Was the Nazis and the Roman Catholic Church together in the holocaust?

Answer 1

The Catholic Church firmly opposed Hitler both in words and in actions.

We would not be able to provide a better testimony than that of the people who experienced the tragedy of those days.

When cardinal Pacelli was elected as Pope Pius XII, the official newspaper of the Nazi party wrote: "the election of cardinal Pacelli is not accepted with favor in Germany because he has always opposed Nazism."

In his encyclical letter Mit brennender Sorge (written not in Latin but in German, and addressed not to all Bishops but to the Bishops of Germany) Pope Pius XII wrote:

"We cannot consider a believer in God [...] whoever, following a pre-cristian understanding of ancient germanism, puts in place of the personal God the impersonal fate, renegating the divine wisdom and His providence; such a man cannot pretend to be accounted amidst the true believers. [...] Only superficial souls can fall in the error of speaking of a national God, of a national religion, and undertake the insane attempt of trapping within the boundaries of one nation, in the ethnic restriction of one race alone, God, Creator of the world, king and legislator of the peoples, in front of whom all nations are as small as droplets in a bucket of water. [...] We did not want, with an inopportune silence, to be guilty of not having clarified the situation, nor with an excessive rigor of having hardened the hearts of those who, being subject to our pastoral responsibility, are not less object of our love solely because they walk on the ways of error and have walked away from the Church." Hitler personally ordered all copies to be destroyed.

Major efforts were undertaken through private channels, diplomatic means, and secret initiatives to counteract Hitler's works of evil. Baptism certificates were given to Hebrews to save their lives. Shelter was also offered. Many religious men and women, as well as priests and bishops, suffered persecution and even death. Two famous examples are St. Edith Stain and St. Maximilian Kolbe.

In 1940, Albert Einstein wrote: "only the Catholic Church fully blocks the path of Hitler's campaign for the suppression of truth. Before I had no particular interest for the Church, but now I feel great affection and admiration for Her, because only the Church had the courage and perseverance to stand on the side of intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am thus forced to admit that what I once deprecated, now I appreciate without any reservation."

On December 25, 1941 the New York Times wrote in its editorial: "The voice of Pius XII is a lonely voice...He is about the only ruler left on the continent of Europe who dares to raise his voice"

In an emergency private directive issued in 1943, Pope Pius XII explicitly ordered: "give refuge to all jews persecuted by the nazi in all religious institutes, open the institutes and even the catacombs. " Chaim Weizmann (who in 1949 would become the first president of Israel) wrote: "The Holy See is giving her powerful help wherever she can to attenuate the fate of my co-religious under persecution." At the same time, Hitler told General Wolff, SS chief in Italy: "Woff, at what stage is the project to capture the Pope? I must take him immediately. Be ready to depart to Rome. I must occupy the Vatican immediately. We will apologize later."

Gary Krupp, president of Pave the Way Foundation, would later state: "On October 1943 in Rome there were 12,428 Hebrews. The direct action of Pope Pius XII saved the life of over 11,400."

In 1944, Isaac Herzog, Chief Rabbi of the British Mandate of Palestine (later Israel) said: "the people of Israel will not forget the help given to their persecuted brothers and sisters by His Holiness [the Pope] and His Eminent Delegates in one of the saddest moments of our history". In the same year, the Jewish News would report: "the Hebrew were kept safe within the walls of the Vatican during the German occupation of Rome."

In 1958, Golda Meir said: "during the decade of the Nazi terror, our people suffered a terrible martyrdom. The voice of the Pope was raised to condemn the persecutors and to invoke mercy for the victims."

In 1961, Gideon Hausner, Israeli chief prosecutor against Eichmann, would say: "the Italian clergy helped many Israelites and hid them in the monasteries and the Pope personally intervened on behalf of those arrested by the Nazi."

I invite you to see with your own eyes and hear with your own ears through, for instance, the documentary "A Hand of Peace: Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust". Please see the trailer at the link below.

Answer 2

Pardon me, but that is more than a little insulting, that is like asking if the Jews were in collusion with Hitler. The Nazis were the instigators of the Holocaust. The Catholic Church was one of the victims of the Holocaust. The Holocaust killed between five and five and half million Poles, half of whom were Catholics.

This is from the United States Holocaust Museum:

In the eastern European regions, millions of Poles -- Jews and Catholics alike -- were murdered by the SS and police personnel in the field or in killing centers such as Auschwitz-Birkenau and Treblinka. In the ideology of the Nazis, the Poles were considered an inferior "race." The Germans intended to murder members of the political, cultural and military elite and reduce the remainder of the Polish population to the status of a vast pool of labor for the so-called German master race. It is estimated that between 5 and 5.5 million Polish civilians, including 3 million Polish Jews, died or were killed under Nazi occupation. This figure excludes Polish civilians and military personnel who were killed in military or partisan operations. They number approximately 664,000.

SS authorities in the concentration camps did not generally record the religious affiliation of a prisoner, with the exception of the Jehovah's Witnesses. As a result it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to reliably estimate the total number of Catholic victims who were persecuted or killed because of some action or position connected to their Catholic faith. Some data exists regarding the number of Catholic prisoners (especially members of the clergy) in individual camps. For example, the following table illustrates the number of clergy incarcerated in the concentration camp at Dachau:

Clergy Incarcerated in Dachau Camp

Nationality Catholics Other creeds Total

Poles 1,748; 32;; 1,780

Germans 411; 36; 447

French 153; 3; 156

Czechs, Slovaks93; 16; 109

Dutch 29; 34; 63

Belgians 46; -; 46

Italians 28; -; 28

Luxemburgers 16; -; 16

Danes -; 5; 5

Lithuanians 2; 1; 3

Hungarians 3; -; 3

Stateless 1; 2; 3

Swiss -; 2; 2

Greeks -; 2; 2

British 2; -; 2

Albanians -; 2; 2

Norwegians -; 1; 1

Rumanians 1; -; 1

Spaniards 1; -; 1

Totals 2,579; 141; 2,720

(Of these, a total of 1,034 died in the camp; 132 were transferred to other camps or liquidated; 1,240 were liberated on April 29, 1945; and 314 were released before that date.)

Source: Johann Neuhausler, What Was It Like in the Concentration Camp at Dachau? (Munich: Manz, 1961).

For additional information on the subject of Catholics in the Holocaust, see:

Hehl, Ulrich von. Priester unter Hitlers Terror: eine biographische und statistische Erhebung. Paderborn: F. Schonigh, 1996.

Helmreich, Ernst Christian. The German Churches under Hitler: Background, Struggle, and Epilogue. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1979.

Hlond, August. The Persecution of the Catholic Church in German-Occupied Poland: Reports Presented by H. E. Cardinal Hlond, Primate of Poland, to Pope Pius XII, Vatican Broadcasts, and Other Reliable Evidence. London: Burns, Oates, 1941.

Hoffmann, Bedrich. And Who Will Kill You: The Chronicle of the Life and Sufferings of Priests in the Concentration Camps. Posnan: Pallottinum, 1949.

Hurten, Heinz. Die katholische Kirche zwischen Nationalsozialismus und Widerstand. Berlin: Gedenkstatte Deutscher Widerstand, 1989.

Kempner, Benedicta Maria. Nonnen unter dem Hakenkreuz: Leiden, Heldentum, Tod; die erste Dokumentation uber das Schicksal der Nonnen im 3. Reich. Wurzburg: Naumann, 1979.

Kempner, Benedicta Maria. Priester vor Hitlers Tribunalen. Munchen: Rutten & Loening, 1966.

Matheson, Peter. The Third Reich and the Christian Churches. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark Ltd., 1981.

McCauley, M. Janet. The Fate of Catholic Schools in the Third Reich: A Case Study. Posn'n: Pallottinum, 1994.

Moll, Helmut. Zeugen für Christus: das deutsche Martyrologium des 20. Jahrhunderts. Paderborn: Schöningh, 2000.

Royal, Robert. The Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century: A Comprehensive World History. New York : Crossroad, 2000.

Shuster, George N. Like a Mighty Army: Hitler Versus Established Religion. New York: D. Appleton-Century, 1935.

Answer 3

No, in fact Pope Pius XII did everything within his power before he was the pope and during his reign to stop the Nazis.

Answer 4

There is no connection with the exception that Hitler was a baptized Catholic but abandoned his faith as he had little use for any religion.