ADSS 10.125 Angelo Rotta (Hungary) to Luigi Maglione

ADSS 10.125 Angelo Rotta to Cardinal Maglione

Reference: Telegram 184 (AES 2040/44)

Location and date: Budapest 30.03.1944; received in Rome 31.03.1944.

Summary statement: Information on the new government in Hungary and its attitude towards to the Jews.

Language: Italian

Text:

In response to my telegram 182: (1)

A new Hungarian government (2) was formed under German pressure, and under their surveillance.   The Regent (3) has been obliged to … accept the ministry under German threats to (?) occupy the country with an invasion of Romanian, Croatian and Slovakian troops.  The new ministers (4) tend to come from a background in Christian nationalism.  Now (?) there appears the danger of persecution against the Jews, the fight (?) will be fierce (?); many are already imprisoned. (5) The fate of two deported Italian diplomats remains uncertain despite the protest of a number of colleagues (6) … the Hungarian government seems powerless to have take a position, however false, having said in the past that the Germans considered them [the Italians] to be political refugees. The former prime minister has fled; many socialist politicians, a few liberals and legitimists have been arrested, but, so far, no Hungarian ecclesiastics; the Socialist Party and the small farmers’ party have been dissolved; unions have been placed under government control.  Several Hungarian diplomats abroad have resigned, as did the Mayor of Budapest (8).  There have been numerous calls to arms, but public order is not disturbed.

Notes:

(1) Telegram sent 20.03.1944 (AES 1952/44); not published in ADSS.  Recounts the news of the German invasion of Hungary.

(2) Döme Sztójay (1883-1946) replaced Miklós Kállay (1887-1967) as prime minister on 22.03.1944.  Sztójay was prime minister and foreign minister until 29.08.1944.

(3) Regent, Admiral Miklos Horthy (1868-1957)

(4) For a list of the ministers see http://www.rulers.org/rulh.html#hungary (Accessed 16.04.2014)

(5) See ADSS 10.196

(6) Charge d’Affaires, Baron de Ferrariis and Military attaché, General Voli, were deported with their families.

(7) See note 2 above.

(8) Tivadar Homonnay was mayor 1942-1944.

Generalplan Ost - what the Pope could not have known

What the pope could not know and did not know.

The General Plan for the East

As the German-led war “in the east” unfolded with ever-increasing severity and brutality the position of the church in north-central and northeastern Europe grew more and more precarious.  We have seen through ADSS volumes 3.1 and 3.2 how the German occupation imposed varying degrees of terror and insecurity on local populations based on the National Socialist bio-political worldview.  Throughout the war years the response of the Catholic Church through its bishops and other religious leasers also varied in response to the level of local terror.  And these responses formed the basis of much of the information that was sent to Rome. 

For many of the persecuted the realities of daily survival precluded the luxury of rationalizing the “why” of Nazi terror.  In fact most of the leaders of the Catholic Church in Poland, Ukraine and the Baltic States were at a loss to understand the murderous hostility shown to the church, even if their religious-cultural histories allowed a measure of “understanding” of German actions against the Jews.

Pope Pius XII was certainly not the only one who did not grasp the extent of the murderous intent of the German plans for Eastern Europe and European Russia.  It was not until after the war that the first information of a systematic plan to reshape Eastern Europe was revealed; firstly at the Nuremburg Trial in the testimony of former SS Standartenführer Hans Elich (1901-1991), one of the planners of what was known as Generalplan Ost (Master Plan for the East).

Generalplan Ost (GPO) grew out of the Nazi concept of lebensraum (living space) an idea that Hitler had spoken of regularly since the 1920s.  In its simplest form, lebensraum was the belief that Germany’s growing population needed more living space.  That “living space” would come from “the East” in general, and Poland and European Russia in particular.  Since in the Nazi Weltanschauung most of the peoples of Eastern Europe were one or other members of different untermenschen (sub-human races) they had no permanent place in the New Order.  Their fate was either a form of servitude for the Germans who would in course settle the new lebensraum or they would be expelled.

Planning the GPO began around January 1940 and continued through a number of revisions until late 1942 when the emerging crisis at Stalingrad brought the planning to an abrupt halt.

The GPO was executed under the supervision of the Reichsministerium für die besetzten Ostgebiete (Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories) and the RSHA (Reich Main Security Office) with constant reference to the Reichsführer SS, Heinrich Himmler.  A government planning team of this nature would not have met without the explicit approval of Hitler. 

GPO was supposed to work on two actions; movement of desirable people in, and movement of undesirable people out.  Himmler envisioned GPO would take about 30 years to implement but shortly afterwards insisted that the program be completed in 20 years.  It was his hope that by the end of that period the Greater German Reich would not only be territorially huge, but it would be populated by a majority of Aryan Germans and tiny minorities of non-Aryan groups would serve the Herrenvolk (Master Race) with unquestioning obedience.  GPO statistics suggested that an estimated 4.5 million ethnic Germans would be settled in the conquered territories over the lifespan of the plan.

Part one of the GPO was the expulsion of racial undesirables in the newly conquered land (1939-1941) and the settlement of ethnic Germans in their place.  Over the three years the GPO was in operation about 850,000 Germans were settled “in the East”, mostly in Poland and the Baltic States, but some in Ukraine and Crimea.  Ultimately the GPO forecast a future population of about 23 million of which 5.3 million were existing Germans, a residual German population of 5.4 million and 12.4 million German immigrants from the Reich.

The second part of the GPO was the removal of “alien races”.  Czeslaw Madajczyk’s study of GPO, General Plan East: Hitler’s Master Plan for Expansion (1962) sets out the percentages of local populations slated for removal and / or destruction.  The welfare of populations targeted for “resettlement” were not a concern of the architects of the New Order.

An estimated 45 million people were to be removed from Eastern Europe and European Russia:

Jews – 100%

Latgalians (indigenous Latvians) – 100%

Poles – 80-85%

Lithuanians – 85%

Russians – 75%

White Russians – 75%

Ukrainians – 65%

Latvians, Estonians, Czechs – 50%

The remaining 14 million people were to be judged for racial suitability and Germanisation or kept for slave labour for the German settlers.

GPO planners were under no illusions that the scale of expulsions would result in deaths on a previously unimagined scale but incorporated this into their planning. 

Deliberate murder of a population was only used against the Jews after the summer of 1941 and, in that regard, was the only part of the GPO that approached its target goal.  Originally Jews were, like other undesirables, to be expelled into Siberia.

The implementation of the plan stalled in February 1943 after the loss of Stalingrad and the call for Total War before it was “shelved” as Germany faced defeat.  However, if “success” was to be judged by the number of non-German dead in the area proposed for the GPO, then the plan attained some of the goals its authors intended. The total number of deaths in Eastern Europe and European Russia exceeded over 30 million men, women and children.

ADSS 3.2.413: Notes of Bishop Adamski on Poland

These notes were written by the Bishop of Katowice and represented a summary of the situation that confronted the Polish Church under German occupation.  The terse language belied the suffering of Polish Catholics.  

Stanislaw Adamski

ADSS 3.2.413 Notes of Stanislaw Adamski (Katowice)

Reference: AES 7239/42

Location and date: Warsaw, September 1942.  Arrived in Rome 18.09.1942.

Summary statement: Information on the situation in the Polish dioceses.

Language: Latin

Text:

The Archbishop of Vilnius (1) is imprisoned in Marimopol (2), in the convent of the Marian Brothers (3) in the diocese of Kaunas, (4) (Lithuania).  He is in good health and in contact with his Vicar General, Bishop Reinys, a Lithuanian national.(5)   

The bishop of Pinsk, Bukraba (6) and his auxiliary Niemira (7) are both in Warsaw.  Permission to return to their diocese is refused.

Auxiliary bishop of Wloclavek, Mons. Kozal, has recently died in a concentration camp.(8)

Bishop of Lodz, Jasinski,(9) and his auxiliary Tomczak,(10) are being held in a reformed [Franciscan] convent in Biecz near Krosno in the diocese of Tarnow.

Bishop of Lublin (11) is currently in Nowy Sacz and is refused permission to return to his diocese.  His auxiliary is in a concentration camp.(12)

Bishop of Katowice (13) is in Warsaw; his auxiliary (14) is in Krakow, a long way from the diocese.  The bishop recently named a new vicar general.

The auxiliary of the diocese of Lomza, bishop Takuwski (?) (15), now resides in Ostrow Mazoviecka as Apostolic Administrator of a small part of the diocese.  He has been refused permission to return to Lomza.  Bishop Lukomski is living in his own house. (16)

Clerics of the Latin Rite … [obscured] between three to four thousand priests have been killed or imprisoned.  Many died in the camps through exhaustion and various diseases.  Perhaps about 100-1500 remain alive.  Lately in the camps, the priests only receive a third of a ration of bread.

Priests who ministered as army chaplains have been taken from prisoner of war camps and sent to concentration camps.

Some bishops and auxiliaries are resident in their dioceses and continue to minister there.

A Polish sect who call themselves “Polski konioc narodnj” has united with the German sect of the “Old Catholics” in Utrecht – and given recognition by the General government on 22.04.1941. (See the attachment). (17)

The Vicar General of Katowice (20) has received from the Eminent Cardinal Secretary of State, the letter which has confirmed his nomination.  Thank you.

Cross references: 

(1) Romuald Jalbrzykowski (1876-1955), Archbishop of Vilnius 1926-1955.

(2) Should read Marijampole

(3) The Congregation of Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary was founded in Poland by Stanislaus Papczyński in 1673.

(4) Should read Vilkaviskis

(5) Mečislovas Reinys (1884-1953), auxiliary bishop of Vilnius, 1940-1953.

(6) Kasimiriz Bukraba (1885-1946), Bishop of Pinsk, 1932-1946.

(7) Karol Niemira (1883-1965), auxiliary bishop of Pinsk, 1933-1946.

(8) Michael Lozal (1893-1943), auxiliary bishop of Wloclawek, 1939-1943.  The report of his death was premature.  Kozal died in KL Dachau on 25.01.1943.  He was beatified as a martyr in 1987.

(9) Włodzimierz Bronisław Jasiński (1873-1965), bishop of Lodz, 1934-1946.

(10) Kazimierz Tomczak (1883-1967), auxiliary bishop of Lodz, 1927-1967.

(11) Marian Fulman (1866-1945), bishop of Lublin, 1918-1945. Fulman was held in Nowy Sacz from 1940 until liberation in January 1945.

(12) Vladislaw Goral (1898-1944), auxiliary bishop of Lublin, 1938-1944. Died in KL Sachsenhausen.

(13) Stanislaw Adamski (1875-1967), bishop of Katowice, 1930-1967.

(14) Juliusz Bieniek (1895-1978), auxiliary bishop of Katowice, 1937-1978.

(15) Tadeusz Zakrzewski (1883-1961), auxiliary bishop of Lomza, 1938-1946.

(16) Stanislaw Lukomski (1874-1948), bishop of Lomza, 1926-1948.

(17) Not published in ADSS.  The organisation referred to were a small break-away group that rejected papal authority because of the alleged silence of the pope.  They sought recognition and union with the Old Catholics, a group of Catholics who rejected the definition of Papal Infallibility of Vatican I (1869-1871).

(18) Franciszek Woznica, (1902-1979), Vicar General of Katowice diocese 1941-1946.

ADSS 3.1.89 August Hlond to Maglione: report on 3 Polish bishops

Having escaped Poland and found temporary exile in Rome, Cardinal-Primate of Poland, August Hlond (1881-1948) became a major focus for information from Poland arriving in Italy.  Throughout the war years Hlond maintained an extensive series of contacts within his homeland and made regular representation to the Holy See on behalf of the Poles.  

Uppermost in the mind of many bishops, including the pope, was the ever-worsening situation in Poland.  Polish dioceses were often without bishops, clergy were arrested and imprisoned and several thousand Polish priests had been hauled off to concentration camps.    Many had died.  In this document Hlond provides information about three Polish bishops - one most likely dead, one possibly insane and a third still in his diocese and under the protection of the Jews.

Hlond was no friend of Polish Jews having warned the country in a Pastoral Letter in 1936 that the Jews posed a social, moral and economic danger to Poland.  However, he did draw the line at physical attacks on Jews and Jewish property.  Once the German genocide against the Jews began in earnest, Hlond condemned the persecution vigorously and consistently.

This document echoes the popular myth that Jews were almost naturally sympathetic to communism - Judeo-Bolshevism.

By early 1940 Pope Pius XII had as clear and accurate picture of life in German-occupied Poland as he did of Soviet-occupied Poland.  The grim depictions that cross his desk were to get worse.

Cardinal August Hlond

ADSS 3.1.89

Reference: AES 93/40

Location and date: Rome, 07.01.1940

Summary: Almost certain that bishop Stanislaw Lukomski of Lomita has died. Bishop Casmir Bukraba of Pinsk is in a lunatic asylum.  Auxiliary bishop Charles Niemira (1883-1965) is ‘generous to all and protective against the Jews who are powerful under the Soviet regime.’

Language: Italian

Text: 

In response to the venerable letter of your Eminence of 03.01.1940 (12/40) (1), permit me to present the following information about Stanislaw Lukomski, bishop of Lomža.

The war surprised the very active bishop of this diocese.  By order of the military command Lomža was evacuated and he was ordered to leave on 10 September. Bishop Lukomski went by car to Pinsk, which was in throes of great turmoil, where he stayed for three days with his Excellency, Bishop Casimir Bukraba.  On 14 September he went with the bishop to Nowogrodek (the northernmost part of the diocese of Pinsk) from where Bishop Bukraba returned to Pinsk on 15 September, while bishop Lukomski continued to Vilna where he arrived on 16 September.  There he stayed with his Excellency, Bishop Jalbrzykowski, the metropolitan, and where he witnessed the occupation of the city by Bolshevik troops. On 26 September he returned to his diocese in Lomža, which is not far from Bialystok.

For some time there were rumours that those “Without God” had martyred him.  Finally, around mid-December I was told in person with news from Warsaw, from his Excellency, Bishop [Stanislaw] Gall that his Excellency, Bishop [Tadeusz] Zakrzewski, Vicar General and auxiliary bishop of Lomža (2) had received a letter saying that Bishop Lukomski “is not alive” and that Bishop Zakrzewski asked for instruction on what to do.  All those who have come from Warsaw have repeated this news, but a written confirmation from Bishop Gall is significant since this most excellent prelate usually does not write anything. 

According to sources, Bishop Zakrzewski is currently in Nur or near to it (3), that is, in the part of Lomža diocese that lies within the limits of today’s “General Government Poland” and which is the smaller part of the diocese, because the remaining two thirds are partly under Soviet occupation, in the context of the Greater German Reich. 

Concerning Bishop Bukraba, I wrote to his Excellency, Bishop Jalbrzykowski who wrote to me in a letter dated in December, that bishop Bukraba had fallen seriously ill and had obtained permission from the Russians to go to Lvov for treatment.  Instead there came from Lvov the news that the bishop. Overwhelmed by the events, had become mentally ill and was admitted to the Kulparkow asylum in Lvov.

Bishop [Karol] Niemira (4), Vicar General and auxiliary bishop, remained in Pinsk.  He is loved by everyone and even protected by the Jews who are powerful under the Soviet regime.

Cross references: 

(1) ADSS 3.1.84

(2) Tadeusz Zakrzewski (1883-1961) Aux bp Lomža (1938-1946).  Hlond wrote to Maglione on 15.01.1940 to report that Bishop Lukomski was alive and in his diocese. Cf ADSS 3.1.98.

(3) Nur was about 70kms south of Lomža and was the northern most part of the Generalgouvernment.

(4) Karol Niemira (1883-1965).