ADSS 8.431 Marcone to Maglione

In this report to Rome, Marcone writes with a bluntness unusual in diplomatic correspondent.  He has spoken with Eugene "Dido" Kvaternik who as head of police in Croatia from 1941-1943 before he had a serious rupture with Pavelic and fled to Slovakia.  The rupture seems to have been caused by the suicide of Kvaternik's Jewish mother, Olga Frank, which makes his antisemitism all the more horrific.

Kvaternik was responsible for enabling the persecution of Croatia's Jews and creating the environment for the reign of terror against them.  From Marcone's tone Kvaternik had no inhibition in telling the Visitor that "two million Jews have been killed" and the same fate seems to lie in store for the Jews of Croatia.  Reports such as this added to the gathering mountain of information Rome possessed by the late summer of 1942.  The murder of the Jews of Europe had passed into a new phenomena - from mass killing "in the East" to a systematic continent-wide extermination campaign.

After the war Kvaternik escaped to Argentina with support from Catholic circles.  He remained an unrepentant Ustasha officer until the end and worked with expatriate Croats against the communist regime of Marshal Tito.  Kvaternik died in a car crash in Argentina in 1962.

A biographical essay on Kvaternik was posted on the Axis History Forum in 2003.

ADSS 8.431


Reference: Report number 417/42 (AES 5766/42, original)

Location and date: Zagreb, 17.07.1942

Summary statement: Germans demand extradition of all Croatian Jews; request for intervention in their favour. Difficulties facing the departure of Jewish children for Turkey.

Language: Italian

Text:


I learned the following from the Chief of Police, Dr Eugene Kvaternik [1910-1962], to whom I had complained about the cruelty used against Jews of all ages and conditions.

The German government has demanded the extradition of all Jews residing in Croatia to Germany within six months, where, according to Kvaternik, two million Jews have been killed in recent times. It seems that the same fate awaits the Croatian Jews, especially the old and those unable to work.

Having received this news about the Jews, I am continually seeking to find ways of securing their salvation. The Chief Rabbi of Zagreb [Miroslav Freiberger 1904-1943] visits me often and tells me news of new misfortunes.

I commend the Chief of Police, who, at my suggestion, has delayed as much as possible, the execution of this order. Indeed, he would be pleased if the Holy See could intervene for the withdrawal of the order, (1) or at least to suggest that all Croatian Jews be concentrated on an island or in a zone of Croatia where they could live in peace.

In the meantime, I have learned from the Chief Rabbi that Turkey is willing to accept fifty Croatian Jewish children, but not by way of Serbia, but through Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria.

While Bulgaria has granted transit permission, Hungary and Romania are opposed.

The Chief Rabbi implores the Holy See to intervene with these two countries in order to obtain the right of passage.

Note of Domenico Tardini 11.08.1942


After audience with Cardinal Maglione.

1. Take the step specified in paragraph 1 in the name of the Holy See. (2)


2. Inform the nuncios in Budapest and Bucharest (we will do this ourselves). (3)

References:


(1) In the margin Tardini wrote: see note at the end of the report.
(2) Cf ADSS 8.502
(3) We wrote to the two nuncios on 14.08.1942 (AES 5767/42) and informed the Visitor [Marcone] in Zagreb on the same day (AES 5766/42): “ … I would ask your paternity to propose such a solution on behalf of the Holy See and that it can be implemented …” The nuncio in Bucharest [Andrea Cassulo] wrote on 05.09.1942 to the Minister of Foreign Affairs: “… because the Turkish government would be willing to receive them [the children], the Holy See would be happy and grateful if the Romanian authorities would grant the necessary permissions”. (Number 9197/42 Archives of the Romanian Nunciature)

Eugen Kvaternik (left)

ADSS 8.430 Giuseppe Marcone to Maglione: Croatian Jews

The first series of reports from Abbot Giuseppe Marcone OSB, Apostolic Visitor to Croatia appear in ADSS from July 1942, nearly a year after his arrival in Zagreb the previous August (ADSS 5.36).  There is a clear pattern that emerges in the documents showing Marcone's work in attempting to help the Jews of Croatia.  Without further material it is hard to speak of Marcone's work as overly energetic, even when the historical contexts of Ante Pavelic's regime are taken into consideration.  Marcone does not appear to have been fooled by the murderous nature of the Ustasha, but he does appear to have maintained a position of strict neutrality.

Requests to do what he could to help Croatian Jews were forwarded to the Visitor by Cardinal Maglione (ADSS 8.238, 289, 502) and Marcone replied with reports indicating what he had done to help (ADSS 8.347, 537, 557).  Domenico Tardini noted the concerns of Niko Mirosevic-Sorgo (1884-1966), the Yugoslav ambassador to the Holy See, about Croatian Jews in Italian occupied Dalmatia threatened with possible deportation by Croatian authorities.  "Of interest to Marcone" appears at the end of the ambassador's letter. (ADSS 8.450)

There was difficulty obtaining reliable information about what was happening to Croatia's Jews in the summer of 1942, which is hard to credit given the amount of information travelling between Vatican diplomats that spoke of unprecedented murder "in the East".  As we see below and in the following post, Marcone approached two of the architects of the murder of the Jews of Croatia - Andrija Artukovic and Eugene Kvaternik - asking for their advice and  help.  In an almost surreal moment, Marcone writes that his secretary, Fr Giuseppe Masucci OSB, wrote a letter of protest to the Croatian government at the suggestion of Artukovic, drafter of the anti-Jewish laws and founder of the Croatian concentration camps! (ADSS 8.430; see below)

Marcone did work with the Chief Rabbi of Zagreb, Miroslav Freiberger (1904-1943) before he was transported to and murdered in Auschwitz.  One of the plans was to try and send Jewish children out of Croatia to Turkey (ADSS 8.514) and Italy (ADSS 8.566).  Nothing appears to come of the plan.  Freiberger wrote in gratitude for the work that Marcone was doing, which indicates the Visitor was seriously trying to help. (ADSS 8.495).ADSS 8.430

Reference: Report number 417/42 (AES 5766/42, original)

Location and date: Zagreb, 17.07.1942

Summary statement: Difficulty in obtaining information about Croatian Jews.

Language: Italian

Text:
In response to the letter number 48473 of 18.04.1942 (1) I have the honour to report as follows.
In recent months requests for information about the Jews made to the Croatian authorities have met an inexplicable silence. At the suggestion of Dr [Andrija] Artukovic, [1899-1988] Minister of the Interior [04.1941-10.1942], my secretary [Giuseppe Masucci] made a protest in my absence, after which a response was made …

References:
(1) Not published.
(2) Information omitted.

NYT Obituary of Andrija Artukovic.

http://www.nytimes.com/1988/01/19/obituaries/andrija-artukovic-88-nazi-ally-deported-to-yugoslavia-is-dead.html


Andrija Artukovic, 88, Nazi Ally Deported to Yugoslavia, Is Dead


By RALPH BLUMENTHAL


Published: January 19, 1988


Andrija Artukovic, a former leader of the Nazi puppet state of Croatia who was extradited from the United States to Yugoslavia, died Saturday in a prison hospital in Zagreb, where he had been condemned to death for mass murder, the Yugoslav press agency announced yesterday. He was 88 years old and had won a stay of execution on the ground of poor health.


''Convicted war criminal Andrija Artukovic died of illness,'' the press agency, Tanyug, said. It did not specify the ailment but the court had previously found him to be suffering from sclerosis, heart ailments and anemia.


Mr. Artukovic's son, Radoslav, a stockbroker in Los Angeles, said yesterday that when he last saw his father in prison in December he was down to 95 pounds and was suffering from Alzheimer's disease. He said his father ''was only guilty of being on the wrong side of World War II.''


Mr. Artukovic, a longtime resident of Seal Beach, Calif., south of Los Angeles, was the highest-ranking fascist official known to have found refuge in the United States after the war. He was the Interior Minister and then Justice and Religion Minister in the government of the Croatian fascist dictator Ante Pavelic. The postwar Yugoslav Government charged Mr. Artukovic with ordering the machine-gunning of hundreds of civilians and with responsibility for the killing of more than 700,000 other Serbs, Jews, gypsies and Croats.


Charged With Killings


As the chief justice official in the German-created puppet state of Croatia, Mr. Artukovic was accused of drafting racial laws modeled after the Nazi statutes and setting up a network of concentration camps. He was directly charged with the reprisal slayings of civilians in the village of Vrgin Most.


After his long-disputed extradition to Yugoslavia in February 1986, he was tried for war crimes and convicted after a one-month trial during which he maintained his innocence. He said he never knew of any killings and had never been to Vrgin Most. The Government postponed execution of the death sentence last April.


Mr. Artukovic's 35-year effort to stave off Yugoslav demands for his return spun an extraordinary legal chronicle that illustrated both the exhaustiveness of American judicial review and the politicization of American courts, in the opinion of some experts.


After the war, according to a Justice Department investigation, Mr. Artukovic escaped to the British zone of Austria where he was questioned and inexplicably released. He fled next to Switzerland, where he adopted the alias Alois Anich, and then to Ireland.


In 1948, with his wife and three children, he traveled to California on a 90-day tourist visa that was to sustain his residency in America for the next 38 years. Identity Is Learned


As early as 1949, the Immigration and Naturalization Service in Los Angeles learned his true identity but took no action against him.


By 1951 the Yugoslavs, who had been hunting him since 1946, learned he was in California and disclosed the story to the newspapers. Mr. Artukovic was then arrested. But Croatian emigre groups and influential clerics petitioned for his release and he was let out of jail pending an extradition hearing.


An aide to Deputy Attorney General Peyton Ford instructed Immigration that Mr. Artukovic ''should not be sent to apparently certain death at the hands of the Yugoslav Communists.'' In fact, he added, ''if his only crime was against Communists, I think he should be given asylum in the U.S.''


Mr. Artukovic was ordered deported in 1952 and the Board of Immigration Appeals upheld the ruling. But other court decisions threw the question into doubt and the case seesawed back and forth until 1957 when the Supreme Court sent the case back for an Immigration rehearing. A commissioner then ruled that the Yugoslav affidavits charging Mr. Artukovic with murder were unreliable and alleged, at most, political crimes. The Case Is Revived


Yugoslavia's effort to try Mr. Artukovic languished for nearly two more decades until the Immigration Service revived the case under pressure in the late 1970's. The Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations finally won the extradition order two years ago.


Mr. Artukovic was born Nov. 29, 1899, in Croatia, then part of Austria-Hungary, studied law and grew active in the Croatian separatist movement. In 1934 he was charged with others in the assassination of King Alexander of Yugoslavia in Marseilles but he was aquitted. Afterward he fled Yugoslavia, working with the Nazis in Germany, Hungary and Austria until Hitler's formation of Croatia in 1941.


In addition to his son, he is survived by his widow, Anamarie, and four daughters, Visnja, Zorica, Ruzica and Nada, who live in California and Arizona.


The Yugoslav Government said Mr. Artukovic's remains would be disposed of in accordance with the death penalty, apparently meaning the body would be cremated and the ashes scattered to avoid creating a memorial.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrija_Artukovi%C4%87  

Andrija Artukovic seated far left next to

Abbot Marcone and Archbishop Stepinac.

 

1986 Andrija Artukovic on trial for war crimes in Zagreb.

The Vatican and the Ustasha

After posting the comments about the scandalous news of public memorials for the former leader and war criminal of war-time Croatia, Ante Pavelic, I began exploring the relationship between the Vatican and the Ustasha state in order to contextualise the documentation found in ADSS.  It has been a depressing exercise.  Unlike any other part of Europe during the war, the Catholic Church's relationship with the Ustasha state is overwhelmingly negative from the perspective of the Holocaust and the parallel genocides waged against Orthodox Christian Serbs.  Croatia holds the infamous distinction for carrying out a planned and state-sponsored genocide against Christians because they were not Roman Catholic.  I know of no other similar program carried out during the War. 

The Ustasha war against the Serbs was as much religious as racial.  The language used and the justifications fabricated were cloaked in "catholic" religious terminology.  The diplomatically neutral role of Apostolic Visitor, Giuseppe Marcone, precluded him from making formal protest, but did not prevent him from reporting what he heard and saw to the pope, Cardinal Maglione and others in the Secretariat of State.  It is impossible to suggest that Rome knew nothing, quite simply because they did know and admitted as much.

ADSS records some of the reports sent by Marcone indicating that the Croatian bishops were doing something to try and protect the Jews, but with next to no success.  There is evidence that attempts were made to rescue Jewish children and larger efforts to move as many Jews as possible into the Italian zones in nearby Slovenia and Dalmatia.

I will post some of these documents along with comments in the near future as well as continuing the account from Slovakia.  Given that both Slovakia and Croatia were "Catholic" states the history of the Holocaust in each place does provide a way of attempting to understand the action and reaction of the Vatican to the unfolding events.

For an introduction and overview to the Holocaust in Croatia see the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum pages on Yugoslavia.

On Croatia's relationship with the Catholic Church there is much material.  Michael Phayer's The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930-1965, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2000 and Pius XII, the Holocaust, and the Cold War, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2007 are, I believe, the best place to start.

If the reader can chart their way carefully through Carl Savich's sometimes contentious interpretation of history, The Vatican Role in the Ustasha Genocide in the Independent State of Croatia (2011) does have some interesting points.  I disagree not only on his reliance on John Cornwall's Hitler's Pope, but the lack of balance in parts.  It is historical fact that the Vatican did attempt to do something to help the Jews of Croatia-Serbia.  It is also historical fact that Archbishop Stepinac of Zagreb did speak against the murderous policies of Pavelic's regime.  These need to be acknowledged.  It is also dangerous putting too much responsibility on the shoulders of Abbot Marcone.  Marcone did let Rome know what was going on. Moral issues aside, the Vatican needed "its man on the ground" in order to have a conduit into and out of Croatia. 

ADSS 8.141 Gabrielle Apor's response to Cardinal Maglione's protest over changes to Hungary's marriage laws.

Following the previous post which set out Cardinal Maglione's protest to the Hungarian government, I present the reply written to Maglione by the Hungarian Minister to the Holy See, Gabrielle Apor.

Apor's response is couched in the customary diplomatic language, makes general and sweeping statements, vague and non-committal.  The Vatican was no threat as far as the Hungarian government was concerned.

Volume and Document Number: ADSS 8.141

Reference: without number (AES 7410/41, original)
Location and date: Rome 06.09.1941
Summary statement: Justification for the race laws in Hungary.
Language: French.

Text:

With reference to the letter of 13.08.1941 (1), I have the honour to communicate to Your Eminence:

The Hungarian Government has noted with sincere regret, the fears Your Eminence expressed about the reforms introduced in Hungarian marriage laws.

The Hungarian population is – as is generally known – divided into different religions. Therefore after 47 years the Hungarian State was required to regulate the institution of marriage by statue and introduce legislation to make civil marriage mandatory.

From 1894 the Hungarian government has been, therefore, consistently of the view that the regulation of the institution of marriage is a task for the state: the Hungarian Government has not – after that time – changed its point of view

Vital political interests of the country oblige the Hungarian Government to introduce into the marriage laws new prohibitive measures. These important interests which result as a consequence, in part, of the general European situation, in part special social conditions in Hungary, which have been raised several times by qualified representatives of the Government before the Parliament and expressed by the President of the Council [László von Bardossy] to His Excellency, the Apostolic Nuncio [Angelo Rotta].

During the discussion of the bill in question, the Hungarian Government sought to take account of the views expressed by His Excellency, the Apostolic Nuncio and His Eminence, the Cardinal Prince Primate [Justinian Seredi] to the extent that the political circumstances that have made reform inevitable, allowed them.

The Hungarian Government, on its part, assures the Holy See that the framework of the law will not lose sight of the considerations which the Church places, with great importance, when the law is promulgated and in its implementation.

The Hungarian Government would sincerely regret if these concessions were not entirely satisfactory to the Holy See, but it expresses the hope that this circumstance will not affect the friendly relations that have traditionally existed so well between the Holy See and Hungary since the time of our first king, St Stephen [King of Hungary 1000-1038]

ADSS 8.139 Cardinal Maglione to Abbot Giuseppe Marcone

This is my translation of the letter of instructions sent to the Apostolic Visitor to Croatia, Abbot Giuseppe Marcone by the papal Secretary of State, Cardinal Luigi Maglione on 3 September 1941. Marcone had written to Maglione on 23 August 1941 about the marking of the Jews with a metal disc that was to be worn on the sleeve of their coats.  Maglione's response is very interesting for gauging something of the atmosphere in the Vatican's understanding of what was now happening to the Jews.  The invasion of the Soviet Union was still in its early stages, but reports of terrible killings were reaching centres of government in the "free world", and in all likelihood, rumours may have even reached Rome.

The Jewish badge worn in Croatia and the former Yugoslavia.

Marcone's August note is found in the first footnote.  I apologise in advance for the quality of the translation.  If a reader finds a serious error, please let me know.

Volume and Document Number: ADSS 8.139

Reference: AES 6660/41 minute
Location and date: Vatican City, 03.09.1941

Summary statement: Instructions from the Sec State, Cardinal Maglione, for the charitable work of the Apostolic visitor to Croatia, Giuseppe Marcone, OSB.

Language: Italian

Text:

I received the report of 23.08.1941(1) where your reverence reported his first impressions of the religious and political situation in Croatia.

I thank your reverence warmly for providing information for the Holy See, and I hope that communication with other countries becoming more difficult, you will be able to keep me regularly informed of the progress of the mission entrusted to you. I would be grateful if you would, in future, report on individual arguments with separate reports.

I gladly express to your reverence, my appreciation for your kindness working in favour of the Serbian people, and which I am sure will continue with prudence and tact required by the circumstances, to develop your charitable work with the intention to prevent the spread of these lamentable facts. (Possible reference to the forced conversion program undertaken by the Ustasha)

I noted with satisfaction how much His Excellency, the Archbishop of Zagreb (2) has done, as much as he can, to alleviate, the suffering of the Slovenian priests and exiled Catholics. In encouraging your paternity to continue to be more effectively involved, I am pleased to inform you that the Holy Father himself has deigned to favourably grant your request and advance a subsidy to provide for the most urgent needs. (3)

In this regard, however, as to the use of the money, I intend to send you instructions as soon as possible.

Given the opportunity, your paternity is to procure, confidentially and always ensuring in every case that your acts do not have an official character, to recommend proper restraint concerning the treatment of Jews living in Croatian territory.

As for the attitude of the clergy, both secular and religious, towards political issues, your paternity is to continue the ensure that they remain outside and above all party contests, while giving the civil authority their loyal and disinterested collaboration.

I have noted that your paternity reported of the real possibility for the Archbishop of Zagreb to continue to assist the faithful of the territory of Murakös. (4) I do not need to add that, in the current circumstances which may possibly persist, the Holy See does not intend to take away those faithful from their current jurisdiction to which they are subject.

I have the honour, finally, to inform your paternity that the Holy Father, with regard to the current difficulties communicating with the Holy See, has deigned to concede to you the use of faculties which are usually granted to Papal representative.

Notes:


1. Marcone had written this report on 23.08.1941:

The Jews of Croatia are required to wear on their sleeves, a yellow metal disc, ten centimetres wide, with the letter “Z” (Zidov = Jew) written in the centre. This evil badge is tolerated, the hatred of the Croats and the economic disadvantages towards the Jews, often results in the souls of the Jews the desire to go to the Catholic Church. Do not exclude this a priori supernatural reasons and the silent work of divine grace. Our clergy facilitates their conversion, thinking that at least their children will be educated in Catholic schools and then will be more sincere Christians. (AES 4951/41)

There are several notes from Tardini:

This badge has been worn by the Archbishop of Zagreb. It is the same as those created for the Jews of Croatia. They [Croatian gov’t] also wanted to impose them [the badges] on converted Jews. The Archbishop was unable to prevent it. (I have not been able to verify this statement. I think it would be highly unlikely that Stepinac would have worn the Jewish badge.)

2. Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac (1898-1960).

3. A note from Cardinal Maglione – 25.07.1941 (AES 5795/41) said: The Holy Father has deigned to distribute:

1. for the 8 seminarians from Maribor at Propaganda College, as indicated by Cardinal Pietro Fumasoni (1872-1960; Prefect of Propaganda)

2. and for the other Maribor seminarians, for whom he [Fumasoni] asked for a subsidy, you are given 50,000 lire.


3. for the priests of Maribor and Ljubljana driven from their homes, you are given a subsidy of 150,000 lire (75,000 for the diocese).

The total sum could be sent to the bishop of Ljubljana [Gregorio Rožman, 1883-1959] with the request that he send to his colleague in Maribor [Ivan Josef Tomazic, 1876-1949), the amount indicated.

All these amounts are to be taken from the US$200,000 recently placed at the disposal of the Holy Father by the American bishops.

4. A territory in neighbouring Hungary. Under canon law no change to a diocese was made during a time of war or before formal international recognition of a new country’s borders.

Croatian Jewish children wearing a form of the badge.

Abbot Marcone and Croatia

I have been rather busy of late and been kept away from blogging.  Just before work commitments went into top gear, this article appeared in L'Osservatore Romano.  It looks at the Apostolic Visitor to Croatia, Abbot Giuseppe Marcone OSB, (1882-1952).  The Ustasha dictator, Ante Pavelic (1889-1959) desperately wanted Vatican recognition of his regime.  His visit to Rome in May 1941 (See ADSS 4.348, 351, 352, 356, 358) was a tight-rope exercise for the Vatican.

ADSS makes it clear that the pope wanted to avoid anything that would create an impression that the Holy See recognised the Croatian state or that is endorsed the policies of the Ustasha.  It is not difficult to see how these impressions were possible.  It mattered little that Pavelic's visit had none of the trappings associated with diplomatic visits; the fact remained that the pope received him.  To be fair to Pius, he had little choice.

One of the outcomes of the Pavelic visit was the appointment of Marcone as an Apostolic Visitor, a promise Pius made to Archbishop Stepinac in June 1941 (ADSS 4.392).  It was not until July 1941 that the pope appointed Marcone as Apostolic Visitor (ADSS 5.21), and August when the Visitor arrived in Zagreb (ADSS 5.36).

Marcone held no formal diplomatic credentials and was a guest of the Croatian government, nothing more.  His role was to watch the concerns of the Church in Croatia.  Nonetheless, Marcone not only watched Catholic interests, but also the growing rabid antisemitism in Croatia.  On 23 August 1941 he wrote to Cardinal Maglione, the Secretary of State, about the marking of Jews that had just begun in Croatia.  He also mentioned the hatred Jews were exposed to.  Maglione's instructions to Marcone (ADSS 8.139) were basically to do whatever he could to help while keeping out of anything that could compromise his official status.  I will post my translation of this document in the next post.  The Cardinal also added that Marcone was to ensure that the clergy kept out of politics and remain neutral.

Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac

and

Abbot Giuseppe Marcone,

Apostolic Visitor to Croatia

****************************

The papers of Apostolic Visitor, Giuseppe Ramiro Marcone reveal the Holy See’s commitment to helping Jews persecuted by Nazis

2011-08-09 L’Osservatore Romano

While the Second World War was blazing on the European continent, Benedictine abott, Monsignor Giuseppe Ramiro Marcone, was sent, in the summer of 1941, by the Holy See to the Croatian episcopate, as an Apostolic Visitor, to look after the Catholic interests in that country.

Detailed instructions from the Secretary of State of the Holy See clearly state that Abbot Marcone’s mission had “a completely spiritual and religious aim…from which it follows that the Most Reverend Abbot Marcone visiting the Kingdom of Croatia…will endeavor to avoid official contact with the governing authorities, in such a way that his mission be, and appear to be, in accordance with the desires of the Holy See, of a strictly religious nature...Particularly, the Most Reverend Prelate will advise and support Monsignor Stepinac and the Episcopate in combating the evil influence of neo-pagan propaganda which could be exercised in the organization of the new state.”

Only three weeks after his arrival, the diligent Apostolic Visitor sent a detailed report to the Holy See in which he described, in an abundance of detail, the precarious condition of the Jews in Croatia. The Roman Curia did not delay in replying, and on September 3rd, a letter from the Secretariat of State reached him containing precise directives which the Pope’s representative was advised to follow scrupulously: “Moderation is recommended regarding the treatment of Jews who reside in Croatian territory.” I

In reality, as Marcone’s secretary, Don Giuseppe Masucci, writes in his diary of the events, beginning on February 10, 1942, Abbot Marcone was asked to approach, with a certain swiftness, the Ustasa authorities to plead the cause of the Jews who were about to be taken to concentration camps; the prelude to the wicked “final solution to the Jewish problem.” S.S. Captain, Franz Abromeit, had been sent to Croatia to oversee the transfer of 5,500 Jews who – between August 13-20, 1942 – were removed from Croatian concentration camps and put on five trains destined for Auschwitz.

Seriously worried for the precipitation of events, Chief Rabbi of Zagreb, Miroslav Shalom Freiberger, in the late afternoon of February 10, 1942, decided to immediately call on the Pope’s representative. In Don Giuseppe Masucci’s diary the entry reads, “Chief Rabbi Dr. Freiberger presented himself to me at 6 pm, out of breath, and communicated to me that the city is full of notices announcing that all Jews, without distinction, must present themselves to the police. I told him that I would ask to speak with the Chief of Police the following day, and ask for an explanation. He added that the situation was very urgent because they would have already arrested everyone that night. So I telegraphed Dido (Eugen Kvaternik) saying that I had an extremely urgent matter to discuss with him and that there was no time to waste; he told me that I could come at 7 pm. At 7 pm I went to him and at length spoke, implored him and begged on behalf of these unfortunate Jews. I told him that mixed marriages should not be considered Jewish, but as part of the Catholic Church.”

The Police Chief , “was fairly pensive and immediately gave the order to publish in the newspapers that the notices were annulled. That all Jews in a mixed marriage should not be further disturbed, and that those who were still alive in concentration camps should be immediately released.” Abbot Marcone then took it upon himself to organize the transport of a small group of Jewish children – among whom was the son of the Chief Rabbi of Zagreb – through Hungary and Romania to safety in neutral Turkey.

As a sign of his gratitude, Rabbi Freiberger sent a letter to the Pontiff, on August 4, 1942, in which he expressed his deepest thanks for the sacrifice of many Catholic religious in assisting the Jews, and hoped that the Vatican would continue in this direction: “Full of respect, I dare come before the throne of Your Holiness to express, as Grand Rabbi of Zagreb and spiritual head of the Jews in Croatia, my most profound gratitude, and that of my congregation for the goodness, without limits, that the representatives of the Holy See and the heads of the church have shown to our poor brothers.”

By Giovanni Preziosi