorities. In the annual report Attività della Santa Sede from 1940, reference was also made to assistance being granted to ‘persons considered to be non-Arian and punished for this reason by the laws of certain states’. The German ambassador to the Holy See made a remark about the reference and after that similar forms of assistance were no longer mentioned in the annual report.60 The nuncio in Germany, Cesare Orsenigo, was permitted to visit French priests and seminarians in a Bavarian prisoner-of-war camp where he was also allowed to say Mass. A second visit to a prison camp for Italian soldiers was permitted at the end of 1944.61 499

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In May 1942, a Swedish diplomat informed Borgongini Duca, nuncio to the Italian government, that there was a tendency on both sides of the Eastern Front to ‘get rid of ’ prisoners of war, either directly or indirectly. This was a sign that Russian prisoners of war were being executed, worked and starved to death on a large scale. He suggested a papal intervention to be drafted together with a number of government heads from neutral states. A concrete criticism of this mass killing – three million Russian prisoners of war – was not forthcoming.62 The perspective changed when Rome was liberated in 1944 and fear of the consequences of Soviet victory simultaneously increased, namely communist domination in Eastern Europe. Relief was continued using the same resources for a new category of political refugees for Central and Eastern Europe who faced severe punishment on account of their collaboration if they fell into the hands of their communist persecutors. The issue of personal conversion was added later; some prelates within the Vatican were willing to support baptized Nazis. The Pontifica Commissione di Assistenza Profughi (PCA ) provided the infrastructure for this relief effort. The commission was a pyramid of national committees that were thus free to work with relative independence. Money for its activities was provided by the Vatican Bank. A number of national committees were ejected because they had focused on helping Nazis and fascists to flee to Latin America. And a committee of priests from Georgia occasioned a major scandal when they asked for and received the Holy See’s permission to reopen the Georgian seminary. The place later turned out to be a refuge for SS officers and their girlfriends. An American military unit searched the building and discovered a radio station in the cellar. Deputy Secretary of State Montini tried to cloak the scandal.63 The Austrian committee was particularly active. Its central figure was Bishop Alois Hudal (see above) who had endeavoured since the 1930s to establish a bridge with National Socialism. Hudal was rector of the German college in Rome – Santa Maria del’ Anima – and offered a place of hiding to National Socialist refugees in the college’s church. With a recommendation from the bishop it was relatively easy to acquire a travel document from the International Red Cross. This served in turn as the basis of an Italian residence permit, which was a precondition for issuing exit visas to one of the South American states.64 As a result of Bishop Hudal’s mediation, Franz Stangl (among others), the commandant of Treblinka extermination camp, was able to cross the Atlantic. Another committee was led by the Croatian priest Krunoslav Draganović. The latter had enjoyed the protection of Ivan Sarić, the Archbishop of Sarajevo, who had revealed himself to be sympathetic towards the fascist Ustaša movement. In 1943, Draganović became a member of the Croatian delegation to the Vatican, which was housed in the college of San Girolamo degli Illirici. When the Croatian state fell into the hands of Tito’s partisans, the college changed its policy. A ‘Fraternity of San Girolamo’ was formed that served as a front for providing assistance to fascist refugees. Appreciation for the fraternity’s work increased dramatically when it was reported that hundreds of political and military refugees had been expelled from the British zone of occupied Austria and returned to Yugoslavia where death was ensured. Draganović succeeded in 500

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providing an exit from Croatia for prominent members of the Ustaša, among them head of state Ante Pavelić. Johannes Geisler, Prince Bishop of Bressanone (Brixen) in South Tirol, and Alois Pompanin, his vicar general, played an exceptional role in providing escape routes for Nazi refugees. Both were fervent German nationalists and both were sympathetic towards National Socialism. In 1937, for example, the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge was not read out in their diocese; neither Geisler nor Pompanin supported public criticism of Nazi Germany. They made it possible in a variety of ways for Nazi refugees to travel to Rome or to the port city of Genoa and they also assisted by facilitating the baptism or re-baptism of prominent National Socialists. The Protestant SS officer Erich Priebke, for example, who had played a part in the murder of 335 Roman citizens in the Ardeatine Caves, was re-baptized as Catholic on Geisler’s instruction and was thus able to escape legal proceedings.65 Was Pius XII aware of these potential escape routes? Montini was his closest collaborator and Hudal was an ‘assistant to the pontifical throne’. But even if he was not aware of all of the details involved in the assistance provided such notorious war criminals – granting visas was the work of individual prelates in cooperation with the Red Cross – he nevertheless defined the intentions of Vatican policy. This was dominated by an aversion to the punishment of collaborators in Eastern Europe by communist governments, an aversion that was shared by the Western powers from 1947, especially America, which had shifted its priority from combating National Socialism to combating communism in the context of the Cold War. A second factor to be accounted for was his critique of the circumstances in which the said collaborators were being held in Italian camps. A third and final factor was his leniency. The pope had a ‘mercy programme’ for Nazis and fascists who had themselves baptized or converted. 1.9 Epilogue In December 1945, Pius XII added new members to the College of Cardinals, something that had not happened since 1937. ‘Rumour said that the Pope must have decided to fill no office while the war lasted, because any appointment would look political.’66 It is striking that the 32 new cardinals also included bishops whose episcopal see did not traditionally oblige such elevation. The Bishop of Münster, Clemens von Galen, who had spoken out against the Nazi euthanasia programme in a sermon in 1941, was among them, as was the Bishop of Berlin, Konrad von Preysing, who appeared to have been a critic of National Socialism. The Archbishop of Toulouse, Jules-Géraud Saliège, who preached openly in 1942 against the persecution of the Jews, was elevated to cardinal for the same reason as the Archbishop of Utrecht, Johannes de Jong. It seemed that Pius XII was now approving of their actions, which he himself had felt unable to pursue. After the war, Pius XII also adopted a different stance towards the Catholic political parties. Where the Italian Populari and the German Zentrum had been sacrificed to the pre-war belief that the Church and its priests should withdraw from parliamentary activities, after the war the Christian democratic parties in Italy and Germany were 501

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favoured. It is interesting to observe in this regard that the Lateran Seminary – next to the cathedral of the same name in Rome and thus extraterritorial – was used to house almost the entire National Liberation Committee (CLN ) on the initiative of Rector Roberto Ronca. The committee included Giuseppe Saragat, Pietro Nenni, Alcide de Gasperi and other individuals who were to form the first democratic Italian government after the liberation. It is also striking that the seminary was never raided, in spite of the fact that the headquarters of Herbert Kappler, the German chief of police in Rome, was only a hundred metres away.67 Anti-Semitism did not disappear when the war ended. In the months following the liberation, pogroms were reported in Poland, in particular in the city of Kielce. Jacques Maritain, then French ambassador to the Holy See on the request of General De Gaulle, approached Montini, Pius XII ’s deputy Secretary of State, on the subject. In a letter dated 12 July 1946, Maritain wrote that the Nazis had murdered six million Jews and that they were the only ones who wanted to kill the Jews as a people and eradicate them. The ambassador was able to accept that the Holy Father had refrained from addressing the Jews directly and from making solemn and direct statements addressed to the entire world against the tragedy of the deportations; for reasons of prudence and for a greater good or for fear of making the persecutions worse and creating insurmountable obstacles on his way to salvation. But now that National Socialism had been defeated and the circumstances had changed, he could not permit himself – and this was the reason for his letter – to refrain from passing on the appeal from so many fearful souls in Poland and begging the Holy Father to listen to their voice. Maritain was received in audience by Pius XII on 16 July 1946. The Pope decided, nevertheless, not to react.68

2 The second Rome: the patriarchate of Constantinople The contrast could not have been greater. The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, the primus inter pares in the Eastern Orthodox Church, maintained a reserved stance during the Second World War. This reserve was, in the first instance, a personal choice, but it was also dictated by the relationship between Church and state in the new Turkish Republic. Where the Latin patriarch had regained a sovereign passion in his episcopal city, the Greek patriarch was more bound to the state in his episcopal city than he preferred. Veniamin (Christodoulos) had occupied the patriarchal see since 1936. His humility and low profile had more or less put an end – as explained in Chapter 1 – to a period of conflict concerning the character of Orthodoxy’s highest office. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the emergence of the secular Republic of Turkey, and the Greek– Turkish war had had serious consequences for the content and style of his patriarchate. The situation called for a moral standpoint, but Veniamin had maintained a low profile throughout the war. He was a man of ‘personal modesty and political reserve’.69 Turkey opted for neutrality during the Second World War, although it armed itself and mobilized its forces. The patriarch was forced to accept the fact that non-Muslim 502

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men – his faithful included – could be called up to serve as labourers and that a tax on the assets of non-Muslim citizens had been introduced in 1942. The patriarchate only reacted when it was expedient to do so. Contact with the dioceses and monasteries in occupied Greece that stood under the patriarch’s jurisdiction – Crete, the islands of the Dodecanese and the monasteries on Mount Athos – was made difficult by the circumstances of war. Neutrality did not apply to the Greeks – still numbering 100,000 in Istanbul – and the Bulgarians, whose countries of origin were at war with one another. Bulgarian Christians revealed themselves as a self-aware minority in the war years, their symbol the restoration of the Great Church of Bulgarian Orthodoxy dedicated to Saint Stephen. The building was reborn on the Golden Horn, Istanbul’s estuary, and formed a significant contrast in architectural terms with the neighbouring patriarchal cathedral.70 In 1945, Patriarch Veniamin recognized the autonomy of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, albeit under pressure from his fellow patriarch in Moscow and at the moment the Red Army had occupied Bulgaria. He put an end to a schism that had poisoned mutual relations for three-quarters of a century. Russian clergy and diplomats attended a celebratory liturgy in the cathedral in Sofia on the occasion. In his turn, Metropolitan Stephanos (Sofia) attended a Pan-Slavic conference in 1945 where he sang the praises of the Soviet Union, no doubt in recognition of the new power relations.71 Isaac Herzog, Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, reported that the Patriarch of Constantinople had given written instructions to all the bishops in the Balkans and in Central Europe to assist the Jews with every possible means and to announce in the churches that hiding Jews was a sacred duty.72 It seems unlikely nevertheless that he was the true source of relief actions in the Greek and Bulgarian Orthodox Churches or that his appeal was ignored by Romanian Orthodoxy. The Patriarch of Constantinople had no jurisdiction over these so-called autocephalous Churches. The humble patriarch died in September 1946, and for the first time a Turkish administrator – the prefect of Istanbul – attended the funeral. Maksimos Vapotszis was chosen as his successor and once again the Turkish authorities did not disapprove. Patriarch Maksimos served as patriarch for two years and then resigned to spend the rest of his life in retirement as Metropolitan of Ephesus. There was considerable commotion about his person and his political orientation, however, some claiming that he had an unstable character and others that he sympathized with the Soviet Union.73 There is evidence that he made no secret of his preference for the Communist Party in the civil war in Greece and that Greek troops marching through the villages carried statues of him together with Aleksii, the Patriarch of Moscow. When Maksimos stood down at the beginning of 1948 Athenagoras was chosen as patriarch. After a religious formation in Greece, he was appointed Metropolitan of the Orthodox Church in America in 1930 and later became an American citizen. The fact that he did not have Turkish nationality would normally have been a formal obstacle to his election as patriarch. Nevertheless, it is characteristic of the time – the beginning of the Cold War – that Athenagoras was elected and accepted. Shared pressure from the Americans and the Turkish led to the appointment of a patriarch who was able to offer a 503

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counter-balance in terms of his personality and his opinions to the Patriarch of Moscow. Since 1945, moreover, the latter had become a representative of Stalin’s foreign policy.

3 Moscow as the third Rome 3.1 The Church Assembly of 1945 At the end of the Second World War, the historical designation of Moscow as the ‘Third Rome’ acquired a new significance. During the renowned audience with Stalin at the beginning of September 1943, the latter had invited the highest authority of the Russian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Sergii, ‘to create a Vatican of sorts’. The patriarchate of Moscow was to be restored in such a way that the new patriarch would mirror the Latin patriarch, the Pope in Rome. The Russian Orthodox Church, which had been persecuted in the previous decades to the point of extinction, fitted well in the strategy of the day. Now that a turning point had been reached in the war with Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union was set to become the dominant power throughout Central and Eastern Europe. Orthodoxy had once served as an instrument of Russification in the empire of the tsar. Stalin saw the opportunity to use it once again to consolidate his Soviet empire. Patriarch Sergii died on 15 May 1944 after serving a period of eight months in office and a council of bishops came together in November of that year to discuss his successor. The decision was then made to recommend Aleksii, the Metropolitan of Leningrad, to the Sobor as the only candidate. Aleksii had acquired fame as one of the moral leaders of the people in besieged Leningrad and had also been named as locum tenens in the deceased patriarch’s will. Archbishop Luka (Voino-Yasentsky), a former surgeon, reminded his confreres that the election of a patriarch had to be done in secret, following the canonical code of 1917, and that the bishops should be free to choose from the prospective candidates. The sitting bishop was not allowed to name his successor. He thus stated that he would be obliged to vote against the appointment of Aleksii on formal grounds. Luka was the only Russian bishop not to be invited to the Sobor.‘Characteristically, not a single church publication gives any hint of either this incident or of Luka’s absence from the sobor.’74 Forty-one Russian bishops took part in the solemn church assembly, which was organized in Moscow from 31 January to 2 February 1945. Their number was an indication of the extent to which the Russian Orthodox Church had been able to repair itself – with Stalin’s permission – after years of persecution. ‘Some of these bishops may have come out of exile and prisons, after having finally agreed to accept Sergii and his pledge of total loyalty. Others were received back into the Church from the Renovationist schism via repentance. Some were newly ordained from the ranks of widowed priests and surviving monastics with the necessary education.’75 The All Russian Sobor was also attended by patriarchs from abroad, as the Orthodox conciliar tradition prescribed, but not all of them had the same ecclesial status. According to a British diplomat: ‘The Oecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople did not feel able to

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attend in person, & only sent his Exarch in Western Europe. Similarly the Patriarch of Jerusalem, on the ground of poor health, sent one of his bishops. The Patriarch of Antioch appears to have been anxious to go for political reasons, and the Patriarch of Alexandria’s vacillations were ended through his desire not to be outdone by an Arab confrere. Of the newer Orthodox Churches, the Patriarchs of Serbia and Romania alone were represented. The Serbian Patriarch Gavrilo is still in German hands, but it is not clear why Patriarch Nicodim (Munteanu) of Romania merely sent one of his Bishops. The Bulgarian Eparch could not have been invited, the Bulgarian Church still being regarded as being in schism by all the Orthodox except the Russians.’76 The Soviet government had spared neither trouble nor expense to welcome and provide for its ecclesial guests. The same British diplomat observed that churches and monasteries were visited and church music resounded anew for the first in an official concert. ‘On the evening of Aleksii’s enthronement, the Soviets arranged a banquet in Hotel Metropole – the nearest thing to a luxury establishment in drab, wartime Stalinist Russia – “which is understood to have cost 150,000 roubles.” At a time when many people throughout the USSR were at or near starvation level, the contrast with the heavily laden tables of the Metropole, piled high to serve the visiting bishops, was striking.’77 The Sobor of 1945 can be considered the high point of the restoration of the Russian Orthodox Church after the catastrophic persecutions of the preceding decades. It represented a restoration of the administrative authority of the patriarch. On the first day of the sobor, the new Church statutes were unanimously approved. Probably drafted by Sergii, the new statutes ascribed greater power and jurisdiction to the patriarch. And it was also the restoration of an administrative alliance between the Russian state and the Russian Church that was intended from then on to promote the Russification of the Soviet Union’s outlying provinces. The centralization of the authority of Russian Orthodoxy was in fact realized according to the Vatican model. The patriarch acquired ‘papal’ competencies to appoint and dismiss bishops and sometimes even local priests. This right, moreover, was specified with little detail, thus allowing the patriarch to act as he thought best. The Sobor was abolished as a form of democratic church administration and was only called together for the election of a new patriarch. Candidates for the office had to be pre-approved by the state-run Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church, which was established as a means to control the Church. It is also striking that the administration of the local church community was changed in an authoritarian manner. The Bolshevik achievement of a church administration of twenty members was abandoned. ‘In contrast to the 1929 legislation, according to which the priest was simply a hired employee of the “group of twenty”, under the 1945 regulations he became the chairman of the parish community, as well as of the parish meeting and of the parish council (only until 1961, however).’78 But the Church failed to reinstate religious education in the schools. The law that forbade such lessons to more than three children in addition to the use of unauthorized teachers continued to operate. Priests were never granted this authorization. ‘Occasionally a family would invite a priest home for dinner, over which he would informally lead a catechetical conversation for interested 505

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adults or children as the case may be, or a child might receive answers to theological problems during confession.’79 The same Sergii who had called for extensive democratization of the Russian Orthodox Church in the revolutionary spirit of 1905 became the author of – or at least the source of inspiration for – a centralized Church administration along Vatican lines. This form of governance was precisely what none other than Metropolitan Antoni (Hrapovitsky) had called for in 1905, the man who was to become leader of the Orthodox Synod of Russian Emigrants after the October Revolution and evolve in the 1930s into Sergii’s (still locum tenens) greatest opponent. ‘Apparently, Sergii and Aleksii wanted to match the Soviet administrative structure by their church centralization, hoping that such a centralized Church would be stronger and could better withstand future trials and attacks of an ideologically incompatible and hostile state.’80 3.2 Church and state on the road to final victory At the Allied leaders’ conference in Yalta in February 1945, Stalin made his renowned remark to Roosevelt and Churchill concerning the Pope. ‘Let’s make him our ally,’ proposed Churchill. ‘All right,’ smiled Stalin, ‘but as you know, gentlemen, war is waged with soldiers, guns, tanks. How many divisions has the Pope? If he tells us . . . let him become our ally.’81 After this conference, Patriarch Aleksii and Metropolitan Nikolai were summoned to a private audience with Stalin in Moscow on 10 April of the same year. They were told once again that they were expected to play a leading role in the Orthodox Churches of Central and Eastern Europe – along Vatican lines. They were also expected to present the Orthodox faithful with the same propaganda that the Red Army had spread in that part of Europe, which after Yalta had been placed under Soviet influence. Metropolitan Nikolai, who was head of the patriarchate’s Department of Foreign Affairs, was expected to play a very important role in this government policy. He thus chose to cooperate with the expansion of Soviet communism and to work closely with the atheist state. It is probable that he was guided in this by considerations of Russian nationalism and pragmatism that would be of benefit to his Church. ‘The Russian church, by gaining dominance over the churches in the newly acquired areas, could at least save them the bitter experience of experimentation and by guiding their policy could show them the way of least hardship.’82 The Orthodox Church was intent on contributing with force to the war propaganda. Metropolitan Nikolai took his seat on the Pan-Slavic Committee that was charged with calling the Slavic nations to fight the Germans. The Church, according to the metropolitan, is ‘full of sacred hatred toward the enemy’. The evangelical appeal to love of one’s neighbour did not in his opinion deserve priority when it came to the German killers. ‘How shall we now preach the gospel of love and brotherhood to those who do not know Christ, but who have seen the satanic face of the German who claims to be a Christian?’ His rhetorical question is all the more striking given the atheist Soviet Union that formed its context.83 506

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Archbishop Luka received the 1944 Stalin Prize worth 200,000 roubles. He gave 130,000 to state institutions sheltering war orphans and used the remaining 70,000 to help orphans in his own diocese. The reborn Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate was replete with articles underlining the patriotic role of the Orthodox Church in Russia’s long history. It was also reported that church communities sent volunteers to military hospitals or their choir to sing (secular) songs for the war wounded. This patriotic charity was illegal – strictly speaking – according to Soviet law, but it was tolerated in the interests of the war effort.84 The Church also identified itself at another level with the warring state, providing its own public response to the 1943 Christmas message of Pope Pius XII in which he expressed concern about communist domination in Central and Eastern Europe and discussed the desirability of a compromise peace with Germany. In February 1945, the Sobor published a declaration for ‘all the Christians in the world’ in which the approaching victory of the Allies was predicted. It stated, nevertheless, there were some who were called for amnesty to be granted to child murderers and traitors in the name of forgiveness. But, the Sobor stated, ‘in the name of the triumph of the Christian and all-human principles of liberty, the Orthodox Church calls upon all Christians of the world to struggle with all their force against such monstrous distortions of the Saviour’s divine doctrine’. The assembly clearly desired to see fascism and its creators go up in smoke, like candle wax devoured by the flame. ‘Christ’s words, that he who raises the sword shall perish by the sword, are already being visited upon them.’85 The Orthodox Church’s propaganda role was explained for the sake of the Western Allies. The director of the Soviet press office in New York (TASS ), and Moscow’s unofficial spokesperson, informed American journalists of the Kremlin’s conviction that only a Russian Orthodox Church under the control of the state would be powerful enough to stand up to the Vatican. Protestantism was unable to do this because it was highly divided in itself.86 The Soviet state remained cautious. The aforementioned Council for the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church was a state-run organization intended to oversee church administrators and as such it was a copy of the Oberprokuror from the time of the tsars. The Church’s new freedoms were not established in law. ‘Thus, it left the Church as a body still, strictly speaking, outside the normal Soviet legal structure, and therefore subject to attack at any time and to being deprived of the de facto privileges of the 1943–1945 era, which were never confirmed de jure.’87 The fact that religion could be practised in public with a degree of freedom had the potential to lead to situations that might, in the eyes of the secret police, be unmanageable. Believers assembled in reopened churches and demanded the reopening of other churches. The ‘fire’ of Orthodoxy had taken hold of a small number of them and there were police reports of ‘saintly fools’ – a familiar phenomenon in Russian Orthodoxy – missionaries who travelled from village to village trying to reclaim churches with their exceptional religious powers of reasoning.88 After decades of atheist propaganda, there was also a great deal of incomprehension within the party concerning this new official tolerance of the Russian Orthodox Church. A report written by Georgii Aleksandrov, head of the directorate for propaganda in the 507

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Central Committee for the Communist Party, observed that the energies of the people needed to be mobilized in order to defeat the enemy. This meant that anti-religious propaganda in its old form was no longer useful at this juncture. Aleksandrov was forced to admit that the efforts of the communist regime to suppress the faith had not prevented millions of Soviet citizens from continuing to adhere to it. The Church would have to be tolerated during the war, but it remained an enemy. Aleksandrov noted, moreover, that while the Orthodox hierarchy had indeed sided with Stalin, there was still a serious threat from the ordinary priests who were leading liturgical services throughout the country and represented a dangerous political and social power.89 The ‘Renovationists’ who had detached themselves from the patriarchal Church after the October Revolution and had exhibited in the process of renewal a preference for a synodal – i.e. democratic – Church structure were sacrificed to the rebirth of the central Church. In October 1943, Georgii Karpov, responsible for religious affairs in the NKVD (secret police) informed Stalin that the Renovationists had played a constructive role in the past, but in recent years had lost significance. ‘On this basis, and taking into account the patriotic stance of the Sergiite church, the Council for Russian Orthodox Church Affairs has decided not to prevent either the dissolution of the Renovationist church or the transfer of Renovationist clergy and parishes to the patriarchal, Sergiite church.’90 Stalin wrote in the margin that he agreed with Comrade Karpov. The patriarch received an instruction that the Renovationists were not to be deterred by excessively high demands on their return to the patriarchal church. Sergii responded that he was obliged to uphold the rules of canon law for bishops and priests. This meant, for example, that the primate of the church of the Renovationists – Alexander Vedensky – could not return to the patriarchal church because he had been married four times. Canon law in the Russian Orthodox Church prescribed celibacy for bishops. In 1944, 147 churches in the Soviet Union were still being served by the Renovationists, particularly in the Krasnodar and Stavropol regions. The Metropolitan of Stavropol, Vasilii Kozhin, agreed to a process of expressing his regret in the Sobor and became an archpriest in the patriarchal church. The only church still in the hands of the Renovationists in Moscow was the church of Saint Pimen where Alexander Vedensky was pastor. In a campaign against him, complaints were collected about the way in which Alexander and his sons presided at the liturgy, complaints about drunkenness and inappropriate language. But his former links with the apparatus of state saved him from removal as did the fact that no fewer than 8,000 people attended his liturgy at Easter 1945, 40 per cent of whom were relatively young. The bishop sought reconciliation with the patriarch in March 1946 and discovered him on a visit hiding in his garden. ‘Aleksii said that Vedensky might be received as an ordinary priest with the stipulation that he could never enter the altar or serve the Eucharist. Vedensky asked if he could wear his mitre and vestments, and Aleksii responded he could do so only at home or under other clothes. The patriarch fled into his house, leaving a stunned Vedensky to find his own way out.’91 Alexander died in 1946, and the fate of the Renovationists was thereby sealed. The Russian Orthodox Church did everything in its power to bring the faithful under its control and to remind ‘dissenters’ like the Renovationists of the necessity of unity. 508

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Aleksii wrote to his flock that it wasn’t for nothing that the Church insisted with urgency that the name of the patriarch should be remembered in every liturgy and in every church in the Soviet Union. Those who did not do so were strangers to the Orthodox Church.92 The necessity of unity was all the more important and evident because the largest number of open churches was to be found in the western border nations of the Soviet Union: 6,072 in the Ukraine, 633 in Belarus and 343 in the Baltic States, in contrast to 2,297 in the Russian heartland.93 The Nazi regime had brought an end to Stalinist repression in these places and reopened churches. It was vital that believers and churches were brought back under the control of Moscow, both that of the state and that of the Moscow patriarchate. The policy of Russification was a success. Three months after the Sobor, a number of Orthodox Churches in Estonia, Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia expressed a willingness to recognize the leadership of the Patriarch of Moscow. In the second phase at the end of May 1945, a senior delegation of the Russian Orthodox Church (Patriarch Aleksii and Metropolitan Nikolai) undertook a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Alexander, the Patriarch of Antioch, joined them in Beirut and continued with them to Jerusalem where they visited sacred places and the Orthodox Bishop of Jerusalem. In Egypt they met with the Patriarch of Alexandria and were received by King Farouk on 11 June 1945. Metropolitan Nikolai then travelled on to London were he was received by King George VI . Opposition to the dominant position of the Russian Orthodox Church came from the Patriarch of Constantinople, particularly when the said See was occupied by Patriarch Athenagoras from America. The further Greece descended into civil war and the Communist Party received support from Moscow, the more difficult relations between Moscow and Constantinople became. This was early evidence of a development in which the new Cold War set a political limit on the efforts of Aleksii and Nikolai to gather Orthodox support. The leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church received the gratitude of the state for its patriotic policy during the war. Patriarch Aleksii was honoured with the medal for the defence of Leningrad, Metropolitan Nikolai with the medal for the defence of Moscow. During the victory parade in Moscow on 24 June 1945, Orthodox prelates were present on the tribune next to diplomats and overseas guests. The reason for their presence was the Soviet government’s ambition to draw attention to Russia’s new freedom of religion and the new relationship between Church and the state. In a second honour granted on 16 August 1946 by the Supreme Soviet, Patriarch Aleksii received the Order of the Red Banner of Labour for his leadership in promoting patriotic activity during the war.94 Heavy with the laurels of victory, Stalin had rescued the Russian Orthodox Church from the abyss. For him, the Church, with its long national history, was a factor of importance in the defence of Russia. Historians and biographers had speculated on a potentially personal dimension to this turnabout. One presupposition suggests that Stalin was probably moved by the commendatory words of the Patriarch of Moscow. It was possible that ‘eleven years of study in church schools and seminary left in the depths of Stalin’s heart “a carefully concealed trembling before a church” that also could preserve 509

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the image of “the greatest leader of all times and all peoples’ in the memory of generations over centuries”. It is difficult to read a dark soul.’95 In his turn, the patriarch did not hold back on his praise of Stalin. The Sobor of 1945 had started with a collective expression of praise addressed to ‘our beloved leader of the Soviet state and Supreme Commander of our glorious troops, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin’. These words were later to become a fixed element in every public ecclesial statement. They were also the words addressed to Stalin by all the bishops on the occasion of his 70th birthday in 1949, and when he died in 1953 they resounded once again. Moreover, the patriarch together with two archbishops took part in the guard of honour standing by the bier of the deceased marshal.96 The Russian Orthodox Church returned to the service of the state in 1945, a service it sought to abandon forty years earlier. During the great church assembly of 1917, the democratization of the Church’s administration was the most important topic, inspired by the revolutionary spirit of the day. After the October Revolution, however, this modernization was overshadowed by a hitherto unprecedented persecution of the Church. The Great Patriotic War also rectified this situation. The relationship between Church and state in Russia was now as it was in the ‘old days’.

4 Geneva: the World Council of Churches Geneva, the city of Calvin, was an emerging centre of ecumenism in the twentieth century. But the Second World War thwarted the initiative to establish a World Council of Churches (WCC ). When the war broke out, consultation between a total of 196 church administrations was in full swing. An initial plenary – an assembly of the World Council was planned for August 1941 at which it was expected to formally establish itself. The consultation was postponed and the constituent assembly – in Amsterdam – only became possible in 1948. The experience of the war clearly influenced the establishment of the WCC . The model of the Confessing Church that was tested by oppositional Protestants in Germany and reproduced in the Churches in Norway, France and the Netherlands, became a cradle of international ecumenical witness. In addition, the persecution of the Jews occasioned relief actions and political pressure from the secretariat, which was exploring the boundaries of its potential as it gradually took concrete form. The Provisional Committee of the World Council and the secretariat were housed in Geneva, i.e. in neutral Switzerland. This facilitated a certain freedom. Leadership, moreover, had been in the hands of the Dutch pastor Willem Visser ’t Hooft since 1939. He was personally inspired by the theology and person of Karl Barth and used every means at his disposal to introduce a Protestant voice or organize Protestant support for refugees and the persecuted. Ecumenical communication that had been constructed in the Interbellum demonstrated its value during the war. The secretary managed to remain in contact with his dialogue partners in the Anglican and Reformed Churches of France, Great Britain 510

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and the United States. He was thus able – as described in Chapter 9 – to mediate in a contact between Dietrich Bonhoeffer, spokesperson for the ideas of conservative and Christian conspirators in Germany in 1942, and Church representatives of the allied states who were expected to urge their governments to offer an appropriate response to the conspiracy in question. One of the contact persons, Bishop Bell, even succeeded in having the issue debated in the British House of Lords, albeit in a disguised manner. The Provisional Committee worked with the Confessional Churches both shortly before and during the war, in the first instance with those in Nazi Germany and after the spring of 1940 with those in the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway and France. ‘The Confessing Churches in wartime Europe had become centers of renewal of the Church; they had accepted responsibility for freedom, justice and peace of all people and had begun to fight for the unity of the Church.’ They became centres of the idea of ecumenism and of the ecumenical movement in their respective countries.97 While ‘confession’ was an example, the World Council in formation was nevertheless unable to vote on a public declaration on the war. The so-called ‘sentinel’s office’ could not be exercised because the members of the inaugural committee were unable to meet, let alone agree. The chairman, the Archbishop of Canterbury William Temple, was of the opinion that the World Council was not at liberty to operate as a spokesperson for the churches until it had been formally established. In 1942, Pastor Visser ’t Hooft tried to formulate a Christmas message and have it distributed by the members of the Preparatory Committee. ‘The message spoke in general terms about the victory of Christ over injustice and violence. But Archbishop Erling Eidem of Sweden wrote that he could not attach his signature to the message because he did not want to give the impression that he had sided with Anglo-Saxon Christianity and because he believed that Christians in neutral countries should not put their chances of contributing to a future peace at risk.’98 The most important task at the beginning of the war was to organize relief for refugees. In January 1939, a special secretary was appointed within the Provisional Committee of the World Council: Adolf Freudenberg, a pastor in the Bekennende Kirche. The Committee’s first relief action focused on the ‘non-Aryans’ in Vichy France who had been locked up in internment camps. Assistance in the emigration of Jews was also a topic of discussion in 1939 and Freudenberg was able to negotiate the departure from Germany of 1,138 Jewish refugees who had been presented by Pastor Heinrich Grüber’s office, set up to assist Jews who had been baptized Protestant.99 Money for this work had to be found in the United States, but efforts to acquire it were not very successful. The secretary was able to count on the support and experience of the (Protestant) Cimade – see Chapter 4 – who had shown themselves early in the internment camps in France. Before long, activities were organized to help Jewish refugees who were stateless and facing the threat of deportation to Poland. Madeleine Barot and her friends in the Cimade opted for secret routes through the Jura to bring people to safety in Switzerland. Church leaders in Switzerland had come to an agreement with the civil authorities that refugees under threat of deportation would be accepted in Switzerland as long as their names were known in advance.100 511

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A further task of the WCC ‘in formation’ was the provision of pastoral care to prisoners of war. An ecumenical Commission for the Pastoral Care of Prisoners of War was set up to this end, which tried to establish contact with the camps, find ‘congregations in captivity’ and support them. According to the secretary of the WCC ‘in formation’, the Christian Churches and Visser ’t Hooft in person had an obligation to intervene as witnesses on behalf of the persecuted.101 He took this task seriously and travelled to the then unoccupied part of France to support the pastors of the Reformed Church in their opposition to Vichy and to the anti-Jewish measures that had been implemented. He was able to maintain contact with like-minded people in the Dutch Reformed Church via the so-called ‘Swiss road’, an illegal exchange of information with occupied Netherlands. On 29 October 1941, Visser ’t Hooft sent an urgent message to the administration of the International Red Cross – also located in Geneva – to devote special attention to refugees in the Reichsgau Wartheland and in the General Government. He added a memorandum in which he mentioned that Jewish organization in the occupied territories were no longer able to intervene actively on behalf of their people. ‘The Jewish question is related to the heart of the Christian message; if the Church failed to raise its voice in order to protest and to warn and if it failed to do its best to help, it would not be obedient to its Lord.’102 The secretariat’s concern quickly extended to the persecuted Jews. It continued to assist those trying to emigrate, but now added exhortations to states and international organizations to intervene in concrete ways against the deportations or to help alleviate the consequences thereof. In September and October 1942, information reached the secretariat in Geneva concerning the ultimate goal of the deportations: the murder and annihilation of large numbers of Jews. The source of this information – referred to in Chapter  11 – was the World Jewish Congress. Its secretary, Gerhart Riegner, had his office in the same Swiss city. As a result, Pastor Freudenberg increased his efforts to persuade the Swiss authorities to accept more Jewish refugees. In March 1943, the World Council together with the World Jewish Congress issued a memorandum calling for immediate measures to be taken, ‘given that the campaign to eradicate the Jews from almost every European country was now reaching its climax’. It was no longer time to study rules and regulations for the period after the war. The time had now come for immediate assistance. Neutral states should be enabled to offer asylum to Jews who managed to reach their borders. They should be granted financial support to this end and ensured of extra food provisions. A further proposed measure was the exchange of threatened Jews for German citizens in North and South America and in Palestine. Jews were to be included in this exchange programme ‘en bloc’ because individual searches were no longer possible in the prevailing circumstances.103 It later turned out that the reaction among the Allied leaders was not encouraging. The High Commissioner for Refugees of the League of Nations, Herbert Emerson, lamented the fact that only the situation of the Jews had been underlined, ‘giving the impression that there are no other refugees in the world’.104 The Allied guideline – no special attention for specific groups – did not square with the call for special assistance to Jews. According 512

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to Visser ’t Hooft, the core of the memorandum was not taken up for this reason. ‘Once again, theoretical concern for every refugee drew attention away from the immediate danger of the mass extermination of Europe’s Jews.’105 An inter-governmental conference on refugees was held in Bermuda in April 1943, but it did not produce a tangible result. In 1943 and 1944, when the ultimate fate of the deported Jews was now internationally known, the imminent persecution of the Jews in Hungary was openly criticized from Geneva. It was as if those in Geneva were intent on putting as much pressure as possible on the government of a state that had become a source of deportations relatively late. An official and public reaction from the Ecumenical Committee for Refugees and the emerging World Council of Churches was issued in 1944, exposing and denouncing the imminent deportation of 400,000 Jews from Hungary calling upon Christians across the world to raise their voices against this crime.106 The Hungarian Reformed Church, and in particular its leading bishop László Ravasz, were challenged from Geneva on their relatively anti-Semitic position with respect to the Jews in Hungary, which would prevent the Church from ‘pronouncing prejudice-free criticism of national-socialism’. The bishop responded that the Jews in Hungary maintained a system of values that made them a collective. ‘Resolving Hungary’s “Jewish question” demanded a similar collective response, one that treated Jews “in the entire community” and not just “in individual persons”. Individual converts might merit exemptions; Jews as a group most certainly did not.’107 In the eyes of the secretary general, the war had a two-sided effect on the ecumenical movement: ‘the paradoxical result was that the establishment process of the World Council was slowed down on the one hand, yet became much more exhaustive on the other. Many who had not given much thought to ecumenical matters discovered that the movement was spiritually indispensible for the Churches in time of need. At the same time, it became apparent that there were urgent practical tasks that could only be performed by an ecumenical organisation.’108 The World Council of Churches was to be officially established in Amsterdam in 1948. Its inaugurating meeting was a moment of encounter for church leaders on whom the war had left a profound impression and for whom the Christian confession was no longer to be seen as an exclusively constituent factor, but also a factor that motivates and activates.

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1 Monuments The two church monuments in Coventry and Berlin commemorating the Second World War – and discussed in the Introduction – are a combination of old and new. The ruins represent a fossilized memory of a Christian past, but also the violence that appeared to have put an end to that past. The modern buildings attached are an argument in stone for resilience regained and renewed missionary awareness. The Christian Churches, we can thus initially conclude, survived war and occupation and managed to rise again from the chaos of the end that seemed so near; damaged perhaps, but also safe. Ruins, as we have already observed, are not the only painful reminder of the war; martyrs too ignite memories, those who lost their lives because of their office or their faith. Two of the latter, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Maximilian Kolbe, are carved into the western portal of Westminster Abbey in London; a traditional mark of honour bestowed by the church. They were victims in the midst of millions of others who were murdered on account of their birth (Jewish, Slavic, Roma and Sinti) or killed as Russian prisoners of war, or were condemned to the same fate in their tens of thousands because of their political convictions. In contrast, the Churches managed to survive in the midst of war and occupation. The Nazi regime initially saw these institutions as potential allies. When war broke out, moreover, they were tolerated on account of their social influence. The Nazi police took action against pastors, priests and lay people, but these were often resolutely individual actions. The lower clergy did penance for their Church and their Church leaders. It has to be said that – in comparison with Christianity – Germany’s attempts to employ Islam in its war effort were remarkable. It was the SS which eventually took the lead in Germany’s Islamic mobilization campaign in Bosnia and Albania. From 1941 the Wehrmacht and from 1943 the SS recruited thousands of Muslim soldiers. The extent and intensity of this campaign ‘can hardly be overestimated’.1 Stalin in turn decided that the Russian Orthodox Church might be important for the defence of the Russian fatherland and for the territorial expansion of the Soviet Union. The merciless persecution of the church in the 1930s came to an (albeit provisional) end. The national Orthodox Churches in the states liberated by the Red Army and even Orthodox Churches in communion with the Holy See were initially tolerated. One argument for these policy options was the national significance of religion. It had played an essential role in the emergence of the nation state in the nineteenth century: in the preservation and propagation of the national language as was the case with the Orthodox churches or in the propagation of the national ideology by the lower clergy

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(pastors and priests) in Central and Western Europe. This significance can be explained in two different ways. For the warring parties, the ‘indigenous’ religion was a factor that could make a positive contribution to the desired calm in the hinterland, behind the front, but it could also be a negative factor in terms of resistance. For the populations of the occupied countries, the Church was a place of refuge, a representative of the nation oppressed, as was the case in Poland and Norway. Church leaders were invited at times to play the role of intermediary between an occupying power and its ‘subordinates’. The situation in occupied Poland is once again an example hereof. Since the war of independence, the Orthodox Church in Greece had (and still has) a national purpose. During the occupation, its most prominent leader – Archbishop Damaskinos of Athens – became a leading figure in the resistance on account of his personal interventions. And after the capitulation of the occupying forces he was entrusted with a mediating role as provisional president of the state. In occupied Serbia, the Nazi regime ‘disconnected’ Patriarch Gavrilo Dožić in advance for this very reason. He was immediately interned. In states that had allied themselves with Nazi Germany or were forced to do so, voices within the Church were heard in support of endorsing the alliance and critical thereof. In Romania, the Orthodox patriarch served for a period of time as Prime Minister. In vassal states like Croatia and Slovakia, Catholicism played an essential part in the national (and fascist) ideology and in its result, state formation. In Slovakia, for example, a priest even became the first president. One can argue, broadly speaking, that the Churches in Western Europe had more success in the struggle to maintain a degree of independence during the Nazi occupation than their Central and Eastern European counterparts. Central and Eastern Europe represented that part of the continent that Nazis wanted to set aside as a German colonization, a region, in which they could treat the original Slavic population with merciless disdain. In southEastern Europe (Greece and Bulgaria), on the other hand, the church’s most senior leaders managed to exercise a considerable degree of concrete influence.

2 Totalitarian state The establishment of a totalitarian state was a political goal of the communist dictatorship in the Soviet Union and of the Fascist and National Socialist regimes of Italy and Germany respectively. The model was exported with varying levels of intensity to countries under occupation. The consequence for the Churches was that they faced competition and challenge when it came to their social significance and the extent of their influence in the world of education. It is clear that the challenge was focused on Orthodox institutions (especially monasteries) and on the churches of the Reformation, but that it was also intense for the Catholic Churches and their more or less central leadership. At the national level, Protestant and Catholic Churches had taken confessional root in numerous social organizations and institutions and in a network of confessional schools from the nineteenth century onwards. 516

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The evil of ‘state idolatry’ can be discerned in the various forms of totalitarian state. This was challenged by a specifically Catholic response, namely the development of a social doctrine by Pius XI intended to compete with and oppose the totalitarian state. The pre-war response was twofold. The concordat, on the one hand, can be seen as an attempt to establish the boundaries between Church and state with as much accuracy as possible. In so doing, the Catholic Church hoped to maintain the rights it had acquired in education and society. On the other hand, the concept of Catholic Action envisaged a system of social organizations under clerical leadership intent on the exclusion of partypolitical engagement. In the course of the war, however, the Church’s response changed. The Vatican sought to align itself with the Western European powers as well as the United States and presented itself as a supporter of (Christian) democracy. This ‘conversion’ on the part of the Vatican was quite remarkable. Prior to the war it had sacrificed such parties in Italy and Nazi Germany to an ideology; in the course of the war, and in particular in its option for the Western Allies, democracy became a genuine ambition, although Pope Pius XII continued to maintain the official neutrality of the Church with respect to political systems and configurations. It was a decision that had already been made and expounded upon before there was any talk of a Cold War between the former allies. In the Churches of the Reformation, critique of the ‘political religion’ of National Socialism – more than that of ‘state idolatry’ – served as the source of an original concept: the ‘pure confession’. The influence of the Swiss theologian Karl Barth and his radical theology had an inspirational effect on Churches in Nazi Germany and occupied Western Europe, particularly in Norway. The said ‘pure confession’ became the foundation of a militant ‘Confessing Church’ that guarded itself against the ideas and constructions of the political religions. This attitude was not accepted by everyone in the Protestant Churches. It nevertheless united a generation in the occupied countries that had been made ready in the Christian youth movements for such a radical theology. The purity pursued made it possible for a variety of Protestant Churches to publicly testify against injustice in society.

3 Resistance Martyrs testified with their blood to protest and resist, even although their imprisonment and death was frequently intended as a punishment for church leaders. Their fate is commemorated in countless monuments and memorials, including the western entrance to Westminster Abbey in London, and invites us to explore the question of a specifically Christian reaction to war and occupation. The answer to this question reveals a variety of grades on a line between collaboration and resistance. Pastors and priests stepped into the breach in seeking rapprochement with the new regime. This was the case, for example, with the Orthodox Church of the Renewers, which sought conciliation with the (atheistic) Soviet regime after the October Revolution in the form of a social Christianity. It was also the case with respect to the German Christians, who set out to pepper their nationalist convictions with ideas and 517

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texts from both Christian doctrine and German traditional sagas. And it was also the case for Catholics in Slovakia who supported a clerical fascism and in Croatia, where the national incarnation of the latter was particularly cruel. This was, in short, a conscious mingling of religion and politics that gave rise to a political religion. Resistance in Christian circles was tested for its legitimacy and there is evidence of extensive and individual diversity in this regard. The discussion focused on the question whether an act of disobedience against an established authority was justified or not. From a religious perspective, resistance was justified by the argument that civil government had become tyrannical and thus no longer exercised lawful authority. It was possible to base the right to resist on this reality. Additional problems of conscience arose when the debate turned to the idea of armed resistance. Discussion focused on the question whether (ordained) clergy were free to participate in such actions and became particularly pertinent in Catholic Poland and Catholic France. While the issue of the right to resist was addressed in a number of Churches, it was a particular focus of debate among Protestants. In the Lutheran community, with its distinction between spiritual and worldly authority and between spiritual and worldly obedience, the issue played a very significant role. The attack on Hitler’s life on 20 July 1944 gave rise to a lengthy exchange of thought between conservatives and consciously Christian perpetrators on the moral foundations of killing a legitimately elected head of state. The same was true of the Lutheran Church in Norway, which decided to detach itself from its formal relationship with the state and renounce its obedience to Quisling’s Nazi regime. Resistance emerged on occasion for a traditional and deeply rooted non-conformism. Small Christian communities, such as the Waldensians in Italy, the Baptists in the Ukraine, and the Protestant farmers in the French mountains, were often prepared to offer shelter to those who were facing persecution on account of their political convictions or Jewish origins and their rural location offered relative safety. The non-conformism of their hosts was a product of their religious conviction. Sometimes religion had nothing to do with it. Young refugees were saved by an agricultural tradition whereby farmers took children (and local scoundrels) into their homes to provide help during the harvest period. Such help could also be offered by people fleeing Nazi persecution. It is reasonable to claim in broad terms that the majority of the Christian population endured the war and the occupation with varying degrees of resignation, with fear of what might happen, and on occasion with a degree of sympathy for one or another measure. The general trend was acquiescence, reinforced by feelings of personal impotence towards the compulsory measures introduced by the occupying regime (forced labour) and towards instances of famine. Pulpit-based moral condemnations were few and far between. Churches kept their distance partly out of fear of reprisals and partly because they wanted to keep religion away from a political confrontation. Where states were allies of Nazi Germany there is sometimes evidence of striking approval, also in religious terms, of the ‘sitting’ government, certainly in the first years of the war. Approval of this kind can be observed in Vichy France, in clerico-fascist Slovakia and fascist Croatia, and in ‘Latin-Orthodox Romania’. 518

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For practising Christians, Sunday services offered an opportunity for free association, a freedom that was not to be taken for granted in occupied territories. Church services made it possible for people to exchange experiences and personal messages and were often a place of encouragement and comfort. In places where public communication had been adapted to the conditions of war or was subject to ideological manipulation, the pulpit was often an alternative source of news and information, and church communities provided a trustworthy forum for discussion. All this explains in part why religious services appear to have been particularly well attended during the war years. A variant here relates to the Orthodox Churches in regions of the Soviet Union that had been defeated by the Wehrmacht. The said Churches were able to resume their original function as priests came out of hiding or left behind their lay functions to reopen church doors for the liturgy. In certain parts of the Ukraine, for example, religious processions were seen again on the streets. And even in such difficult circumstances, the Church was able to continue as a refuge and sanctuary, within the concessions granted by an otherwise unfathomable Nazi regime.

4 Post-war consequence: ecumenism The struggle for a pure confession and a pure church was to have consequences after the war in the context of critical synods and a critical ecumenical movement. Church leaders with personal experience of war and resistance met together in 1948 in an inaugural assembly in the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam. The World Council of Churches – a project with its roots in the 1930s – became a fact. At that juncture, the federation was primarily a Protestant affair under the leadership of Anglican bishops and pastors from a variety of Protestant denominations. The college that guided the inaugural assembly was an array of conflicting personalities. The Roman Catholic Church had not been invited to send observers. In its turn, the Congregation of the Holy Office in Rome banned Catholics from participating.2 The secretary general, Willem Visser ’t Hooft, did his best nonetheless to leave open explicit channels with the Orthodox world. The Moscow patriarchate was not seen as ‘a branch of the Soviet government’. This led to a pointed discussion during the congress in Amsterdam between John Foster Dulles, the spokesperson for American Protestantism, and the Czech theologian Josef Hromàdka (a student of Karl Barth), who was known to have welcomed the communist coup d’état in Prague that same year (1948) with open arms. The World Council of Churches assembled a decade later in August 1959 on the Greek island of Rhodes, i.e. within the religious domain of Eastern Orthodoxy. It was hosted by the then Patriarch of Constantinople whose official jurisdiction extended to Rhodes. One of the advances achieved by the meeting was the presence of Archpriest Vitaly Borovoj representing the Moscow patriarchate. The establishment of the World Council of Churches is a post-war fact and in a certain sense a consequence of the Second World War. From the ecumenical perspective, 519

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the political alliance of the ‘Big Three’ (the Soviet Union, the United States and Great Britain) against Nazi Germany also offered the WCC with the opportunity to maintain dialogue with Russian Orthodoxy, but for the Catholic Church this was an uneasy combination of Church and politics. The Rhodes congress was organized fourteen years after the end of the Second World War. It was in essence a Postlude that reached further back in time than the simple review of history one might expect from a Conclusion. Three themes were its focus, examples of what the churches inherited from the war and what would be of concrete significance in the following era: the Cold War, European Federalism, and the post-war consequences of the Holocaust.

5 Post-war consequence: the beginning of the Cold War In the last year of the war President Roosevelt tried to arrange an ‘understanding’ between the Vatican and the Soviet Union via his personal emissary in Rome, but his efforts ran aground in face of the Holy See’s more or less explicit insistence that religious freedom should also be extended to Catholics. On the other hand, Pius XII – as noted above – objected to the demand for an ‘unconditional surrender’ that the Allies had presented to Nazi Germany. In a conversation with the American envoy Myron Taylor, he stated that Germany (‘a people of great pride and obstinacy’) would thus be forced to fight to the end and that this would have destructive consequences for German society.3 An attack on Hitler’s life was made on 20 July 1944. It did not succeed, but it did expose a layer of conservative German officers and politicians who were willing to set aside their obedience to the state by removing a tyrant and hoping thereby to put an end to the National Socialist regime. Pius XII wanted to react to the attack with a statement condemning violence of every kind, but the statement did not materialize. It appeared that the diplomatic corps in Berlin – with Nuncio Cesare Orsenigo as its dean – had already congratulated Hitler on surviving the attack.4 This diplomatic manoeuvre was considered to be enough. Pius XII followed American policy, however, when it came to the creation of an international organization with its sights set on guaranteeing a just and enduring peace: the United Nations. On the advice of the American envoy, the Pope added a passage on the desirability of such an organization to his radio address on 1 September 1944.5 In the meantime, the Red Army was advancing towards Poland with Berlin as its final goal. The Vatican instructed priests not to abandon the faithful. The Holy See appeared to consider the position of Catholic Poland in the post-war disposition to be the most important test case in face of the threat of communist domination. At the beginning of 1945, initial reports reached the Vatican about priests in the Polish city of Lublin being deported to Russia and of professors at the Theological Institute being executed. When the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill visited the Vatican shortly after the liberation of Rome in August 1944, the Pope gave priority to informing him of his concerns about the future of Poland. These were evidently early intimations of a future Cold War. 520

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Stalin was well aware that the Pope feared communist domination in Eastern Europe and had therefore appealed for a peace by agreement with Germany instead of ‘unconditional surrender’ demanded by the ‘Big Three’. The religious policies of the Soviet Union were thus intent on striking the Roman Catholic Church with its international leadership. But the primary goal was to ensure that the national Churches in Sovietdominated Eastern Europe, the majority of Orthodox signature, were brought to heel in one way or another. To this end, the decision was made to reinstate the Moscow patriarchate and make it effective at the international level. With a mixture of repression and reward, the Orthodox Churches were brought under the control of national, communist-dominated governments. The climax of this policy was the Pan-Orthodox meeting in Moscow in July 1948, at which the 500th anniversary of Russian ‘autocephaly’ (independence) was celebrated in the presence of numerous ecclesial representatives. The meeting succeeded in creating the impression of a European Orthodoxy under the leadership of the Patriarch of Moscow.6 The spearheads of Stalinist policy towards the Catholic Church were twofold. In the first instance it was intent on liquidating the Roman variant of Orthodoxy: the Greek Catholic Churches in Eastern Europe. In the second instance it led to the arrest of the most important leaders of the Catholic Church in the countries of Central Europe. When the Red Army had driven the Wehrmacht out of the Ukraine, the possibility of a truce between the Soviet masters and the Greek Catholic Church – important in the west of the country – seemed within reach. On 23 November 1944, Metropolitan Iosyf Slipy, successor to the charismatic Sheptytsky, welcomed the liberation of the Ukraine and re-unification with the Soviet Union. He warned against nationalist excesses, a warning that was relevant at a time in which Ukrainian militants were engaged in a rearguard conflict with the Red Army. Soviet policy changed in 1945. Stalin was determined to bring the Orthodox Churches associated with Rome under the authority of the Patriarch of Moscow. Nikita Khrushchev, the party secretary in Ukraine, spearheaded the amalgamation. The offensive against the Greek Catholic Church took two forms. The first was a wave of arrests in April 1945: Metropolitan Slipy, two bishops and a host of priests were arrested. The second was the encouragement of a ‘revolt’ among the ‘Easternizers’, who had long resisted a far-reaching Latinization of this Uniate Church in favour of a pure Eastern Orthodoxy.7 Their leader, the priest Havryil Kostelnyk, stepped forward with a group of priests, who were willing to return to Russian Orthodoxy. The Russian Patriarch Aleksii is said to have called for a break with the Vatican, which had compassion with Hitler. This turned out to be a secret service fabrication.8 The climax came in 1946 when a Sobor (synod) was held in Lviv that had to decide on the incorporation of the Greek Catholic Church into Russian Orthodoxy: 216 priests and 30 lay people were present and Kostelnyk constituted the presidium with two other likeminded colleagues. The resolution of the Sobor declared that the decision of the Synod of Brest from 1596 – the bond between Orthodoxy and the Vatican – was annulled. The break with the Vatican was a fact. The Holy See was perceived as an ally of fascism and 521

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the decision to return to Russian Orthodox had been made.9 The Sobor ended in Hotel Bristol. ‘Kostelnyk exceeded the sobor’s wine budget by 23.008,40 rubles.’10 In 1949, the Greek Catholic churches in the eparchy of Mukachevo and of Ushorod, both in Transcarpathia, were handed over to Russian Orthodoxy. The preceding struggle was less vehement than in the Ukraine. The communist regime in Romania had already forced 400 Greek Catholic priests to accept Romanian Orthodoxy in October 1948. Their bishops were dismissed and the church’s administration liquidated.11 On 10 October 1949, Khrushchev informed Stalin that the reunification of the Orthodox Churches was complete; he called it ‘a mass movement’.12 The Vatican’s say in Eastern Orthodoxy appeared to have been eliminated. The Stalinist policy of arresting Roman Catholic church leaders in Central and Eastern Europe started in Lithuania, the only Soviet republic in which the Catholic Church enjoyed a prominent position. In 1945, the communist authorities asked the bishops for their cooperation in the guerrilla struggle against the Lithuanian nationalists who were determined to resist the Sovietization of their country. The church leaders were expected to convince the said nationalists to lay down their arms. One diocesan leader, K. Paltarokas, consented, but the others refused and some published pastor letters on the fifth commandment: Thou shalt not kill. As a result, all the bishops were arrested in the period between 1945 and 1947 with the single exception of Bishop Paltarokas, who was also spared on account of his advanced age.13 Around 1950, the most prominent Catholic Church leaders in countries in Central Europe with a large Catholic population were arrested and tried. Josef Beran, the Archbishop of Prague who had distinguished himself in the resistance and had been imprisoned in Dachau, was detained in 1949. Alojzije Stepinac, the Archbishop of Zagreb who had already been arrested in 1945 was arrested once again in 1946. His detention was directly related to the trial of leading figures in Croatia, a vassal state of Germany and Italy during the Second World War. He was sentenced to forced labour, but when Yugoslavian President Tito distanced himself from the Soviet Union his sentence was commuted to house arrest in his home town of Krašić. When he was appointed cardinal at the end of 1952, political difficulties surrounding his person flared up once again. The arrest of József Mindszenty, the Archbishop of Esztergom, on 29 December 1948 caused the greatest stir. He was accused of high treason, currency speculation and crimes against the Republic. The main charge was related to his association with Otto von Habsburg and his ambition as ‘prince-primate’ of Hungary to restore the monarchy. He was sentenced to life imprisonment on 8 February 1949 in a court case that attracted global attention and led to numerous protests. In September 1953, Stefan Wyszyński, Archbishop of Gniezno and Warsaw, was also detained. He had succeeded in 1950 to establish an official understanding with the government in Poland whereby the Catholic Church declared its loyalty to the communist state in exchange for the preservation of certain Church rights. The persecution of the church reached its climax in 1953, the year of Stalin’s death and a moment of exceptional mourning in the communist world. 522

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6 Post-war consequences: European federalism In Vichy France – and in spite of it being an example of Catholic endorsement – a Christian resistance movement evolved that was later to disseminate its ideas in the ‘nouvelle theologie’ movement. Fifteen years later, representatives of this movement such as the Jesuit and resistance fighter Henri de Lubac and Dominican and former army officer Yves Congar were present as experts at the Second Vatican Council, an assembly that debated and defined the process of ‘aggiornamento’, the modernization of the Catholic Church. The resistance movement also produced a number of politicians – including George Bidault, Maurice Schumann and Robert Schuman – who were to play an important role in a series of French governments and in the realization of European federalism. After the war, Paris was restored to its place as the world’s intellectual capital. ‘French intellectuals acquired a special international significance as spokesmen for the age, and the tenor of French political arguments epitomized the ideological rent in the world at large.’14 This not only applied to the new generation of philosophers such as Jean-Paul Sartre and to the broad debate on Marxism, it also applied to Catholic intellectuals such as Jacques Maritain and Emmanuel Mounier and to the Protestant philosopher Denis de Rougemont. They formulated the ideas of a personalism that came to be seen as a ‘third way’ between communism and liberalism. These same circles also called for a (European) federalism that was to move beyond theory in France and acquire concrete constitutional form under external influence of economists like Jean Monnet. After the liberation, Christian democratic parties were established or re-established in the nations of Western Europe. This applied to Germany (CDU ) and Italy (DC ), but also to republican France, where the Popular Republican Movement (MRP ) – a Catholic party without a confessional identifier – became the largest in the country in 1946. Initiatives were generated by lay people, but there was clear knowledge of Vatican endorsement. In 1946, when elections were being held almost simultaneously in France and Italy for the creation of a constitutive assembly that was to establish a new constitution, Pius XII published a declaration in which he presented Catholic voters with a political dilemma: opting for the ‘solid rock’ of Christian civilization, or the ‘omnipotence of a materialistic state without God’.15 In the West German Federal Republic and in Italy, Christian democratic leaders such as Konrad Adenauer and Alcide de Gasperi managed to keep their respective parties in power for many years. The MRP in France was less successful, although it remained a crucial political force until the middle of the 1950s. ‘The Christian Democratic parties were ideally placed to capitalize on virtually every aspect of the post war condition: the desire for stability and security, the expectation of renewal, the absence of traditional right-wing alternatives and the expectations vested in the state – for in contrast to the conventional Catholic politicians of an earlier generation, the leaders of Christian Democratic parties and their more radical young followers had no inhibitions about enrolling the power of the state in pursuit of their goals.’16 After the war, Pius XII revealed himself to be not only a supporter of the reconstruction of defeated Germany, but also of a European federation along Swiss lines. Such a 523

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federation would have to be inspired by Christian values and choose its own direction alongside its American allies.17 This Vatican ideal was not so far removed from the European unification to which Christian democratic leaders like Schuman, Adenauer and De Gasperi made a critical contribution. Pius XII welcomed – on three occasions no less – its first supranational result in 1952, the European Coal and Steel Community. In contrast to this Christian, predominantly Catholic support for (Western) European federalism, a realization developed within Slavic Orthodoxy of ecclesial solidarity with Eastern Europe and with Moscow as the third Rome. The old schism of 1054 came to life again in an aversion to Latin Rome. This contrast was nourished in part by a conscious political campaign, but it was also possible to hark back to centuries of historical consciousness and to visible cultural differences.

7 An ecclesial answer to the persecution of the Jews The final and most urgent question in our concluding reflections is the following: what answer did the Christian Churches offer to the greatest evil in Hitler’s war, the persecution and murder of six million Jews and thousands of Sinti and Roma? In hindsight, this was the primary moral challenge of Nazi years. It can already be stated that there is no evidence of church intervention on behalf of homosexual men who were persecuted primarily in Nazi Germany or on behalf of the Jehovah’s Witnesses who were imprisoned for their principled refusal to do military service. Homosexuals were considered to be outside the bounds of Catholic moral teaching and thus went unnoticed, so to speak. The Jehovah’s Witnesses on the other hand were understood to be on the margins of the community of Christian Churches, a sideline position they freely preferred to maintain. The ecclesial stance on the Jews was determined by three negative factors. When the Roman governor Pontus Pilate offered them a choice between the execution of Jesus and the execution of Barabbas they opted for Jesus. The first negative factor was the ancient ‘deicide’ argument. The second factor was an aversion to emancipated and secularized Jews, jealousy towards their economic progress, their scientific research (psychoanalysis) and a ‘subconscious resentment towards the moral sobriety even secular Jews exposed’.18 The third was a contemporary factor: Jews should have been significantly involved in the Bolshevik revolution and in the advance of (atheistic) Bolshevism in Europe. The Churches offered little if any open challenge to the ‘legal’ discrimination of Jews in Nazi Germany and the judicial consequences thereof in countries under occupation. The ghettoization that followed was met with a similar silence. Protests from church instances against the deportations are known to us, but the vast majority had to do with the deportation of Jews who had been baptized and against the state’s intention to dissolve mixed marriages. There were also exceptions. In Vichy France, for example, the French Reformed Churches under the leadership of Pastor Marc Boegner were among the first to offer public protest against legal discrimination. In the Orthodox world, the Athenian 524

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Archbishop Damaskinos and the Bulgarian Metropolitan Stephanos did their best to prevent deportation and offered Jews the possibility of seeking refuge in church institutions such as monasteries. It would appear that protest was more vocal and better organized the further one was from the centre of Slavic Orthodoxy. In the Catholic Church, public protest is associated with the French bishop Jules Saliège (Toulouse) and with the Dutch episcopate as a whole who worked in ecumenical solidarity with the Protestant Churches. The critical pastoral letters written by Archbishop Johannes de Jong (Utrecht) and his fellow bishops led to punitive Nazi measures – the deportation of baptized Jews from occupied Netherlands – and their intervention thus became a subject of global debate. Was public protest a blessing or a curse? The Dutch experience provided an argument in support of those in the Vatican who preferred to err on the side of caution, not the least of them Pope Pius XII . Silence, to a certain degree, could have positive effects. The Belgian Cardinal Van Roey remained silent, intent, among other things, on not disrupting the assistance already being offered to Jews in churches and monasteries. A relatively large number were saved, especially, but not exclusively, in religious institutions in Brussels and Wallonia. It should also be noted that a number of these monasteries observed the cloister and were not accessible to outsiders. Permission thus had to be acquired from the local bishop to open the doors to refugees. No single senior church leader in Europe protested openly and in no uncertain terms against the persecution of the Jews. In spite of sometimes dramatic calls to speak out, Pope Pius XII limited himself to a few general condemnations of the persecution of people on account of their race. It is known, nevertheless, that he allowed Jews to seek places of safety in Vatican institutions. The World Council of Churches had not yet been constituted and was thus unable to reach agreement on a declaration. Its secretariat in Geneva played an active role nevertheless in the propagation of information related to the persecution of the Jews. The Patriarch of Constantinople remained silent. Restored to his office, the Patriarch of Moscow called for a ‘Great Patriotic War’ against Nazi Germany, but he made no concrete references to the persecution of the Jews. Individual Christians made it possible for persecuted Jews to find places of refuge and safety. The organization of these efforts was a local phenomenon. Some Christian households opened their doors, as did some monasteries of religious men and – primarily – women. The identity of the Jews in their care had to be concealed. This meant that he or she – and especially the children – had to adopt a Christian identity and were often obliged to accept baptism. This led to problems after the war. In some instances those offering protection understood this new identity as provisional, in others they did not. Painful conflicts emerged after the war between Protestant and Catholic leaders and Jewish instances on the significance of the baptism of Jewish children. Few if any church protests are known to us with respect to the deportation of Sinti and Roma. In most instance they were left to face deportation and murder. This is all the more striking when aware that many of the said families were baptized Christians. 525

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8 Post-war consequences: an admission of guilt Shortly after the end of the Second World War in Europe, the Christian Churches in Germany engaged in a process of reflection on their part in war and persecution. Half a century later, a selection of European churches openly admitted negligence with respect to the persecution of the Jews. We offer here a – necessarily – brief survey, focusing on three points of reference: the defeat of Germany in 1945, the ‘discovery’ of the Holocaust in the 1960s and the admission of guilt as an act of purification on the threshold of the twenty-first century. After the capitulation on 8 May 1945, the German Churches publicly stated their desire to submit themselves to a critical evaluation. In August of the same year, the conference of bishops in Fulda drafted a pastoral letter which lamented the fact that many Germans – ‘from our own ranks also’ – had let themselves be blinded by the false doctrine of National Socialism and had remained indifferent to crimes against human freedom and human dignity; many had promoted these crimes by the attitude they took, and many had become criminals themselves. The bishops rejected a collective indictment of the German people, but this passage was scrapped by order of the American military authorities.19 In October 1945, the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany meeting in Stuttgart under the chairmanship of the Lutheran Bishop Wurm issued a Declaration in the presence of an ecumenical delegation. ‘We are aware that we do not only stand with our people in the great community of suffering, but also in a solidarity of guilt. Through us, many peoples and nations were exposed to endless suffering. What we have often declared in the name of our own communities we now declare in the name of the entire Church: While we struggled for many years in the name of Jesus Christ against the spirit that took terrible concrete form in the violent National Socialist regime, we accept the accusation that we did not confess with enough courage, pray with enough fidelity, believe with enough joy, and love with enough devotion.’20 The Stuttgart Declaration was not supported by all the Landeskirchen; only four out of 27 gave their agreement. It is striking that the Jews were not mentioned explicitly in the Declaration and that ‘the sins that it confesses are primarily sins of omission, not of commission: of not doing enough to help, rather than doing the wrong thing in the first place’.21 Nevertheless, it was a courageous declaration in a country that lay in ruins after years of prominence, the population of which had been seriously uprooted. The Fraternal Council of the Evangelical Church met in Darmstadt in 1947 to draw a close to the war chapter of the Bekennende Kirche. The Council adopted a declaration – that became known as the Darmstädter Wort – in which the errors of German Protestantism under the Nazis were sketched by the Lutheran theologian Hans-Joachim Iwand and by Karl Barth. One of these errors was the dream of a special German mission whereby ‘we opened the door to an limitless use of political power and placed our nation on the throne of God’.22 While the Darmstädter Wort did not discuss the Holocaust, the following meeting of the Fraternal Council (also in Darmstadt in 1948) did. The Council bitterly regretted ‘that antisemitism rose and flourished, not only among the people (who 526

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still seemed to be a Christian nation), not only among the intelligentsia, and in governmental and military circles, but also among Christian leaders. And when finally this radical antisemitism, based on racial hatred, destroyed our nation and our churches from within, and released all its brutal force from without, there existed no power to resist it.’23 The extent to which the Holocaust was already a determining factor for public evaluation in 1945 is a question that can also be asked at the international level of church administration, namely to the World Council of Churches and to the Vatican. An indicator was the stance these two institutions adopted on what happened in 1948 in the former British Mandate for Palestine: the foundation of the state of Israel as a Zionist ideal and as a consequence of the persecution and killing of European Jews and the subsequent expulsion of Palestinian inhabitants. At its constitutive assembly in Amsterdam in 1948, the new World Council of Churches was unequivocal. It stated in a report, that ‘we must acknowledge in all humility that too often we have failed to manifest Christian love towards our Jewish neighbours, or even a resolute will for common social justice. We have failed to fight with all our strength the age-old disorder of man which anti-semitism represents.’ The Churches were called upon to combat this anti-Semitism as a ‘sin against God and man’.24 The World Council also reflected on the foundation of the state of Israel at its 1948 meeting. At that moment they were confronted with the fact that 350,000 Arabs and others had been forced to flee their homes in the ‘Holy Land’. In a resolution, the Council called to mind the roots of the problem: the concern of the Churches for Jewish refugees. Now it called for a ‘distinctive and maximum Christian effort’ in offering assistance to all the Christians in Palestine.25 In this international assembly, a recognition of the political or religious legitimacy of the state of Israel was not yet self-evident. Israel continued to be a discordant theme in the ecumenical world. At the following meeting of the World Council in Evanston in August 1954, this even led to a separate declaration from primarily European representatives expressing a conscious biblical hope ‘in Christ’s coming victory’, that ‘includes our hope for Israel in Christ’. This statement was not supported by the majority of representatives. They were of the opinion that the Jews should not be ascribed a unique place in history because such would constitute a form of discrimination. This majority enjoyed the support of a small number of representatives from the Middle East.26 After the war, the Vatican likewise opposed the realization of a Zionist ideal. On 8 August 1944, roughly a month after the liberation of Rome, the Vatican received a visit from Lord Gort, High Commissioner to the British Mandate for Palestine. It was made clear to Gort in a note from the Secretary of State that Palestine was not to become a ‘Jewish Home’ or ‘Arab Home’, but rather ‘a Catholic Home and Catholic Centre’.27 Six weeks after the arrival of allied troops in Rome, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill paid a visit to Pope Pius XII . In preparing for the meeting, Domenico Tardini, the deputy Secretary of State wrote the following: ‘From a religious (the most important) point of view, Palestine is a Holy Land not only for the Jews but to a far greater extent for all Christians and especially for Catholics. To give it to the Jews would be to offend all 527

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Christians and infringe upon their rights.’ The Holy See was willing to grant an exception to allow Jews ‘at the present time’ to emigrate to Palestine in so far as this was ‘justified by the dangers to which Jews are exposed in various countries’.28

9 Admission of guilt in the Catholic Church The first sign of a change in attitude in the Catholic Church with respect to the Jews became visible in 1959 in the first year of the pontificate of John XXIII (Angelo Roncalli). Cardinal Achille Silvestrini remembered the emotions stirred that year on Good Friday, ‘when John XXIII suddenly called the master of ceremonies and said: “Please, eliminate that perfidi from the prayer we read on Good Friday.”29 The prayer for the ‘perfidious Jews’ had signalled for centuries a consciousness of Jewish ‘deicide’ and on some occasions had signalled the beginning of pogroms. The new Pope announced the convention of a Council in 1959 that has entered history as the Second Vatican Council, the ‘aggiornamento’ Council that was to modernize Catholic doctrinal teaching. As part of the preparations, questions and aspirations were collected in 1959 and 1960 from bishops and church organizations with a view to determining the Council’s agenda. The submissions did not include a call for reflection on the Holocaust and the Catholic Church, but the latter came nonetheless from an individual, Jules Isaacs, a French inspector of public schools. Isaacs was a prominent member of a group of French Jews and Catholics that had assembled in 1947 in an Amitié Judéo-chrétienne de France. One of them was the philosopher Jacques Maritain. Influenced by the Holocaust, the group had drafted a programme of reconciliation between Judaism and Catholicism during a conference held in the Swiss village of Seelisberg. The said document was received in Rome in 1960 and supplemented with other material, namely a report by Dutch experts headed by seminary president Anton Ramselaar and a proposal from the priest John Oesterreicher who had by this time become an American citizen. This was the start of a discussion that was to last four years and to result in of the documents of the Council. Isaacs had endeavoured to draw Pope Pius XII ’s attention to the subject in 1949, but a brief meeting during an audience in Castel Gandolfo had produced no results. Ten years later, however, on 13 June 1960, the 81-year-old Isaacs managed to speak to John XXIII about the matter. An initial attempt to move forward had been frustrated by Cardinal Ottaviani, then the head of the Congregation of the Holy Office, but the second attempt succeeded. The Pope passed on Isaacs’ dossier to the new Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity led by the German and Jesuit Cardinal Augustinus Bea and the Dutch Bishop Johannes Willebrands. The Secretariat had not only been charged with ecumenical matters, but had also been given an ‘interreligious mandate’.30 The Secretariat was required to keep this mandate secret – ‘sub secreto’ – on account of the critical stance of the patriarchs of the Eastern Churches. In the Middle East, and particularly in Syria and the Palestinian territory, Christians were conscious of the Arab identity and were thus opposed to Israel. This meant that the Orthodox 528

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Churches – Uniate or not – had difficulties with the idea of an admission of guilt concerning the persecution of the Jews, even if it was not formulated in terms of rapprochement with the Jewish state. On the other hand, a performance of The Deputy, a theatre piece by Rolf Hochhuth critical of Pius XII , inspired a number of Council participants to call for a statement on the Catholic Church and the Holocaust. The statement was made during the Second Vatican Council in a declaration on ‘non-Christian religions’ entitled Nostra Aetate. ‘This sacred council remembers the spiritual ties which link the people of the new covenant to the stock of Abraham.’ ‘Abraham’s stock’ shared therein a place alongside Hindus, Buddhists and Muslims. Pope Paul VI promulgated the declaration on 28 October 1965 after the plenary assembly had voted to accept it 2,312 to 88. The Declaration states that while the Church considers itself the new people of God, the Jews cannot be presented as rejected or cursed by God. ‘They do not teach anything that does not conform to the truth of the Gospel and the spirit of Christ.’ The Church rejects every form of persecution. ‘The Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel’s spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against the Jews at any time and by anyone.’31 At the same time, however, ‘there was no reference to the Holocaust or the church’s own historical responsibility’.32 A new phase in the ongoing debate about the Catholic Church and the Holocaust opened with the papacy of John Paul II . In 1978, the Polish Pope visited Auschwitz concentration camp and in 1986 he was officially received in Rome’s Great Synagogue. In the course of 1993, the Holy See engaged for the first time in negotiations with the government of the state of Israel on the question of official recognition. Differences of opinion were settled in a ‘Fundamental Agreement’ issued in the same year and (political) recognition became a fact on 10 May 1994. John Paul II visited Israel in 2000 and was the first Pope to enter Yad Vashem, Israel’s official memorial to the victims of Jewish persecution and the Holocaust. With the new millennium in sight, efforts were made to formulate a more or less definitive admission of guilt. A papal commission under the leadership of Cardinal Edward Idris Cassidy wrote a document entitled ‘We Remember – A Reflection on the Shoah’, which stated, among other things, that ‘alongside courageous men and women’, who offered help to Jews in search of a place of safety, ‘the spiritual resistance and concrete action of other Christians was not that which might have been expected from Christ’s followers. For Christians, this heavy burden of conscience of their brothers and sisters during the Second World War must be a call to penitence.’ The document also included statements from a number of episcopal conferences. The French bishops – with Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, Archbishop of Paris, who considered himself to remain Jewish – published a Déclaration de Repentance in which they stated that the Church of France together with the Christian people bore responsibility ‘for failing to lend their aid, from the very first moment when protest and protection were still possible as well as necessary, even if, subsequently, a great many acts of courage were performed’.33

529

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NOTES

Introduction 1. Benz and Distel, Der Ort, Volume 2, p. 253. 2. Schnabel, Die Frommen, p. 74. 3. Nipperdey, Deutsche Geschichte, p. 403. 4. Blaschke, Konfessionen, pp. 25–8. 5. Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes. 6. Burleigh, Earthly Powers, pp. 4–5. 7. Dawson, Religion, p. 52. 8. Snyder, Bloodlands.

1 Church and State, Church and Nation after the First World War 1. Pressel, Kriegspredigt, pp. 295 and 306. 2. Pressel, Kriegspredigt, pp. 295 and 306. 3. Kühl-Freudenstein et al., Kirchenkampf, p. 66. 4. Notmeier, Adolf von Harnack, pp. 470–1. 5. Misiunas and Taagepera, Baltic States, p. 125. 6. Sturtzer, Les églises protestantes, p. 15. 7. Kossmann, The Low Countries, p. 304. 8. Encrevé and Poujol, Les protestants français, p. 16. 9. Missalla, ‘Gott mit uns’, p. 97. 10. Gerber, Historische Zeitschrift 294, pp. 361–90. 11. Wolff and Hoensch, Catholics, pp. 75 and 79. 12. Wolff and Hoensch, Catholics, p. 69. 13. Gentile, Grande Italia, p. 121. 14. Burggraeve, Is God een Turk?, p. 45. 15. Scholder, Die Kirchen, Volume 1, p. 72. 16. Magocsi, A History of Ukraine, p. 603. 17. Mayeur, Histoire du Christianisme, p. 705. 18. Porter-Szücs, Faith and Fatherland, p. 160. 19. Kloczowski, Histoire religieuse, p. 437. 20. Heyer, Kirchengeschichte, pp. 213–14. 21. Bociurkiw, The Ukrainian Church, p. 23. 531

Notes 22. Klier, Kriegspredigt, p. 143. 23. Mitchell, Revolution, p. 166. 24. Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, p. 74. 25. Hanebrink, In Defense, p. 73. 26. Deàk et al., The Politics of Retribution, p. 49. 27. Hummel and Kösters, Kirchen, p. 179. 28. Vos and Goddeeris, De strijd, p. 254. 29. Kloczowski, Histoire religieuse, p. 440. 30. Pollard, The Vatican, p. 5. 31. Mayeur, Histoire, pp. 22–3. 32. Scholder, Die Kirchen, Volume 1, p. 67. 33. Fouilloux, Les chrétiens français, p. 151. 34. Mayeur, Des Partis catholiques, p. 149. 35. Shevzov, Russian Orthodoxy, pp. 51–2. 36. Fireside, Icon, p. 3. 37. Fletcher, A Study in Survival, p. 28. 38. Pospielovsky, The Russian Church, Volume 1, p. 20. 39. Alexeev and Stavrou, The Great Revival, p. 30. 40. Miner, Stalin’s Holy War, p. 33. 41. Fireside, Icon, p. 26. 42. Alexeev and Stavrou, The Great Revival, p. 14. 43. Alexeev and Stavrou, The Great Revival, p. 16. 44. Roslof, Red Priests, p. 61. 45. Pospielovsky, The Russian Church, Volume 1, p. 56. 46. Struve, Les chrétiens, p. 307. 47. Alexeev and Stavrou, The Great Revival, p. 19. 48. Fletcher, A Study in Survival, pp. 29–30. 49. Pospielovsky, The Russian Church, Volume 1, p. 109. 50. Alexeev and Stavrou, The Great Revival, p. 22. 51. Billington, Russia, p. 28. 52. Fitzpatrick et al., Russia, p. 298. 53. Figes, The Whisperers, pp. 44–7. 54. Figes, The Whisperers, p. 33. 55. Hernandez, ‘Sacred Sound and Sacred Substance’, pp. 1475–1504. 56. Hernandez, ‘Sacred Sound and Sacred Substance’, p. 1483. 57. Hernandez, ‘Sacred Sound and Sacred Substance’, p. 1504. 58. Roslof, Red Priests, p. 143. 59. Pospielovsky, The Russian Church, Volume 2, p. 368. 60. Heyer, Kirchengeschichte, p. 182.

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Notes 61. Alexeev and Stavrou, The Great Revival, p. 188. 62. Fireside, Icon, p. 35. 63. Pospielovsky, The Russian Church, Volume 2, p. 175. 64. Runciman, The Great Church, p. 411. 65. Jelavich and Jelavich, The Balkans, pp. 87–8. 66. Turczynski, Konfession, pp. 271–2. 67. Mazower, The Balkans, p. 75. 68. Bucur and Wingfield, Staging the Past, pp. 250–1. 69. Cirkovic, The Serbs, p. 261. 70. Heyer, Kirchengeschichte, p. 91. 71. Turczynski, Konfession, p. 12. 72. Biondich, ‘Controversies’, p. 430. 73. Biondich, ‘Controversies’, p. 431. 74. Wolff and Hoensch, Catholics, p. 34. 75. Alexander, Triple Myth, p. 56. 76. Friedman, Bosnian Muslims, p. 62. 77. Mazower, The Balkans, p. 97. 78. Alexander, Triple Myth, p. 34. 79. Fischer-Galati et al., Romania, p. 240. 80. Ramet, Nihil Obstat, pp. 182–3. 81. Mazower, The Balkans, p. 107. 82. Gillet, Réligion, p. 94. 83. Rouse and Neill, Ecumenical Movement, p. 416.

2 Religion and Totalitarian Ideology 1. Scholder, Die Kirchen, Volume 1, p. 281. 2. Scholder, Die Kirchen, Volume 1, p. 283. 3. Scholder, Die Kirchen, Volume 1, pp. 283–4. 4. Scholder, Die Kirchen, Volume 1, p. 277. 5. Kershaw, Hitler 1889–1936, p. 14. 6. Zipfel, Kirchenkampf, pp. 8–10. 7. Zipfel, Kirchenkampf, pp. 8–10. 8. Hummel and Kißener, Die Katholiken, p. 121. 9. Volk, Akten deutscher Bischöfe, Volume 34, p. 466, footnote 2. 10. Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp. 379–80 and 632. 11. Steigmann-Gall, The Holy Reich, pp. 219–20. 12. Steigmann-Gall, The Holy Reich, p. 221. 13. Dawson, Religion, p. 52.

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Notes 14. Gevers and Bank, Religion, Volume 1, p. 320. 15. Scholder, Die Kirchen, Volume 1, p. 123. 16. Scholder, Die Kirchen, Volume 1, pp. 136–7. 17. Scholder, Die Kirchen, Volume 1, p. 123. 18. Scholder, Die Kirchen, Volume 1, p. 162. 19. Scholder, Die Kirchen, Volume 1, p. 125. 20. Scholder, Die Kirchen, Volume 1, p. 141. 21. Scholder, Die Kirchen, Volume 1, pp. 140–2. 22. Steigmann-Gall, The Holy Reich, passim; Bärsch, Die politische Religion, passim. 23. Scholder, Die Kirchen, Volume 1, p. 272. 24. Scholder, Die Kirchen, Volume 1, pp. 180–1. 25. Schneider, Reichsbischof, pp. 89–91. 26. Scholder, Die Kirchen, Volume 1, pp. 233–5. 27. Scholder, Die Kirchen, Volume 1, p. 270. 28. Scholder, Die Kirchen, Volume 2, pp. 18–19. 29. Scholder, Die Kirchen, Volume 1, p. 421. 30. Scholder, Die Kirchen, Volume 1, pp. 469–70. 31. Scholder, Die Kirchen, Volume 1, p. 470. 32. Scholder, Die Kirchen, Volume 1, p. 664. 33. Scholder, Die Kirchen, Volume 1, pp. 704–5. 34. Scholder, Die Kirchen, Volume 1, p. 731. 35. Schneider, Reichsbischof, pp. 219–21. 36. Scholder, Die Kirchen, Volume 1, p. 581. 37. Schmidt, Martin Niemöller, passim. 38. Koch, Karl Barth, Volume 5, pp. 108–9. 39. Scholder, Die Kirchen, Volume 1, pp. 687–8. 40. Scholder, Die Kirchen, Volume 1, p. 687. 41. Busch, Barths Lebenslauf, p. 57. 42. Busch, Barths Lebenslauf, pp. 112–13. 43. Beintker et al., Karl Barth, pp. 429 and 432–3. 44. Busch, Barths Lebenslauf, pp. 121–2. 45. Beintker et al., Karl Barth, pp. 249–50. 46. Busch, Barths Lebenslauf, p. 221. 47. Barth, Theologische Existenz, passim. 48. Barth, Theologische Existenz, pp. 39–41. 49. Barth, Theologische Existenz, pp. 46–8. 50. Harinck, 75 Jaar, p. 12. 51. Barth, Theologische Existenz, pp. 58–61. 52. Barth, Theologische Existenz, pp. 69–70. 53. Scholder, Die Kirchen, Volume 1, p. 742. 534

Notes 54. Scholder, Die Kirchen, Volume 2, pp. 182–3. 55. Busch, Barths Lebenslauf, p. 258. 56. Scholder, Die Kirchen, Volume 2, p. 185. 57. Barth, Texte, pp. 1–5. 58. Besier, Die Kirchen, Volume 3, p. 39. 59. Hummel and Kösters, Kirchen, p. 224. 60. Albrecht, Katholische Kirche, p. 29. 61. Besier, Die Kirchen, Volume 3, p. 610. 62. Besier, Die Kirchen, Volume 3, p. 341. 63. Albrecht, Katholische Kirche, p. 29. 64. Besier, Die Kirchen, Volume 3, p. 385. 65. Scholder, Die Kirchen, Volume 2, p. 283. 66. Besier, Die Kirchen, Volume 3, pp. 90–2. 67. Schäfer, Landesbischof, p. 10. 68. Besier, Die Kirchen, Volume 3, p. 88. 69. Besier, Die Kirchen, Volume 3, p. 637. 70. Gerlach, Als die Zeugen, p. 170. 71. Besier, Die Kirchen, Volume 3, p. 647. 72. Bethge, Bonhoeffer, pp. 556–7. 73. Bethge, Bonhoeffer, pp. 725–6. 74. Brakelmann, Kirche, p. 127. 75. Brakelmann, Kirche, p. 128. 76. Volk, Akten deutscher Bischöfe, Volume 34, pp. 1012–16. 77. Binchy, Church, pp. 30–59. 78. Kertzer, The Pope, p. 25. 79. Kertzer, The Pope, p. 61. 80. Kertzer, The Pope, p. 29. 81. Kertzer, The Pope, p. 50. 82. Chenaux, Entre Maurras, p. 227. 83. Nelis et al., Catholicism, p. 41. 84. Achille Ratti, p. 391. 85. Chenaux, Entre Maurras, p. 148. 86. Binchy, Church, pp. 157–8. 87. Pollard, Catholicism, pp. 89 and 97. 88. Vincent, Catholicism, p. 222. 89. Mayeur, Histoire du Christianisme, Volume 12, p. 386; Pollard, The Vatican, pp. 147–57. 90. Kertzer, The Pope, p. 273. 91. Chadwick, Britain, p. 22. 92. Divini Redemptoris, p. 24. 93. Fouilloux, Les chrétiens, p. 97. 535

Notes 94. Blaschke, Die Kirchen, p. 94. 95. Fouilloux, Les chrétiens, pp. 20–1. 96. Chenaux, L’Église catholique, pp. 44–5. 97. Chenaux, L’Église catholique, pp. 47–50. 98. Feldkamp, Pius XII, pp. 50–1. 99. Achille Ratti, p. 499. 100. Vincent, Catholicism, pp. 136 and 155. 101. Achille Ratti, p. 503. 102. Preston, Spanish Holocaust, pp. 16–17. 103. Achille Ratti, pp. 506–7. 104. Vincent, Catholicism, p. 214. 105. Beevor, The Battle, p. 27. 106. Vincent, Catholicism, pp. 214–15. 107. Vincent, Catholicism, p. 259. 108. Vincent, Catholicism, p. 258. 109. Vincent, Catholicism, p. 257. 110. Beevor, The Battle, p. 82. 111. Vincent, Catholicism, pp. 249–50. 112. Vincent, Catholicism, p. 250. 113. Mayeur, Histoire du Christianisme, Volume 12, pp. 429–30. 114. Ealham and Richards, The Splintering, p. 68. 115. Ealham and Richards, The Splintering, p. 79. 116. Ealham and Richards, The Splintering, p. 86. 117. Ealham and Richards, The Splintering, p. 87. 118. Ealham and Richards, The Splintering, p. 87. 119. Preston, Spanish Holocaust, pp. 236–7. 120. Preston, Spanish Holocaust, p. 429. 121. Beevor, The Battle, p. 225. 122. Achille Ratti, p. 527. 123. Scholder, Die Kirchen, Volume 1, p. 307. 124. Feldkamp, Pius XII, p. 54. 125. Scholder, Die Kirchen, Volume 1, p. 207. 126. Chenaux, Pie XII, p. 187. 127. Chenaux, Pie XII, p. 188. 128. Chenaux, Pie XII, p. 185. 129. Blaschke, Die Kirchen, pp. 116–25. 130. Chenaux, Pie XII, p. 191. 131. Albrecht, Katholische Kirche, p. 22. 132. Albrecht, Katholische Kirche, p. 28. 133. Hockerts, Die Sittlichkeitsprozesse, pp. 48–9. 536

Notes 134. Hockerts, Die Sittlichkeitsprozesse, pp. 50–2. 135. Besier, Die Kirchen, Volume 3, p. 715. 136. Besier, Die Kirchen, Volume 3, p. 763. 137. Albrecht, Katholische Kirche, pp. 242–3. 138. Albrecht, Katholische Kirche, p. 36; Besier, Die Kirchen, Volume 3, p. 774. 139. Albrecht, Katholische Kirche, p. 38. 140. Nobécourt, ‘Le Vicaire’, p. 164. 141. Albrecht, Katholische Kirche, p. 41. 142. Albrecht, Katholische Kirche, p. 46. 143. Hockerts, Die Sittlichkeitsprozesse, pp. 53–4; Blaschke, Die Kirchen, p. 155. 144. Albrecht, Katholische Kirche, p. 53. 145. Albrecht, Katholische Kirche, pp. 50–1. 146. Zahn, German Catholics, p. 95. 147. Albrecht, Katholische Kirche, p. 261. 148. Albrecht, Katholische Kirche, p. 259. 149. Albrecht, Katholische Kirche, p. 82; Zahn, German Catholics, p. 93. 150. Kulka and Mendes-Flohr, Judaism, p. 187. 151. Kulka and Mendes-Flohr, Judaism, p. 187. 152. Kulka and Mendes-Flohr, Judaism, p. 188. 153. Kulka and Mendes-Flohr, Judaism, p. 189. 154. Besier, Die Kirchen, Volume 3, p. 762. 155. Spicer, Resisting, p. 139. 156. Besier, Die Kirchen, Volume 3, p. 697. 157. Besier, Die Kirchen, Volume 3, pp. 173–4. 158. Besier, Die Kirchen, Volume 3, p. 172. 159. Besier, Die Kirchen, Volume 3, pp. 171–2. 160. Connelly, From Enemy, p. 92. 161. Connelly, From Enemy, pp. 14–15. 162. Connelly, From Enemy, pp. 17–18. 163. Connelly, From Enemy, pp. 20–1. 164. Connelly, From Enemy, p. 26; Gevers and Bank, Religion, Volume 1, pp. 325–6. 165. Connelly, From Enemy, p. 28. 166. Scholder, Die Kirchen, Volume 1, pp. 660–1. 167. Scholder, Die Kirchen, Volume 1, pp. 660–1. 168. Achille Ratti, p. 913. 169. Achille Ratti, p. 920. 170. Poorthuis and Samelink, Een donkere Spiegel, p. 194. 171. Poorthuis and Samelink, Een donkere Spiegel, pp. 196–7. 172. Poorthuis and Samelink, Een donkere Spiegel, pp. 258 and 260. 173. Micheels, De vatenman, p. 61. 537

Notes 174. Kertzer, The Pope, p. 292. 175. Connelly, From Enemy, p. 166. 176. Kertzer, The Pope, p. 301. 177. Kertzer, The Pope, p. 373. 178. Kertzer, The Pope, p. 374. 179. Larsen et al., Who were the Fascists, p. 375. 180. Mylonas, Serbian Orthodox Fundamentals, pp. 227–8. 181. Gillet, Réligion, p. 84. 182. Henkel, Eros, pp. 300–4. 183. Fermor, The Broken Road, p. 148. 184. Braham, The Destruction, p. 13. 185. Benz and Mihok, Holocaust, p. 14. 186. Judt, Thinking, pp. 172–3. 187. Roggers and Weber, The European Right, p. 517. 188. Heinen, Die Legion, p. 136. 189. Heinen, Die Legion, p. 141. 190. Roggers and Weber, The European Right, p. 521. 191. Larsen et al., Who were the Fascists, p. 387. 192. Larsen et al., Who were the Fascists, pp. 380–1. 193. Roggers and Weber, The European Right, pp. 541–3. 194. Larsen et al., Who were the Fascists, p. 389. 195. Nelis et al., Catholicism, p. 386. 196. Heinen, Die Legion, p. 318. 197. Vago, The Shadow, p. 235. 198. Nelis et al., Catholicism, p. 387. 199. Larsen et al., Who were the Fascists, pp. 387 and 389.

3 Churches in Occupied Territories 1 1. Conway and Romijn, The War on Legitimacy, p. 81. 2. Scholder, Die Kirchen, Volume 2, p. 362. 3. Hehl, Katholische Kirche, p. 83. 4. Wolff and Hoensch, Catholics, p. 9. 5. Wolff and Hoensch, Catholics, p. 18. 6. Heer, Gottes erste Liebe, p. 365. 7. Wolff and Hoensch, Catholics, p. 8. 8. Liebmann et al., Staat und Kirche, pp. 518–619; Liebmann, Theodor Innitzer, p. 38. 9. Liebmann et al., Staat und Kirche, pp. 213–15.

538

Notes 10. Liebmann, Theodor Innitzer, p. 92. 11. Liebmann, Theodor Innitzer, p. 109. 12. Liebmann, Theodor Innitzer, pp. 138–9. 13. Liebmann, Theodor Innitzer, p. 143. 14. Botz, Wien, p. 125. 15. Gross, Polish Society, p. 30. 16. Muskalla, NS-Politik, p. 499. 17. Schulze Wessel and Zückert, Handbuch, p. 325. 18. Talos et al., NS-Herrschaft, p. 526. 19. Liebmann, Theodor Innitzer, pp. 475–6. 20. Liebmann, Theodor Innitzer, p. 477. 21. Botz, Wien, pp. 383–8. 22. Rohkrämer, Freundschaft, pp. 54 and 65. 23. Koch, Karl Barth, pp. 153–6. 24. Mazower, Hitler’s Empire, p. 57. 25. Schulze Wessel and Zückert, Handbuch, p. 329. 26. Hummel and Kösters, Kirchen, p. 159. 27. Schulze Wessel and Zückert, Handbuch, pp. 301–3. 28. Schulze Wessel and Zückert, Handbuch, p. 314. 29. Jelinek, The Parish Republic, p. 18. 30. Mazower, Hitler’s Empire, p. 61. 31. Nedelsky, Sovereign Community, p. 108. 32. Ward, Priest, p. 41. 33. Hummel and Kösters, Kirchen, p. 171. 34. Hoensch, Die Slowakei, p. 80. 35. Ward, Priest, pp. 87–8. 36. Wolff and Hoensch, Catholics, pp. 166–7. 37. Brandmüller, Holocaust, pp. 61–3. 38. Hummel and Kösters, Kirchen, pp. 166–7. 39. Hummel and Kösters, Kirchen, p. 176; Ward, Priest, p. 11. 40. Mazower, Hitler’s Empire, pp. 59–60. 41. Nelis et al., Catholicism, p. 326. 42. Snyder, Bloodlands, p. 262. 43. Mazower, Hitler’s Empire, p. 244. 44. Schulze Wessel and Zückert, Handbuch, p. 414. 45. Schulze Wessel and Zückert, Handbuch, p. 420. 46. Seibt, Bohemia sacra, p. 351. 47. Seibt, Bohemia sacra, p. 351.

539

Notes 48. Gross, Polish Society, pp. 83–4; Gross, Fear, p. 4, footnote. 49. Browning, The Origins, p. 110. 50. Gross, Polish Society, p. 68. 51. Ahonen et al., People, p. 209. 52. Vos and Goddeeris, De strijd, p. 268. 53. Ahonen et al., People, pp. 26 and 30. 54. Fireside, Icon, p. 73. 55. Gevers and Bank, Religion, Volume 1, p. 9. 56. Karp and Köhler, Katholische Kirche, p. 158. 57. Karp and Köhler, Katholische Kirche, p. 210. 58. Mazower, Hitler’s Empire, p. 84. 59. Karp and Köhler, Katholische Kirche, pp. 212–13. 60. Karp and Köhler, Katholische Kirche, pp. 218–19. 61. Karp and Köhler, Katholische Kirche, p. 229. 62. Gevers and Bank, Religion, Volume 1, p. 23. 63. Chiari and Kochanowski, Die polnische Heimatarmee, p. 371. 64. Karp and Köhler, Katholische Kirche, pp. 196–7. 65. Berglund and Porter Szücs, Christianity, p. 142. 66. Gevers and Bank, Religion, Volume 1, p. 24. 67. Mazower, Hitler’s Empire, p. 19. 68. Breitinger, Als Deutschenseelsorger, p. 43. 69. Kloczowski, Histoire religieuse, pp. 471–2. 70. Gürtler, Nationalsozialismus, Volume 2, p. 141. 71. Gürtler, Nationalsozialismus, Volume 2, pp. 48–51. 72. Gürtler, Nationalsozialismus, Volume 2, p. 79. 73. Kloczowski, Histoire religieuse, p. 478. 74. Breitinger, Als Deutschenseelsorger, pp. 48–9. 75. Mazower, Hitler’s Empire, p. 23. 76. Chiari and Kochanowski, Die polnische Heimatarmee, p. 58. 77. Mazower, Hitler’s Empire, p. 91. 78. Madajczyk, Die Okkupationspolitik, p. 364. 79. Gevers and Bank, Religion, Volume 1, p. 18. 80. Dieckmann et al., Kooperation, pp. 122–3. 81. Dieckmann et al., Kooperation, p. 127. 82. Chodakiewicz, Between Nazis, p. 79. 83. Blet et al., Le Saint Siège et la situation réligieuse, Volume 3, p. 730. 84. Blet et al., Le Saint Siège et la situation réligieuse, Volume 3, p. 295. 85. Les Églises chrétiennes, p. 77. 86. Gevers and Bank, Religion, Volume 1, p. 18. 87. Heyer, Kirchengeschichte, p. 230; Shkarovskij, Die Kirchenpolitik, passim. 540

Notes 88. Gross, Revolution, p. 230. 89. Gross, Revolution, p. 232. 90. Boeckh, Stalinismus, pp. 69–70. 91. Gross, Revolution, p. 61. 92. Snyder, Bloodlands, p. 126. 93. Gross, Revolution, p. 31. 94. Magocsi, A History, p. 546. 95. Pospielovsky, The Russian Church, Volume 2, p. 175. 96. Heyer, Kirchengeschichte, p. 120. 97. Heyer, Kirchengeschichte, p. 120, footnote 47. 98. Snyder, Bloodlands, p. 53. 99. Snyder, Bloodlands, p. 55. 100. Bociurkiw, The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, p. 54. 101. Alexeev and Stavrou, The Great Revival, p. 50. 102. Alexeev and Stavrou, The Great Revival, p. 51. 103. Bociurkiw, The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, p. 45. 104. Magosci, Morality, p. 108. 105. Bociurkiw, The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, p. 57. 106. Fletcher, A Study in Survival, p. 99. 107. Alexeev and Stavrou, The Great Revival, p. 74. 108. Kettola, The Nationality Question, pp. 308–29. 109. Talonen, Church, p. 12. 110. Misiunas and Taagepera, The Baltic States, p. 39. 111. Alexeev and Stavrou, The Great Revival, p. 77. 112. Gevers and Bank, Religion, Volume 1, pp. 184–92. 113. Snyder, Black Earth, p. 140. 114. Snyder, The Reconstruction, pp. 73–83.

4 Churches in Occupied Territories 2 1. Jacobsen, ‘The Danish Church during the German Occupation 1940–45’. 2. Benz et al., Anpassung, pp. 35–6. 3. Hassing, Church Resistance, p. 47. 4. Hassing, Church Resistance, p. 57. 5. Molland, Church Life, p. 115. 6. Hoidal, Quisling, p. 497. 7. Hoidal, Quisling, p. 566. 8. Robertson, Bishop, p. 119. 9. Hoidal, Quisling, pp. 565–6. 10. Paxton, Vichy France, p. 48–9. 541

Notes 11. Montclos et al., Églises, La France, p. 11. 12. Montclos et al., Églises, La France, p. 11. 13. Burrin, La France, p. 223. 14. Bédarida, Les catholiques, p. 50. 15. Burrin, La France, p. 223. 16. Yagil, La France, Volume 3, p. 54. 17. Burrin, La France, p. 225. 18. Les églises protestantes, p. 16. 19. Mehl, Le pasteur, p. 147. 20. Bédarida, Les catholiques, pp. 51–2. 21. Halls, Politics, p. 10. 22. Burrin, La France, p. 226. 23. Burrin, La France, p. 413. 24. Wolff and Hoensch, Catholics, p. 85. 25. Burrin, La France, p. 227. 26. Bédarida, Les catholiques, pp. 42–3. 27. Et wor alles, pp. 117–8. 28. Les églises protestantes, p. 543. 29. Sturtzer, Les églises, p. 99. 30. Dantoing, La ‘collaboration’, p. 127. 31. Van den Wijngaert, Een koning geloofd, pp. 35–48; Boudens, Kardinaal Van Roey, p. 49. 32. Dantoing, La ‘collaboration’, p. 314; Maerten et al., Entre la peste, p. 13. 33. Herderlijke brief, pp. 14–15. 34. Herderlijke brief, pp. 24–7. 35. Het aartsbisdom, Volume 2, p. 218. 36. Delleman, Opdat wij niet vergeten, p. 48. 37. Touw, Het verzet, Volume 1, p. 228. 38. Ridderbos, Strijd, Volume 1, p. 300. 39. Ridderbos, Strijd, Volume 1, p. 310. 40. Stokman, Het verzet, pp. 74 and 171. 41. Stokman, Het verzet, p. 178. 42. Gevers and Bank, Religion, Volume 1, p. 238. 43. Rodogno, Fascism’s European Empire, p. 44. 44. Rodogno, Fascism’s European Empire, p. 52. 45. Rodogno, Fascism’s European Empire, pp. 69–70. 46. Kertzer, The Pope, p. 222. 47. Durand, L’Église catholique, p. 25. 48. Manoschek, ‘Serbien’, p. 19. 49. Benz et al., Anpassung, p. 269.

542

Notes 50. Jordan, Albanien, p. 279. 51. Rodogno, Fascism’s European Empire, p. 290. 52. Bataković, Kosovo, p. 43. 53. Rodogno, Fascism’s European Empire, p. 293. 54. Rodogno, Fascism’s European Empire, p. 296. 55. Hanebrink, In Defense, p. 162; Berglund and Porter Szűcs, Christianity, p. 71. 56. Berglund and Porter Szűcs, Christianity, pp. 71–3. 57. Mazower, Hitler’s Empire, p. 328. 58. Nelis et al., Catholicism, p. 384. 59. Gevers and Bank, Religion, Volume 1, pp. 105–7. 60. Cornelius, Hungary, pp. 287–91. 61 Alexander, Church and State, p. 13. 62. Berglund and Porter Szűcs, Christianity, p. 195. 63. Mazower, The Balkans, p. 111. 64. Crampton, A Concise History, p. 172. 65. Mazower, After the War, p. 280. 66. Dölger, Mönchsland, p. 42. 67. Dölger, Mönchsland, pp. 70 and 88. 68. Times Literary Supplement, 10 February 2012, p. 3. 69. Mazower, Inside Hitler’s Greece, p. 82. 70. Hionidou, Famine, pp. 121–4. 71. Mazower, Inside Hitler’s Greece, p. 94. 72. Rodogno, Fascism’s European Empire, p. 266. 73. Burgwyn, Empire, pp. 118–19. 74. Biondich, ‘Controversies’, p. 432. 75 Morley, Vatican Diplomacy, p. 329. 76. Lampe and Mazower, Ideologies, p. 62. 77. Velikonja, Religious Separation, p. 165. 78. Lampe and Mazower, Ideologies, pp. 62–9. 79. Rodogno, Fascism’s European Empire, p. 189. 80. Gevers and Bank, Religion, Volume 2, p. 63. 81. Lampe and Mazower, Ideologies, pp. 62–3. 82. Biondich, ‘Controversies’, p. 437. 83. Biondich, ‘Controversies’, p. 438. 84. Velikonja, Religious Separation, p. 170. 85. Gevers and Bank, Religion, Volume 1, p. 71. 86. Buchenau, Kämpfende Kirchen, pp. 70–1. 87. Friedman, The Bosnian Muslims, p. 122. 88. Motadel, Islam, pp. 182 and 201–2.

543

Notes 89. Friedman, The Bosnian Muslims, p. 126. 90. Gevers and Bank, Religion, Volume 2, pp. 187–8. 91. Motadel, Islam, p. 253. 92. Friedman, The Bosnian Muslims, p. 124. 93. Friedman, The Bosnian Muslims, p. 124. 94. Mattar, The Mufti, pp. 102–5. 95. Biondich, ‘Controversies’, p. 435. 96. Biondich, ‘Controversies’, p. 435. 97. Wolff and Hoensch, Catholics, p. 50. 98. Biondich, ‘Controversies’, p. 436. 99. Pattee, The Case, pp. 249–50. 100. Gevers and Bank, Religion, Volume 1, p. 67. 101. Tanner, Croatia, p. 157. 102. Tanner, Croatia, pp. 157–8. 103. Alexander, The Triple Myth, p. 90. 104. Biondich, ‘Controversies’, p. 435. 105. Alexander, The Triple Myth, p. 85. 106. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et la Guerre, Volume 2, p. 537. 107. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 9, pp. 222–3. 108. Biondich, ‘Controversies’, p. 454. 109. Wolff and Hoensch, Catholics, p. 34. 110. Wolff and Hoensch, Catholics, p. 54. 111. Lampe and Mazower, Ideologies, p. 66. 112. Leustean, Eastern Christianity, p. 63. 113. Judah, The Serbs, p. 113. 114. Alexander, Church, p. 10. 115. Judah, The Serbs, p. 115. 116. Radić, Život, pp. 361–2. 117. Tomasevich, War and Revolution, The Chetniks, p. 184. 118. Larsen et al., Who were the Fascists, p. 374.

5 Religion in All Out War 1. Struve, Les chrétiens, pp. 323–4. 2. Döpmann, Jahrbuch für Historische Kommunismus-Forschung, p. 113. 3. Pospielovsky, The Russian Church, Volume 1, p. 197. 4. Merridale, Night, p. 225. 5. Dickinson, ‘A Marriage of Convenience?’, p. 339. 6. Miner, Stalin’s Holy War, p. 126. 544

Notes 7. Dickinson, ‘A Marriage of Convenience?’, p. 342. 8. Pospielovsky, The Russian Church, Volume 1, p. 202, footnote 18. 9. Pospielovsky, The Russian Church, Volume 1, pp. 201–2. 10. Dickinson, ‘A Marriage of Convenience?’, pp. 343–4. 11. Pospielovsky, The Russian Church, Volume 1, p. 197. 12. Merridale, Ivan’s War, p. 168. 13. Berkhoff, Harvest, pp. 228 and 250. 14. Fireside, Icon, p. 176. 15. Merridale, Ivan’s War, p. 168. 16. Merridale, Ivan’s War, p. 115. 17. Merridale, Ivan’s War, pp. 167–8. 18. Merridale, Ivan’s War, p. 67. 19. Reid, Leningrad, p. 248. 20. Simmons and Perlina, Writing, p. 13. 21. Simmons and Perlina, Writing, p. 126. 22. Reid, Leningrad, p. 251. 23. Fireside, Icon, p. 181. 24. Fireside, Icon, p. 182. 25. Pospielovsky, The Russian Church, Volume 1, p. 200. 26. Chumachenko, Church, p. 81. 27. Volk, Akten deutscher Bischöfe, Volume 5, p. 463. 28. Volk, Akten deutscher Bischöfe, Volume 5, p. 1040. 29. Volk, Akten deutscher Bischöfe, Volume 5, p. 562. 30. Meier, Der Evangelische Kirchenkampf, Volume 3, p. 163. 31. Missalla, Für Gott, pp. 44–5. 32. Brandt, Priester, p. 14. 33. Brandt, Priester, pp. 11–12. 34. Hummel and Kösters, Kirchen, p. 209. 35. Missalla, Für Gott, p. 56. 36. Hummel and Kösters, Kirchen, p. 290. 37. Hummel and Kösters, Kirchen, p. 288. 38. Bartov, The Eastern Front, p. 93. 39. Leugers, Jesuieten, pp. 93 and 99. 40. Missalla, Für Gott, p. 57. 41. Hummel and Kösters, Kirchen, p. 215. 42. Missalla, Für Gott, p. 33. 43. Missalla, Für Gott, pp. 33–4. 44. Rodogno, Fascism’s European Empire, p. 156. 45. Franzinelli, Padre Gemelli, p. 44; Rodogno, Fascism’s European Empire, pp. 154–5.

545

Notes 46. Rodogno, Fascism’s European Empire, p. 155. 47. Heyer, Kirchengeschichte, p. 238; Berkhoff, Harvest, p. 240. 48. Heyer, Kirchengeschichte, p. 242. 49. Fireside, Icon, p. 117. 50. Fireside, Icon, p. 106. 51. Fireside, Icon, p. 106. 52. Fireside, Icon, p. 106. 53. Fireside, Icon, p. 109. 54. Shkarovskij, Die Kirchenpolitik, pp. 70–1. 55. Fireside, Icon, pp. 85–6. 56. Fireside, Icon, p. 87. 57. Fireside, Icon, p. 58. 58. Fireside, Icon, p. 64. 59. Snyder, The Reconstruction, p. 164. 60. Heyer, Kirchengeschichte, pp. 246–7. 61. Heyer, Kirchengeschichte, p. 278. 62. Heyer, Kirchengeschichte, p. 270. 63. Shkarvoskij, Die Kirchenpolitik, pp. 70–1. 64. Fireside, Icon, p. 95; Krausnick and Wilhelm, Die Truppe, p. 427. 65. Heyer, Kirchengeschichte, p. 287. 66. Heyer, Kirchengeschichte, p. 296. 67. Berkhoff, Harvest, pp. 248–50. 68. Chiari and Kochanowski, Die polnische Heimatarmee, p. 553. 69. Snyder, The Reconstruction, pp. 164–5. 70. Berkhoff, Harvest, p. 296. 71. Magocsi, Morality, p. 152. 72. Magocsi, Morality, pp. 127–8. 73. Magocsi, Morality, p. 132. 74. Fireside, Icon, p. 104. 75. Magocsi, Morality, p. 152. 76. Heyer, Kirchengeschichte, pp. 254–5. 77. Chiari and Kochanowski, Die polnische Heimatarmee, p. 373. 78. Chiari and Kochanowski, Die polnische Heimatarmee, p. 374. 79. Magocsi, Morality, p. 134. 80. Magocsi, Morality, p. 64. 81. Fireside, Icon, p. 105. 82. Snyder, The Reconstruction, p. 163. 83. Magocsi, Morality, p. 134. 84. Krausnick and Wilhelm, Die Truppe, p. 308.

546

Notes 85. Snyder, Bloodlands, p. 226. 86. Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, p. 99. 87. Krausnick and Wilhelm, Die Truppe, pp. 356–7. 88. Fireside, Icon, p. 105. 89. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et la situation réligieuse, Volume 3, p. 533. 90. Fireside, Icon, p. 93. 91. Krausnick and Wilhelm, Die Truppe, p. 431. 92. Shkarovskij, Die Kirchenpolitik, pp. 212–13. 93. Krausnick and Wilhelm, Die Truppe, pp. 430–1. 94. Fireside, Icon, p. 141. 95. Shkarovskij, Die Kirchenpolitik, p. 216. 96. Alexeev and Stavou, The Great Revival, pp. 133–4. 97. Alexeev and Stavou, The Great Revival, p. 142. 98. Shkarovskij, Die Kirchenpolitik, pp. 170–1. 99. Shkarovskij, Die Kirchenpolitik, pp. 196–201. 100. Shkarovskij, Die Kirchenpolitik, pp. 173–7. 101. Alexeev and Stavrou, The Great Revival, p. 85. 102. Alexeev and Stavrou, The Great Revival, pp. 98–9. 103. Mazower, Hitler’s Empire, pp. 465–6. 104. Krausnick and Wilhelm, Die Truppe, p. 433. 105. Krausnick and Wilhelm, Die Truppe, p. 438. 106. Misiunas and Taagepera, The Baltic States, pp. 125–6. 107. Talonen, Church, p. 15. 108. Talonen, Church, p. 15. 109. Krausnick and Wilhelm, Die Truppe, p. 438. 110. Talonen, Church, p. 16. 111. Gevers and Bank, Religion, Volume 1, p. 196. 112. Krausnick and Wilhelm, Die Truppe, p. 435. 113. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et la situation réligieuse, Volume 3, p. 593. 114. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et la situation réligieuse, Volume 3, pp. 703 and 856. 115. Krausnick and Wilhelm, Die Truppe, p. 439. 116. Chiari and Kochanowski, Die polnische Heimatarmee, p. 372. 117. Chiari and Kochanowski, Die polnische Heimatarmee, pp. 372–3. 118. Dallin, Odessa, p. 162. 119. Boeckh, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 45, p. 68. 120. Boeckh, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 45, pp. 65–6. 121. Dallin, Odessa, p. 166. 122. Heyer, Kirchengeschichte, p. 298. 123. Tarkka, Neither Stalin nor Hitler, p. 63.

547

Notes 124. Hummel and Kösters, Kirchen, pp. 71–2. 125. Vehviläinen, Finland, p. 115. 126. Harmati, The Church, pp. 41–8. 127. Harmati, The Church, pp. 41–8.

6 Churches between Loyalty and Resistance 1. Mazower, Hitler’s Empire, pp. 238–9. 2. Judah, The Serbs, p. 117. 3. Manoschek, ‘Serbien,’ p. 161. 4. Hoare, Genocide, p. 108. 5. Hoare, Genocide, pp. 94–5. 6. Friedman, The Bosnian Muslims, p. 129. 7. Tomasevich, War and Revolution, The Chetniks, p. 156. 8. Judah, The Serbs, p. 39. 9. Anzulović, Heavenly Serbia, p. 63. 10. Alexander, Church and State, p. 16. 11. Gevers and Bank, Religion, Volume 2, pp. 105 and 107. 12. Gevers and Bank, Religion, Volume 2, pp. 68–70. 13. Gevers and Bank, Religion, Volume 2, p. 71. 14. Gevers and Bank, Religion, Volume 2, p. 72. 15. Gevers and Bank, Religion, Volume 2, p. 76. 16. Tomasevich, War and Revolution, The Chetniks, p. 176. 17. Alexander, Church and State, p. 18. 18. Judah, The Serbs, p. 129. 19. Tomasevich, War and Revolution, Occupation, p. 514. 20. Hoare, Genocide, p. 189. 21. Documents on the Struggle, pp. 562–3. 22. Tomasevich, War and Revolution, Occupation, p. 515. 23. Wolff and Hoensch, Catholics, p. 62, footnote 9a. 24. Hoare, Genocide, p. 190. 25. Hoare, Genocide, p. 190. 26. Schmider, Partisanenkrieg, pp. 568–70. 27. Gevers and Bank, Religion, Volume 1, p. 78. 28. Wolff and Hoensch, Catholics, p. 58. 29. Gevers and Bank, Religion, Volume 1. p. 76. 30. Gevers and Bank, Religion, Volume 1, p. 81. 31. Biondich, ‘Controversies’, p. 438. 32. Biondich, ‘Controversies’, p. 438.

548

Notes 33. Wolff and Hoensch, Catholics, p. 59. 34. Wolff and Hoensch, Catholics, pp. 59–60. 35. Wolff and Hoensch, Catholics, p. 60. 36. Gevers and Bank, Religion, Volume 1, p. 120. 37. Gevers and Bank, Religion, Volume 1, p. 123. 38. Gevers and Bank, Religion, Volume 1, p. 124. 39. Wolff and Hoensch, Catholics, pp. 59–60. 40. Byford, Denial and Repression, p. 23. 41. Bremer, Ekklesiale Struktur, p. 128. 42. Anzulović, Heavenly Serbia, p. 30. 43. Buchenau, Kämpfende Kirchen, pp. 53–4. 44. Bremer, Ekklesiale Struktur, p. 130. 45. Anzulović, Heavenly Serbia, p. 30. 46. Buchenau, Kämpfende Kirchen, p. 15; Byford, Denial and Repression, p. 45. 47. Anzulović, Heavenly Serbia. p. 120. 48. Alexander, Church, p. 18, note 54. 49. Mazower, Hitler’s Empire, p. 484. 50. Mazower, Hitler’s Empire, p. 497. 51. Mazower, Hitler’s Empire, p. 505. 52. Close, The Greek Civil War, p. 54. 53. Close, The Greek Civil War, p. 92. 54. Close, The Greek Civil War, pp. 114–15. 55. Gevers and Bank, Religion, Volume 2, pp. 106–8. 56. Leeper, When Greek, p. 120. 57. Leeper, When Greek, p. 123. 58. Baerentzen et al., Studies, p. 213. 59. Leeper, When Greek meets Greek, p. 240. 60. Leeper, When Greek meets Greek, p. 241. 61. Savramis, Die soziale Stellung, p. 71. 62. Savramis, Die soziale Stellung, pp. 79–80. 63. Savramis, Die soziale Stellung, p. 73. 64. Mazower, Inside Hitler’s Greece, p. 124. 65. Boeschoten, ‘From Armatolik’, p. 186. 66. Mazower, After the War Was Over, p. 192. 67. Mazower, Inside Hitler’s Greece, p. 360. 68. Mazower, Inside Hitler’s Greece, p. 273. 69. Mazower, Inside Hitler’s Greece, p. 314. 70. Boeschoten,‘From Armatolik’, p. 185. 71. Boeschoten, ‘From Armatolik’, p. 186.

549

Notes 72. Porter-Szücs, Faith, p. 9. 73. Kloczowski, Histoire religieuse, p. 486. 74. Porter-Szücs, Faith, pp. 8–9. 75. Kloczowski, Histoire religieuse, pp. 485–6. 76. Chiari and Kochanowski, Die polnische Heimatarmee, p. 369. 77. Chiari and Kochanowski, Die polnische Heimatarmee, p. 369. 78. Chiari and Kochanowski, Die polnische Heimatarmee, pp. 371–2. 79. Kloczowski, Histoire religieuse, p. 489. 80. Vos and Goddeeris, De strijd, p. 272. 81. Micewski, Katholische Gruppierungen, pp. 26–7. 82. Kloczowski, Histoire religieuse, p. 488. 83. Kloczowski, Histoire religieuse, p. 488. 84. Chiari and Kochanowski, Die polnische Heimatarmee, p. 381. 85. Krausnick and Wilhelm, Die Truppe, pp. 437–8. 86. Chiari and Kochanowski, Die polnische Heimatarmee, p. 382. 87. Mazower, Hitler’s Empire, pp. 465–6. 88. Mazower, Hitler’s Empire, p. 513. 89. Mazower, Hitler’s Empire, p. 514. 90. Davies, Rising ’44, pp. 258–9. 91. Molette, Prêtres religieux, p. 90. 92. Borodziej, The Warsaw Uprising, p. 136. 93. Borodziej, The Warsaw Uprising, p. 164, footnote 24. 94. Gross, Fear, p. 11. 95. Vos and Goddeeris, De strijd, p. 274. 96. Duchrow, Zwei Reiche, p. 96. 97. Austad, ‘Church of Norway during the German Occupation 1940–45’. 98. Austad, ‘Church of Norway during the German Occupation 1940–45’. 99. Duchrow, Zwei Reiche, pp. 103–4. 100. Duchrow, Zwei Reiche, p. 104. 101. Duchrow, Zwei Reiche, p. 105. 102. Mazower, Hitler’s Empire, p. 485. 103. Eisenberg, Die politische Predigt, p. 16. 104. Eisenberg, Die politische Predigt, p. 73. 105. Eisenberg, Die politische Predigt, p. 76. 106. Dosenrode, Christianity, p. 101; Thomsen, Deutsche Besatzungspolitik, passim. 107. Eisenberg, Die politische Predigt, p. 51. 108. Eisenberg, Die politische Predigt, p. 16. 109. Eisenberg, Die politische Predigt, pp. 79–82. 110. Eisenberg, Die politische Predigt, p. 43.

550

Notes 111. Eisenberg, Die politische Predigt, p. 34. 112. Thomsen, Deutsche Besatzungspolitik, p. 206. 113. Touw, Het verzet, Volume 1, pp. 48–50. 114. Touw, Het verzet, Volume 1, pp. 115–17 and 184. 115. Touw, Het verzet, Volume 1, p. 127. 116. Touw, Het verzet, Volume 1, p. 133. 117. Ridderbos, Strijd op twee fronten, Volume 2, p. 25. 118. Ridderbos, Strijd op twee fronten, Volume 1, p. 372. 119. Bruijn and Harinck, Geen duimbreed, p. 91. 120. Ridderbos, Strijd op twee fronten, Volume 2, pp. 359–60. 121. Bolle and Godel, Spiritualité, pp. 172–4. 122. Bolle and Godel, Spiritualité, p. 174. 123. Les protestants français, p. 43. 124. Les églises protestantes, p. 34. 125. Wellers et al., La France et la Question juive, pp. 157–8. 126. Fieret, De Staatkundig Gereformeerde Partij, p. 221. 127. Fieret, De Staatkundig Gereformeerde Partij, p. 221. 128. Fieret, De Staatkundig Gereformeerde Partij, p. 227. 129. Fieret, De Staatkundig Gereformeerde Partij, pp. 239–40. 130. Fieret, De Staatkundig Gereformeerde Partij, p. 244. 131. Keizer, Putten, p. 167. 132. Keizer, Putten, p. 322. 133. Keizer, Putten, p. 323.

7 Churches between Forced Labour and Resistance 1. Herbert, Europa, p. 98. 2. Lagrou, The Legacy, pp. 131–6. 3. Montclos et al., Églises, La France, p. 403. 4. Bédarida, Les catholiques, pp. 192–3. 5. Poulat, Naissance, p. 252. 6. Poulat, Naissance, p. 253. 7. Burrin, La France, p. 230. 8. Azéma and Bédarida, Le régime, p. 446. 9. Bédarida, Les catholiques, p. 199. 10. Burrin, La France, p. 230. 11. Poulat, Naissance, p. 350. 12. Poulat, Naissance, p. 274. 13. Poulat, Naissance, pp. 279–80.

551

Notes 14. Poulat, Naissance, p. 216. 15. Poulat, Naissance, p. 38. 16. Poulat, Naissance, p. 135. 17. Poulat, Naissance, p. 171. 18. Verrier, Le père Victor Dillard, p. 35. 19. Poulat, Naissance, p. 317. 20. Bédarida, Les catholiques, p. 58. 21. Bédarida, Les catholiques, p. 86. 22. Poulat, Naissance, p. 318, footnote 3. 23. Poulat, Naissance, p. 321. 24. Verrier, Le père Victor Dillard, p. 140. 25. Verrier, Le père Victor Dillard, pp. 168–74. 26. Poulat, Naissance, p. 329. 27. Poulat, Naissance, p. 333. 28. Rost, Goethe, p. 167. 29. Gevers and Bank, Religion, Volume 1, p. 224. 30. De Vroede and Hermans, Vijftig jaar, p. 37. 31. Gerard, De christelijke arbeidersbeweging, pp. 452–4. 32. Touw, Het verzet, Volume 1, p. 465. 33. Sijes, De arbeidsinzet, pp. 222–3. 34. Sijes, De arbeidsinzet, pp. 168–9. 35. Maerten et al., Entre la peste, p. 23. 36. Maerten et al., Entre la peste, p. 13. 37. Maerten et al., Entre la peste, p. 23. 38. Maerten et al., Entre la peste, p.107. 39. Maerten et al., Entre la peste, p. 15. 40. Maerten et al., Entre la peste, p. 103. 41. Maerten et al., Entre la peste, pp. 16 and 30. 42. Maerten et al., Entre la peste, p. 96. 43. Maerten et al., Entre la peste, pp. 17–18. 44. Gevers and Bank, Religion, Volume 1, p. 227. 45. Maerten et al., Entre la peste, p. 16. 46. Maerten et al., Entre la peste, p. 109. 47. Maerten et al., Entre la peste, p. 151. 48. Harinck, Tussen lijdelijkheid, p. 92. 49. Harinck, Tussen lijdelijkheid, p. 93. 50. Delleman, Opdat wij niet vergeten, p. 371. 51. Molette, Prêtres religieux, p. 92. 52. Bédarida, Les catholiques, p. 119.

552

Notes 53. Bédarida, Les catholiques, p. 152. 54. Bédarida, Les catholiques, p. 161. 55. Bédarida, Les catholiques, pp. 155–6. 56. Frazier, Maurice Duruflé, pp. 156–65. 57. Clément, La Collaboration, pp. 76–7. 58. Bédarida, Les Armes, pp. 18–19. 59. Bédarida, Les Armes, p. 31. 60. Bédarida, Les catholiques, pp. 103–4. 61. Bédarida, Les catholiques, p. 85. 62. Clément, La Collaboration, p. 102. 63. Bédarida, Les catholiques, p. 126. 64. Bédarida, Les Armes, p. 24. 65. Burrin, La France, pp. 228–9. 66. Clément, La Collaboration, pp. 160–1. 67. Montclos et al., Églises, La France, p. 155. 68. Clément, La Collaboration, pp. 167–8. 69. Bédarida, Les Armes, p. 48. 70. Bédarida, Les catholiques, pp. 127–8. 71. Burrin, La France, p. 229. 72. Clément, La Collaboration, p. 173. 73. Clément, La Collaboration, pp. 176–7. 74. Bédarida, Les Armes, pp. 188–9. 75. Bédarida, Les catholiques, p. 130. 76. Bédarida and Bédarida, La résistance spirituelle, pp. 17–20. 77. Wolff and Hoensch, Catholics, p. 85. 78. Montclos et al., Églises, La France, pp. 417–18 and 458. 79. Bédarida, Les catholiques, p. 122. 80. Fouilloux, Les chrétiens français, p. 99. 81. Mazower, Hitler’s Empire, p. 361. 82. Casella, Clero, p. 157. 83. Durand, L’Église catholique, p. 27. 84. Malgeri, La Chiesa Italiana, pp. 72–3. 85. Malgeri, La Chiesa Italiana, p. 101. 86. Durand, L’Église catholique, p. 37. 87. Durand, L’Église catholique, pp. 39 and 41. 88. Durand, L’Église catholique, pp. 42–5; Pollard, Catholicism, p. 95. 89. Durand, L’Église catholique, p. 74. 90. Durand, L’Église catholique, pp. 136–7. 91. Durand, L’Église catholique. pp. 123–5.

553

Notes 92. Durand, L’Église catholique, p. 128. 93. Malgeri, La Chiesa Italiana, pp. 126–7. 94. Durand, L’Église catholique, pp. 143–4. 95. Durand, L’Église catholique, pp. 147–8. 96. Durand, L’Église catholique, pp. 151–2. 97. Durand, L’Église catholique, p. 150. 98. Durand, L’Église catholique, pp. 145–6. 99. Nelis et al., Catholicism, p. 45. 100. Durand, L’Église catholique, pp. 154–5. 101. Durand, L’Église catholique, p. 158. 102. Durand, L’Église catholique, pp. 158–60. 103. Drapac, War, p. 13. 104. Drapac, War, p. 12. 105. Duchrow, Zwei Reiche, p. 96. 106. Austad, ‘Church of Norway during the German Occupation 1940–45’. 107. Koch, Karl Barth, pp. 340–3. 108. Barth, Eine Schweizer Stimme, pp. 244–50. 109. Harinck, Tussen lijdelijkheid, pp. 30–1. 110. Harinck, Tussen lijdelijkheid, p. 31. 111. Drapac, War, p. 13. 112. Montclos et al., Églises, La France, p. 413. 113. Montclos et al., Églises, La France, p. 410. 114. Montclos et al., Églises, La France, pp. 410–12. 115. Durand, L’Église catholique, p. 138. 116. Durand, L’Église catholique, pp. 138–9. 117. Durand, L’Église catholique, p. 151.

8 National Socialist Mass Murder and the Churches: Persecution in Nazi Germany 1. Stone, Histories, p. 2. 2. Stone, Histories, p. 182. 3. Quinkert et al., Krieg, pp. 63–4. 4. Quinkert et al., Krieg, p. 73. 5. Browning, The Origins, p. 186. 6. Quinkert et al., Krieg, p. 81. 7. Connelly, From Enemy, p. 13. 8. Kuropka, Clemens August Graf von Galen, p. 185–8. 9. Kuropka, Clemens August Graf von Galen, p. 190.

554

Notes 10. Klee, ‘Euthanasie’, pp. 61–2. 11. Klee, ‘Euthanasie’, pp. 280–1. 12. Kuropka, Clemens August Graf von Galen, pp. 194–5. 13. Kuropka, Streitfall Galen, p. 50. 14. Hummel and Kiβener, Die Katholiken, p. 119. 15. Kuropka, Clemens August Graf von Galen, p. 310–11. 16. Kuropka, Streitfall Galen, p. 59. 17. Kuropka, Streitfall Galen, pp. 72–3. 18. Quinkert et al., Krieg, p. 65. 19. Hummel and Kißener, Die Katholiken, p. 136. 20. Kuropka, Streitfall Galen, pp. 56–7. 21. Zimmermann, Rassenutopie, pp. 17–18. 22. Zimmermann, Rassenutopie, p. 119. 23. Stone, Histories, p. 191. 24. Browning, The Origins, passim. 25. Browning, The Origins, p. 12. 26. Browning, The Origins, p. 167. 27. Browning, The Origins, p. 177. 28. New York Review of Books LIX (2012) Volume 13, p. 70. 29. Browning, The Origins, p. 110. 30. Browning, The Origins, p. 259. 31. Browning, The Origins, pp. 283–4. 32. Browning, The Origins, pp. 272–3. 33. Browning, The Origins, pp. 263–4. 34. Browning, The Origins, p. 373. 35. Kösters and Ruff, Die katholische Kirche, p. 104. 36. Zimmermann, Rassenutopie, p. 374. 37. Scholder, Die Kirchen, Volume 1, pp. 677–8. 38. Gerlach, Als die Zeugen schwiegen, p. 121. 39. Gerlach, Als die Zeugen schwiegen, p. 61. 40. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoefffer, p. 359. 41. Gerlach, Als die Zeugen schwiegen, p. 62. 42. Gerlach, Als die Zeugen schwiegen, p. 63. 43. Gerlach, Als die Zeugen schwiegen, pp. 156–7. 44. Gerlach, Als die Zeugen schwiegen, p. 159. 45. Gerlach, Als die Zeugen schwiegen, p. 237. 46. Kulka and Mendes-Flohr, Judaism, p. 248. 47. Benz, Selbstbehauptung, pp. 15–18. 48. Gerlach, Als die Zeugen schwiegen, pp. 305–7; Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 731.

555

Notes 49. Gerlach, Als die Zeugen schwiegen, p. 299. 50. Hummel and Kiβener, Die Katholiken, pp. 129–30. 51. Volk, Akten Kardinal Faulhabers, Volume 2, p. 606. 52. Liebmann, ‘Heil Hitler’, p. 108. 53. Gerlach, Als die Zeugen schwiegen, p. 342. 54. Gerlach, Als die Zeugen schwiegen, pp. 327–8. 55. Kulka and Mendes-Flohr, Judaism, p. 245. 56. Gerlach, Als die Zeugen schwiegen, pp. 243–4. 57. Gerlach, Als die Zeugen schwiegen, pp. 243–4. 58. Weinzierl, Prüfstand, pp. 285–6. 59. Gerlach, Als die Zeugen schwiegen, p. 340. 60. Kulka and Mendes-Flohr, Judaism, p. 244. 61. Hummel and Kösters, Kirchen, p. 301. 62. Kulka and Mendes-Flohr, Judaism, p. 246. 63. Gerlach, Als die Zeugen schwiegen, pp. 346–7. 64. Gerlach, Als die Zeugen schwiegen, p. 358. 65. Gerlach, Als die Zeugen schwiegen, p. 358. 66. Volk, Akten Kardinal Faulhabers, Volume 2, pp. 824–5. 67. Volk, Akten Kardinal Faulhabers, Volume 2, p. 845. 68. Volk, Akten Kardinal Faulhabers, Volume 2, pp. 856 and 845. 69. Volk, Akten deutscher Bischöfe, Volume 34, pp. 635–6. 70. Volk, Akten deutscher Bischöfe, Volume 34, p. 944. 71. Zimmermann, Rassenutopie, pp. 307–8. 72. Volk, Akten deutscher Bischöfe, Volume 38, pp. 281–2. 73. Volk, Akten deutscher Bischöfe, Volume 38, p. 944. 74. Kulka and Mendes-Flohr, Judaism, p. 210. 75. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 8, pp. 740–2. 76. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 43. 77. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 69. 78. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 112. 79. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 127. 80. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, pp. 112 and 223. 81. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 249. 82. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 323. 83. Scholder, Die Kirchen, Volume 1, p. 581. 84. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 396. 85. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 779. 86. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 727. 87. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 742.

556

Notes 88. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 743. 89. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 785. 90. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 789. 91. Visser ’t Hooft, Memoires, p. 141. 92. Visser ’t Hooft, Memoires, p. 141. 93. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 861. 94. Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, p. 1038. 95. Census, 17-05-1939: Hummel and Kösters, Kirchen, p. 296. 96. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 6, pp. 45 and 62–7. 97. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 6, p. 98. 98. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 8, p. 351. 99. Besier, Die Kirchen, Volume 3, p. 887. 100. Hummel and Kiβener, Die Katholiken, p. 136. 101. Volk, Akten deutscher Bischöfe, Volume 34, pp. 677–8. 102. Connelly, From Enemy, p. 5; Weinzierl, Prüfstand, p. 266. 103. Heer, Gottes erste Liebe, p. 353. 104. Wolff and Hoensch, Catholics, p. 5. 105. Wolff and Hoensch, Catholics, p. 25. 106. Liebmann, ‘Heil Hitler’, p. 99. 107. Connelly, From Enemy, p. 23. 108. Benz and Wetzel, Solidarität, Volume 2, p. 210. 109. Born, Die erzbischöfliche Hilfstelle, pp. 5–6. 110. Born, Die erzbischöfliche Hilfstelle, p. 88. 111. Benz and Wetzel, Solidarität, Volume 2, p. 217. 112. Weinzierl, Prüfstand, p. 284. 113. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 8, pp. 78–9. 114. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 8, pp. 116–19. 115. Volk, Akten deutscher Bischöfe, Volume 34, p. 551, footnote 1. 116. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 8, p. 537. 117. Gruner and Osterloh, Das Groβdeutsche Reich, pp. 373–6. 118. Zimmermann, Rassenutopie, pp. 214–15. 119. Et wor alles net esou einfach, p. 236. 120. Fisch, Die Luxemburger Kirche, p. 135. 121. Gruner and Osterloh, Das Groβdeutsche Reich, p. 200. 122. Gruner and Osterloh, Das Groβdeutsche Reich, p. 359. 123. Osterloh, Nationalsozialistische Judenverfolgung, p. 505. 124. Benz and Wetzel, Soldarität, Volume 2, p. 141. 125. Benz and Wetzel, Soldarität, Volume 2, p. 147. 126. Zimmermann, Rassenutopie, pp. 219–20.

557

Notes 127. Brandes, Die Tschechen, Volume 1, p. 119; Dagan et al., The Jews of Czechoslovakia, p. 15. 128. Rothkirchen, The Jews, p. 373, footnote 16. 129. Rothkirchen, The Jews, p. 221. 130. Schulze Wessel and Zückert, Handbuch, p. 424. 131. Brandes, Die Tschechen, Volume 2, p. 30. 132. Schulze Wessel and Zückert, Handbuch, p. 425. 133. Benz and Wetzel, Soldarität, Volume 2, p. 148. 134. Maner and Schulze Wessel, Religion, p. 155. 135. Benz and Wetzel, Soldarität, Volume 2, pp. 157–60. 136. Benz and Wetzel, Soldarität, Volume 2, p. 170.

9 National Socialist Mass Murder and the Churches: Persecution in the Occupied Countries 1. Davies, God’s Playground, Volume 2, p. 463. 2. Snyder, Bloodlands, pp. 258–9. 3. Kosmala and Tych, Facing the Nazi Genocide, pp. 87–8. 4. Maritain, A Christian Looks, p. 64. 5. Maritain, A Christian Looks, p. 61. 6. Wasserstein, On the Eve, p. 36. 7. Porter-Szücs, Faith, p. 310. 8. Porter-Szücs, Faith. p. 272. 9. Davies, God’s Playground, Volume 2, pp. 247–8. 10. Porter-Szücs, Faith, p. 282. 11. Porter-Szücs, Faith, pp. 272–3. 12. Davies, God’s Playground, Volume 2, p. 261. 13. Wasserstein, On the Eve, pp. 40–1. 14. Judt, Thinking, p. 18. 15. Porter-Szücs, Faith, p. 291. 16. Judt, Thinking, p. 14. 17. Tec, ‘Of Help, Understanding and Hope’, p. 298. 18. Judt, Thinking, p. 14. 19. Porter-Szücs, Faith, p. 311. 20. Modras, The Catholic Church, pp. 118 and 315; Porter-Szücs, Faith, p. 312. 21. Porter-Szücs, Faith, p. 177. 22. Brzoza, Polin, p. 228. 23. Modras, The Catholic Church, pp. 302–3. 24. Porter-Szücs, Faith, p. 34. 25. Maritain, A Christian Looks, p. 82.

558

Notes 26. Kosmala and Tych, Facing the Nazi Genocide, p. 91. 27. Benz and Wetzel, Solidarität, Volume 1, p. 58. 28. Paulsson, Secret City, p. 1. 29. Davies, God’s Playground, Volume 2, p. 264. 30. Porter-Szücs, Faith, p. 316. 31. Morley, Vatican Diplomacy, p. 295. 32. Gross, Golden Harvest, p. 48. 33. Kulka and Mendes-Flohr, Judaism, p. 382. 34. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 8, p. 288. 35. Blet et al., Le Saint Siège et la situation réligieuse, Volume 3, p. 539; Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 8, p. 534. 36. Jansen, Pius XII, p. 111. 37. Jansen, Pius XII, p. 131. 38. Blet et al., Le Saint Siège et la situation réligieuse, Volume 3, p. 670. 39. Benz and Wetzel, Solidarität, Volume 1, p. 62. 40. Gross, Golden Harvest, pp. 114–15. 41. Kosmala and Tych, Facing the Nazi Genocide, pp. 112–14. 42. Kosmala and Tych, Facing the Nazi Genocide, pp. 115–16. 43. Dieckmann et al., Kooperation, p. 149. 44. Polonsky, ‘My Brother’s Keeper?’, passim. 45. Kosmala and Verbeeck, Facing the Catastrophe, pp. 184–5. 46. Dieckmann et al., Kooperation, p. 149. 47. Gross, Golden Harvest, p. 111. 48. Gross, Golden Harvest, p. 112. 49. Tec, When Light, p. 186. 50. Paulsson, Secret City, p. 106. 51. Tec, When Light, p. 186. 52. Benz and Wetzel, Solidarität, Volume 1, p. 90. 53. Paulsson, Secret City, p. 241. 54. Ariel, ‘Conversions and De-Conversions during the Holocaust’, p. 41. 55. Kurek-Liszik, ‘The Conditions of Admittance and the Social Background of Jewish Children’, pp. 262–3. 56. Kurek-Liszik, ‘The Conditions of Admittance and the Social Background of Jewish Children’, p. 273, note 12. 57. Kulka and Mendes-Flohr, Judaism, p. 398. 58. Kulka and Mendes-Flohr, Judaism, pp. 390–1. 59. Benz and Wetzel, Solidarität, Volume 1, p. 66. 60. Gevers and Bank, Religion, Volume 1, p. 27. 61. Kosmala and Tych, Facing the Nazi Genocide, p. 101. 62. Gross, Golden Harvest, p. 117.

559

Notes 63.Dieckmann et al., Kooperation, pp. 143–6. 64.Gevers and Bank, Religion, Volume 1, p. 5. 65. Gross, Golden Harvest, pp. 109–10. 66. Gross, Fear, p. 179. 67. Gross, Fear, p. 180, footnote. 68. Gevers and Bank, Religion, Volume 1, p. 4. 69. Lendemeijer, Maximiliaan Kolbe, p. 31. 70. Porter-Szücs, Faith, pp. 307–8. 71. Ricciardi, Maximilien Kolbe, passim. 72. Modras, The Catholic Church, pp. 397–8. 73. Modras, The Catholic Church, pp. 64 and 398. 74. Porter-Szücs, Faith, p. 309. 75. Lendemeijer, Maximiliaan Kolbe, p. 205. 76. Lendemeijer, Maximiliaan Kolbe, p. 259. 77. Molette, Prêtres religieux et religieuses, p. 94. 78. Snyder, Bloodlands, p. 183. 79. Snyder, Bloodlands, pp. 199–201. 80. Pecherskaya, Theology, pp. 106–17. 81. Pecherskaya, Theology, p. 113. 82. Pecherskaya, Theology, p. 114. 83. Pecherskaya, Theology, p. 114. 84. Pecherskaya, Theology, p. 115. 85. Maritain, A Christian Looks, p. 45. 86. Krausnick and Wilhelm, Die Truppe, pp. 440–1. 87. Gitelman, Bitter Legacy, p. 238. 88. Gitelman, Bitter Legacy, p. 239. 89. Gitelman, Bitter Legacy, p. 241. 90. Berkhoff, Harvest, pp. 83–4. 91. Berkhoff, Harvest, p. 84. 92. Benz and Wetzel, Soldarität, Volume 2, pp. 42–3. 93. Berkhoff, Harvest, p. 85. 94. Berkhoff, Harvest, p. 87. 95. Benz and Wetzel, Soldarität, Volume 2, p. 67. 96. Magocsi, Morality, p. 155. 97. Magocsi, Morality, p. 155. 98. Magocsi, Morality, p. 148. 99. Gitelman, Bitter Legacy, p. 65. 100. Magocsi, Morality, p. 152. 101. Blet et al., Le Saint Siège et la situation réligieuse, Volume 8, p. 438.

560

Notes 102. Blet et al., Le Saint Siège et la situation réligieuse, Volume 8, pp. 625 and 628. 103. Magocsi, A History, p. 532. 104. Benz and Wetzel, Soldarität, Volume 2, pp. 32–3. 105. Benz and Wetzel, Soldarität, Volume 2, pp. 32–3. 106. Magocsi, Morality, p. 156. 107. Fireside, Icon, p. 105. 108. Magocsi, Morality, p. 158. 109. Magocsi, Morality, p. 138. 110. Magocsi, Morality, p. 157. 111. Manoschek, ‘Serbien’, p. 184. 112. Manoschek, ‘Serbien’, p. 167. 113. Manoschek, ‘Serbien’, p. 161. 114. Browning, The Origins, p. 423. 115. Kladovo Transport, p. 460. 116. Radić, Život, p. 326. 117. Byford, Denial, pp. 161–2. 118. Fleming, Greece, p. 17. 119. Fleming, Greece, p. 47. 120. Fleming, Greece, p. 141. 121. Fleming, Greece, p. 98. 122. Pierron, Juifs, p. 223. 123. Carpi, Italian Diplomatic Documents, p. 296. 124. Benz and Wetzel, Solidarität, Volume 1, p. 137. 125. Cesarani and Kavanaugh, Holocaust, Volume 3, p. 567. 126. Snoek, The Grey Book, p. 155. 127. Snoek, The Grey Book, p. 157. 128. Benz and Wetzel, Solidarität, Volume 1, p. 163. 129. Fleming, Greece, p. 135. 130. Bowman, Jewish Social Studies 48, p. 57. 131. Fleming, Greece, p. 111. 132. Fleming, Greece, p. 113. 133. Fleming, Greece, p. 128. 134. Kasekamp, A History, p. 135. 135. Snyder, Bloodlands, p. 190. 136. Snyder, Black Earth, p. 214. 137. Morley, Vatican Diplomacy, pp. 301–2. 138. Kasekamp, A History, p. 134. 139. Kasekamp, A History, pp. 134–5. 140. Snyder, Black Earth, p. 215.

561

Notes 141. Benz and Wetzel, Solidarität, Volume 2, p. 300. 142. Benz and Wetzel, Solidarität, Volume 2, p. 304. 143. Benz and Wetzel, Solidarität, Volume 2, p. 245. 144. Benz and Wetzel, Solidarität, Volume 2, pp. 245–6. 145. Benz and Wetzel, Solidarität, Volume 2, p. 253. 146. Benz and Wetzel, Solidarität, Volume 2, p. 246. 147. Benz and Wetzel, Solidarität, Volume 2, p. 256. 148. Benz and Wetzel, Solidarität, Volume 2, pp. 257–8. 149. Blet et al., Le Saint Siège et la situation réligieuse, Volume 8, p. 695. 150. Kosmala and Tych, Facing the Nazi Genocide, p. 154. 151. Kosmala and Tych, Facing the Nazi Genocide, p. 156. 152. Snyder, Black Earth, p. 164. 153. Kosmala and Tych, Facing the Nazi Genocide, p. 161. 154. Hoppe and Glass, Die Verfolgung, Volume 7, p. 84. 155. Narkuté, Catholicism, p. 28. 156. Krausnick and Wilhelm, Die Truppe, p. 436. 157. Kosmala and Tych, Facing the Nazi Genocide, p. 167. 158. Benz and Wetzel, Solidarität, Volume 2, p. 288. 159. Snoek, The Grey Book, p. 117. 160. Bentz and Wetzel, Solidarität, Volume 1, p. 219. 161. Hassing, Church Resistance, p. 201. 162. Austadt, Colloquium Ålborg 1986, pp. 27–47. 163. Gevers and Bank, Religion, Volume 1, p. 244. 164. Griffioen and Zeller, Jodenvervolging, p. 163. 165. Griffioen and Zeller, Jodenvervolging, p. 163. 166. Gevers and Bank, Religion, Volume 1, pp. 245–6. 167. Griffioen and Zeller, Jodenvervolging, p. 202. 168. Gevers and Bank, Religion, Volume 1, p. 245. 169. Maerten et al., Entre la peste, pp. 227–8. 170. Gevers and Bank, Religion, Volume 1, p. 269. 171. Gevers and Bank, Religion, Volume 1, pp. 265–6. 172. Maerten et al., Entre la peste, pp. 228–9. 173. Griffioen and Zeller, Jodenvervolging, p. 658. 174. Griffioen and Zeller, Jodenvervolging, pp. 539 and 658. 175. Maerten et al., Entre la peste, p. 208. 176. Maerten et al., Entre la peste, p. 209. 177. Maerten et al., Entre la peste, pp. 210–11. 178. Maerten et al., Entre la peste, pp. 214–15. 179. Maerten et al., Entre la peste, pp. 232–4.

562

Notes 180. Maerten et al., Entre la peste, p. 180. 181. Maerten et al., Entre la peste, p. 180. 182. Maerten et al., Entre la peste, p. 184. 183. Maerten et al., Entre la peste, pp. 256–7. 184. Maerten et al., Entre la peste, pp. 271–2. 185. Griffioen and Zeller, Jodenvervolging, p. 17. 186. Griffioen and Zeller, Jodenvervolging, pp. 210–12. 187. Boom, ‘Wij weten niets’, p. 162. 188. Griffioen and Zeller, Jodenvervolging, p. 330. 189. Stokman, Het verzet, pp. 249–51. 190. Jong, Het Koninkrijk, Volume 7, p. 371. 191. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 8, p. 678. 192. Lehnert, Ich durfte, pp. 117–18. 193. Flap and Croes, Wat toeval leek, p. 60. 194. Griffioen and Zeller, Jodenvervolging, pp. 567–8. 195. Griffioen and Zeller, Jodenvervolging, p. 572. 196. Jong, Het Koninkrijk, Volume 7, p. 371. 197. Müller and Neyer, Edith Stein, p. 13. 198. Müller and Neyer, Edith Stein, p. 68. 199. Müller and Neyer, Edith Stein, p. 95. 200. Müller and Neyer, Edith Stein, p. 93. 201. Müller and Neyer, Edith Stein, p. 121. 202. Müller and Neyer, Edith Stein, p. 148. 203. Müller and Neyer, Edith Stein, p. 155. 204. Müller and Neyer, Edith Stein, p. 230. 205. Kempner, Edith Stein, pp. 116–18. 206. Kempner, Edith Stein, pp. 124–5.

10 National Socialist Mass Murder and the Churches: Allies and Vassal States of Nazi Germany 1. Larsen and Hagtvet, Modern Europe, p. 887; Benz, Dimension, pp. 237–8. 2. Tamir, Bulgaria, p. 188. 3. Snoek, The Grey Book, pp. 182–3. 4. Todorov, La fragilité, p. 16. 5. Snoek, The Grey Book, p. 193. 6. Todorov, La fragilité, p. 30. 7. Döpmann, Kirche, p. 69. 8. Tamir, Bulgaria, pp. 200–1; Snoek, The Grey Book, p. 188.

563

Notes 9. Tamir, Bulgaria, p. 209. 10. Tamir, Bulgaria, p. 179. 11. Braham, The Destruction, p. XIII. 12. Kosmala and Tych, Facing the Nazi Genocide, pp. 139–44. 13. Ioanid, The Holocaust, pp. 13–15. 14. Dieckmann et al., Kooperation, p. 78. 15. Braham, The Destruction, p. 319. 16. Braham, The Destruction, p. 324. 17. Benz and Mihok, Holocaust, p. 40. 18. Balta, Rumänien, p. 73. 19. Ioanid, The Holocaust, p. 61. 20. Benz und Mihok, Holocaust, p. 33. 21. Benz und Mihok, Holocaust, p. 33. 22. Benz und Mihok, Holocaust, pp. 37–41. 23. Ioanid, The Holocaust, p. 86; Braham, The Destruction, p. 75. 24. Benz and Mihok, Holocaust, pp. 42–3. 25. Ioanid, The Holocaust, p. 108. 26. Balta, Rumänien, pp. 218–19. 27. Ioanid, The Holocaust, p. 175. 28. Benz and Wetzel, Solidarität, Volume 1, p. 119. 29. Ioanid, The Holocaust, p. 75. 30. Ioanid, The Holocaust, p. 98. 31. Ioanid, The Holocaust, p. 105. 32. Braham, The Destruction, p. 257. 33. Benz and Wetzel, Solidarität, Volume 1, p. 126. 34. Balta, Rumänien, p. 293; Ioanid, The Holocaust, p. 246. 35. Braham, The Destruction, p. 80. 36. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 8, p. 502. 37. Benz and Wetzel, Solidarität, Volume 1, p. 128. 38. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 9, p. 283. 39. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 9, pp. 283–5. 40. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 9, p. 285. 41. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 10, pp. 513–14. 42. Ward, Priest, p. 202. 43. Kamenec, On the Trail, p. 64. 44. Brandmüller, Holocaust, p. 22. 45. Brandmüller, Holocaust, pp. 145–52. 46. Kamenec, On the Trail, p. 206. 47. Tönsmeyer, Das Dritte Reich, p. 156, footnote 254.

564

Notes 48. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 6, pp. 408–9. 49. Kamenec, On the Trail, pp. 168–9. 50. Kamenec, On the Trail, p. 220. 51. Kamenec, On the Trail, p. 212. 52. Kamenec, On the Trail, p. 209. 53. Kamenec, On the Trail, p. 293. 54. Kamenec, On the Trail, p. 224. 55. Becker et al., Juifs, pp. 157–8. 56. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 8, pp. 458–9. 57. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 8, p. 484. 58. Kamenec, On the Trail, p. 208. 59. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 8, p. 502. 60. Dieckmann et al., Kooperation, pp. 51–2, footnote 136. 61. Kamenec, On the Trail, p. 234. 62. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 8, p. 516. 63. Brandmüller, Holocaust, pp. 161–3. 64. Kamenec, On the Trail, p. 235. 65. Kamenec, On the Trail, p. 235. 66. Brandmüller, Holocaust, p. 36. 67. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 8, pp. 524–5. 68. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 9, p. 177. 69. Tönsmeyer, Das Dritte Reich, p. 155. 70. Brandmüller, Holocaust, pp. 38–9. 71. Brandmüller, Holocaust, pp. 169–74; Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 9, p. 23. 72. Brandmüller, Holocaust, pp. 42–3. 73. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 9, p. 246. 74. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 9, pp. 26–7 and 245–51. 75. Kamenec, On the Trail, p. 325. 76. Tönsmeyer, Das Dritte Reich, p. 156. 77. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 10, p. 50. 78. Wolff and Hoensch, Catholics, pp. 176–7. 79. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 10, p. 433. 80. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 10, p. 461. 81. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 10, p. 477. 82. Brandmüller, Holocaust, pp. 201–203. 83. Hoare, Genocide, pp. 20–1. 84. Motadel, Islam, p. 213. 85. Mattar, The Mufti, p. 105. 86. Gevers and Bank, Religion, Volume 1, pp. 62–3.

565

Notes 87. Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows, pp. 122–5. 88. Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows, p. 115. 89. Gevers and Bank, Religion, Volume 1, pp. 62–3. 90. Tanner, Croatia, p. 149. 91. Gevers and Bank, Religion, Volume 1, pp. 63–4. 92. Gevers and Bank, Religion, Volume 1, p. 65. 93. Gevers and Bank, Religion, Volume 1, p. 66. 94. Tanner, Croatia, p. 181. 95. Gevers and Bank, Religion, Volume 1, p. 66. 96. Tanner, Croatia, p. 156. 97. Gevers and Bank, Religion, Volume 1, p. 73, footnote 128. 98. Biondich, ‘Controversies’, p. 450. 99. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 8, pp. 709–10 and 735. 100. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 9, pp. 33–5. 101. Cesarani and Kavanaugh, Holocaust, Volume 5, pp. 123–4. 102. Snoek, The Grey Book, p. 167. 103. Schwarz Lausten, A Church History, p. 300. 104. Snoek, The Grey Book, p. 169. 105. Cesarani and Kavanaugh, Holocaust, Volume 5, p. 138. 106. Lubac, Résistance, p. 493. 107. Browning, The Origins, p. 201. 108. Browning, The Origins, p. 200. 109. Montclos et al., Églises, pp. 198–9. 110. Griffioen and Zeller, Jodenvervolging, p. 276. 111. Griffioen and Zeller, Jodenvervolging, p. 258. 112. Semelin, Persécutions, pp. III –IV; Griffioen and Zeller, Jodenvervolging, pp. 395 and 418. 113. Wellers et al., La France, pp. 151–2. 114. Wellers et al., La France, pp. 180–1. 115. Bédarida, Les catholiques, p. 174. 116. Bédarida, Les catholiques, p. 166. 117. Wellers et al., La France, pp. 153–4. 118. Nobécourt, ‘Le Vicaire’, p. 207. 119. Chenaux, Pie XII, p. 282. 120. Nobécourt, ‘Le Vicaire’, pp. 356–62. 121. Felice, Storia, p. 480, footnote 1. 122. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 8, pp. 297 and 334; Lubac, Résistance, pp. 575–6. 123. Burrin, La France, p. 228. 124. Wellers et al., La France, pp. 157–8. 125. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 8, p. 610; Morley, Vatican Diplomacy, p. 117. 566

Notes 126. Morley, Vatican Diplomacy, p. 122. 127. Wellers et al., La France, p. 195. 128. Wellers et al., La France, pp. 157–8. 129. Wellers et al., La France, p. 159; Semelin, Persécutions, pp. 662–3. 130. Semelin, Persécutions, p. 662. 131. Bédarida, Les catholiques, pp. 179–80. 132. Bédarida, Les catholiques, p. 181. 133. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 8, p. 626; Morley, Vatican Diplomacy, pp. 123–4. 134. Yagil, La France, Volume 3, p. 99. 135. Yagil, La France, Volume 3, pp. 54–5. 136. Azéma and Bédarida, Le régime, p. 456. 137. Wellers et al., La France, pp. 159–60. 138. Wellers et al., La France, pp. 245–55. 139. Lubac, Résistance, p. 657. 140. Wellers et al., La France, p. 163. 141. Wellers et al., La France, p. 170. 142. Bédarida, Les catholiques, pp. 173–4. 143. Bédarida, Les catholiques, pp. 178–9. 144. Yagil, La France, Volume 3, pp. 170–3. 145. Semelin, Persécutions, pp. 744–5. 146. Montclos et al., Églises, La region Rhone-Alpes, pp. 178–9. 147. Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows, p. 152. 148. Sarfatti, The Jews, p. 201; Semelin, Persécutions, p. III . 149. Yagil, La France, Volume 3, pp. 72–3; Semelin, Persécutions, pp. 761–2. 150. Blet et al., Le Saint-Siège et les Victimes, Volume 9, pp. 399–400. 151. Abramovici, Un rocher, p. 131. 152. Abramovici, Un rocher, pp. 133–4. 153. Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows, p. 141. 154. Felice, Storia, p. 444. 155. Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows, p. 278. 156. Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows, p. 282. 157. Coslovich, Primo Levi Center New York 2010. 158. Felice, Storia, p. 446. 159. Felice, Storia, p. 455. 160. Felice, Storia, p. 463. 161. Felice, Storia, p. 464. 162. Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows, p. 235. 163. Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows, p. 235. 164. Felice, Storia, pp. 476–7. 567

Notes 165. Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows, p. 255. 166. Benz and Wetzel, Solidarität, Volume 4, p. 321. 167. Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows, p. 262. 168. Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows, p. 275. 169. Chenaux, Pie XII, p. 295. 170. Chenaux, Pie XII, p. 296. 171. Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows, p. 163. 172. Chenaux, Pie XII, p. 297. 173. Sarfatti, The Jews, pp. 392–3; Felice, Storia, pp. 610–14. 174. Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows, p. 200. 175. Blet et al., Le Saint-Siège et les Victimes, Volume 9, pp. 568–9. 176. Benz and Wetzel, Solidarität, Volume 4, p. 320. 177. Chenaux, Pie XII, p. 300. 178. Chenaux, Pie XII, p. 292. 179. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 10, p. 300. 180. Benz and Wetzel, Solidarität, Volume 4, p. 365. 181. Wolff and Hoensch, Catholics, p. 130. 182. Wolff and Hoensch, Catholics, pp. 128–9. 183. Wolff and Hoensch, Catholics, p. 130. 184. Wolff and Hoensch, Catholics, pp. 130–1. 185. Hanebrink, In Defense, p. 169. 186. Hanebrink, In Defense, p. 161. 187. Hanebrink, In Defense, pp. 161–2. 188. Wolff and Hoensch, Catholics, pp. 127–8. 189. Hanebrink, In Defense. pp. 178–9. 190. Hanebrink, In Defense, pp. 176–7. 191. Hanebrink, In Defense, p. 185. 192. Hanebrink, In Defense, p. 186. 193. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 8, p. 44. 194. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 8, p. 246. 195. Dieckmann et al., Kooperation, pp. 59–60. 196. Hanebrink, In Defense, p. 174. 197. Hanebrink, In Defense, p. 221. 198. Hanebrink, In Defense, p. 191. 199. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 8, p. 44. 200. Hanebrink, In Defense, pp. 205–6. 201. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 10, p. 289. 202. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 10, p. 328. 203. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 10, p. 328.

568

Notes 204. Hanebrink, In Defense, p. 207. 205. Hilberg, The Destruction, Volume 2, p. 898, footnote. 206. Hanebrink, In Defense, pp. 210–11. 207. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 10, pp. 31–2. 208. Hanebrink, In Defense, pp. 212–13. 209. Hanebrink, In Defense, p. 216. 210. Hanebrink, In Defense, p. 218. 211. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 10, p. 395. 212. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 10, p. 456. 213. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 10, p. 460. 214. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 10, p. 497. 215. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 10, p. 39. 216. Hanebrink, In Defense, pp. 220–1. 217. Hilberg, The Destruction, Volume 2 , p. 898. 218. Wolff and Hoensch, Catholics, pp. 131–2.

11 National Socialist Mass Murder and the Churches: The Christian Dimension of Relief and Refuge 1. Berkhoff, Harvest, p. 87. 2. Joutard et al., Cévennes, p. 13; Semelin, Persécutions, pp. 744–5. 3. Hellemans, Schimmen, p. 77. 4. Joutard et al., Cévennes, p. 252. 5. Joutard et al., Cévennes, p. 336. 6. Croes and Tammes, ‘Gif laten wij niet voortbestaan’, p. 439. 7. Semelin, Persécutions, p. 720. 8. Klinken, Opvattingen, p. 369. 9. Klinken, Opvattingen, p. 373. 10. Schenkel, De Twentse Paradox, p. 89. 11. Klinken, Opvattingen, p. 378. 12. Yagil, La France, Volume 3, pp. 88–92 and 97. 13. Lubac, Résistance, pp. 545–6. 14. Tec, When Light, p. 205. 15. Tec, When Light, p. 137. 16. Presser, Ondergang, Volume 2, p. 250. 17. Jong, Het Koninkrijk, Volume 7, p. 466. 18. Tec, When Light, p. 139. 19. Kurek-Liszik, ‘The Conditions of Admittance and the Social Background of Jewish Children’, p. 246.

569

Notes 20. Benz and Wetzel, Solidarität, Volume 1, p. 64. 21. Kurek-Lesik, ‘The Conditions of Admittance and the Social Background of Jewish Children’, pp. 269–70. 22. Kamenec, On the Trail, p. 341. 23. Benz and Wetzel, Solidarität, Volume 4, p. 48. 24. Kurek-Lesik, ‘The Conditions of Admittance and the Social Background of Jewish Children’, p. 272; Paulsson, Secret City, pp. 87–8. 25. Kurek-Lesik, ‘The Conditions of Admittance and the Social Background of Jewish Children’, p. 272. 26. Benz and Wetzel, Soldarität, Volume 2, p. 281. 27. Tec, When Light, p. 34. 28. Ariel, ‘Conversions and De-Conversions during the Holocaust’, p. 44. 29. Kłoczowski, ‘The Religions Orders and the Jews in Nazi-Occupied Poland’, p. 240. 30. Benz and Wetzel, Solidarität, Volume 4, pp. 316–17. 31. Benz, Überleben, p. 178. 32. Benz, Überleben, p. 180. 33. Benz, Überleben, p. 178. 34. Stepien, ‘The Image of Post-War Kraków in Jewish Writing, 1945–1950’, pp. 377–8. 35. Stepien, ‘The Image of Post-War Kraków in Jewish Writing, 1945–1950’, pp. 377–8. 36. Paulsson, Secret City, p. 241. 37. Tec, When Light, p. 148. 38. Tec, When Light, pp. 148–9. 39. Ariel, ‘Conversions and De-Conversions during the Holocaust’, p. 54. 40. Tec, When Light, pp. 186–7. 41. Benz and Wetzel, Soldarität, Volume 2, p. 59. 42. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 10, p. 310. 43. Maerten et al., Entre la peste, pp. 271–2. 44. Gross, Fear, p. 162, footnote. 45. Chenaux, ‘Le Saint-Siege et la question de l’antisemitisme sous le pontificat de Pie XI’, pp. 720–1. 46. Friedländer, Quand vient, p. 77. 47. Friedländer, Quand vient, p. 78. 48. Friedländer, Quand vient, p. 113. 49. Friedländer, Quand vient, pp. 119–20. 50. Friedländer, Pie XII, passim. 51. Friedländer, Quand vient, p. 151.

12 Supreme Pastors and Ecumenism 1. Feldkamp, Pius XII, p. 175. 2. Chenaux, Pie XII, p. 227.

570

Notes 3. Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, p. 213. 4. Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, p. 271. 5. Friedländer, Pius XII, p. 27. 6. Feldkamp, Pius XII, p. 133. 7. Friedländer, Pius XII, p. 31. 8. Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, p. 223. 9. Chenaux, Pie XII, p. 234. 10. Schneider et al., Die Briefe Pius XII, pp. 77–8. 11. Chenaux, Pie XII, p. 237. 12. Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope, p. 232. 13. Chenaux, L’Église catholique, p. 135. 14. Summi Pontificatus, p. 74. 15. Nobécourt, ‘Le Vicaire’, p. 197. 16. Summi Pontificatus, p. 26. 17. Summi Pontificatus, pp. 41–4. 18. Summi Pontificatus, pp. 55–6 and 58. 19. Feldkamp, Pius XII, p. 131. 20. Durand, L’Église catholique, p. 59. 21. Sommamente gradita, pp. 55–6. 22. La Paterna Parola, pp. 75–6. 23. La Paterna Parola, p. 135. 24. La Paterna Parola, p. 140. 25. Chenaux, Pie XII, p. 244. 26. Chenaux, Pie XII, p. 245. 27. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et la Guerre, Volume 6, p. 454. 28. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et la Guerre, Volume 6, p. 479. 29. Chenaux, Pie XII, p. 263. 30. Schneider et al., Die Briefe Pius XII, p. 79. 31. Nobécourt, ‘Le Vicaire’, p. 199. 32. Nobécourt, ‘Le Vicaire’, pp. 200–1. 33. Friedländer, Pius XII, p. 8. 34. Chenaux, Pie XII, p. 267. 35. Chenaux, Pie XII, pp. 267–8. 36. Becker et al., Juifs et Chrétiens, pp. 157–8. 37. Friedländer, Pius XII, p. 111. 38. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 8, p. 534. 39. Chenaux, Pie XII, pp. 285–6. 40. Fouilloux, Les chrétiens français, p. 93. 41. Friedländer, Pius XII, p. 116.

571

Notes 42. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 9, pp. 287–9. 43. Blet et al., Lettres de Pie XI, Volume 2, pp. 323. 44. Kösters and Ruff, Die katholische Kirche, p. 137. 45. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 9, pp. 229–30. 46. Morley, Vatican Diplomacy, p. 275. 47. Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows, pp. 284–5. 48. Friedländer, Pius XII, p. 132. 49. Sommamente gradita, p. 38. 50. Chenaux, Pie XII, p. 261. 51. Kilsdonk, Plaatsbekleder, pp. 35–6. 52. Friedländer, Pius XII, p. 161. 53. Overy, The Bombing War, p. 541. 54. Chadwick, Britain, p. 275. 55. Feldkamp, Pius XII, p. 148. 56. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 11, pp. 16–17. 57. Chadwick, Britain, p. 301. 58. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 10, p. 568. 59. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 6, p. 9. 60. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 6, p. 10. 61. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 8, p. 5. 62. Papeleux, L’Action caritative, p. 35. 63. Steinacher, Nazis on the Run, p. 116. 64. Steinacher, Nazis on the Run, p. 122. 65. Steinacher, Nazis on the Run, p. 140. 66. Chadwick, Britain, p. 305. 67. Blet et al., La Saint Siège et les Victimes, Volume 10, p. 13. 68. Gross, Fear, pp. 140–1, footnote. 69. Akgönül, Le Patriarcat grec, p. 55. 70. Akgönül, Le Patriarcat grec, pp. 62–3. 71. Miner, Stalin’s Holy War, p. 309. 72. Friedländer, Pius XII, p. 133. 73. Akgönül, Le Patriarcat grec, p. 72. 74. Pospielovsky, The Russian Church, Volume 1, p. 210, footnote 35. 75. Pospielovsky, The Russian Church, Volume 1, pp. 204–5. 76. Miner, Stalin’s Holy War, p. 193. 77. Miner, Stalin’s Holy War, pp. 193–4. 78. Pospielovsky, The Russian Church, Volume 1, pp. 212–13. 79. Pospielovsky, The Russian Church, Volume 1, pp. 217–18. 80. Pospielovsky, The Russian Church, Volume 1, p. 213.

572

Notes 81. Montefiore, Stalin, p. 426. 82. Fletcher, Nikolai, p. 63. 83. Pospielovsky, The Russian Church, Volume 1, p. 208. 84. Pospielovsky, The Russian Church, Volume 1, p. 209. 85. Miner, Stalin’s Holy War, p. 195. 86. Miner, Stalin’s Holy War, p. 171. 87. Pospielovsky, The Russian Church, Volume 1, p. 215. 88. Miner, Stalin’s Holy War, p. 142. 89. Miner, Stalin’s Holy War, pp. 152–3. 90. Chumachenko, Church, p. 37. 91. Roslof, Red Priests, pp. 200–201. 92. Miner, Stalin’s Holy War, pp. 137–8. 93. Miner, Stalin’s Holy War, p. 139. 94. Chumachenko, Church, p. 51. 95. Chumachenko, Church, pp. 100–1. 96. Fireside, Icon, p. 184. 97. Kulka and Mendes-Flohr, Judaism, p. 454. 98. Visser ’t Hooft, Memoires, p. 122. 99. Kulka and Mendes-Flohr, Judaism, p. 456. 100. Visser ’t Hooft, Memoires, p. 119. 101. Kulka and Mendes-Flohr, Judaism, p. 458. 102. Kulka and Mendes-Flohr, Judaism, p. 458. 103. Visser ’t Hooft, Memoires, p. 154. 104. Kulka and Mendes-Flohr, Judaism, p. 463. 105. Visser ’t Hooft, Memoires, p. 155. 106. Visser ’t Hooft, Memoires, p. 156. 107. Hanebrink, In Defense, p. 188. 108. Visser ’t Hooft, Memoires, p. 120.

Conclusion 1. Motadel, Islam, p. 314. 2. Chenaux, L’Église catholique, pp. 161–2. 3. Blet et al., Le Saint-Siège et la Guerre, Volume 11, p. 484. 4. Blet et al., Le Saint-Siège et la Guerre, Volume 11, p. 467. 5. Blet et al., Le Saint-Siège et la Guerre, Volume 11, p. 531. 6. Chumachenko, Church, p. 54. 7. Bociurkiw, The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, p. 119. 8. Boeckh, Stalinismus, p. 502.

573

Notes 9. Bociurkiw, The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, p. 170; Boeckh, Stalinismus, pp. 518–20. 10. Bociurkiw, The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, p. 175, footnote 114. 11. Leustean, Eastern Christianity, p. 42. 12. Bociurkiw, The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, p. 238. 13. Narkutė, Catholicism, pp. 64–5. 14. Judt, Postwar, p. 210. 15. Chenaux, L’Église catholique, pp. 167–8. 16. Judt, Postwar, pp. 80–1. 17. Chenaux, Une Europe vaticane, pp. 26–7. 18. Burleigh, Moral Combat, p. 101. 19. Hummel und Kiβener, Die Katholiken, pp. 219–20. 20. Schäfer, Landesbischof, p. 12. 21. Macculloch, Silence, p. 210. 22. Umkehr zu Gott, pp. 68–9. 23. The Theology, p. 168. 24. The Theology, p. 6. 25. The Theology, p. 9. 26. The Theology, pp. 11 and 134. 27. Blet et al., Le Saint-Siège et la Guerre, Volume 11, pp. 489–90. 28. Blet et al., Le Saint-Siège et la Guerre, Volume 11, p. 510. 29. Cunningham et al., The Catholic Church, p. 180. 30. Landman and Melloni, Nostra Aetate, pp. 26–7. 31. Connelly, From Enemy, p. 248. 32. Connelly, From Enemy, p. 267. 33. Landman and Melloni, Nostra Aetate, p. 62.

574

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INDEX OF THEMES

Albania Churches and occupation 187–190 Austria: Church and Anschluβ 118–125 Churches and the Holocaust 361–365 Baltic States Churches and Soviet-occupation 158–161 Churches and German occupation 244–249 Churches and the Holocaust 398–402 Belgium Church and occupation 176–180 Church and Forced Labour 305–307 Church and Resistance 307–309 Church and the Holocaust 404–408 Belorussia Churches and occupation 240–244 Churches and the Holocaust 388–389 Bulgaria Orthodox Church 40–42 Church and occupations 192–194 Church and the Holocaust 419–421 Calvinism Calvinism in the Interbellum 9–12 The theology of Karl Barth 67–74, 289–293 Pietism 294–295 Reflections on Christian resistance 324–328 Relief and refuge 469–479 Catholicism Catholicism in the Interbellum 12–26 Spanish Civil War 86–91 The worker-priest 302–305 Reflections on Christian resistance 324–326, 328–331 Relief and refuge 469–479 Christianity and race 100–107 Church and Bolshevism 29–30 Church and the Cold War 520–522 Church and the European Federalism 523–524 Church and Fascism 79–84 Church and National Socialism 53–56 Croatia Church and independence 198–202 Catholic Church and state 206–210 Church and the Holocaust 437–439

Czechoslovakia Church and State 16–17, 125–136 Church and the Holocaust 367–368 Denmark Church and German rule 163–164 Ecumenism Ecumenism in the Interbellum 50–52 World Council of Churches at war 510–513 Foundation of the World Council 519–520 Ecclesial reactions to the Holocaust Protestant Churches 524–527 Catholic Church 524–529 Finland Churches at war 251–253 France Vichy: Church and State 171–174 Alsace-Lorraine: annexation 174–176 Church and Forced Labour 299–305 Churches and Resistance 312–318 Alsace-Lorraine: Holocaust 365–366 Churches and the Holocaust 441–450, 451–452 Germany: Evangelical Churches Struggle for the ‘Reichskirche’ 57–79 ‘Confessing Church’ 65–74 The Church at war 262–266 Church and Euthanasia 334–336 Churches and the Holocaust 344–346, 347–349 Churches and baptised Jews 359–361 Germany: Catholic Church Confrontation with the Nazi-regime 91–99 The Church at war 262–266 Church and Euthanasia 334–338 Church and the Holocaust 346–347, 350–352 Church and the persecution of Roma/Sinti 351 Churches and baptised Jews 359–361 Greece Orthodox Church and the “Catastrophe” 49–50 Church and occupation 194–196 Church and civil war 269–275 Church and the Holocaust 394–398

593

Index of Themes Greek Catholic Churches Romania 48, 192 Ukraine 153–157, 237–240 Church and the Holocaust 389–392 Hungary Soviet-style republic 20–22 Church and occupations 190–192 Churches and the Holocaust 458–467 Holy See Lateran Treaty 79–82 Reich Concordat 91–100 The issue of race 105–107 Refugees in the Vatican 456–458 The policy of Pius XII 483–498, 501–502 Vatican relief measures 1939–1947 498–501 Islam Occupation of Bosnia 203–206 Holocaust in Bosnia 436 Italy Mediterranean ambitions 183–190 The Church and the fall of Mussolini 318–320 Church and occupation 320–324 Church and the Holocaust 450–451, 453–456 Luxembourg Church and annexation 174–176 Church and Holocaust 366 Lutheranism Lutheranism in the Interbellum 1–8 Norway: Church and obedience 166–168, 283–284 Denmark: Church and obedience 285–289 Reflections on Christian resistance 324–328 Relief and refuge 469–479 Monaco Church and Holocaust 452 Netherlands Churches and occupation 180–183 Churches and Forced Labour 306–307 Churches and Resistance 309–312 Churches and the Holocaust 408–412

594

Norway Church and occupation 164–168 Churches and the Holocaust 402–404 Patriarchate of Constantinople 38–40, 502–504 Poland Pluralistic society 18–20 and 23 Fourth partition 136–141 and 152–153 Church and occupations 138–157 Resistance and religion 275–280 The Warsaw Uprising 280–282 Churches and the Holocaust 369–381 Romania Churches in the “new Romania” 46–48 Legion of the Archangel Michael 109–113 Church in Transnistria 249–251 Churches and the Holocaust 421–428 Russian Orthodox Church Stalinist persecution 31–38 Orthodoxy and Russification 157–158 The Great Patriotic War 220–226 The Church and the Holocaust 385–388 Church and the Soviet victory 504–510 Saarland: Church and annexation 117–118, 122–125 Serbia Orthodox Church 40–46 Church and occupation 210–213 Church and Resistance 256–262 Church and the Holocaust 393–394 Slovakia Church and independence 17, 129–133 Church and the Holocaust 428–436 Slovenia Church and occupation 196–198 Church and liberation 266–267 Ukraine Churches and Sovietization 152–157 Churches and Nazification 233–240 Churches and the Holocaust 389–393 Yugoslavia Federalism and religions 44–46 Resistance in Yugoslavia 256–269

INDEX OF NAMES

Note: # denotes where years of birth and death are unknown. A Abadi, Moussa (1910–1997) 451 Aba-Gomer, Khayim (1898–1941) 399 Abašidse, David (1876–?) 37 Abraham 529 Abetz, Otto (1903–1958) 170–171, 173, 441–442 Adam, Karl (1876–1966) 103–104 Adamski, Stanisław (1875–1967) 143–145, 277 Adenauer, Konrad (1876–1967) 101, 523–524 Ady, Endre (1877–1917) 11 Afanasii (Sakharov) (1881–1962) 223 Akšamović, Antun (1875–1959) 209 Alcalá-Zamora, Niceto (1877–1949) 88 Aleksandr (Paulus) # 160 Aleksii (Hromadsky) (1882–1943) 234, 235, 237 Aleksii (Simansky) (1877–1970) 38, 221–223, 225–226, 245, 504–505, 506, 509, 521 Aleksić, Nikola # 257 Alexander I (Yugoslavia) (1881–1934) 43, 44 Alexander (Tahan) (?–1958) 509 Alexander, Stella (1912–1982) 265 Aleksandr (Vedensky) (1889–1946) 244, 508 Alexandrov, Georgy (1908–1961) 507–508 Alexianu, Gheorghe (1897–1946) 250 Visarion (Puju) (1879–1964) 250 Alfieri, Dino (1886–1966) 490 Alfonso XIII (Spain) (1866–1941) 86, 87, 89 Altenburg, Günther (1894–1984) 397 Althaus, Paul (1888–1966) 57 Amvrosii (1812–1891) 43 André, Joseph (1908–1973) 408, 478–479 Andreotti, Giulio (1919–2013) 320 Andrew (saint) (?–60) 19, 108, 259 Antonescu, Ion Victor (1882–1946) 186, 249–250, 423–425, 426–428 Antonescu, Mihai (1904–1946) 424 Antoni (Hrapovitsky) (1863–1936) 31, 43, 506 Apor, Vilmos (1892–1945) 459, 464 d’Arc, Jeanne (1412–1431) 13, 171, 312, 449 d’Arcy Osborne, Francis (1994–1964) 84 Ariel, Yaakov # 378 Arsenije III (Čarnojević) (1633–1706) 41 Arsenije IV (Jovanović Šakabenta) (1698–1748) 43 Artuković, Andrija (1899–1988) 203, 437–438 Ascalesi, Alessio (1872–1952) 318

Asmussen, Hans (1898–1968) 59, 72–73 Asseldonk, Anton van (1892–1973) 106 Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal (1881–1938) 40, 49 Athenagoras I (Spyrou) (1886–1972) 503–504, 509 Augustīns (Pētersons) (1875–1955) 160, 244 Austad, Torleiv (1937) 327 B Babović, Gliska # 393 Bach-Zelewski, Erich von dem (1899–1972) 281–282 Bacht, Heinrich (1910–1986) 107 Badoglio, Pietro (1871–1956) 318, 320 Baeck, Leo (1873–1956) 346 Baels, Lilian (1916–2002) 179 Bălan, Nicolae (1882–1955) 426 Baldelli, Ferdinando (1886–1963) 499 Balzer, Erwin (1901–1975) 77 Bandera, Stepan (1909–1959) 237 Bánffy, Miklós (1873–1950) 465 Barbu, Zeev # 110 Barale, Vincenzo (1903–1979) 455 Barot, Madeleine (1909–1995) 511 Barth, Fritz (1856–1912) 69 Barth, Karl (1886–1968) 12, 68–73, 75, 126, 289–290, 292–293, 327–328, 345, 353, 517, 519, 526 Bartolini, Domenico (1880–1960) 381 Bartolomasi, Angelo (1869–1959) 320 Bastianini, Giuseppe (1899–1961) 199 Baudrillart, Alfred-Henri (1859–1942) 172–173, 314 Bauer, Antun (1856–1937) 44, 45, 206 Bea, Augustinus (1881–1968) 528 Bédarida, François (1926–2001) 316 Bell, George (1883–1958) 354, 357, 511 Benedict XV (pope) (1854–1922) 16, 23, 51, 79, 132, 485, 490, 493, 499 Beneš, Edvard (1884–1948) 128 Benshalom, Benzion (1907–1968) 161 Beran, Josef (1888–1969) 67, 522 Bérard, Léon (1876–1960) 445–446 Berg, Paal (1873–1968) 165 Bergen, Diego von (1872–1944) 483, 485 Berggrav, Eivind (1884–1959) 165–168, 283, 290, 326, 403 Bergson, Henri (1859–1941) 447

595

Index of Names Bernardini, Filippo (1884–1954) 492 Berning, Wilhelm (1877–1955) 97, 100, 350 Bertram, Adolf (1859–1945) 54, 97, 98–99, 100, 104, 143, 336, 346–347, 350–352, 360, 361 Best, Werner (1903–1989) 288 Bethge, Eberhard (1909–2000) 357 Bichlmair, George # 363 Bidault, Georges (1899–1983) 317, 523 Bieliek, Juliusz (1895–1978) 144 Billington, James H. (1929) 34 Biondich, Mark # 200–202 Blau, Paul (1861–1944) 146 Blericq, Edward van (1895–1946) 147 Blónski, Jan (1931–2009) 377 Blum, Léon (1872–1950) 13, 303, 441 Bobe, Franz Werner (1902–1947) 135 Bodelschwingh, Friedrich von (1877–1946) 60–61, 67, 336, 354 Boegner, Marc (1881–1970) 12, 52, 166, 171–172, 293, 444–446, 470, 524 Boetto, Pietro (1871–1946) 323, 455 Bogaard, Johannes (1881–1974) 471 Bonefačic, Kvirin Klement (1870–1957) 437 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich (1906–1945) 62, 67, 168, 345, 352–359, 511, 515 Bonhoeffer, Karl (1868–1948) 352, 357–358 Bonhoeffer, Karl-Friedrich (1899–1957) 356 Bonhoeffer, Klaus (1901–1945) 353, 358 Bonhoeffer, Walter (1899–1918) 352 Boniface (saint) (672–754) 226 Bór-Komorowski, Tadeusz (1895–1966) 280 Borgongini Duca, Francesco (1884–1954) 500 Boris III (Bulgaria) (1884–1943) 420, 421 Borkowska, Anna (Bertranda) (1900–1988) 473–474 Bormann, Martin (1900–1945) 55, 123, 145, 232, 236, 338, 410 Born, Ludger (1897–1980) 363 Bornewasser, Franz Rudolf (1866–1951) 118 Borovoj, Vitali (1916–2008) 519 Bosch, Dirk Arie van den (1884–1942) 310 Boulard, Fernand (1898–1977) 13 Boulier, Jean (1894–1980) 452 Božić, Savo (1886–1945) 262 Bracht, Fritz (1899–1945) 144 Brandsma, Titus (1881–1942) 310 Brauchitsch, Walther von (1881–1948) 356 Bräuer, Curt (1889–1969) 165 Brauer, Max (1887–1973) 59 Breit, Thomas (1880–1966) 72 Breitinger, Hilarius (1907–1994) 147 Brizgys, Vincentas (1903–1992) 248, 249, 402 Britten, Benjamin (1913–1976) x Brunacci, Aldo (1944) 455 Brokāns, Aloisz # 400 Browning, Christopher (1944) 340

596

Buchberger, Michael (1874–1961) 335 Budak, Mile (1889–1945) 200, 203 Bürckel, Josef (1895–1944) 121, 122–125 Buriakova, Sofia # 225 Bursche, Juliusz (1862–1942) 148 Burzio, Giuseppe (1901–1966) 430, 431–435, 492, 493 C Cadorna, Rafaele (1889–1973) 323 Calcagno, Tullio (1899–1945) 321, 322 Calvin, Jean (1509–1564) 4, 9, 52, 68, 449 Canaris, Wilhelm (1887–1945) 356–358 Cardijn, Jozef (1882–1967) 306 Carol II (Romania) (1893–1953) 112, 186 Cassidy, Edward Idris (1924) 529 Cassulo, Andrea (1869–1952) 426–428 Cavallier József (1891–1970) 466 Célis, Louis # 407 Chaillet, Pierre (1900–1972) 315, 444, 450 Chameides, Leon (1935) 392 Chameides, Zvi (1932) 392 Chappoulié, Henri (1901–1959) 446 Charlemagne (742/747–814) 323 Charles IX (Sweden) (1550–1611) 220 Charlotte (Luxembourg) (1896–1985) 174 Chenaux, Philippe (1959) 479, 491, 495 Cher, Israel # 394 Chevrot, Georges (1879–1958) 314 Chicherin, Georgy (1872–1936) 85 Chirac, Jacques (1932) 449 Chopin, Frédéric (1810–1849) 277, 282 Christian X (Denmark) (1870–1947) 163, 440 Chrysanthos (Philippidis) (1881–1949) 49–50, 194–195, 272 Chrysostomos (Kalafatis) (1867–1922) 49 Chrysostomos (Papadopoulos) (1868–1938) 49 Chrysostomos (Zakynthos) (1890–1958) 397 Churchill, Winston (1874–1965) 271, 272, 496, 520, 527 Chyliński, Rafaël (1694–1741) 381 Ciano, Galeazzo (1903–1944) 486 Cicognani, Gaetano (1881–1962) 121 Claudel, Paul (1868–1955) 314 Clement (Ohrid) (840–916) 188 Clement XIII (pope) (1693–1769) 16 Clement XIV (pope) (1705–1774) 18 Coch, Friedrich (1887–1945) 63 Codreanu, Corneliu Zela (1899–1938) 110–113, 423 Colli, Evasio (1883–1971) 320 Congar, Yves (1904–1995) 523 Connelly, John # 103 Conrad, Theodor (1881–1969) 415 Conrad-Martius, Hedwig (1888–1966) 415 Constantine the Great (272–337) 323

Index of Names Conzemius, Victor (1929) 493 Cornelius (saint) (?–253) 110 Cortesi, Filippo (1876–1947) 139 Costa, Elia Dalla (1872–1961) 455 Courant, Auguste (1849–1936) 412, 415–416 Crainic, Nichifor (1889–1972) 108 Cristea, Miron (1868–1939) 47, 111–112, 516 Csernoch, János (1852–1927) 22 Čule, Petar (1898–1985) 210 Cuza, Alexandru (1820–1873) 109 Cyril (saint) (827–869) 135 Czapik, Gyula (1887–1956) 464 Czapliński, Przemysław (1962) 380 D Dąbrowska, Maria (1889–1970) 381 Daca, Roman # 238 Daladier, Édouard (1884–1970) 303 Damaskinos (Papandreou) (1891–1949) 49–50, 195–196, 272–273, 397–398, 516, 525 Daniel, Yvan (1909–1986) 302 Dantzig, Andries van (1920–2005) 295 Darlan, François (1881–1942) 444 Davies, Norman (1939) 371, 374 Dawson, Christopher (1889–1970) 55 Deák, Istvan (1926) 22 Deda, Nijaz (?–1941) 188 Degrelle, Léon (1906–1994) 110, 179 Delay, Jean (1907–1987) 447 Delmaire, Danielle (1945) 448 Desbuquois, Gustave (1869–1959) 107, 303 Desgrange, Henri (1865–1940) 303 Deutsch, Yaakov Moshe # 383 Dibelius, Otto (1880–1967) 3, 53, 77 Diem, Hermann (1900–1975) 348 Dillard, Victor (1897–1945) 302–305 Dimitrije (Pavlović) (1846–1930) 43 Dinter, Artur (1876–1948) 56 Djilas, Milovan (1911–1995) 259 Dmowski, Roman (1864–1939) 19 Dobraczýnski, Jan (1910–1994) 378 Dohnanyi, Hans von (1902–1945) 356, 357–358 Döhring, Bruno (1879–1961) 2 Dölger, Franz (1891–1968) 194 Dolfuβ, Engelbert (1892–1934) 83, 119, 363 Dominik, Konstantin # 141 Donner, Jan (1891–1981) 409 Donskoy, Dimitri (1350–1389) 220 Dorotheos (Mammelis) # 50 Dostoyevski, Fyodor (1821–1881) 43, 466 Douwes, Arnold (1906–1999) 473 Dožić, Dušan # 211 Draganović, Krunoslav (1903–1983) 500–501 Dreyfus, Alfred (1859–1935) 80 Duca, Ion (1879–1933) 111, 112 Duesberg, André (Daniel) (1902–1944) 309

Đujić, Momčilo (1907–1999) 262 Dulles, John Forster (1913–2008) 519 Durand, Marie (1711–1776) 68 Đurović, Đuro # 262 Dušan (Stafan) (Serbia) (1308–1355) 41 Duruflé, Maurice (1902–1986) 312 Dutoit, Henri-Édouard (1873–1953) 313 Dymek, Walenty (1888–1956) 147 E Eden, Anthony (1897–1977) 357 Eder, Hans # 364 Eichmann, Adolf (1906–1962) 442, 463 Eidem, Erling (1880–1972) 511 Eisner, Kurt (1867–1919) 20 Elena (Romania) (1896–1982) 426 Elevterii (Bogojavlensky) # 160 Eliade, Mircea (1907–1986) 109 Elisabeth (Belgium) (1876–1965) 405 Eliáš, Alois (1890–1942) 134–135 Emerson, Herbert (1881–1962) 512 Ephraim (saint) (306–373) 155 Erzberger, Matthias (1875–1921) 13 Eugene of Savoy (1863–1736) 228 Evreinoff, Alexander (1877–1959) 499 F Falkenhausen, Alexander von (1878–1966) 177 Farouk (Egypt) (1920–1965) 509 Faulhaber, Michael (von) (1869–1952) 12, 20, 93, 95–97, 100, 101, 104, 228, 335, 347, 350, 360 Felice, Renzo De (1929–1996) 184 Feltin, Maurice (1883–1975) 317–318 Ferdinand I (Romania) (1865–1927) 47 Fessard, Gaston (1897–1978) 315 Filatov, Vladimir (1875–1956) 38 Filipović, Miroslav (1915–1946) 201 Filippović, Leontii # 37 Filov, Bogdan Dimitrov (1883–1945) 193, 420 Fireside, Harvey (1929) 27 Fjellbu, Arne (1890–1962) 166 Flory, Jean (1886–1949) 449 Forster, Albert (1902–1952) 141 Fossati, Maurilio (1876–1965) 455 Fouilloux, Etienne (1941) 493 Franceschiello (Francesco II ) (1836–1894) 190 Franco y Bahamonde, Francisco (1892–1975) 89–91, 111, 441, 486 Frank, Hans (1900–1946) 138, 148, 150, 152, 374, 380 Franko, Ivan (1856–1916) 153 Franzinelli, Mimmo (1954) 229 Freiberger, Miroslav Šalom (1903–1943) 438 Freudenberg, Adolf (1894–1977) 511–512 Friedländer, Saul (1932) 479–481, 491

597

Index of Names Friedrich III (Germany) (1831–1888) 2 Fuglsang-Damgaard, Hans (1890–1979) 284, 440 G Gajowniczek, Franciszek (1901–1995) 384 Galen, Clemens von (1878–1946) 335, 336–338, 342, 501 Gall, Stanisław (1865–1942) 276 Gamelin, Maurice (1872–1958) 303 Gantois, Jean-Marie (1904–1968) 180 Garel, George (Garfinkel) (1909–1979) 472 Garibaldi, Giuseppe (1807–1882) 190, 322 Garić, Josip Stjepan (1870–1946) 265 Garczýnska, Wanda (1891–1954) 474 Gasparri, Pietro (1852–1934) 25, 81, 105 Gasperi, Alcide De (1881–1954) 82, 320, 502, 523–524 Gaulle, Charles de (1890–1970) 170, 315, 317, 325, 502 Gavrilo (Dožić) (1881–1950) 210–213, 260, 269, 394, 505, 516 Gawlina, Józef Feliks (1892–1964) 278 Gedda, Luigi (1902–2000) 320 Geisler, Johannes (1882–1952) 501 Gelasius I (pope) (?–496) 496 Gemelli, Augustino (1876–1959) 14 Geneviève (saint) (419/422–502/512) 13 Gennadios (metropolite) (1868–1951) 396 Gennaro (saint) (272–305) 318 Gentile, Emilio (1946) 183 George (saint) (?–303) 228 George II (Greece) (1890–1947) 187, 270–271, 272–273 George VI (United Kingdom) (1895–1952) 509 Gerlier, Pierre-Marie (1880–1965) 170, 172–173, 318, 444–446, 447 Germanos V (patriarch) (1746–1821) 39 Germanos (Strenopoulos) (1872–1951) 50, 52 Getter, Matylda (1870–1968) 474 Gezelle, Guido (1830–1899) 15 Gföllner, Johannes (1867–1941) 119–120, 362 Gillet, Louis-Marie (1876–1943) 445 Gil-Robles, José Maria (1898–1980) 88 Giobbe, Paolo (1880–1972) 410 Girbeau, Jean-Justin (1870–1963) 317 Girolamo (saint) (347–419/420) 500 Glagolev, Aleksii (1901–1972) 389 Glasberg, Alexandre (1902–1981) 450 Glattfelder, Gyula (1874–1943) 461 Glavaš, Andrija Radoslav (1909–1945) 201 Globocnik, Odilo Lotario (1904–1945) 341, 453 Godin, Henri (1906–1944) 302 Godlewski, Marceli (1865–1945) 378 Goebbels, Joseph (1897–1945) 53, 338, 339 Goga, Octavian (1881–1938) 109, 112 Gojdič, Pavol Peter (1888–1960) 433

598

Gomá y Tomás, Isidoro (1869–1940) 87, 89, 90–91 Gömbös, Gyula (1886–1936) 110 Göring, Edda (1938) 67 Göring, Hermann (1893–1946) 65, 67, 68, 93, 143, 165, 227, 235 Gorškov, Pavel (1867–1950) 245 Gort; John Vereker (Viscount) (1866–1946) 527 Gravemeyer, Kuno (1883–1970) 180, 409 Graziani, Rodolfo (1882–1955) 321, 323 Graziosi, Virginia (1844–1920) 484 Gregorios V (patriarch) (1746–1821) 39, 273 Gregory XVI (pope) (1765–1846) 18, 276 Greiser, Arthur (1897–1946) 145 Griffioen, Pim (1963) 405, 412 Grīnbergs, Teodors (1870–1962) 400 Gröber, Conrad (1872–1948) 94, 336 Gross-Grudzińskana, Irena (1946) 374 Gross, Jan Tomas (1947) 374, 380 Grősz, Jószef (1887–1961) 191 Grösser, Max # 360 Grouès, Henri (abbé Pierre) (1912–2007) 313 Grüber, Heinrich (1891–1975) 360, 511 Grundlach, Gustav (1892–1963) 107 Grundtvig, Nikolaj Frederik Severin (1783–1872) 5, 164, 286, 287, 325 Grynszpan, Herschel (1921–1942) 339 Guberina, Ivan (1897–1945) 210 Gylys, Jonas (1886–1959) 402 H Haakon VII (Norway) (1872–1957) 6, 164 Habsburg, Otto von (1912–2011) 522 Hácha, Emil (1872–1945) 128–129 Haldezos, Panos # 397 Hallesby, Ole (1879–1961) 6, 166, 404 Hanosset, Emilia (1912–1945) 309 d’Harcourt, Robert (1881–1965) 316 Harnack, Adolf von (1851–1930) 3, 69 Hartl, Albert (1904–1982) 101–103, 336 Hase, Paula von (1874–1951) 352 Hedenquist, Göte (1907–1996) 364 Heidegger, Martin (1889–1976) 353, 414 Heintz, Joseph-Jean (1886–1958) 175 Henry IV (France) (1553–1610) 293 Henry VIII (England) (1491–1547) 286 Henlein, Konrad (1898–1945) 127 Henriot, Philippe (1899–1944) 317–318, 329 Herder, Johann Gottfried (1744–1803) 131 Hermogen (Maksimov) (1861–1945) 202 Herriot, Edouard (1872–1957) 13 Herwegen, Ildefons (1874–1946) 101 Herzog, Isaac (1888–1959) 503 Heβ, Rudolf (1884–1987) 64 Heydrich, Reinhard (1904–1942) 55, 123, 134–135, 339–342, 367, 431, 442 Himmelreich, Laetus (1886–1957) 106

Index of Names Himmler, Heinrich (1900–1945) 55, 72, 74, 101–103, 123, 134, 137, 204, 231, 233, 239, 281, 301, 308, 336–342, 391, 399, 437 Hindenburg, Paul von (1847–1934) 53, 65, 71, 337 Hitler, Adolf (1889–1945) passim Hlinka, Andrej (1864–1938) 17, 130–131, Hlond, August (1881–1948) 18, 139, 150, 276, 315, 372, 486–487 Hobsbawn, Eric (1917–2012) xiii Hochhuth, Rolf (1931) 483, 484, 529 Hodzić, Mohammed # 263 Hoffmann, Johannes (1867–1930) 20 Holland, Coenraad Bernardus (1878–1948) 295 Honneger, Arthur (1892–1955) 312 Hope, Ludvig (1871–1954) 166 Horthy, Miklós (1868–1957) 22, 190, 459, 463, 465 Hossenfelder, Joachim (1899–1976) 59–61, 76 Hrabovec, Emília (1964) 132 Hromádka, Josef Lukl (1889–1969) 126, 519 Hudal, Alois (1885–1963) 104, 124, 500–501 Hus, John (1369–1415) 16, 17, 129, 134 al-Hussayni, Amin (1897–1974) 204, 428 Husserl, Edmund (1859–1938) 414, 415 Huyn, Pavel (1868–1946) 101 Hymmen, Johannes (1878–1951) 78 I Immer, Karl (1888–1944) 68, 345 Innitzer, Theodor (1875–1955) 26, 119–121, 125, 361–365, 492, 494 Ilarion (metropolite) # 152 Ioakeim (Dimitriados) (1873–1959) 397 Ioakeim (Martianos) (1875–1955) 275 Iorga, Nicolae (1871–1940) 110, 112 Irbe, Kārlis (1861–1934) 7 Irenej (Ćirić), (1884–1955) 192 Irinej (Đordević) (1894–1952) 200 Isaacs, Jules (1877–1963) 528 Ivarsson, Johannes # 364 Iwand, Hans Joachim (1899–1960) 526 J Jacobi, Gerhard (1891–1971) 62, 67, 76 Jacobsen, Erik Thostrup # 164 Jachimowski, Tadeusz (1892–1944) 279, 281 Jäger, August (1887–1949) 61, 63, 65, 145 Jaeger, Lorenz (1892–1975) 351 Jägerstätter, Franz (1907–1943) 228 Jakavonis, Ambrozius (?–1944) 249 Jałbrzykovski, Romuald # 161, 248 James (Iago) (saint) (?–44) 90 Jan, Julius von (1897–1964) 345 Jankowitsch, Pawel # 400 Jantausch, Pavol (1870–1947) 432, 474 Jasínski, Wladimir (1873–1965) 375 Jelinek, Yeshayahu (1933) 215

Jerić, Ivan # 192 Jesih, Dragutin (1895–1944) 437 Joanikije (Lipovac) (1890–1945) 212, 262 Johannes (the Baptist) # 56 Johannes of the Cross (saint) (1542–1591) 416 John XXIII (pope) (1881–1963) 528 John Nepomuk (saint) (1345–1393) 16 John Paul II (pope) (1920–2005) 151, 384, 529 Jørgensen, Elise # 286 Josif (Cvijović) (1878–1957) 193, 212, 259–260, 394 Jong, Johannes de (1885–1955) 181–182, 290–291, 311, 325, 417, 501, 525 Joseph II (Austria) (1741–1790) 18, 47, 362 Judt, Tony (1948–2010) 109, 371–372 Justus (saint) (?–303) 453 K Kaas, Ludwig (1881–1952) 26, 93–94 Kaczmark, Czesław (1895–1963) 276 Kahane, David (1903–1998) 238, 391, 392 Kaila, Erkki (1867–1944) 252 Kalinin, Michail (1874–1946) 224 Kamenev, Lev (1883–1936) 387 Kaminski, Bronislav (1899–1944) 246 Kaminskis, Artūrs (1914–2003) 247 Kantorowicz, Ruth (1901–1942) 416 Kapi, Béla (1879–1957) 465 Kappler, Herbert (1907–1978) 502 Karathános, Dimítris # 274 Karieras, Loukas # 397 Karlovic, David # 438 Károlyi, Mihály (1875–1955) 21 Karpov, Georgi 222, 509 Kašpar, Karel Boromejský (1870–1941) 129, 367 Kasche, Siegfried (1903–1947) 439 Katz, Janina (1939–2013) 477 Kerkhofs, Louis-Joseph (1878–1962) 178–179, 307, 405, 407 Kerrl, Hanns (1887–1941) 74–78, 95, 97–98, 346 Kersten, Gerrit Hendrik (1882–1948) 294 Kesselring, Albert von (1885–1960) 498 Khrushchev, Nikita (1894–1971) 521–522 Kierkegaard, Søren (1813–1855) 70, 286, 287 Kilsdonk, Jan van (1917–2008) 496 Kinder, Christian (1897–1975) 76 Klausener, Erich (1885–1934) 95, 235 Kleijn, François (1887–1970) 412 Klimo, Bohuslav (1882–1952) 431 Kmet’ko, Karol (1875–1948) 132 Koch, Erich (1896–1986) 55, 235–236 Koch, Hal (1904–1963) 164 Koch, Pietro (1918–1945) 457 Kochurov, Ioann (1871–1917) 31 Kolbe, Julius # 381 Kolbe, Maksymilian (Rajmund) (1894–1941) 381–385, 515

599

Index of Names Kolbe, Frans # 381 Komaj, Pola # 475 Kominek, Bolesław (1903–1974) 277 Komoly, Ottó (1882–1945) 463 Koopmans, Jan (1905–1945) 327 Köpp, Johan (1874–1970) 159, 160 Korošec, Anton (1872–1940) 26 Körper, Karol (1894–1969) 130 Kossak-Szczucka, Zofia (1809–1968) 376–377 Kossuth Lajos (1802–1894) 11 Kostelnyk, Havryil (1886–1948) 521 Kovner, Abba (1918–1987) 473 Koyré, Alexander (1892–1964) 415 Közi-Horvath, Jószef (1903–1988) 461 Kozhin, Vasilii # 508 Kraft, Ole Bjørn (1893–1980) 288 Kranc, Remigiusz (1910–1945) 239 Krause, Reinhold (1893–1980) 64–65 Krestinski, Nikolai (1883–1938) 85 Krišto, Jure (1943) 202 Kubiliūnas, Petras (1894–1946) 402 Kube, Wilhelm (1887–1943) 59 Kubsz, Wilhelm Franciszek (1911–1978) 279 Kuipers-Rietberg, Helena (1893–1944) 311, 471 Kukk, Jakob (1870–1933) 7 Kukk-Kuljusega, Melanie (1903–2000) 159 Kulenović, Džafer-beg (1891–1956) 203 Kulenović, Osman (1889–1947) 203 Kun Béla (1886–1939) 21 Kuyper, Abraham (1837–1920) 9, 11, 181, 291 Kuyper, Elisa Willem (1896–1944) 291 Kuyper, Herman Huber (1864–1945) 181, 291 Kvaternik, Slavko (1878–1947) 438 Kyrill (Konstantinov) (1901–1971) 398, 420 L Laba, Vasyl (1887–1976) 239, 392 Lach, Josip (1899–1983) 201 Lachman, Hans (1906–1980) 473 LaFarge, John (1880–1963) 107 Lagarde, Alphonse # 444 Landesdorfer, Simon Konrad (1880–1971) 486 Landra, Guido (1913–1980) 106 Laval, Pierre (1883–1945) 443, 447 Lazar (Serbia) (1329–1389) 41, 211, 259–260 Lebed, Mykola (1909–1998) 237 Lebreton, Jules (1873–1956) 316 Leclef, Edmond (1898–1967) 405 Lédochowski, Wlodimir (1866–1942) 107, 150 Leeper, Reginald (1888–1968) 272 Leer, Bernard van (1883–1958) 105 Leer, Sophie (Francesca) van (1892–1953) 105–106 Lehner, Vilko # 438 Lehnert, Pascalina (1894–1983) 410–411 Leiber, Robert (1887–1967) 93, 485

600

Leigh Fermor, Patrick (1915–2011) 109 Lenin, Vladimir (1870–1924) 29, 32, 34, 85 Leo XIII (pope) (1837–1903) xiii, 18, 25, 83, 329, 487 Leopold I (Austria) (1640–1705) 41 Leopold III (Belgium) (1901–1983) 177–179, 307, 308, 405 Lepkifker, Joseph (1906–1990) 407 Levitin-Krasnov, Anatoli (1915–1991) 221 Lewin, Jechzekiel # 391 Lewin, Kurt # 391 Lichtenberg, Bernhard (1875–1943) 347, 361 Lienart, Achille (1884–1973) 172, 179–180, 299–300, 317, 448 Lilje, Hanns (1899–1977) 60 Lipps, Hans (1909–1941) 414–415 Lisówna, Ludwika (?–1944) 474 Ljotić, Dimitrije (1891–1945) 257, 260, 268 Löb, Dort (1916–1942) 417 Löb, Ernst (1909–1942) 417 Löb, George (1908–1942) 417 Löb, Lina (1911–1942) 417 Löb, Luise (1918–?) 417 Löb, Robert (1910–1942) 417 Loew, Jacques (1908–1999) 302 Logothetopoulos, Konstantinos (1878–1961) 397 Lohse, Hinrich (1896–1964) 241, 244 Lopinot, Callisto # 450 Lorek, Jan Kanty (1886–1967) 276 Lospinoso, Guido # 452 Louis XIV (France) (1638–1715) 8, 11 Louis II (Monaco) (1870–1949) 452 Lubac, Henri de (1896–1991) 316, 448, 472, 523 Luca, Ascanio De # 322 Lueger, Karl (1844–1910) 362 Luka (Voino-Yasenetsky) (1877–1961) 504 Lustiger, Jean-Marie (1926–2007) 529 Luther, Martin (1483–1546) 58, 64, 77, 78, 232 M Maček, Vladko (1879–1964) 198 Mach, Alexander (1902–1980) 132, 429–430, 431–432, 434 Machens, Joseph Godehard (1886–1956) 351 Mackensen, Stephanie von (1894–1985) 72 Maglione, Luigi (1877–1944) 208, 323, 375, 427, 430, 431, 433, 437, 438, 445–446, 456, 458, 463–464, 493, 494, 498 Mahrarens, August (1875–1950) 62, 65–66, 76, 78, 346 Maksimos V (Vapotszis) (1897–1972) 503 Malachy (1095–1148) 484 Mangers, Jacob (1889–1972) 404 Mannerheim, Carl Gustav Emil (1867–1951) 251 Marabotto, Błazej # 279 Maria Adelheid (Luxembourg) (1894–1924) 174

Index of Names Marcone, Giuseppe Ramiro (1882–1952) 208, 438–439, 493 Marie-Benoît (Pierre Péteul) (1895–1990) 451–452, 457, 479 Maritain, Jacques (1882–1973) 25, 81, 316, 325, 370, 373, 502, 523, 528 Márton, Áron (1896–1980) 464 Mary (saint) 23, 85, 89, 129, 138, 149, 170, 229, 230, 236, 273, 282, 312, 319, 324, 381–382, 495, 498 Masaccio, Tomasso (1401–1428) 455 Masaryk, Tomáš Garrigue (1850–1937) 16, 17, 128, 131, 367 Matteotti, Giacomo (1885–1924) 82 Maurer, Charles (1874–?) 175–176 Mauriac, François (1885–1970) 483 Maurras, Charles (1868–1952) 80–81, 293 Mayer, Josef (1866–1967) 336 Mayeur, Jean-Marie (1933–2013) 26, 448 Mazower, Mark (1958) 274 Meda, Filippo (1869–1939) 14 Meglio, Giuseppe Di # 352 Mei, Aldo (1912–1944) 322 Meirowsky, Lisamaria (1904–1942) 417 Meiser, Hans (1881–1956) 62, 65–66, 76, 100 Melnik, Andrej (1890–1964) 237 Meneghello, Giacomo # 455 Menningen, Alex (1900–1994) 360 Mercier, Desiré-Joseph (1851–1921) 14, 15, 52, 177, 405 Merridale, Catherine # 224 Merry del Val, Rafael (1865–1930) 106 Mestrović, Ivan (1883–1962) 203, 208 Metaxas, Ioannis (1871–1941) 49–50, 186 Methode (saint) (815–885) 135 Meunier, André # 407 Meunier, Georges # 406–407 Michael the Brave (1558–1601) 110 Mihail I (Romania) (1921) 186, 426 Michaelis, Else (1899–1945) 417 Mihailović, Dragoljub-Draža (1883–1946) 257–262 Mikuž, Metod (1909–1982) 263, 266 Mindszenty, Jószef (1892–1975) 22, 460, 466, 522 Miskotte, Kornelis Heiko (1894–1976) 327 Mistiaen, Emmanuel (1893–1970) 314 Mitrofanov, Georgi # 386–387 Mölders, Werner (1913–1941) 228–229 Molen, Gezina van der (1892–1978) 328 Molette, Charles (1918–2013) 329 Molotov, Vyacheslav (1890–1986) 136, 220, 221 Moltke, Helmut von (1907–1945) 168 Monnet, Jean (1888–1979) 523 Montini, Giovanni Battista (1897–1978) 103, 320, 445–446, 484, 493, 496, 499–501, 502 Moretti, Aldo (1909–2002) 322–323 Morosini, Giuseppe (1913–1944) 322, 437 Moţa, Ion (1902–1937) 110–111, 113

Mott, John R. (1865–1955) 50 Mounier, Emmanuel (1905–1950) 313, 444, 523 Moussaron, Jean-Joseph (1877–1956) 447 Mstyslav (Skrypnyk) (1898–1993) 234, 389 Muckermann, Friedrich (1883–1946) 103 Muckermann, Hermann (1877–1962) 103, 335 Müller, Josef (1896–1979) 356, 489, 489 Müller, Ludwig (1883–1945) 60–67, 101, 354 Muftić, Ismet (1876–1945) 203 Munk, Kaj (1898–1944) 286–289 Munk, Marie # 286 Munk, Peter # 286 Murad I (sultan) (1326–1389) 41 Mussolini, Benito (1883–1945) 80–84, 106, 119, 183–184, 188, 198, 204, 229, 319–320, 323–324, 331, 428, 437, 453, 454, 486, 497 Mussolini, Bruno (1918–1941) 80 Mussolini, Edda (1910–1995) 80 Mussolini-Guidi, Rachele (1890–1979) 80 Mussolini, Vittorio (1916–1997) 80 N Napoleon I (France) (1769–1821) 8, 30, 220 Natlačen, Marko (1886–1942) 266 Naurois, René de (1906–2006) 472 Nedić, Milan (1878–1946) 213, 257, 260, 262 Nektarije (Krulj) (1879–1966) 200, 262 Nenni, Pietro (1891–1980) 502 Neophit (metropolitan) # 421 Neuhaus, Karl # 101 Neurath, Konstantin von (1873–1956) 134, 367 Nevsky, Alexander (1221–1263) 158, 220–221 Nicodim (Munteanu) (1864–1948) 426 Nicolescu, Alexandru (1882–1941) 191 Nicolini, Giuseppe Placido (1877–1973) 455 Niemöller, Martin (1892–1984) 60, 65–68, 73, 77–78, 345 Nikolai (Jaruševic) (1891–1961) 38, 158, 221–223, 241–242, 506, 509 Nikolaj (Jokanović) (1874–1943) 200, 241 Nikolai (Velimirović) (1880–1956) 267–269, 394 Nikanor (Abramovic) (1883–1969) 389 Nogara, Giuseppe (1872–1955) 84, 322 Nolens, Willem Hubert (1860–1931) 26 Nougat, Noël (1882–1944) 293 O Oberheid, Heinrich (1895–1977) 63 Oesterreicher, Johannes (1904–1993) 362, 363, 528 Øhrn, Armold T. (1889–1963) 403 Okoniewski, Stanisław Wojciech (1870–1944) 141 Olaf II (Norway) (995–1030) 6 Oldham, Joseph H. (1874–1969) 51–52 Opletal, Jan (1915–1939) 134 Oppitz, Alexander # 383 Orlando, Emmanuele (1860–1952) 14

601

Index of Names Orsenigo, Cesare (1873–1946) 121, 352, 493, 499, 520 Ottaviani, Alfredo (1890–1979) 320, 528 Otto, Rudolf (1869–1937) 424 Overduin, Leendert (1900–1976) 471 P Pacelli, Carlo (1903–1970) 457 Pacelli, Eugenio (1876–1958) 20, 21, 85–86, 92–94, 97, 107, 117, 121, 335, 483–484, 495 Pacelli, Filippo (1837–1916) 484 Pacelli, Marco Antonio (1804–1902) 484 Paderewski, Ignacy (1860–1941) 370 Paganuzzi, Quirino (1914–1974) 375 Palamas, Kostis (1859–1943) 196 Palatucci, Giovanni (1909–1945) 453–454 Palatucci, Giuseppe (1892–1961) 453–454 Paltarokas, Kazimieras (1875–1968) 522 Panteleimon (Rožnovsky) (1867–1950) 242 Panteleimon (Rudyk) (1898–1968) 389 Papandreou, Georgios (1888–1968) 270 Papen, Franz von (1879–1969) 94 Patin, Wilhelm (1879–1945/46) 336 Paul (saint) (3–64/67) 12, 34, 64, 77, 104, 246, 403 Paul (Yugoslavia) (1897–1978) 186 Paulus VI (pope) (1897–1978) 384, 529 Pavel (Dmitrovsky) (?–1946) 244 Pavel (Gorsjkov) # 245 Pavelić, Ante (1889–1959) 44, 198–199, 200–202, 203, 206–209, 265, 438 Pavle (Stojčević) (1914–2009) 269 Paxton, Robert (1932) 316 Pećanac, Kosta (1879–1944) 257 Péguy, Charles (1873–1914) 312 Pétain, Philippe (1856–1951) 169–174, 213, 216, 299, 303, 313, 317, 328, 329, 441–443, 443–446, 447–448, 452, 480 Petar II (Yugoslavia) (1923–1970) 186 Petar (Zimonjić) (1866–1941) 200 Peter the Great (Russia) (1672–1725) 27 Petersen, Kaj Harald Leininger (1898–1944) 286 Petit, Paul (1893–1944) 314 Petr (Poliansky) (1862–1937) 34, 36 Petrova, Valentina (1927–?) 225 Petrović-Njegoš, Jelena (1873–1952) 212 Petrović-Njegoš, Petar (1813–1851) 259 Philippe, Joseph (1877–1956) 175, 366 Philotheus (Narko) (1895–1984) 242 Piasecki, Bolesław (1915–1979) 279 Piazza, Adeodato (1884–1957) 321, 456 Pic, Camille (1876–1951) 449 Pierlot, Hubert (1883–1963) 178 Pietromarchi, Luca (1895–1978) 190 Pignatelli, Enza (Aragona Cortes) # 456 Piguet, Gabriel (1887–1952) 313 Pilatus, Pontius (?–37) 392, 471, 524

602

Piłsudski, Józef (1867–1935) 19, 23, 372–373, 381 Pira, Girogio La (1904–1977) 455 Pitter, Přemysl (1895–1976) 368 Pius VI (pope) (1717–1799) 18 Pius IX (pope) (1792–1878) xiii, 24, 48, 484 Pius X (pope) (1835–1914) 483 Pius XI (pope) (1857–1939) 14, 23–25, 52, 79–83, 84–85, 91,99, 106–107, 121, 150, 170, 337, 347, 361, 382, 444, 483, 487, 517 Pius XII (pope) (1876–1958) 85, 132, 139, 157, 199, 239, 248, 276, 317, 319, 321, 343, 360, 375, 391, 410–411, 431, 435, 456–458, 466, 481, 483–498, 499, 502, 507, 517, 520, 523–524, 525, 527, 528, 529 Plato (427/28–347/48 BC ) 70 Platon (Ivanović) (1874–1941) 200 Polikarp (Sikorsky) (1875–1953) 234, 389 Pompanin, Alois (1889–1966) 501 Popoff, Michael # 192 Popović, Justin (1894–1979) 267 Popovsky, Mark # 221 Porter-Szücs, Brian # 371, 374, 383 Posadzy, Ignacy (1898–1984) 297 Pospielovsky, Dimitry (1935–2014) 34 Post, Johannes (1906–1944) 382–383 Pozdech, Augustín (1895–1960) 433 Prenter, Regin (1907–1990) 285 Preysing, Konrad von (1880–1950) 97, 99, 360–361, 494, 501 Preziosi, Giovanni (1881–1946) 454 Priebke, Erich (1913–2013) 501 Primo de Rivera, Miguel (1870–1930) 86 Proháska Ottokár (1858–1927) 22 Przybylski, Bernard (1907–1979) 279 Puah (Exodus 1.15) 311 Q Quisling, Vidkun (1887–1945) 164–168, 213, 284, 403 R Radić, Stjepan (1871–1928) 44 Radónski, Charles (1883–1951) 374 Raffay, Sándor (1866–1947) 463 Ragaz, Leopold (1868–1945) 70 Rahamägi, Hugo (1886–1941) 159, 160 Rakowski, Franz Justus (1873–1950) 227 Ramselaar, Antoon (1899–1981) 528 Ránki, Vera # 462 Rāncāns, Jazeps (1896–1969) 400 Rasputin, Gregorii (1869–1916) 33 Ratisbonne, Marie-Alphonse (1814–1884) 381 Ratti, Achille (1857–1939) 79, 85, 150 Ravasz, László (1882–1957) 22, 460–461, 463, 465, 513 Razmeritja (Romanian priest) # 425

Index of Names Reinach, Adolf (1883–1917) 415 Reinach-Stettenheimer, Anne (1884–1953) 415 Reinys, Mečislovas (1884–1953) 161, 248–249 Rémy (saint) (437–533) 13 Rémond, Paul (1873–1963) 451 Rémond, René (1918–2007) 317, 329, 451 Renner, Karl (1870–1950) 121 Repetto, Francesco (1914–1984) 455 Révész, Imre # 461 Ribbentrop, Joachim von (1893–1946) 136, 489 Riegner, Gerhard Moritz (1911–2001) 281, 492, 512 Riquet, Michel (1898–1993) 305 Rittig, Svetozar (1873–1961) 263 Rivet, Élisabeth (1890–1945) 384 Rivière, Pierre-Maurice (1871–1961) 452 Rocco, Carmine (1912–1982) 447 Rodhain, Jean (1900–1977) 299 Rodogno, Davide (1972) 183 Röhm, Ernst (1887–1934) 95 Roncalli, Angelo Giuseppe (1881–1963) 428, 479, 491, 528 Ronca, Roberto (1901–1977) 502 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano (1882–1945) 460, 489, 496, 520 Rosenberg, Alfred (1893–1946) 55–56, 65, 98, 165, 176, 231, 232–233, 241, 245 Roslof, Edward E. # 36 Rosselini, Roberto (1906–1977) 322 Rossi, Raffaele Carlo (1876–1948) 458 Rossum, Willem van (1854–1932) 105 Rostworowski, Tomasz (1904–1974) 279 Rotta, Angelo (1872–1965) 431, 433, 460, 462, 463–464, 465–467, 478, 493 Rougemont, Denis de (1906–1954) 523 Rozenbergs, Pauls (1906–1954) 400 Rožman, Gregorij (1883–1959) 197, 198, 266–267 Ruch, Charles (1873–1945) 175 Runciman, Steven (1903–2000) 38 Rusanovs, Jānis # 400 Rutgers, Victor Henri (1877–1945) 328 S Saerens, Lieven (1958) 407 Şafran, Alexandru (1910–2006) 426, 427 Şaguna, Andrei (1809–1873) 47 Salazar, Antonio de Oliveira (1889–1970) 133 Saliège, Jules-Géraud (1870–1956) 315, 472, 501, 525 Salvi, Carlo # 455 Santin, Antonio (1895–1981) 453, 494 Santini, Luigi # 455 Santos, Lucia de Jesus (1907–2005) 495 Sapieha, Adam Stefan (1867–1951) 18, 150, 276, 297, 372–373, 375, 381, 492 Saragat, Giuseppe (1898–1988) 502 Šarić, Ivan (1871–1960) 265

Sartorius, Anna # 69 Sartre, Jean-Paul (1905–1980) 523 Sasse, Herman (1895–1976) 73 Sauckel, Fritz (1894–1946) 298 Šaulys, Kazimieras (1872–1964) 402 Sava (saint) (1174–1236) 260, 269 Sava (Trlajić) (1884–1941) 200 Savramis, Demosthenes # 273 Scavenius, Erik (1877–1962) 285, 439 Scant, Mary # 88 Scavizzi, Pirro (1884–1964) 375, 492 Schachleiter, Albanus (1861–1937) 101 Scharnagl, Anton (1877–1955) 101 Scheler, Max (1874–1928) 415 Schilder, Klaas (1890–1952) 181, 291–292 Schindler, Oskar (1908–1974) 453 Schmidt, Wilhelm (1868–1954) 103 Scholder, Klaus (1930–1985) 58, 69, 100 Schulte, Karl Joseph (1871–1941) 97, 118 Schultz, Walter (1900–1957) 78, 101 Schuman, Robert (1886–1963) 312, 523–524 Schumann, Maurice (1911–1998) 523 Schussniggg, Kurt (1897–1977) 118, 119 Schuster, Ildefonso (1880–1954) 184, 321, 322, 323, 455 Schwerdt, Otto (1918–1975) 288 Scriban, Iuliu (1878–1977) 250 Sebestyén, Jenő (1884–1950) 11 Seeberg, Reinhold (1859–1935) 353 Segura y Sáens, Pedro (1880–1957) 87 Seipel, Ignaz 119, 131 Serafim (Jovanović) (1875–1945) 189 Serebrenik, Robert (1904–1965) 366 Serédi, Jusztinián (1884–1945) 22, 459–460, 463–465 Sergii (Stragorodsky) (1867–1944) 32–34, 36–37, 158, 220–223, 245, 504, 506 Sergii (Voskresensky) (?–1944) 37, 38, 158, 244–246, 247, 368 Setta, Ugo della (1879–1958) 455 Seyffardt, Hendrik (1872–1943) 328 Seyss-Inquart, Arthur (1892–1946) 118, 177, 409–410, 416 Shaporina, Lubov (1885–1967) 225 Sheptytsky, Andrej (1865–1944) 19–20, 153–154, 156–157, 237–240, 390–392, 398, 521 Shiprah (Exodus 1.15) 311 Sidor, Karol (1901–9153) 431 Siegfried, André (1875–1959) 13 Sikelianós, Angelos (1884–1951) 196 Silvestrini, Achille ((1923) 528 Sima, Horia (1907–1993) 423 Simeon (Bulgaria) (1937) 421 Simeon (Stanković) (1886–1960) 46 Simon, Gustav (1900–1945) 174, 175 Šimrak, Janko (1883–1946) 210, 437 Sinčic, David (1911–1949) 438

603

Index of Names Sismondo, Giovanni (1879–1957) 321 Skancke, Ragnar (1890–1948) 166, 403 Skvireckas, Juozapas (1873–1959) 248, 401, 402 Slachta, Margit (1884–1974) 433, 462–463 Slomp, Frits (1898–1978) 311, 471 Slipy, Iosyf (1892–1984) 239, 521 Smetona, Antanas (1874–1944) 401 Snyder, Timothy (1969–) xv, 109, 240, 333, 371 Söderblom, Nathan (1866–1931) 7, 50–52 Söhnlein, Paul # 288 Sokołowski, Czesław (1877–1951) 277 Sommer, Margarete (1893–1965) 361 Sommet, Jacques (1912–2012) 305 Sonnemann, Emmy (1893–1973) 67 Spaho, Fehim (1877–1942) 203 Speer, Albert (1905–1981) 96 Spiero, Heinrich (1876–1946) 360 Spiridon (Mifka) (1902–1945) 202 Splett, Carl Maria (1898–1964) 141–143 Springovičs, Antonijs (1876–1958) 399 Spruyt, Armand # 407 Stahel, Rainer (1892–1955) 456 Stalin, Josef (1878–1953) 29, 34, 36, 37, 38, 157, 161, 185, 220–223, 225–226, 253, 271, 388, 496, 504, 506, 510, 522 Stangl, Franz (1908–1971) 500 Stăniloae, Dumitru (1903–1993) 109 Stauning, Thorvald (1873–1942) 163 Stefan I Nemanjić (1114–1200) 41 Stefanovici (Romanian priest) # 425 Stein, Edith (1891–1942) 347, 412–416 Stein, Rosa (1883–1942) 416 Stein, Siegfried # 412 Stephanos I (Shokov) 1878–1957) 398, 420–421, 503, 509 Stephen (saint) (?–34) 503 Stephen I (Szent Istvan) (Hungary) (976–1038) 190 Stepinac, Alojzije (1898–1960) 45, 206–210, 265, 267, 437–439, 522 Stites, Richard (1931–2010) 35 Stöcker, Adolf (1835–1909) 348 Stoss, Veit (1450–1533) 148 Streicher, Julius (1885–1946) 339 Strauss, Richard (1864–1948) 62 Stroothenke, Wolfgang (1913–1945) 336 Strossmayer, Josip Jurai (1815–1905) 44 Sturzo, Luigi (1871–1959) 26, 80, 82 Suhard, Emmanuel Célestine (1874–1949) 172–173, 300–301, 314, 315, 317, 449 Sully, Maximilien de Béthune (1560–1641) 293 Sylvestr (Haievsky) # 389 Szálasi, Ferenc (1897–1946) 110, 459–460, 466–467 Széchényi, György (1889–1938) 461 Szlagowski, Antoni (1864–1956) 282 Sztéhlö, Gabriel (1909–1974) 466 Sztójay, Dome (1883–1946) 459

604

T Tacchi Venturi, Pietro (1861–1957) 83, 437 Tardini, Domenico (1888–1961) 445, 484, 527 Taylor, Myron Charles (1874–1959) 489, 493, 510 Tec, Nechama (1931) 378, 472, 478 Temple, William (1881–1944) 52, 511 Tetelbaum-Hirsch, Viviane (1977) 406 Terboven, Josef (1898–1945) 165, 403 Théas, Pierre-Marie (1894–1977) 447 Theresa of Avila (1515–1582) 415 Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) xiii, 415, 445 Tikhon (Belavin) (1865–1925) 28, 31–34, 36, 155, 387 Tillich, Ernst (1910–1985) 76 Tiso, Jozef Gašpar (1887–1947) 26, 127, 129–132, 428–430, 431–435, 516 Tisserant, Eugène (1884–1972) 317, 317, 491 Tito, Josip Broz (1892–1980) 258, 262, 264, 269, 271, 452, 522 Tittmann, Harold (1893–1980) 493 Tőkés, István # 427 Török, Sandor (1882–1950) 464 Tomažić, Ivan Jožef (1867–1949) 266 Tomislav II (Croatia) (1900–1948) 199 Treitschke, Heinrich von (1834–1896) 348 Trifunović-Najhaus, Elsa # 394 Troeltsch, Ernst (1865–1923) 3 Trotski, Leon (Bronstein) (1879–1940) 387 Truman, Harry (1884–1948) 271 Tsolakoglu, Georgios (1886–1948) 194, 272 Tuka, Vojtech (1880–1946) 132, 429–430, 431–432,434 Twardowski, Bolesław (1864–1944) 238 Tych, Feliks (1929–2015) 379 U Umiltà, Carlo # 189 Urbach, Hinko (1872–1980) 437 V Valeri, Valerio (1883–1963) 445–446 Valerijan (Stefanović) # 262 Vallat, Xavier (1891–1972) 442 Valobra, Lelio Vittorio (1900–1976) 454 Vančura, Bohumil # 368 Van den Berg, Albert (1890–1945) 405, 407 Van der Elst, Pieter Willem (1890–?) 405, 407 Van Roey, Josef Ernst (1874–1961) 52, 177–180, 182, 307, 405, 407, 448, 473, 525 Vansteenberghe, Edmond (1881–1943) 447 Vanutelli, Vincenzo (1836–1930) 484 Varnava (Rosić) (1880–1937) 46 Vasyl (Lypkivski) (1864–1937) 155 Veesenmayer, Edmund (1904–1977) 434 Velouchiotis, Aris (1905–1945) 274 Venedikt (Bobkovsky) (1876–1951) 242 Veniamin (Christodoulos) # 40, 502–503

Index of Names Veniamin (Kazansky) (1874–1922) 32 Venizelos, Eleftherios (1864–1936) 49 Verdier, Jean (1884–1940) 172 Verschaeve, Cyriel (1874–1949) 308 Victor Emmanuel II (Italy) (1820–1878) 14 Victor Emmanuel III (Italy) (1869–1947) 80, 183, 187, 188, 212, 318, 497 Vidal y Barraquer, Francesco (1868–1943) 88, 91 Vikentije (Prodanov) (1880–1958) 193 Vinček, Robert # 438 Vincent de Paul (saint) (1581–1660) 13 Visarion (Puju) (1879–1964) 250 Visser ’t Hooft, Willem (1900–1985) 52, 292–293, 355, 357, 510–513 Vitus (saint) (?–303) 45, 259 Vladimir (Bogoyavlensky) (1848–1918) 31 Vladimir (Muckačevo) # 192 Voegelin, Eric (1901–1985) xiv Vojtaššák, Ján (1877–1965) 431 Voronski, Vaclav # 85 Vullinghs, Henri (1883–1945) 473

Wedemeyer, Ruth von (1887–1985) 357 Weidemann, Heinz (1895–1976) 101 Weiszäcker, Ernst von (1882–1951) 456, 496, 497 Wenceslas (Václav) (saint) (907–935) 17, 129, 134 Werfel, Franz (1890–1945) xiv Werner, Friedrich (1875–1944) 78, 79 Wetzel, Juliane (1957) 458 Wienken, Heinrich (1883–1961) 336 Wilhelm I (Germany) (1797–1888) x Wilhelm II (Germany) (1859–1941) 2,4, 69 Wilhelmina (Netherlands) (1880–1962) 177, 180–181 Willebrands, Johannes (1909–2006) 528 Willibrord (saint) (658–739) 182 Wilson, Woodrow (1856–1924) 15 Woityla, Karol (1920–1005) 151 Wolff, Karl (1900–1984) 324 Wurm, Theophil (1868–1953) 62, 65–66, 76, 100, 346, 347–349, 526 Wyrzykowska, Antonina (1916–2011) 379 Wyszyński, Stefan (1901–1981) 522

W Wachs, Marie (Eustache) (1915–1981) 312 Wächter, Otto Gustav von (1901–1949) 239 Wagner, Adolf (1890–1944) 347 Wagner, Richard (1813–1883) 62, 105 Wagner, Robert # 174, 365 Wallenberg, Raoul (1912–1947) 466 Walzer, Raphael (1888–1966) 415 Warszawski, Tea (1907–1991) 473 Waugh, Evelyn (1903–1966) 209–210 Weber, Anton Alois (1877–1948) 128 Wedemeyer, Hans von (1888–1942) 357 Wedemeyer, Maria von (1924–1977) 357

Z Zandt, Pieter (1880–1961) 294 Žanić, Milovan (1882–1946) 438 Zawadzki, Aleksander (1899–1964) 279 Zeller, Ron (1957) 405 Zellitis, Artūrs # 247 Zečević, Vladimir (1903–1970) 262 Zieja, Jan (1897–1991) 279 Zöllner, Wilhelm (1860–1937) 74, 77 Zog I (Albania) (1895–1961) 187 Zolli, Israel (1881–1956) 457 Zucotti, Susan (1940) 455, 457 Zwingli, Ulrich (1484–1531) 4

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