The Nizkor Project: Remembering the Holocaust (Shoah)

What was the role of the Vatican during the time the six million Jews were alleged to have been exterminated?


52. What was the role of the Vatican during the time the six million Jews were alleged to have been exterminated?

The IHR says:

If there had been an extermination plan, the Vatican would most certainly have been in a position to know. But since there was none, the Vatican had no reason to speak out against it.

Nizkor replies:

Lies. The Nazis hated the Catholic church, and executed many clergymen in Poland and other places. The church had no power or influence over the Nazis. Reich propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary on March 26, 1942 (see Lochner, The Goebbels Diaries, 1948, p. 146):

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

Or, look at the following:

Letter to Reich Minister of Justice
From Roman Catholic Bishop of Limburg
13 August 1941

... Buses arrive in Hadamar several times a week with a large number of these victims. School children in the neighborhood know these vehicles and say: "Here comes the murder wagon." After the arrival of such vehicles the citizens of Hadamar then see the smoke coming from the chimney and are upset by constant thoughts about the poor victims especially when, depending on the direction of the wind, they have to put up with the revolting smell. The consequence of the principles being practiced here is that children, when quarreling with one another make remarks like: "You are thick, you'll be put in the oven in Hadamar." People who do not want to get married or who do not get the opportunity say: "Get married? No fear. Put children into the world who then end up going through the stack." Old people are saying "on no account will I go into a state hospital! After the feeble-minded, the old will be next in line as useless mouths to feed."

The last paragraph refers to the systematic annihilation of tens of thousands of insane and retarded people by the Nazis, in the so-called "euthanasia" or "mercy killing" program.


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