Pope Pius XII and the Roman razzia
Encyclopedia
Pope Pius XII
's response to the Roman razzia—Italian
for roundup, or mass deportation of Jews on October 16, 1943—is one of the central issues related to Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust
. According to Phayer, "the question of the pope's silence has become the focus of intense historical debate and analysis" because the deportations occurred "under his very windows
" (a term popularized by the work of historian Susan Zuccotti
). The phrase is based on an actual quotation from the report of Ernst von Weizsäcker
, the German ambassador to the Vatican, who reported to Berlin that the razzia had taken place "under the Pope's windows".
Pius XII's role in the Roman razzia has been debated by scholars since the 1960s and 1970s with the appearance of "two seminal articles" by Leonidas Hill in The Journal of Modern History
and Owen Chadwick
in the Journal of Ecclesiastical History
, respectively.
and Domenico Tardini first learned of the planned deporations in mid-September 1943. Specifically, the Vatican learned of a "telegram from Berlin instructing the SS in Rome to seize the city's Jews" several weeks before the razzia began.
By October, "various members of the German military and diplomatic corps" were attempting to prevent the planned deportation of Rome's Jews. Ernst von Weizsäcker
took over from bishop Alois Hudal
the task of compiling a comprehensive list of the properties of the pope in Rome and sending hundreds of "letters of protection" to those properties, guaranteeing them extraterritorial status. However, von Weizsäcker delegated the task of actually warning the Roman Jewry to his assistant Albrecht von Kassel, who encountered great difficulty due to the prevailing opinion, generated by former Fascist Jews Dante Almansi and Ugo Foa, that there was "no cause for alarm". In any case, according to Phayer, "Pope Pius gave them no warning". In the end, very few Jews "availed themselves of opportunities to hide" before October 16. Contrary to many non-contemporary accounts, historian Susan Zuccotti finds no evidence that "the populations of convents and monasteries surged before the fateful day".
According to Zuccotti, not only did Pius XII not aid the efforts of Father Père Marie-Benoît
(later honored as Righteous among the Nations
for his efforts to save Jews), he actively discouraged his work. Father Benoît was called to Rome in June 1943, where he had no success in enlisting the aid of the pontiff to help Jews escape Italian-occupied France. With respect to Benoît's actions during the razzia, Zuccotti writes, "far from claiming receipt of material aid from Vatican officials, Benedetto never even wrote that they encouraged him". For example, Msgr. Angelo dell'Acqua
, an official in the Vatican Secretariat of State, wrote on November 20, 1943 that he had repeatedly told Benoît to "use the maximum prudence", lamenting that Benoît had "not wished to listen to the humble advice given to him". Vatican officials actively attempted to "subdue" the efforts of Benoît and others, cautioning them against even meeting with Jews, with "whom it would be better to speak less". When Benoît asked Monitini for a letter of recommendation he needed to provide false documents to Jews, "he received little but a reprimand".
is "notorious for holding the Jews of Rome for ransom" due to his demand of 50 kilograms of gold, for which he was convicted of extortion
by an Italian court after the war. In fact, it is possible that Kappler's intentions were to "bribe Berlin [rather] than to shake down the Jews".
As is well-known, the Jews of Rome turned to the pope in an attempt to meet the ransom. Pius XII offered to loan the Jews the gold, with no deadline for repayment and no interest. However, this loan never took place because the Jews came up with the required amount on their own by September 28. A German cable from October 11—which does not mention their recent receipt of the extorted gold—ordered Kappler to proceed with the deportation as planned.
In addition to von Weizsäcker and von Kessel, the deportations were opposed by General Reiner Stahel
, the commandant of Rome, Field Marshal General Albert Kesselring
, and Eitel Friedrich Möllhausen, German chargé d'affaires
to Italy. Kappler suggested to the foreign ministry on October 6 that the Jews would be "better used as laborers in Italy" and Mollhausen communicated similar sentiments to Stahel. A second telegram the next day from Mollhausen to Berlin said that the field marshal had asked Kappler to postpone the roundup.
Knowing that the German officials in Rome were unanimously opposed to the roundup, Adolf Eichmann
sent Theodore Dannecker, the SS captain responsible for the deportations of the Parisian Jews, to Rome. Having a very limited force compared to the 8,000 Roman Jews, Dannecker pressed Kappler to provide him with additional forces and a list of addresses; both Kappler and Stahel complied.
on Shabbat
and went door-to-door in the early morning, waking up the sleeping Jews on their list of addresses. They were given twenty minutes to assemble their possessions and assemble outside in the rain. 1,000 Jews—900 of whom were women and children—were taken to the Military College of Rome, only a few blocks from St. Peter's Basilica
.
Owen Chadwick
estimates the number of deportees to Auschwitz at 1,007 and the number of survivors at 15.
, the rector of Santa Maria dell'Anima
, the German national church in Rome. Hudal would become notorious after the war for his masterminding the "ratlines"
through which Nazi war criminals escaped to South America. According to the ADSS, the Hudal letter was conveyed to Berlin by Carlo Pacelli, the pope's nephew, through General Stahel.
The letter requested a suspension of the arrests, stating "otherwise I fear the Pope will take a position in public as being against this action, one which would undoubtedly be used by the anti-German propagandists as a weapon against us Germans". According to Albrecht von Kessel, Hudal did not write the letter but merely signed it after it was drafted primarily by von Weizsäcker, von Kessel, Gerhart Gumpel (another German diplomat in Rome), and even General Stahel himself. von Weizsäcker sent a telegram to Berlin a few hours later vouching for the authenticity and argument of the letter.
Phayer does not rule out the possibility of papal involvement with the letter, but suggests that if Pius XII was involved, that the letter was designed "to rescue Jews without risking a papal statement of denunciation".
and is often "taken center stage in accounts of the razzia in Rome". Phayer disagrees with Chadwick's assessment of the importance of the meeting. Chadwick quotes a letter from D'Arcy Osborne to the Foreign Office from the last day of the month:
Nearly all historians agree that Maglione did not protest the seize of that morning in his meeting with von Weizsäcker. Nor did Pius XII ever speak publicly of the razzia. However, on October 25 (by which time most of the Jews were probably already dead or soon to enter the gas chamber), L'Osservatore Romano
ran an article saying that "the Holy Father's charity was universal, extending to all races".
Von Weizsäcker wrote of the Vatican diplomacy on October 22 in a letter to his mother, saying "fortunately so far no one has taken a public position". According to Phayer, "historians—as opposed to writers whose sole objective is to defend Pius XII—are not in agreement with the editors of the Actes et Docuemnts, who maintained that Maglione succeeded in registering a papal protest of the roundup of the Jews". According to Maglione's account of the meeting, when asked by on Weizsäcker "What would the Holy See do if these things were to continue?", he replied that the Holy See did not wish to have to express disapproval, and when asked whether on Weizsäcker should report the conversation to his superiors, he replied that he was "leaving it to his judgement".
itself. It is clear from the number of letters of protection issued by von Weizsäcker that many of the buildings possessing letters of protecting (and asserting extraterritorial status) were in fact not owned by the Church.
Susan Zuccotti's research in Under His Very Windows: The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy
demonstrates that the pope "did not give orders to the various Roman Catholic institutions of Rome to open their doors to the Jews". Zuccotti's other published works advance her argument that Pius XII neither ordered, nor was aware of the full extent, of the rescue operations carried out by Catholics and Catholic institutions. In fact, Zuccotti argues that Pius XII disapproved of the rescue efforts, as evidenced by a December 1943 letter from the Rector of Pontificio Seminario Romano Maggiore apologizing to Pius XII for accepting refugees, apparently having been previously reprimanded. Zuccotti also finds a February 1944 order to remove fugitives from Vatican properties inconsistence with the existence of a papal directive to save Jews. Phayer agrees with this interpretation while arguing that in fact "the Vatican cooperated in this rescue attempt", which he believes was initiated by the German diplomats of Rome. Zuccotti argues that any coordination was the result of the efforts of an Italian Jewish agency DELASEM
which petitioned Italian bishops and turned over funds and lists of names to those who agreed to help.
Robert Leiber
, a close Jesuit adviser of Pius XII, asserted in 1961 that Pius XII personally ordered superiors of church properties to open their doors to Jews. For his statistics on the number of Jews he claimed Pius XII to have saved, Leiber relied on fellow Jesuit Beato Ambord; the original compilation of the numbers is unknown. A more recent study by Dwork and Pelt concurs with Zuccotti, concluding: "Sam Waagenaar challenged Leiber. On the basis of our research, we find Waagenaar's refutation convincing. Pope Pius XII did nothing. Many convents and monasteries helped—but not to the extent that Pius's close associate Robert Leiber claimed".
Jews within the Vatican City State itself were "guests in the private apartments of individual prelates" who were in fact ordered to leave in a February 1944 order, but allowed to stay after much uproar from the prelates in question.
In August 2006 extracts from the 60-year-old diary of a nun of the Convent of Santi Quattro Coronati
were published in the Italian press, claiming that Pius XII had issued such an order to Rome's convents and monasteries.
Pope Pius XII
The Venerable Pope Pius XII , born Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli , reigned as Pope, head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of Vatican City State, from 2 March 1939 until his death in 1958....
's response to the Roman razzia—Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
for roundup, or mass deportation of Jews on October 16, 1943—is one of the central issues related to Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust
Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust
The relationship between Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust has long been disputed, with some scholars arguing that he kept silent during the Holocaust, while others have argued that he saved thousands if not tens or hundreds of thousands of Jews....
. According to Phayer, "the question of the pope's silence has become the focus of intense historical debate and analysis" because the deportations occurred "under his very windows
Under His Very Windows: The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy
Under His Very Windows: The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy is a book by Susan Zuccotti.It describes the actions of the Vatican and Pope Pius XII during the Holocaust, claiming the Church stayed neutral even with the full knowledge of the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis...
" (a term popularized by the work of historian Susan Zuccotti
Susan Zuccotti
Dr. Susan Sessions Zuccotti is an American historian, specializing in studies of the Holocaust. She holds a PhD in Modern European History from Columbia University. She has won a National Jewish Book Award for Holocaust Studies, and the Premio Acqui Storia – Primo Lavoro for Italians and the...
). The phrase is based on an actual quotation from the report of Ernst von Weizsäcker
Ernst von Weizsäcker
Ernst Freiherr von Weizsäcker was a German diplomat and politician. He served as State Secretary at the Foreign Office from 1938 to 1943, and as German Ambassador to the Holy See from 1943 to 1945...
, the German ambassador to the Vatican, who reported to Berlin that the razzia had taken place "under the Pope's windows".
Pius XII's role in the Roman razzia has been debated by scholars since the 1960s and 1970s with the appearance of "two seminal articles" by Leonidas Hill in The Journal of Modern History
The Journal of Modern History
The Journal of Modern History is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal covering European intellectual, political, and cultural history, published by the University of Chicago Press in cooperation with the Modern European History Section of the American Historical Association...
and Owen Chadwick
Owen Chadwick
William Owen Chadwick, OM, KBE, FBA, FRSE is a British professor, writer and prominent historian of Christianity. He was also a rugby union player.-Early life and education:Chadwick was born in Bromley in 1916...
in the Journal of Ecclesiastical History
Journal of Ecclesiastical History
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History is a peer-reviewed academic journal published four times a year by Cambridge University Press. It was established in 1950 and has been published in each year since....
, respectively.
Foreknowledge
According to Phayer, there is no doubt that "Pius XII knew of the plan to murder Roman Jews". Pius XII's under-secretaries of state Giovanni MontiniPope Paul VI
Paul VI , born Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini , reigned as Pope of the Catholic Church from 21 June 1963 until his death on 6 August 1978. Succeeding Pope John XXIII, who had convened the Second Vatican Council, he decided to continue it...
and Domenico Tardini first learned of the planned deporations in mid-September 1943. Specifically, the Vatican learned of a "telegram from Berlin instructing the SS in Rome to seize the city's Jews" several weeks before the razzia began.
By October, "various members of the German military and diplomatic corps" were attempting to prevent the planned deportation of Rome's Jews. Ernst von Weizsäcker
Ernst von Weizsäcker
Ernst Freiherr von Weizsäcker was a German diplomat and politician. He served as State Secretary at the Foreign Office from 1938 to 1943, and as German Ambassador to the Holy See from 1943 to 1945...
took over from bishop Alois Hudal
Alois Hudal
Alois Hudal was a Rome-based bishop of Austrian descent. He was for thirty years head of the small Austrian-German congregation of Santa Maria dell'Anima in Rome and until 1937, an influential representative of the Austrian Church...
the task of compiling a comprehensive list of the properties of the pope in Rome and sending hundreds of "letters of protection" to those properties, guaranteeing them extraterritorial status. However, von Weizsäcker delegated the task of actually warning the Roman Jewry to his assistant Albrecht von Kassel, who encountered great difficulty due to the prevailing opinion, generated by former Fascist Jews Dante Almansi and Ugo Foa, that there was "no cause for alarm". In any case, according to Phayer, "Pope Pius gave them no warning". In the end, very few Jews "availed themselves of opportunities to hide" before October 16. Contrary to many non-contemporary accounts, historian Susan Zuccotti finds no evidence that "the populations of convents and monasteries surged before the fateful day".
According to Zuccotti, not only did Pius XII not aid the efforts of Father Père Marie-Benoît
Père Marie-Benoît
Père Marie-Benoît , born Pierre Péteul, was a Capuchin Franciscan friar who helped smuggle approximately 4,000 Jews into safety from Nazi-occupied Southern France...
(later honored as Righteous among the Nations
Righteous Among the Nations
Righteous among the Nations of the world's nations"), also translated as Righteous Gentiles is an honorific used by the State of Israel to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews from extermination by the Nazis....
for his efforts to save Jews), he actively discouraged his work. Father Benoît was called to Rome in June 1943, where he had no success in enlisting the aid of the pontiff to help Jews escape Italian-occupied France. With respect to Benoît's actions during the razzia, Zuccotti writes, "far from claiming receipt of material aid from Vatican officials, Benedetto never even wrote that they encouraged him". For example, Msgr. Angelo dell'Acqua
Angelo Dell'Acqua
Angelo Dell'Acqua was an Italian Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church who served as Vicar General of Rome from 1968 until his death, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1967.-Biography:...
, an official in the Vatican Secretariat of State, wrote on November 20, 1943 that he had repeatedly told Benoît to "use the maximum prudence", lamenting that Benoît had "not wished to listen to the humble advice given to him". Vatican officials actively attempted to "subdue" the efforts of Benoît and others, cautioning them against even meeting with Jews, with "whom it would be better to speak less". When Benoît asked Monitini for a letter of recommendation he needed to provide false documents to Jews, "he received little but a reprimand".
Offer of a loan
SS Lieutenant Colonel Herbert KapplerHerbert Kappler
Herbert Kappler , was the head of German police and security services in Rome during World War II...
is "notorious for holding the Jews of Rome for ransom" due to his demand of 50 kilograms of gold, for which he was convicted of extortion
Extortion
Extortion is a criminal offence which occurs when a person unlawfully obtains either money, property or services from a person, entity, or institution, through coercion. Refraining from doing harm is sometimes euphemistically called protection. Extortion is commonly practiced by organized crime...
by an Italian court after the war. In fact, it is possible that Kappler's intentions were to "bribe Berlin [rather] than to shake down the Jews".
As is well-known, the Jews of Rome turned to the pope in an attempt to meet the ransom. Pius XII offered to loan the Jews the gold, with no deadline for repayment and no interest. However, this loan never took place because the Jews came up with the required amount on their own by September 28. A German cable from October 11—which does not mention their recent receipt of the extorted gold—ordered Kappler to proceed with the deportation as planned.
Actions of the German diplomatic corps
Reiner Stahel
Reiner Joseph Karl August Stahel , also known as Rainer Stahel, was a German and Finnish military officer. He is best known for his retreat from Vilna and the command of the garrison of Warsaw during the Warsaw Uprising of 1944...
, the commandant of Rome, Field Marshal General Albert Kesselring
Albert Kesselring
Albert Kesselring was a German Luftwaffe Generalfeldmarschall during World War II. In a military career that spanned both World Wars, Kesselring became one of Nazi Germany's most skilful commanders, being one of 27 soldiers awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords...
, and Eitel Friedrich Möllhausen, German chargé d'affaires
Chargé d'affaires
In diplomacy, chargé d’affaires , often shortened to simply chargé, is the title of two classes of diplomatic agents who head a diplomatic mission, either on a temporary basis or when no more senior diplomat has been accredited.-Chargés d’affaires:Chargés d’affaires , who were...
to Italy. Kappler suggested to the foreign ministry on October 6 that the Jews would be "better used as laborers in Italy" and Mollhausen communicated similar sentiments to Stahel. A second telegram the next day from Mollhausen to Berlin said that the field marshal had asked Kappler to postpone the roundup.
Knowing that the German officials in Rome were unanimously opposed to the roundup, Adolf Eichmann
Adolf Eichmann
Adolf Otto Eichmann was a German Nazi and SS-Obersturmbannführer and one of the major organizers of the Holocaust...
sent Theodore Dannecker, the SS captain responsible for the deportations of the Parisian Jews, to Rome. Having a very limited force compared to the 8,000 Roman Jews, Dannecker pressed Kappler to provide him with additional forces and a list of addresses; both Kappler and Stahel complied.
The razzia
The roundup began on October 16. The Germans surrounded the Roman GhettoRoman Ghetto
The Roman Ghetto was a ghetto located in the rione Sant'Angelo, in Rome, Italy, in the area surrounded by today's Via del Portico d'Ottavia, Lungotevere dei Cenci, Via del Progresso and Via di Santa Maria del Pianto close to the Tiber and the Theater of Marcellus...
on Shabbat
Shabbat
Shabbat is the seventh day of the Jewish week and a day of rest in Judaism. Shabbat is observed from a few minutes before sunset on Friday evening until a few minutes after when one would expect to be able to see three stars in the sky on Saturday night. The exact times, therefore, differ from...
and went door-to-door in the early morning, waking up the sleeping Jews on their list of addresses. They were given twenty minutes to assemble their possessions and assemble outside in the rain. 1,000 Jews—900 of whom were women and children—were taken to the Military College of Rome, only a few blocks from St. Peter's Basilica
St. Peter's Basilica
The Papal Basilica of Saint Peter , officially known in Italian as ' and commonly known as Saint Peter's Basilica, is a Late Renaissance church located within the Vatican City. Saint Peter's Basilica has the largest interior of any Christian church in the world...
.
Owen Chadwick
Owen Chadwick
William Owen Chadwick, OM, KBE, FBA, FRSE is a British professor, writer and prominent historian of Christianity. He was also a rugby union player.-Early life and education:Chadwick was born in Bromley in 1916...
estimates the number of deportees to Auschwitz at 1,007 and the number of survivors at 15.
The Hudal letter
That same day, Cardinal Secretary of State Luigi Maglione requested that von Weizsäcker meet with him to discuss the action and sent a telegram of protest to Berlin. The telegram is known as the "Hudal letter", named after bishop Alois HudalAlois Hudal
Alois Hudal was a Rome-based bishop of Austrian descent. He was for thirty years head of the small Austrian-German congregation of Santa Maria dell'Anima in Rome and until 1937, an influential representative of the Austrian Church...
, the rector of Santa Maria dell'Anima
Santa Maria dell'Anima
Santa Maria dell'Anima is a Roman Catholic church in central Rome, Italy, just west of the Piazza Navona and near the Santa Maria della Pace church. It was the national church of the Holy Roman Empire in Rome...
, the German national church in Rome. Hudal would become notorious after the war for his masterminding the "ratlines"
Ratlines (history)
Ratlines were a system of escape routes for Nazis and other fascists fleeing Europe at the end of World War II. These escape routes mainly led toward havens in South America, particularly Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil, Uruguay, and Chile. Other destinations included the United States and perhaps...
through which Nazi war criminals escaped to South America. According to the ADSS, the Hudal letter was conveyed to Berlin by Carlo Pacelli, the pope's nephew, through General Stahel.
The letter requested a suspension of the arrests, stating "otherwise I fear the Pope will take a position in public as being against this action, one which would undoubtedly be used by the anti-German propagandists as a weapon against us Germans". According to Albrecht von Kessel, Hudal did not write the letter but merely signed it after it was drafted primarily by von Weizsäcker, von Kessel, Gerhart Gumpel (another German diplomat in Rome), and even General Stahel himself. von Weizsäcker sent a telegram to Berlin a few hours later vouching for the authenticity and argument of the letter.
Phayer does not rule out the possibility of papal involvement with the letter, but suggests that if Pius XII was involved, that the letter was designed "to rescue Jews without risking a papal statement of denunciation".
Maglione and von Weizsäcker meeting
The meeting that day of Maglione and von Weizsäcker, according to Phayer, "ranks as one of the most dramatic scenes of Holocaust historiography". In particular, the meeting received the attention of British historian Owen ChadwickOwen Chadwick
William Owen Chadwick, OM, KBE, FBA, FRSE is a British professor, writer and prominent historian of Christianity. He was also a rugby union player.-Early life and education:Chadwick was born in Bromley in 1916...
and is often "taken center stage in accounts of the razzia in Rome". Phayer disagrees with Chadwick's assessment of the importance of the meeting. Chadwick quotes a letter from D'Arcy Osborne to the Foreign Office from the last day of the month:
- "As soon as he heard of the arrests of the Jews in Rome the Cardinal Secretary of State sent for the German ambassador and formulated some sort [undecyphered word] of protest. The Ambassador took immediate action with the result that large numbers were released [...] Vatican intervention thus seems to have been effective in saving a large number of these unfortunate people".
Nearly all historians agree that Maglione did not protest the seize of that morning in his meeting with von Weizsäcker. Nor did Pius XII ever speak publicly of the razzia. However, on October 25 (by which time most of the Jews were probably already dead or soon to enter the gas chamber), L'Osservatore Romano
L'Osservatore Romano
L'Osservatore Romano is the "semi-official" newspaper of the Holy See. It covers all the Pope's public activities, publishes editorials by important churchmen, and runs official documents after being released...
ran an article saying that "the Holy Father's charity was universal, extending to all races".
Von Weizsäcker wrote of the Vatican diplomacy on October 22 in a letter to his mother, saying "fortunately so far no one has taken a public position". According to Phayer, "historians—as opposed to writers whose sole objective is to defend Pius XII—are not in agreement with the editors of the Actes et Docuemnts, who maintained that Maglione succeeded in registering a papal protest of the roundup of the Jews". According to Maglione's account of the meeting, when asked by on Weizsäcker "What would the Holy See do if these things were to continue?", he replied that the Holy See did not wish to have to express disapproval, and when asked whether on Weizsäcker should report the conversation to his superiors, he replied that he was "leaving it to his judgement".
Role of monasteries and convents
A large number of Jews, perhaps more than 6000, found refuge in the various religious properties of Rome, including monasteries and convents; a much smaller number, if any, took refuge in Vatican CityVatican City
Vatican City , or Vatican City State, in Italian officially Stato della Città del Vaticano , which translates literally as State of the City of the Vatican, is a landlocked sovereign city-state whose territory consists of a walled enclave within the city of Rome, Italy. It has an area of...
itself. It is clear from the number of letters of protection issued by von Weizsäcker that many of the buildings possessing letters of protecting (and asserting extraterritorial status) were in fact not owned by the Church.
Susan Zuccotti's research in Under His Very Windows: The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy
Under His Very Windows: The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy
Under His Very Windows: The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy is a book by Susan Zuccotti.It describes the actions of the Vatican and Pope Pius XII during the Holocaust, claiming the Church stayed neutral even with the full knowledge of the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis...
demonstrates that the pope "did not give orders to the various Roman Catholic institutions of Rome to open their doors to the Jews". Zuccotti's other published works advance her argument that Pius XII neither ordered, nor was aware of the full extent, of the rescue operations carried out by Catholics and Catholic institutions. In fact, Zuccotti argues that Pius XII disapproved of the rescue efforts, as evidenced by a December 1943 letter from the Rector of Pontificio Seminario Romano Maggiore apologizing to Pius XII for accepting refugees, apparently having been previously reprimanded. Zuccotti also finds a February 1944 order to remove fugitives from Vatican properties inconsistence with the existence of a papal directive to save Jews. Phayer agrees with this interpretation while arguing that in fact "the Vatican cooperated in this rescue attempt", which he believes was initiated by the German diplomats of Rome. Zuccotti argues that any coordination was the result of the efforts of an Italian Jewish agency DELASEM
DELASEM
Delegation for the Assistance of Jewish Emigrants or DELASEM, was a Jewish resistance organization that worked in Italy between 1939 and 1947...
which petitioned Italian bishops and turned over funds and lists of names to those who agreed to help.
Robert Leiber
Robert Leiber
Robert Leiber, S.J. , close advisor to Pope Pius XII, a Jesuit priest from Germany was Professor for Church History at the Gregorian University in Rome from 1930-1960...
, a close Jesuit adviser of Pius XII, asserted in 1961 that Pius XII personally ordered superiors of church properties to open their doors to Jews. For his statistics on the number of Jews he claimed Pius XII to have saved, Leiber relied on fellow Jesuit Beato Ambord; the original compilation of the numbers is unknown. A more recent study by Dwork and Pelt concurs with Zuccotti, concluding: "Sam Waagenaar challenged Leiber. On the basis of our research, we find Waagenaar's refutation convincing. Pope Pius XII did nothing. Many convents and monasteries helped—but not to the extent that Pius's close associate Robert Leiber claimed".
Jews within the Vatican City State itself were "guests in the private apartments of individual prelates" who were in fact ordered to leave in a February 1944 order, but allowed to stay after much uproar from the prelates in question.
In August 2006 extracts from the 60-year-old diary of a nun of the Convent of Santi Quattro Coronati
Santi Quattro Coronati
Santi Quattro Coronati is an ancient basilica in Rome, Italy. The church dates back to the 4th century, and is devoted to four anonymous saints and martyrs. The complex of the basilica with its two courtyards, the fortified Cardinal Palace with the St...
were published in the Italian press, claiming that Pius XII had issued such an order to Rome's convents and monasteries.