The Roundup, Part Four

       "Rosina Sorani and her brother, Settimio, had spent the day in their apartment wondering what they should do.  She had been on her way to work when she saw the trucks parking on the Via del Portico d'Ottavia.  She had calmly turned round and retraced her steps.  From then on they had taken turns to use the telephone;  Rosina to try and contact Foa, her brother to reach Father Weber and Renzo Levi.  Settimio finally contacted the Pallotine priest late in the afternoon who said he would come at once.  When he arrived he explained he had been in the Vatican all day helping to deal with the situation. 
       Weber said he would take them to where Foa, Almansi, and Levi met after going into hiding.  It was a dairy shop run by a Catholic widow and her daughter.  While she provided them with coffee, the three most powerful men in the Jewish community listened to Weber's news.
       They had discussed how they could save the Jews.  Foa suggested he should write an appeal to the pope to intervene.  Weber said Pius was doing all he could.  Levi proposed a direct approach should be made to either the German embassy or its mission to the Holy See to ask for the freedom for the old and sick and the women and children.  He would personally guarantee to pay any sum of money in exchange for their release.  The money would be raised from America.  Weber had asked how long it would take to find such a sum.  Levi thought it would take 'a few days.'  The Pallotine father had looked at the others and said he feared there were only hours left in which to negotiate any deal.
       Nevertheless Ugo Foa decided he would still write to the pope and Weber said he would bring the letter to the Vatican.  When he gave it to Weber it contained a sentence which caught his attention.  Foa had written there were a number of people in the ghetto who were classified under the racial laws as Mischlinge-- the offspring of parents who were of mixed religion.  Some, Foa wrote, had even been baptized and while they still lived in the ghetto were regarded as Catholics.  They should be allowed to go free.
       Pfeiffer hurried to see Maglione.  After reading the letter the secretary of state produced a copy of the racial laws and found the relevant passage.  He had taken the book and Foa's letter with him to the pope.  Pius told Maglione to inform Weizsacker and asked to intervene to have the Mischinlinge freed and arrange for a senior member of the Vatican  to go to the Collegio Militare, taking with him a copy of the racial laws to show to the officer in charge.  Maglione proposed sending Bishop Hudal, given he was the signatory of the letter to Stahel.
        Hudal's role in the roundup has remained secret until now.  In his own notes of the matter Maglione only referred to him as a 'Vatican official.'
        On Sunday morning, dressed in his bishop's robes, Hudal introduced himself to Dannecker at the entrance to the Collegio Militare as 'the most senior Reverend Alois Hudal, the senior German-speaking bishop abroad.'
       Twenty-one months later he would use similar words to receive Heinrich Mueller in his palatial office in the Pan-Germanic college to discuss with the former German gestapo chief the help Nazi war criminal needed from Hudal to obtain Vatican documents to hide in South America.
       There is no evidence the pope and the Vatican were implicated in the matter-- let alone an organization which became known as ODESSA, which appears to have been the brainchild of Hudal.  In 2011 Mossad files show that figures like Franz Stangl, the commandant of Treblinka;  Klaus Barbie;  Martin Bormann;  and Adolf Eichmann were all assisted with false papers and hiding places provided by Hudal while they were en route to hide in Latin America at the end of the war.
       The details emerged in 1945 when Dannecker was captured and interrogated by American forces.  He had been hiding in Bad Tolz in Bavaria organizing Nazi resistance to the Allied occupation.  He had already instructed his wife to poison their two children;  one died, the other was saved.  Dannecker was found hanging in his cell awaiting trial.
        That Sunday morning at the Collegio Militare what passed between them ended with Dannecker agreeing with Hudal that 274 'non-Jews'--spouses and offspring--caught in the roundup were to be set free.
       They left the barracks soon after the bishop drove back to the Vatican.  In the meantime Weizsacker had told Maglione he was unable to help free the non-Jews."  The Pope's Jews by Gordon Thomas pgs 222-224

The Roundup, Part Three

       "It was around 5 A.M. when on Saturday Prince Filippo Doria Pamphilj awoke.  For days now he had knelt on his prie-dieu and prayed about whether it was time to tell the Resistance to place the detonators in the tunnel beneath his family palazzo on the Via del Corso to ensure the enormous baroque edifice, with its thousand rooms, which had become the Waffen SS headquarters and barracks in Rome, would be totally destroyed.
       Over the past weeks, the forty-three-year-old prince, dressed in a coalman's clothes, had led the demolition team through the tunnels as they worked by the light of a lantern placing the explosives beneath a palace where for centuries the family had lived and welcomed monarchs, popes, and rulers of Europe with two exceptions:  Prince Filippo had refused to entertain Mussolini or Hitler when they came to Rome.
        His decision had cost the price his liberty--imprisoned in one of Mussolini's concentration camps.  After pressure from the Vatican to free him.  Pope Pius had advised Filippo to go into hiding from the furious Fascists.
        The palace gardener, by then a member of the Resistance, had found the prince a home in Trastevere among its working-class population, and introduced him to the partisan leaders, who promised he would be safe among them.  They showed him some of their hideouts.  He had told them about the tunnels.  When the Germans arrived he proposed the palace should be blown up.
        Even hard-bitten men of the Resistance had hesitated.  The damage could be widespread, the revenge of the Germans guaranteed, and he would become a prime target, together with his family.
       Prince Filippo discussed the matter with his wife, Gesine, and their daughter, Princess Orietta.  Gesine had reminded her husband that the palace would eventually pass to Orietta as their only child and she would be entitled to an inheritance which would include four princedoms, two dukedoms, and immense estates including a castle, a thirteenth-century abbey, and the church of St. Agnes in Rome's Piazza Navona.
        Orietta told her father he must do what he felt was right.
        Since then Prince Fillipo knelt every morning as dawn broke on his prie-dieu and prayed to make the right decision.
        On that morning his devotions were interrupted by the roar of trucks emerging from the Collegio Militare and moving down the road on the opposite bank of the Tiber.

         The pope's first orders were given calmly.  Maglione was to continue to stay in contact with Weizsacker.  Father Pankratius was to obtain information from the German high command in Rome.  The secretary of state's two assistants--Montini and Tardini--were to work together to contact the religious houses where Jews were being sheltered and told what was happening.  Father Leiber was to inform Osborne and Tittmann and ask them if their governments would protest to Berlin;  the pope's secretary would make a similar request to neutral missions to the Holy See.  Pascalina was to inform Chief Rabbi Zolli and ask him to convey the news to all the other Jews hiding in the Vatican.  D'Altishofen, the Swiss Guard commander, was to contact the Rome police for information.  Ottaviani was to inform O'Flaherty, who should send his priests out into the streets to establish what was happening.  The Vatican switchboard was alerted and it began to handle priority calls from the network Pius had mobilized to help the Jews.
        Through the long day Pius remained in his office receiving reports and issuing new orders.  To Father Leiber he was 'leading the smallest state on earth to challenge the military masters of Rome.  It was clear that upon his courage and decision-making would depend the lives of those being taken into the military college.'

        It was midmorning when Weizsacker was shown into Maglione's office.  The secretary of state said the ambassador must intervene with the foreign minister in Berlin to have the roundup cancelled 'for the sake of humanity and Christian charity.'
       Weizsacker's response came after a pause.  'It would be more powerful if the pope was to publicly protest against the deportation.'
       The words would form part of the claims and counterclaims of what followed in the short meeting between the two diplomats.  Weizsacker claimed he praised the Holy See for its balanced attitude throughout the war and asked if it 'was worthwhile putting everything in danger just as the ship is reaching port?'
        Maglione would insist, 'I reminded him that the Holy See had no wish to be put in a position where it is necessary to protest but if the Holy See is obliged to do so I trust the consequences to divine providence.'

        Hudal had been given a seat around the table for the noon meeting on Saturday which the pope regularly held in a salon in the Apostolic Palace with his senior advisors.  They included Maglione, Montini and Tardini, Monsignor Leiber, Monsignor Ottaviani, and Father Pfeiffer.
         After Maglione had reveiwed his meeting with Weizsacker, Ottaviani reported that the convents and religious houses were sheltering ghetto Jews who had managed to escape and Father Weber had brought a number into the Vatican.
         Each person had before him a copy of the letter Gumpert and Kessel had composed and which Pankratius had brought to Hudal.  It now became the subject of discussion.
         Hudal said he found the content acceptable but that the signatory was too low-ranking to represent the views expressed.  As it involved the Holy See it should be signed by someone with a suitable rank in the Vatican as he was certain then that General Stahel would transmit the letter to Berlin.  Further it should be brought to the Stadtkommandant by Father Pfeiffer to reinforce the letter represented the Holy See's position.
        While agreeing to this approach, Maglione had a question:  Who should sign the letter?  Hudal said he would be honored to put his name to the letter.  It was left to the pope to say the document should not be written on Vatican stationery but on Bishop Hudal's German college notepaper as its rector.  This would be interpreted by his critics as 'evidence' that the pope did not wish to be further involved in the fate of the Jews.

        At 5 P.M. Father Pfeiffer arrived at General Stahel's office in the Hotel Flora and handed over the letter bearing Hudal's signature.  After reading it Stahel sighed, shook his head, and summoned his aide to take it to the communications room to have it encoded and transmitted to the Foreign Office in Berlin.  The matter was now in other hands, the general said.
        Back in his office in the Apostolic Palace Father Pfeiffer informed Maglione and Hudal of Stahel's decision.  The secretary of state told Father Pfeiffer to inform Weizsacker.
        Pfeiffer's confirmation it was on its way to Berlin was the signal for Weizsacker to prepare his own response to the roundup.  He began to write in a fine copperplate.
       'With regards to Bishop Hudal's letter I can confirm that this represents the Vatican's reaction to the deportation of the Jews of Rome.  The Curia is especially upset considering that the action took place, in a manner of speaking, under the pope's own window.  The reaction could be dampened somewhat if the Jews were to be employed in labor service here in Italy.  Hostile circles in Rome are using this event as a means of pressuring the Vatican to drop its reserve.  It is being said that when analogous incidents took place in French cities, the bishops there took a clear stand.  Thus the pope, as the supreme leader of the church and as bishop of Rome, cannot but do the same.  The pope is also being compared with his predecessor, Pius XI, a man of more spontaneous temperament.  Enemy propaganda abroad will certainly view this event in the same way, in order to disturb the Curia and ourselves.'
       He signed and sealed the letter and put it aside to go in the diplomatic pouch to Wilhelmstrasse in Berlin.  That decision would later arouse more speculation than anything else Weizsacker had done during his tenure in Rome.  Was the latter a clear indication he was prepared to risk his career, and very likely his life, to try and save the Jews?  If so, knowing the urgency of the situation, why had he not immediately encoded it and sent it to Berlin?  The diplomatic pouch would not leave until Monday.  By then, he could reasonably deduce, the fate of the Jews would be settled.  From what he had heard Judenaktionen were swift operations."  The Pope's Jews , pgs.204-5, 209-10, 214, 215-16,21-19.

Dealing With the Devil, Part Two

       "{Stewart} Menzies decided to bring {D'Arcy} Osborne to London to brief him as the plotters moved their plan along.  It was vital to know which of the Italian generals could be trusted when the time came.  Osborne was instructed to consult the Vatican doctor 'about my health.'  The physician recommended that Osborne should be given permission by the Italian government to fly to Switzerland to consult a specialist.   {Vatican Secretary of State} Maglione had informed the Italian foreign ministry, that under the Lateran Treaty, Osborne's medical condition permitted him to travel to a neutral country on the understanding he would return.
       Inside a week Osborne was in London.  He briefed Menzies who gave him a letter from a Swiss doctor confirming he had examined Osborne and was treating him for stress.  The doctor was an MI6 contact in Geneva.  Osborne was then driven to Buckingham Palace and privately knighted by King George VI.  He would become the Duke of Leeds, a title he could not use until after the war.  Before he returned to Rome he had spent a day with an instructor at the MI6 Cipher School to learn how to use the latest codes.
       Over dinner with Menzies, Osborne had told him about Hugh O'Flaherty and his visits to see Allied prisoners.
      'An useful-sounding chap--even if he is a little anti-British,' Menzies said.

       Baron Ernst von Weizsacker, a former German naval officer, had replaced Diego von Bergen as ambassador to the Holy See.  He had finally been recalled to Berlin by the foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop for 'poor quality of reports.'  Weizsacker had spent five years at the foreign ministry, and risen to be undersecretary.
       His journey to the upper echelon of the ministry had included reading the daily reports from the Einsatzgruppen, the special SS units systematically murdering Polish and Russian Jews.  He had attended the Wannsee Conference in Berlin to finalize 'the Final Solution of the Jewish Question' and had signed a copy of the minutes.  On his desk came the railway schedules from Adolf Eichmann's office for deportations to the death camps.  At some point, he later insisted, 'I became sickened of what was being done in the name of the German people.'
       He had persuaded Ribbentrop to allow him to take charge of a less odorous task--analyzing the intercepted traffic by the Forschungsamt, the German code-breaking unit.  It included messages between the Holy See and its nunciatures.  By 1943 the German cryptologists had managed to break some of the Vatican codes, but the success did little to add to Germany's war effort.  Nevertheless, Weizsacker had to present his analysis to Admiral Canaris.
       At first their meetings were no more than briefing the spy chief in his office and answering a few questions.  But gradually Canaris had begun to explore Weizsacker's attitude to the war.  Though he realized the risk he was taking, Ribbentrop's deputy had said its continuation could only result in Germany's defeat and dismemberment.  A negotiated settlement was the only hope.  Weizsacker would recall how Canaris had 'sat perfectly still, his eyes fixed on me.  When he spoke his question was simple.  Did I believe that the Vatican could act as a mediator?  I replied that Hitler would only accept papal mediation if he was satisfied of the Pope's sympathy for Germany.'
       There were further meetings in which Weizsacker was encouraged to criticize von Bergen's reports to Ribbentrop.  In the meantime Canaris had told the foreign minister of the importance of having Weizsacker in Rome.  In a memo dated May 8, 1943, which would surface at the Nuremberg Trials, Canaris wrote to Ribbentrop:  'Weizsacker is one of the most interesting phenomena of the time, a type brought to light and perfected through disinterested idealism and shrewdness, such as is particularly rare in Germany.  I strongly urge he should be posted to Rome where he can most usefully serve our nation.'
       On July 10 Weizsacker presented his credentials to Pope Pius XII.  Canaris had briefed the new ambassador on what he expected from him.

       {Bishop Alois} Hudal was the rector of the pan-Germanic college of Santa Maria dell'Anima, the main training center in Rome for German priests.  He had become a member of the Nazi Party after Hitler had thanked him for a telegram supporting the annexation of Austria.  In 1937 Hudal had sent a copy of his book The Foundations of National Socialism to Hitler and with a letter of thanks from the fuhrer came a golden Nazi Party membership badge.  The book was published in the same year that the papal encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge openly attacked National Socialism.  While Hudal continued in his post, his steady rise in the Vatican had stopped as his pro-Nazi views became known.
       By 1943 Hudal had found a new outlet.  He became an informer for the RSHA--Reichs-sicherheitshaptamt--Reich Security Main Office.  Its chief Ernst Kaltenbrunner saw Hudal's recruitment as an intelligence triumph at a time when Germany was trying to establish a rapproachment between the Holy See and the Third Reich.
       Hudal regarded himself as providing important information.  His RSHA controller, Waldemar Meyer, who regularly travelled secretly to Rome, saw Hudal as the eminence grise of the Vatican.  'He knows everybody and everybody respects him.'
       Hudal had also aligned himself with Giovanni Preziose, a rabidly anti-Semetic former priest who edited La Vita Italiana , the Jew-baiting Rome newspaper patterned on Der Sturmer .  He was also in touch with a Benedictine monk, Prior Hermann Keller, who Kessel called 'an agent of the gestapo.'  Kessel described them to Weizsacker as 'our pro-Nazis in the Vatican.'

       Throughout the summer of 1943 Pope Pius had continued to express his horror over the fate of the Jews.  On June 2 he had used Vatican Radio to warn that 'any man who makes a distinction between Jews and other men is unfaithful to God.'  In a direct warning to Hitler Pius said:  'He who guides the fate of nations should not forget that he who bears the sword is not the master over life and death.'  Seven days later, after Goebbels boasted that Berlin 'was now free of Jews,'  the pope had written a long text in German on the rights of Jews which Vatican Radio broadcast.  In July the pope broadcast to Yugoslav Jews that he would continue to pray for them because 'every man has the stamp of God.'
       In between he had written letters to nuncios and bishops asking them to urge their host countries to do everything possible to save the Jews and 'replace the hatred with charity.'  In his speeches and sermons Pius constantly called for help 'for the hundreds of thousands who because of their race are condemned to die.'   More than once he had quoted the Apostle Saint Paul--'there is neither Gentile nor Jew'--adding he used the word Jew as a call to reject racial ideology.  He had gone so far as to say he was 'ready to let himself be deported to a concentration camp rather than do anything against his conscience,' Pascalina would recall.
       He had also turned Vatican Radio into a powerful weapon which, despite attempts to jam it had become a success in attacking the Nazis.

       Pius turned to another matter.  Earlier that morning he had received a telephone call from Count de Salis.  The Red Cross director estimated that soon there could be up to four thousand Allied troops hiding in the city who, having walked out of their prison camps, would be waiting for British and American armies to reach Rome.
       The pope turned to Father Weber.  He said that during the summer hundreds of Jews had been provided with travel documents and smuggled across the Austrian and Slovenian borders into Italy.  But many had been caught by German forces and either had been shot or rounded up for transportation to the concentration camps.   Survivors were fleeing to Rome.
       It was for that reason Pius said he had convened the meeting.  In his view there was a very limited chance of moving those Jews farther south.  They would be entering a war zone and would either be shot by the Germans or left to fend for themselves by the Allies.  The only solution was for the Vatican to prepare to accept them.  That itself would have its own problems.  Reports from nuncios in the Third Reich indicated its ghettos had been systematically emptied of their Jews.  There was no guarantee that would not happen in Rome, despite assurances form von Weizsacker, the German ambassador, that its Jewish population would be allowed to continue their normal lives.
       What was needed, continued Pius, was a properly organized system of safe places which were under the protection of the Lateran Treaty.  In Germany and other parts of the Third Reich the Nazis had not respected church property.  In Vienna troops had been billeted in a convent and the St. Francis deSales girls' school turned into a barracks.  It was all part of the Nazis' systematic war against the church.  The pope said that daily he recieved reports of priests and nuns in Poland and elsewhere being sent to concentration camps.  They had all been accused of helping the Jews and speaking out against Nazism.  More than ever the Vatican had a duty to protect the Jews on its doorstep.  Just as the Nazis had taken over Catholic institutions in the Third Reich so the Vatican must turn every possible convent, monastery, and institution in Rome into a secret refuge for the Jews and escaped prisoners of war.
       To provide such assistance would be difficult, even dangerous as the Germans would regard it as a breach of the Lateran Treaty.  But it was a risk that must be taken.
       The pope turned to Ottaviani and said that given {Monsignor Hugh} O'Flaherty's experience in visiting prisoner-of-war camps he wanted him relieved of all but essential duties in the Holy Office and to concentrate on organizing a plan to provide sanctuary for both the Jews of Rome and the soldiers." The Pope's Jews by Gordon Thomas pgs.92-93,94-95,96-97,100 and115-116.