New York Times: The Holocaust just got more shocking

A colleague emailed me a link to The New York Times for an article that had the eye-catching headline "The Holocaust just got more shocking".  Eric Lichtblau's article makes for blistering reading, and shocking it is.

A longitudinal study conducted by research scholars at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Geoffrey Megargee and Martin Dean revealed an almost unbelievable 45,500 sites of Nazi terror across Europe.  Megargee and Dean are the editors of the USHMM Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos 1933-1945.  Volumes 1 and 2 of a planned 7 volume work are now available.

This article is another piece of evidence that points to a more wide spread knowledge of German atrocities than we had before.  It would have been all but impossible not to know of some aspect of the terror inflicted upon millions of people - Jews and non-Jews.  It would also have been near impossible for the pope and the leaders of the Catholic Church throughout Europe not to have known that the information they received detailing the persecution of the Jews and others deemed "life unworthy of living" was largely accurate and part of a systematic process of "racial reorganisation" across the entire continent.  Of course information came to Rome in piecemeal fashion and took time to verify, but the sheer scope of Nazi terror  revealed in this article suggests that the information coming in must have borne a disturbing similarity.  The records in ADSS support this theory.

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.

Pius XII - co-workers - Luigi Maglione 1877-1944

The most cursory glance at Actes et Documents will reveal a group of names appearing on a frequent basis. Among them is the name of Cardinal Luigi Maglione, Secretary of State from March 1939 to August 1944. For the first five and half years of Pius XII’s papacy, Maglione was his “right hand man”, but little is known about this very important and pivotal Vatican official.

Maglione was born a day short of one year after Eugenio Pacelli, that is, 2 March 1877, in the town of Casoria near Naples in southern Italy. He studied for the priesthood at the Collegio Capranica in Rome along with Pacelli, and was ordained priest in July 1901 for the archdiocese of Naples. Until 1903 Maglione worked in parishes in Naples.

Following a career trajectory similar to Pacelli, Maglione began studying for the diplomatic corp and attended the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy from 1905 to 1907 before entering papal service in the Secretariat of State in 1908. At the end of World War One he was appointed by Benedict XV as papal representative at the League of Nations before being made Nuncio to Switzerland in September 1920. As was customary, the new nuncio was ordained a bishop and created Titular Archbishop of Caesarea in Palestine. In June 1926 Maglione moved to Paris where he was nuncio until mid-1938. His reception by the French was cold; they considered him pro-German, but he used his considerable personal skills and charm to win over his opponents. Time reported that Maglione was involved in the Hoare-Laval Pact (1935) that attempted to provide an amicable end to the Italian invasion of Ethiopia. (Time 20.03.1939) Pius XI elevated him to the College of Cardinals on 16 December 1935.

Maglione was recalled to Rome in July 1938 and appointed Prefect of the Congregation of the Council which was responsible for the diocesan clergy (today known as the Congregation for the Clergy). His time there was short. Pius XI died on 10 February 1939 and his successor, Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, was elected Pope on 3 March 1939. A week later, the new Pius XII named his old friend Maglione, Secretary of State. (New York Times 10.03.1939) By this time the new Cardinal Secretary had a reputation for being anti-fascist, and followed the initiatives set out by the pope, namely to steer a course that would do everything possible to avoid another European war.

Pius XII did not want creators of policy. He wanted implementers. Maglione had been trained in the same late-Tridentine understanding of the Catholic Church that Pacelli had. He knew it and understood it. Thinking independently was not part of the practice of a Secretary of State to the Pope, just as independent thinking was not part of the role description of the Secretary of State to the President of the United States of the Foreign Minister to the Australian Prime Minister.

What then do we learn of Maglione’s style? He was an able diplomat, a skilled negotiator, unfailingly polite and reserved, who faithfully implemented papal policy from March 1939 until his death in August 1944. He could also be quite blunt. In January 1943 Maglione wrote to the exiled bishop of Wloclaweck, Charles Radonski defending the pope’s decision not to make his letters to the Polish bishops public:

If you ask why the documents sent by the Pontiff to the Polish bishops haven not been made public, know that it seems better in the Vatican to follow the same norms, the Polish bishops themselves follow...Isn’t this what has to be done? Should the father of Christianity increase the misfortunes of Poles in their own country? (ADSS 3 Part 2 Doc 460, translation from Blet p 84)


On rare occasions, such as in December 1942, we glimpse the man in a slightly unguarded moment, sending New Year greetings to Nuncio Gaetano Cicognani in Spain in an attachment to an official document, marked “Personal”. (ADSS 7.78)

What did Maglione know of the extermination of European Jewry? The simple answer is, “as much as the Pope did, and the Pope knew a lot”. It would have been unthinkable for Maglione not to pass on to Pius anything of significance; and the murder of the Jews was the most significant event occurring in Europe during the war year. Perhaps the most puzzling thing remains the evidence of muddled reactions to the ever-growing reports of German atrocities.

By August 1942 the Vatican, and that included Pius and Maglione, had as clear a picture of the mass-murder of the Jews as did Churchill, Roosevelt and, had he been particularly interested, Stalin. On 26 September 1942, Myron Taylor, the personal representative of President Roosevelt to the Holy See, presented Maglione with an account of atrocities beyond anything heard of before. The document was part of what has become known as the Riegner Telegram. It disclosed in considerable detail what was happening in Poland. Did the Cardinal pass the memorandum from Taylor onto the Pope? I presume he did. If he did not, it would constitute a major breach in policy and behaviour. What happened after? We do not know – yet. Perhaps the Archives will reveal how these men reacted to this news.

Maglione was a heavy smoker which probably hastened his death 22 August 1944 at the age of 67. (New York Times 23.08.1944; Time 04.09.1944). Pius did not replace Maglione, but took on the responsibilities of the Secretariat himself with the assistance of Monsignori Domenico Tardini and Giovanni Battista Montini.