It would be very helpful if you would provide an English translation of the January 9, 1939 letter from Cardinal Pacelli. There is an email available for your use at my blog, located at http://www.jewishsurvival.blogspot.com.

Thank you very much.

Irvin A. Mermelstein

I don’t think that it’s naïve at all to think the Pope is influenced by PTWF. What the Pope is saying is consistent with what PTWF is saying, previous decades-long research notwithstanding. After all, as you know it is Mr. Krupp and not those historians of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints who have investigated Pius’ life and pontificate who get media coverage, are knighted and are named Top Ten People of the Year by “Inside the Vatican” magazine. I think you are being a little disingenuous in your reference to timing: you know that the Pope had access to your findings and conclusions long before they were published.

I resent your accusation that I hate truth and justice because I believe that the canonization of Pope Pius would be potentially catastrophic if done before independent scholars had had a chance to study the Secret Archives. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Indeed, the opposite is true. It is precisely because I care for truth and justice that I am spending the time to refute your points. Just think of the predicament you as a faithful Catholic researcher would be in in the future after the Archives are open if the evidence shows that Pope Pius was indeed sleeping at the wheel while six million lives were being extinguished. How would you write about it, if it was no longer a pope you were writing about, but rather a saint?

Just as a wrote earlier to Mr. Krupp, I agree you are not responsible for what the press writes, nor would it be realistic to expect that you would correct each and every one of them. But just as PTWF issued a press release triggering that media coverage in th efirst place, they could and should have issued another news release setting the record straight if you felt the press got it wrong, as you and Mr. Krupp claim.

That some recipients of the 1938 telegram thought that those emigrés were Jews is not that surprising given that these converted Jews had been Jews, and quite likely some still secretely were. Like their predecessors in the Holy Inquisition, these bishops must have understood that in extreme circumstances Jews converted or pretended to convert to Catholicism. In no way is this proof that the term “non-Aryan Catholic” was understood to mean “Jew”. Mr. Hesemann, the Vatican could not have possibly used such a code name for the reasons I explained earlier. Also, why would they be so concerned about the letters getting leaked out and risking a Nazi accusation that the Holy See was helping Jews, when at that time the Nazis were (falsely) accusing the Vatican and Pacelli of this very thing almost on a daily basis?

Another point I wanted to bring up is your claim that the November 1938 telex and the January 1939 letter were only referenced in ADSS, and not published in them. You also claimed that you discovered the distribution list and that was never published before. Yet, I find it astonishing you could have the gall to claim all this when anyone can open ADSS Volume 6, page 49, footnote 10 and see the telegram and the recipient list right there! So, your entire case, from the assumption that the beneficiaries of Pacelli’s charity were Jews, to your (or the media’s) claim that you discovered new documents revealing Pacelli’s supposed efforts to save 200,000 Jews, to your claim that ADSS only referenced these documents instead of the documents themsemselves, to your claim that in reality your discovery was just of the distribution list of the 1938 telegram are all false.

It is rather naive to even assume that the Holy Father bases his estimate of the Pontificate of Pisu XII on my findings. For more than four decades, the historians of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints have investigated his life and pontificate and had access to many more files, documents and eyewitness testimony than I will ever have. They came unisono to the conclusion that Pius XII deserves beatification, and so did the Pope, after reading the six volumes of their report. He eventually promulgated the decree on the heroic virtues of Pius XII in December 2009 – half a year before my findings were published. So indeed you can be sure that he had already made up his mind and drew the only possible conclusion long before.

Again: He has some of th best historians working for him for decades – do you really think Pope Benedict XVI. was waiting for a Jewish American’s foundation and a German author and historian to “find” what was never lost but kept in the Vatican Secret Archives since 1939?

The interview with Peter Seewald, which you quote, took place in Castelgandolfo in the summer of 2010, right after my findings were published. If anything, the Pope saw in them a confirmation of his opinion and decision, which he just quoted, because it was just in the news.

Still, as a Roman Catholic, I am glad that our Pope steers the Church in the direction he does – the direction of truth and justice. Only someone who hates truth and justice can ever call this direction “catastrophic”. This Pope is a blessing for the Church and for all faithful and an ongoing inspiration for a writer and historian.

The original press statement, released by PTWF and ZENIT news agency, was correct. I am in no way responsible for what British, American, Indian (!) and Australian media made out of it. I don’t even get their reports in time nor do I have the time to write them all, nor would they ever care to print my reaction days or weeks later. We all know, that newspapers sometimes exagerrate. But the basic information was correct: Eugenio Pacelli tried to get Visa for 200.000 Jews by writing first to the Nuntiatures of so many important countries and then to the Archbishops of the Catholic world. Before, thanks to ADDS, we knew that the LETTERS existed, but we did not know if they were drafts or sent to just a single person – we did not know the extent of this campaign at all and this is what makes the difference. And this, the EXTENT of his request for help and visa, is what I discovered and documented FIRST. Sorry, you can’t deny that.

If you still believe he just referred to Catholic converts, tell me why the recipients understood that it refers to “Jews”. And tell me, first of all, why these Catholics needed their own sanctuaries, schools and the strict observation of their customs and traditions … when they come to a Catholic country! It just does not make sense. “Catholic” means universal, and one advantage our religion has is that we can easily attend Holy Mass in any country on Earth, since they all follow the same rite – even more so in 1938, when Holy Mass was universally said in Latin.
Nobody knew that better than Pacelli who lived in Germany for 12 years. So why did he make such a stupid request if he indeed referred to “Catholic Non Aryans”? I tell you why: Officially, the Church had no right to care about Jews. If anybody would have published any of these letters – and excerpts WERE published, e.g., by the Irish press, a protest from the side of the Nazis (“Pope helps the enemies of the Reich! Why does he care about Jews?”) would have followed immediately. Using a non-provocative term avoided this danger of a collision and was a helpful backdoor.

But you are right: Probably a great part of the “Catholic Non Aryans” indeed had “just converted” – because they were issued false baptism certificates by the Church! Since there were countries, like Brazil, which were only willing to issue Visa for “Catholic Non-Aryans”, not for Jews, the St. Raphael’s Verein was indeed rather creative in fulfilling these traditions (followed by protests from the side of the Brazilians). You want evidence? You find that, too, in the Vatican Archives!

I am very aware of the work PTWF is doing in collecting and making public many documents, and I have already publicly commended you for it. I have visited your archives and find the information there useful (although I must confess I find it hard to navigate and use).

I find it ironic that you refer to anyone who does not conform to your view about Pope Pius a “revisionist”. Come on, Mr. Krupp! Most historians and Holocaust scholars share a common understanding of the role of the pope and the church during the Nazi period, myself included. Revisionism happens when someone looks at something and sees something totally different from what it is. Like calling “converted Jews” or “non-Aryan Catholics” Jews, or claiming that Pope Pius did everything humanly possible to save Jews during the Nazi period, for instance.

In principle I agree with you that reading source documents is of paramount importance to a historian’s work. However, don’t be so quick to dismiss anyone who uses any other means of access to the documents, including reading them on someone else’s book. I am not sure who pays for Mr. Hesemann’s “months on end” at the ASV, and with what intent, but not all independent historians enjoy the backing of a patron, nor would they have access to the relevant period anyway. As you and I discussed before, as important as the archive material until the year 1939 is to understand Cardinal Pacelli’s role in the early Nazi period, it does nothing to understand the contentious period, that is the 1939-1945 years. In other words, I am not sure why you even bring up that few researchers visited the Vatican Archives as it’s totally immaterial. I also fail to understand why you feel Dr. O’Shea should have mentioned that ADSS had been digitized by PTWF. I think the point he was making was simply that he did not need to be physically at the archive as the information was remotely accessible, regardless of who digitized it.

Regarding the 1938 speech Cardinal Pacelli delivered in Budapest, as I mentioned to you during our Galus Australis exchange I did not have access to the original in French. The scan of the speech published on the newspaper on PTWF’s web site is of poor quality and next to impossible to read. I will be glad to concede that the quote was a fabrication, if I find that to be the case. But joining sentences in quotes is customary and accepted practice provided it does not change the meaning of the original. I do not feel I was misleading anyone, given that that quote had been used by others before me.

Lastly, I’d like you to ponder your own quotes about “knowledge” and “wisdom” in light of your earlier point about PTWF’s mission of being simply a repository of knowledge. Based on the standards established by the aphorisms you quoted, and the misguided path Pope Benedict is taking based on that knowledge, do you find that wise?

Gabriel Wilensky

You claim you never denied that the Nov. 1938 telex the media widely reported you “found” at the ASV had already been published in Actes, but neither did you correct the media when they made it sound like it was a new discovery nor did you correct them when they claimed that Pope Pius XII’s actions not only supposedly helped save thousands of Jews, but also their patrimony. As far as I know the media never retracted those reports, nor published new articles clarifying that the newfound document was simply the distribution list of the telex published 40 years earlier in ADSS. You should have clarified all that because, first of all, this act was performed by Cardinal Pacelli as Secretary of State (not yet as pope) acting as you’d expect of someone in that position at a time in which Jewish emigration was official Nazi policy, and second, as you yourself acknowledge, because his actions did not help those thousands of Jews. That, sir, is being misleading.

I am not sure why you think the discovery and publishing of the distribution list is so important. It certainly does not explain or warrant the wide media coverage this “discovery” received. Again, it got coverage because for whatever reason(s) the media thought you had discovered a never seen letter by Cardinal Pacelli attempting to save the lives of 200,000 Jews, which would have certainly been newsworthy. The media would not have reported the list of recipients, because instead of wasting space with that it would have been sufficient to say something to the effect of “X nunciatures and bishoprics around the world”.

In regards to your contention—once again—that the terms “converted Jews” or “non-Aryan Catholics” were widely understood to mean “Jews”, as you know I think this is absolutely wrong. To avoid repeating myself here I invite you to read my previous refutation of this claim. Interestingly enough, you seem to think that the media and the bishops at the time widely understood this to mean “Jews”, but even if we assumed that to be the case (which I don’t), that begs the question of why the Vatican saw fit to use a code word everyone—presumably including the Nazis from whom they were supposedly trying to hide this from in the first place—would understand.

Again, that Cardinal Pacelli would ask the bishops to respect the traditions of the converted Jews can be easily understood when we consider these were adults who had a lifetime in a different tradition and the cardinal knew that despite the church’s strongest desires and wildest wishful thinking, it would have been unrealistic to expect 50 year old people to all of a sudden become completely different persons just because they were baptized. This is not to say some of the bishops (like the cardinal) understood that some of these newly converted people were crypto-Jews who underwent baptism in order to save their skins.

That you never clarified to the media that a non-Aryan Catholic meant a Jew who had converted to Catholicism, and indeed that you continue to express that it was a code-word for “Jew” is a tidbit of disinformation and a historical distortion, and is misleading.

Lastly, in regards to your last point that Pope Pius XII “tried everything humanely possible to help the Jews in those times of persecution” I think you and I are so diametrically opposed in our understanding of what the pope could and should have done, and what “everything humanly possible” means that further discussing this may be futile.

Gabriel Wilensky

Research by reading the books of others cannot come close to going to the source material. Michael Hesemann has spent months on end in the archives basing what he says on real documents not on someone’s footnotes.
Paul O’Shea once publicly informed me, on his site, that he doesn’t have to come to the archives because that the Acts and Documents of the Holy See (ADSS) are available on line on the Vatican website. He forgot to mention that Pave the Way Foundation digitized all 9000 pages of the ADSS and developed a multi-tasking search engine for easy access, and put this information on our site and on the Vatican site.
As far as pushing misleading information, allow me to give you one example recently of how you have misled your readers with incorrect quotations and comments. I am reminding you of your proof of Pacelli’s anti-Semitism on the Australian blog Galus Australis, specifically with the 1938 Eucharistic speech, that Pacelli delivered in Budapest.
After you made those remarks, we simply went back to the original speech. Professor Ron Rychlak and William Doino Jr. reviewed the text of the original speech as it was published in Discorsi e Panegirici (which has been available to any legitimate historian interested in original research). Your quotes were based on intentionally mistranslated remarks and on artificially created sentences, which were taken from different parts of the speech and pieced together in order to change the meaning of the Pope’s remarks. Please see the article by Prof. Ron Rychlak and William Doino Jr., where they explain how this happened and how this lie has been repeated over and over. Please go to http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2010/09/pius-xii-and-the-distorting-ellipsis. So much for accuracy.
Finally, It has been a unfortunate practice of many of the historical revisionists who comment on the personal integrity of those who have defended the wartime record of Pope Pius XII, rather than comment on the real content or accuracy of documents discovered. This practice should stop especially since many of those who may call themselves historians and scholars may have a great deal of knowledge but unfortunately do not have wisdom.
Let us not forget two statements on this phenomenon. Jewish tradition says, “Knowledge without wisdom is like a golden ring in a pig’s nose”. A Japanese proverb says “knowledge without wisdom that it is like a stack of books on the back of and ass”.

Don’t you find it a difference if someone just quotes a letter, as it was done in the ADSS, with no background information about its distribution, or if someone documents the extent of this request for help, as I did?

Once again: The documents were QUOTED in the ADSS, the ORIGINAL documents with their distribution list was published FIRST by us, the Pave the Way Foundation!

Although the letter officially refers to “Non-Aryan Catholics”, its content makes it obvious that it refers to Jews in general. Otherwise, why would Pacelli ask for “their proper sanctuaries, proper schools and all they need to maintain their religious cult, customs and traditions.”
If he would refer to converted Jews, who became Catholics, this request would not make any sense. German Catholics are Catholics like any others. They can send their children to the already existing Catholic schools and Churches of their host country. They have no “cults, customs and traditions” they would miss in any foreign Catholic country, except, maybe at that time, the Christmas tree. Holy Mass, in 1938, was universally celebrated in Latin. What they would still need would just be a German-speaking priest who would take their confessions. But exactly that is not requested in the letter; the problem of language and pastoral is not mentioned at all.
Therefore we conclude that this letter refers to Jews in general. And this is how it was understood, according to the replies which I found – for the first time – in the Vatican Secret Archives. To give just one example, let me quote the Archbishop of St. Andrews and Edingburgh, who, on January 16, 1939, wrote: “I beg to acknowledge your letter in regard to assisting the Refugee Jews from Germany and elsewhere”. He wrote “Jews”, NOT “Catholic Non-Aryans”!
Also the Press of this time understood it right. For example, the “Irish Press” of December 10, 1938, referring to the first telegram of Nov. 30, 1938, called it “a telegram from the Pope expressing sympathy with efforts to aid German Jews”.
I never claimed that this largest ever attempt to obtain Visa for Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany was successful and that Pacelli indeed got the 200.000 Visa he requested. Unfortunately he didn’t. But he tried everything humanely possible to help the Jews in those times of persecution!

Michael Hesemann
Duesseldorf/Germany
Pave the way Foundation
http://www.ptwf.org