How many people were killed in the Holocaust because of their Catholicism?

Answer 1

Although Catholics were not nearly as "targeted" as other groups like the Jews or gay people, Hilter and company sought to create a perfect society by eliminating those who did not fit the Aryan model.

Catholics, with their wide variety of ethnic heritages often failed the "blond haired-blue eyed, European" test. They were also seen as less likely to agree to rule by a civil authority, as their allegiance and obedience was first and foremost to the Pope and the Catholic Church. This made them a suspicious group, in the eyes of many Nazis.

It should be noted, however, that many Catholics remained untouched by Nazis through out the Holocaust period. This was very different from the clear targeting of ALL Jews, gays and gypsies, who were rounded up, incarcerated and killed regardless of their actions or loyalties.

Answer 2

People have asked about the number of Catholics who died because of the

Nazis. The site on the Nuremberg Trials came up with the number of 42,000,000

for Christian victims of the Nazis. Since most of those were Roman Catholics,

one can gather that the number was at least quite overwhelming.)" Extracted from the first site given below. At least 3 000 000 Polish Catholics were holocaust victims. Note especially the systematic massacre of the clergy and religious orders.

The Church itself was a target of the Nazis. On June 6, 1941, Martin Bormann, head of the Nazi Party Chancellery, private secretary to Adolf Hitler, and one of the most powerful figures in the Third Reich, issued a secret decree for all Gauleiters (or regional party leaders) of the Reich regarding the true intentions of the Nazi regime toward the Christian churches.

More and more the people must be separated from the churches and their organs the pastors . . . Just as the deleterious influences of astrologers, seers and other fakers are eliminated and suppressed by the State, so must the possibility of church influence also be totally removed . . . Not until this has happened, does the state leadership have influence on the individual citizens. Not until then are the people and Reich secure in their existence for all time. ("Relationship of National Socialism and Christianity")

n 1941 the Nazi authorities decreed the dissolution of all monasteries and abbeys in the German Reich, many of them effectively being occupied and secularized by the Allgemeine SS under Himmler. However, on July 30, 1941 the Aktion Klostersturm (Operation Monastery) was put to an end by a decree of Hitler, who feared the increasing protests by the Catholic part of German population might result in passive rebellions and thereby harm the Nazi war effort at the eastern front.[53]

The truth is many thousands of Catholic men, women, and children died in concentration camps, SS and Gestapo torture chambers, or in fields and villages across Europe for the "crime" of proclaiming the truth to one of the most evil regimes in human history. The historical reality of this oppression does not in any way reduce the culpability of some Catholics in the Holocaust, nor does it suggest that the unprecedented genocide of the Jewish people should be forgotten or considered reduced in significance.

In February 1933, Hermann Göring banned all Catholic newspapers in Cologne on the claim that Catholics were illegally engaging in politics. The ban was lifted soon after, but Catholics had been sent a message. A short time later, thugs from theSturmabteilung (SA), the Brownshirts, stormed a gathering of the Christian trade unions and the Catholic Center Party and brutalized many of those in attendance.

For average Catholic laity, clergy, and nuns in Germany, the rise of the Nazi Dictatorship in 1933 and 1934 brought sweeping changes to their daily lives. While permitted to go to Mass, Catholics lived increasingly in an oppressive atmosphere of propaganda, fear of arrest at any moment, and the gnawing worry that everything being said to friends or family might be reported to the Gestapo. Friends, pastors, teachers, and relatives were taken in the night, and only vague and gruesome reports of their deaths or imprisonment followed.

Catholics next witnessed the attacks on the Catholic press and Catholic education. A special "Editors' Law" was decreed in December 1933 with the intention of curbing all speech by requiring that all editors join the Literary Chamber of the Third Reich. The Chamber, part of Josef Goebbels' Propaganda Ministry, decided what could be published. The law essentially ended the Catholic press in Germany. Catholic newspapers and publications closed their doors as they were unable to comply with government limitations on freedom and unwilling to print Nazi propaganda on such horrendous issues as enforced sterilization and euthanasia. At the start of 1933, there were over 400 daily Catholic newspapers in Germany. By 1935, there were none. Over the succeeding years, the surviving Catholic periodicals and the diocesan papers slowly ended publication. In 1941, the Nazis shut down the remaining diocesan weekly papers and Catholic journals.

To decimate Polish culture, the Germans closed or obliterated universities, schools, museums, libraries, and scientific centers.

The most feared Polish institution, of course, was the Church, as it had given hope to the Polish people and had encouraged.aspirations of Polish culture, learning, and independence. In the annexed regions of Poland, Nazi officials closed churches, seminaries, convents, and seminaries, and the majority of priests were arrested or executed. Between 1939 and 1945 over 3,000 members of the Polish clergy were killed; 1,992 of them died in concentration camps, 787 of them at Dachau (see "The Priests of Dachau," page 22). Altogether, estimates place the number of Polish civilians killed in the war at between 5 and 5.5 million, including 3 million Polish Jews, not even counting over a half million Polish civilians and military personnel killed in the fighting.

The Priests of Dachau

The Dachau concentration camp was used by the Nazis for many of its most hated enemies. Among them were Catholic priests. Indeed, of the 2,720 clergy sent to Dachau, 2,579 were Catholic priests, along with uncertain numbers of seminarians and lay brothers. Most were Polish priests, 1,748 in all; there were also 411 German priests. Of the 1,034 priests who died in the camp, 868 were Polish. The priests were housed in a special "priest block" and were targeted for especially brutal treatment by the SS guards.

It is estimated that at least 3,000 other Polish priests were sent to other concentration camps, including Auschwitz, while priests from across Europe were condemned to death and labor camps: 300 priests died at Sachsenhausen, 780 at Mauthausen, and 5,000 at Buchenwald. These numbers do not include the priests who were murdered en route to the camps or who died from diseases and exhaustion in the inhuman cattle cars used to transport victims. Several thousand nuns were also sent to camps or killed on the way.

The list of victims is a very long one, and the suffering on a daily basis by the priests is unimaginable. For many, the ordeal lasted for years. Adam Kozlowiecki, a Polish priest, was arrested by the Gestapo in November 1939 and was sent to Auschwitz in 1940; transferred to Dachau in December 1940, he spent the next five years there until he was freed by the U.S. army on April 29, 1945. Kozlowiecki was made a cardinal in 1998. A few of the other notable priests at Dachau were Bl. Michal Kozal, Bl. Stefan Grelewski, Bl. Stefan Frelichowski, Bl. Karl Leisner, and Bl. Titus Brandsma.

http://www.catholic.com/magazine/articles/catholic-martyrs-of-the-holocaust

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The above is a load of propaganda. The simple answer is that nobody was killed simply for being a Catholic. Certainly. some of the victims were Roman Catholics, but they were notkilled for religious reasons. Most Roman Catholic churches in Germany and France remained open throughout the Nazi period, mass was celebrated regularly - and publicly. Oh, and by the way, that figure of 42 million is higher than the total number of World War 2 dead in Europe (civilian and military combined).