ADSS 10.263 Casimir Papee, Polish Ambassador to Luigi Maglione - Hungarian jews

10.263 Casimir Papée, Ambassador of Poland to the Holy See, to Cardinal Maglione

Reference:  Number 122/SA/47 (AES 4571/44)

Location and date: Vatican, 13.07.1944

Summary statement: New on the deportation of Hungarian Jews.  Estimated that 400,000 Jews have been sent to Oswiecim (KL Auschwitz-Birkenau)

Language: French

Text:

By order of my government I have the honour to present to your Eminence news that the German authorities have taken the Hungarian Jews to Poland, to the Oswiecim concentration camp, where they are put to death.  It is impossible to establish the exact number of these Jews, but it seems that already about 400,000 have been deported.  Among them were many Polish citizens. (1)

Since June of this year, they are in the process of deporting a second part, of approximately 350,000.

It seems that the action of the extermination of the Hungarian Jews follows the example of the extermination of the Polish Jews.

In bringing the above to the knowledge of your Eminence, allow me to respectfully ask that you consider the question of a possible intervention of the Holy See to the Hungarian Government, to end and prevent this crime, as well as to warn the Hungarian Government of the possible consequences for Hungary for its collaboration with Germany. (2) 

Notes:

(1) See ADSS 10.233.  Deportations from Hungary had ceased on 09.07.1944 on Horthy’s orders, in part, because of the intervention of the pope and other world leaders.

(2) The editors of ADSS suggested Randolf Braham’s the Destruction of the Hungarian Jews  (1963) and Jenö Levai’s The Black Book on the Martyrdom of Hungarian Jewry (1948).  A more contemporary study of the subject may be found in Zoltán Vági, László Csősz and Gábor Kádár (2013) The Holocaust in Hungary: Evolution of a Genocide, Alta Mira Press & USHMM.