Another plea to Hungarian Christians to help Hungarian Jews.

Another example of a Jewish appeal to non-Jewish Hungarians that ends with the same plea - help us or shoot us here.  It is not beyond belief to think that the Nuncio, Angelo Rotta, either saw this pamphlet or was informed about it.

Document 8-9B. (p275)

Hungarians!

Do not soil the pure armour of Hungarian chivalry!

You must recognise this:  all Jews in the Hungarian provinces, the villages and towns, about half a million people, have been put on death trains and transported abroad, where they died in gas chambers and crematoria.  This end awaits the Jews of the capital, about 200,000 people.

The entire Hungarian nation must assume responsibility for this before the tribunal of history.

End the awful massacre.  Christian mercy and Hungarian decency demand it.

Let them place us, who have been pushed out of their homes, into labour camps until the end of the war, at which point we can be resettled outside the country.

And if our voices are not heard, shoot us in piles here, in the Hungarian motherland; let us then rest in the soil of our birthplace.

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.

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.)

ADSS 8.301 Burzio to Maglione: SS killing Jews in Russia

It would appear that once news began to flow on the increasing brutality shown towards the Jews in German-occupied Russia (which should be read as Belarus and Ukraine more so than Russia itself) the trickle became a flood.  Although this document is pithy, it describes in sufficient detail the standard Einsatzgruppen process of concentrating Jews and then shooting them to death.  Burzio's report to Rome means that the Vatican was in possession of evidence of the German policy of mass murder of Jews by no later than the spring of 1942.

Slovak troops fought as part of the Axis coalition in the Soviet Union, mostly in the Ukraine.  The killing of Jews was not hidden, so it would be highly likely that some Slovakians witnessed the shootings, and, perhaps, some participated.  Einsatsgruppe D, under SS-Gruppenführer Otto Ohlendorf, was the main killing unit in Ukraine.


ADSS 8.301

Reference: Rap nr 812 (AES 3368/42 orig)
Location and date: Pressburg (Bratislava), 11.03.1942
Summary statement: News of massacres of Jews in Russia committed by German SS.
Language: Italian
Text:

With regard to the question contained in the latter part of the dispatch Number 9610/41 of 20 December 1941, I have the honour to communicate to Your Eminence that the Slovak authorities are by no means unfamiliar with the atrocities committed against Jews in occupied Russia. (1)

According to information provided by the Slovak military chaplain [Michael Buzalka], the massacres were committed by units of the militia “SS”, by order of the German government authorities. All the Jews of a given place were concentrated away from the town and murdered with machine guns.

Cross references:

(1) Cf ADSS 8.184, note 3.

ADSS 8.298 Giuseppe Burzio to Maglione on the Deportation of the Slovakian Jews

Throughout much of 1941 the Vatican received news from many different quarters describing an escalation of Jewish persecution.  The news from "the East" was very different to the news from "the West".  By late 1941 the Jews of German-occupied Poland and the Baltic States were largely confined to ghettos of varying sizes.  The largest were Warsaw and Lodz.  Permanent ghettos in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union were less significant because the task assigned to the Einsatzgruppen was to murder Jews, not incarcerate them.  By the end of 1941 more Jews had been murdered in the wake of the German invasion of the USSR than had been killed in the previous two years of the war. 

And the majority of the murdered Jews were killed in Belarus and Ukraine.  Only a fraction of Jews with Russian Soviet nationality were killed.  Among those who died in Belarus and Ukraine were Polish Jews who had fled the German invasion in September 1939 for the relative safety of the Soviet occupied part of Poland.  Many of those Jews, regarded by Stalin as Poles first, and therefore politically unreliable, were deported deep into Siberia and Soviet Asia, where life was harsh, but survival was possible.

At some point in the summer of 1941 most historians believe Hitler gave his assent to the physical annihilation of the Jews.  From the first day of Barbarossa, Germans had been killing Jews on a scale not known before.  Himmler encouraged the eradication and presented the ever-growing number of "pieces" (as dead Jews were known) to Hitler who approved.  The radical step to solve the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question in Europe" had been taken.

The Pope knew of the brutal and harsh regime inflicted on the ghetto Jews of Eastern Europe, but as yet, I believe, had no inkling that the invasion of Russia would lead to a dramatic change in German intent - from elimination through deportation, to elimination through murder.  In this he was not alone.  It took Churchill and FDR time to come to understand that what was happening "in the east" was quantifiably different to what had gone before.

Jews in German occupied Poland remained largely "safe" in the ghettos until the radicalisation action was extended to them.  In late 1941 the death camps, Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka were either built or in the process of being constructed, with the sole purpose of killing Jews.  Gas chambers at Auschwitz had been trialled and were ready to use for large transports in early 1942.

Slovakia's government offered to deport its Jewish citizens at their own cost to German concentration camps.  The Germans accepted the deal.  Slovakia paid the cost of transportation, food, "medical care" and all the tasks necessary to move an anticipated 80,000 Jews from Slovakia to German control.

Watching the events unfold was the Holy See's charge d'affaires, Giuseppe Burzio.  He reported what he saw to Rome.  And he protested to the Slovakian government.  This is is the first report published in ADSS where explicit details of Jewish deportation appear.  Burzio's protests had a short term positive effect - the deportations were suspended (ADSS 8.324, 326).  Burzio was also asked to continue to apply whatever pressure he could on priest-president Jozef Tiso (ADSS 8.332)

Nuncios Filippo Bernardini in Switzerland and Angelo Rotta in Hungary also wrote to Rome asking the Holy See to intervene for the Slovakian Jews (ADSS 8. 300, 303).  Representatives of the Jewish community in Bratislava also wrote directly to the Pope through the Swiss nuncio (ADSS 8.303 attachment).  Pius XII instructed the Secretariat of State to protest to the Slovakian legation to the Holy See (ADSS 8.305) as well as respond to Bernardini (ADSS 8.312).  As the situation worsened, Rotta wrote again to Rome appealing for intervention to save the Slovakian Jews (ADSS 8.317).  Further protests were made to the Slovakian legation in Rome (ADSS 8.322) as well as appeals made by the D'Arcy Osborne, the British minister to the Holy See (ADSS 8.328).

However, after several weeks delay the transports were ordered to proceed.  Burzio reported on 31.03.1942 (ADSS 8.334) that the deportation commenced on 25.03.1942 and was conducted with great brutality.  The first train left Slovakia and took its cargo of 999 Jewish girls and women to somewhere in Poland.  Historians know the destination was Auschwitz where most of the women were gassed upon arrival.  Transports left Slovakia until concerted protests finally led to a suspension in October 1942, by which time 58, 645 Jews had been sent to Poland.  Most had been murdered shortly after reaching their destinations.  Deportations were not resumed until 1944 in the wake of the failed anti-German Slovak uprising.

This is the first of a series of documents I intend to post from ADSS that helps us see something of what Rome saw and came to understand with ever-growing clarity through the first half of 1942.

ADSS 8.298


Reference: Tel nr 19 (AES 2141/42)

Location and date: Pressburg (Bratislava) 09.03.1942


Summary statement: Deportation of Slovakian Jews to German-occupied Poland is imminent. Approaches to the President of the Council and other ministers have been without result.

Language: Italian

Text:

Leaked news reports that a mass deportation of all Slovakian Jews – regardless of age, sex or religion – to Galicia and the Lublin region is imminent. Men will be deported separately to women and children. The first contingent will leave (?) next month.

I am assured that this atrocious plan is the work of the Prime Minister, [Vojtech / Adalbert] Tuka (1880-1946) in agreement with the Minister of the Interior, (Alexander Mach 1902-1980) without any pressure from Germany, which actually requires Slovakia pay 500 Marks and food for two weeks before the deportation.

On Saturday I met with the President of the Council of Ministers who confirmed the news, and has vehemently defended the legality of the measure and he has dared to say (he who is so ostentatiously Catholic) that he cannot see anything anti-Christian or inhuman.

The deportation of 80,000 people to Poland at the mercy of the Germans is the same as condemning most of them to death.