ADSS 10.369 Tardini to Bernardini, Switzerland - Slovak and Hungarian Jews

10.369 Domenico Tardini to Filippo Bernardini, Switzerland.

Reference: Telegram nr: 696 (AES 6913/44)

Location and date: Vatican, 23.10.1944

Summary statement: Efforts of the Holy See for the Jews of Hungary and Slovakia.

Language: Italian

Text:

I request your Excellency to communicate this to the Apostolic Delegate in Turkey.

Number 226. I received telegram 212. (1) The Apostolic Nunciature in Bratislava was quickly interested in the situation of the Jews in Sered camp. (2)

I can assure your Excellency that the Holy See, despite increasing difficulties with communication, continues to follow with particular attention the fate of the Slovak and Hungarian Jews and will leave no stone unturned to bring relief to such persons. (3) 

Notes:

(1) The Jewish Agency in Jerusalem sent a message to the Delegate in Istanbul on 14.10.1944, with news that “over 5,000 Jews are concentrated in a camp at Sered and about 2,000 of them are at risk of deportation, which means certain death.  We respectfully ask you to transmit our request to the Secretariat of State of the Holy See to intervene on behalf of those 2,000 Jews and save them from deportation and death”. (Archives of the Istanbul Delegate)  On 18.10.1944 Filippo Bernardini telegraphed the Vatican (telegram nr 444, AES 6913/44): “The Apostolic Delegate in Turkey has sent the following: Number 212: I received telegram 219. “Holy See urgently requested to intercede to Jews in Sered camp Slovakia, threatened with deportation and death”.

(2) On 22.10.1944 Tardini telegraphed Bernardini (telegram nr 697; AES 6914/44): “I ask you to communicate the following to the Apostolic Nunciature in Bratislava: “The Holy See is urged to intercede for the Jews interned in Sered concentration camp and who are threatened with deportation and death.  I ask your Excellency to take the steps you deem most appropriate and then inform me of any news”.

(3) Apostolic Delegate to the UK, William Godfrey had already written to Chief Rabbi Hertz: “that news had already reached the Vatican of the plight of your people in that country and that the Holy See had at once renewed its efforts with the Government there and had at the same time invited the Slovak Bishops to increase their efforts as far as possible on behalf of those who were stricken by the new racial laws.  I am instructed by the Vatican Secretary of state to make known to you that nothing will be left undone to help your people in any way open to the Holy See”. (Archives Apostolic Delegate, London)

Gates of Sered Camp. (Yad Vashem)

Sered:

Between 1941 and 1945 there were three camps at Sered sometimes operating at the same time.  The camps’ purposes were the same – the removal of Slovakian Jews from the life of the nation, through expulsion, expropriation of property and finally, deportation to the death camps “in the East”. With the exception of the German operated camp, the Slovak government was directly responsible for the construction, maintenance and operation of Sered.

1. Labour Camp for Jews established in September 1941 by order of Alexander Mach, Minister of the Interior and placed under the responsibility of the Hlinka Guard.  The primary purpose of the camp was to concentrate Slovakian Jews, most of whom had been expelled fro Bratislava as part of the “aryanisation” of Jewish businesses, prior to despatch for forced labour.  Exploitation of Jewish workers proved an economic boon for the Slovak government.  In 1943 Jewish labour earned the government in excess of 2 million Slovak Crowns. The camp was dissolved during the Slovak National Uprising in August 1944.

2. A “Concentration Centre for Jews” was set up in 1942 to facilitate the deportation of Slovak Jews to Auschwitz.  It was closed in September 1944.

3. Sered concentration camp was established under German control in September 1944 as the last phase of the “Final Solution” in Slovakia.  SS Haupsturmführer Alois Brunner was commandant. Under Brunner’s watch an estimated 7,400 Jews were sent to Auschwitz between 30.09.1944 and 01.11.1944.  Most were murdered upon arrival.  From 16.11.1944 until the evacuation of the camp on 31.03.1945 more than 4,000 Jews were moved to Sachsenhausen, Terezín and Ravensbrück. Many of these deportees survived.

Much of the information here came from the review of Ján Hlavinka and Eduard Nižňansky, (2009) Pracovný a koncentračný tabor v Seredi 1941-1945, Bratislava: Dokumentačné stredisko holocaust, by Daniel Putík, pp 98-102. 

(The article cited above came from the website for the Studia Territorialia, published by the Charles University in Prague.  More than that I do not know.  If anyone can supply more details I will be very grateful.)

ADSS 10.355 Alexander Easterman to Pius XII - Hungarian Jews face renewed deportation

News that the Hungarian government was under enormous pressure and further, that Regent Horthy was looking at ways to extricate Hungary from its alliance with Germany, spread quickly.  The World Jewish Congress was well-informed and appealed directly to the pope urging him to speak out in order to avoid the resumption of deportations.  One day later the German-backed Arrow Cross deposed Horthy's regency and installed a pro-Nazi government.  The Hungarian Holocaust resumed immediately.

Alexander Easterman, Secretary of the World Jewish Congress to Pope Pius XII

Reference: Telegram 996 (AES 6915/44)

Location and date: London, 14.10.1944 @16.35 (Rec’d Rome 16.10.1944 @ 11.30)

Summary statement: Request intervention for the Jews of Hungary.

Language: English

Text:

Desperate appeals reaching us save surviving Jews in Hungary. (1) Germans now preparing carry out plans deporting three hundred thousand men, women, children.  Your Holiness intervention by public call in name of humanity may avert this appalling tragedy.  We are sure our ill fated innocent people will not appeal in vain for utmost and urgent last hour efforts save them from doom. (2)

Notes:

(1) See ADSS 10.321, notes.

(2) See ADSS 10.362.

ADSS 10.321 Domenico Tardini, Sec State to William Godfrey, UK: Hungarian Jews

This single sentence document indicates the growing public awareness of the situation in Hungary.  As the situation in Hungary grew more uncertain despite the cessation of the deportations in July, pressure increased on the Vatican to get the Pope to make more public announcements.  The June open letter to Regent Horthy gave many Jewish organisations hope that Pius might become more publicly active.  What these organisations could not know was the level of internal debate within the Vatican over the growing certainty that not only would Germany be defeated, but the Soviet Union would extend its control over much of eastern and middle-Europe.  It was becoming a matter of priority of engagement between the Vatican and the Allies over end-of-war objectives and post-war settlements.  Pius, I believe, was beginning to wonder if the Allies would be a reliable bulwark against the encroachments of the Soviet Union.  The Jews would not be forgotten or ignored, but the pope's attention was more and more divided. 

Domenico Tardini to William Godfrey, Ap Del UK

Reference: Telegram 582 (AES 5962/44)

Location and date: Vatican, 09.09.1944

Summary statement: The Holy See is doing all it can for the Jews of Hungary,

Language: Italian

Text:

The World Jewish Congress has sent a request by telegram imploring the intervention of the Holy Father in favour of non-Aryans of Hungary who are threatened with renewed deportation. (1)

Notes:

(1) The telegram from the World Jewish Congress in London was received on 06.09.1944. 

Public appeal to Hungarian Christians by the Jews - Summer 1944

In their excellent history of the Holocaust in Hungary, Zoltan Vagi, Laszlo Csosz & Gabor Kadar included a chapter on Jewish responses to the events unfolding around them.  Despite the cessation of deportations in the early July 1944, some Jews clearly believed this was merely a temporary halt to the killing process.  At some point a group of Budapest Jews wrote and published a series of pamphlets appealing to non-Jewish Hungarians to help their fellow Hungarians survive.  Or, if they would not help, then at least allow the Jews of Hungary to die within the borders of their homeland.

 

It would not be impossible to believe that the Nuncio, Angelo Rotta, saw or knew of this pamphlet or ones like it during the Summer of 1944. I have no evidence that suggests he saw this letter, but given that the nuncio was among the best-informed of anyone living in Budapest at the time, it would not be beyond belief to think he at least knew of the document.

Document 8-9A. (pp273-75)

The Hungarian Jews turn to Christian Hungarian society and raise their voices with a plea in the eleventh hour of their tragic fate.  They turn to those with whom they have lived together for a millennium, in good times and bad, in the country where our ancestors, fathers and grandfathers lie buried.

We did not say a word when we were plundered, lost our civil dignity and respect. And we did not resort to protest when we were thrown out of our homes wither.  However, it is now about our bare lives.  Moreover – and it hurts to even write this sentence – it is about the lives of only those Jews who remain.

We must make clear to Hungarian society that for weeks now, hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews have been deported abroad under tragic and cruel circumstances that are unparalleled in world history. 

[ … ] (In the next six paragraph the pamphlet describes the brutal details of the ghettoization and deportation.)

Will it be historically justifiable that almost six percent of the Hungarian citizens, almost a million people, were doomed to deportation and death without a trial and sentence?

Nowadays we do not have the time nor, particularly the chance to defend ourselves against one-sided charges, but we face those charges head-on.  Even if we made mistakes, they were no particular fault of ours, but arose from that economic system that had prevailed in the world, including Hungary, for a century and in which all productive forces (Christian and Jewish alike) participated.

The Hungarian nation might see it as appropriate to cast the Hungarian Jewry from its own midst, but how can the chivalrous Hungarian nation endure the cruel extermination of the helpless elderly, babies, unarmed defenseless people, and invalid veterans who list their sight and limbs in the war?

A way should be found for the remaining few hundred thousands of Hungarian Jews to emigrate if neutral states were contacted. [ … ]

We beg Hungarian Christian society to protect out children, defenseless women, all of us who are awaiting complete destruction.

We believe in the fairness of the Hungarian nation, which expects and claims justice from the world’s nations, and which cannot let this terrible death of the innocent happen.

But if our pleas are futile, then all we ask from the Hungarian nation is to put an end to our suffering in our own country, instead of putting us through the horrors of deportation, so that we can be buried in our motherland.

(Full citation: USHMMA RG 39.01, reel 26 [HJA XX-F-II, box D 6/4] in Zoltan Vagi, Laszlo Csosz & Gabor Kadar (2013) The Holocaust in Hungary: Evolution of a Genocide, Alta Mira Press & USHMM, Lanham, Maryland.)