More Pius XII

     Last Friday, Estase recieved the new book Disinformation by Ion Pacepa and Ronald Rychlak, available from www.wnd.com (World Net Daily).  Estase's first impulse is to put the whole damn book on this blog, but will not do so because to do so would be gross plagiarism and reduce the income to the authors.  This is not to say that the book is one of the most important non-fiction books ever published on the Soviet Union, with the last landmark being The Mitrokhin Archives from the 90s.  Pacepa brings his experience as a former member of the Romanian intelligence service until his 1978 defection.  His co-author, Professor Rychlak, is the author of Hitler, the War, and the Pope, which Estase used in a graduate school project on the Pius XII controversy.  The two explain the defamation of Pius XII as a larger campaign by the Soviet empire to attack the Catholic Church, Israel, and the United States.  Disinformation means to provide false information, but to provide it in such a way as that the information seems to come from non-Soviet sources.  Thus it differs from misinformation, or propaganda, which clearly comes from Soviet or sympathetic sources.  Did you know that Rolf Hochhuth, author of The Deputy, the play that started the idea that Pius XII was a Nazi sympathizer who did nothing about the Holocaust, was a Communist?  Or that a Communist theatre first performed the play?  Or that a Communist produced it on Broadway?  Or that a Communist had the play made into a movie?  Did you know that Rolf Hochhuth's best friend is David Irving, the British holocaust denier who made his name by writing a flattering biography of Hitler?

       "Much of the reliable new information that documents the Kremlin's disinformation operation blaming the CIA for killing Kennedy has come from defectors.  In 1992, the British smuggled Colonel Vasily Mitrokhin, a KGB archivist, out of the Soviet Union, along with some 25,000 highly classified documents he had stolen from KGB foreign intelligence archives over the course of many years.  Those documents represent a miniscule part of the whole KGB archive.  Nevertheless, the FBI described the Mitrokhin Archive as 'the most complete and extensive intelligence ever received from any source.'  In the view of the CIA, this archive is 'the biggest counterintelligence bonanza of the postwar period.'
        Mitrokhin reported on the Kennedy assassination conspiracy stories promoted by the KGB, and his material identifies a number of the agents in the West who were engaged in promoting those conspiracy theories.  Among the most important revelations provided by the Mitrokhin Archive are the highly classified KGB documents proving that the so-called Kennedy assassination conspiracy, which to this day has generated thousands of books all around the world, was born in the KGB, and that some of it was financed by the KGB.
       Equally significant are the documents in the Mitrokhin Archive showing that the KGB had constructed this conspiracy using some of the same paid KGB agents who were called upon to promote the disinformation operation designed to frame Pius XII as having been pro-Nazi:  Carlo Marzani, codenamed Nord, who received a significant amount of money from the KGB to produce pro-Soviet books;  I.F. Stone, codenamed Blin (Russian for 'pancake'), who began receiving the Kremlin's money in 1944;  and Victor Perlo, codenamed Raid or Raider, identified as a Soviet agent in the Venona electronic intercepts, as well as by defectors.
       That should come as no surprise.  After all, both operations took off in 1963 (The Deputy hit the Berlin stage in February, and Oswald shot the president in November), both would have been dreamt up by Khrushchev with the help of his spy chief, General Sakharovsky--the former chief Soviet intelligence advisor for Romania--and both would have been carried out by the same disinformation experts on the desk at KGB headquarters at that time.
       According to documents in the Mitrokhin Archive, the first book on the assassination published in the United States, Oswald:  Assassin or Fall Guy?;  was authored by a former member of the German Communist Party, Joachim Joesten, and published in New York by KGB agent Carlo Aldo Marzani.  The publisher Marzani was regularly and generously paid by the KGB (and by the Communist Party's Central Committee) to promote books of a progressive nature by both American and foreign authors.  Until the Mitrokhin Archive documents began appearing in 1999, it was not known that Joesten's publisher, Marzani & Munsell, received subsidies totaling $672,000 from the Central Committee of the Communist Party in the early 1960s.
         Shortly before publishing Joesten's book on Oswald, Marzani supported the KGB's attack on Pius XII.  As noted in an earlier chapter discussing Hochhuth's The Deputy, when that anti-Pius XII play debuted in Berlin in 1963, Marzani was able on short notice to republish Shylock:  The History of a Character, an early book describing the mistreatment of Jews by popes, which helped to advertise Hochhuth's play.
       It is noteworthy that Joesten's book saw the light of day just a couple of days before the Warren Commission Report was published, conforming to the KGB's instructions that we in the DIE received in the Dragon Operation.  In his book, Joesten also follows what we knew as Dragon Operation guidelines by describing Oswald as an FBI agent provocateur with a CIA background, who was used to shield the real assassins, and unnamed group of American right-wing conspirators.
       No one knows how Joesten became such an instant authority on the assassination.  He has said that he spent five days in Dallas 'investigating' the tragedy and that he then, on December 11, 1963, returned home to his wife.  But she said he failed to show up for dinner that evening, instead leaving her a note saying he had gone to Europe.  And gone he was for several months.  Later that year, Joesten began publishing articles and books on the Kennedy assassination.
       As discussed earlier, when people asked Rolf Hochhuth where he got his outrageous stories about Pius XII, he would say he had spent three months in Rome chatting up a talkative German bishop, but that the source material had to remain sealed for fifty years.  The public has not been satisfied with either five days in Dallas or three months in Rome.
        The first review of Joesten's book, which praised it to the skies, was signed by KGB agent Victor Perlo and was published on September 23, 1964, in New Times, which I knew was a KGB front at one time printed in Romania.  In the 1930s, Perlo was the head of a group of important agents run by the communist underground in the United States.  In 1944, Perlo and his group were turned over to the KGB predecessor organization and handled by Elizabeth Bentley, who defected a year later.  That transfer, incidentally, took place at the New York apartment of the lawyer John Abt, a lifelong member of the American Communist Party, who--according to the Vassiliev Archive--regularly helped the party underground, the KGB and the GRU with funding and legal matters.  After his arrest, Oswald stated he wanted to be represented by John Abt and tried to reach him by telephone, but Abt was away for the weekend.  The Vassiliev Archive also documents that Perlo frequently wrote articles for various communist fronts, signing them with assorted pseudonyms.  In the 1940s, he helped the writer I.F. Stone compile material for various exposes.
       On December 9, 1963, I.F. Stone (KGB codename 'Blin') published a long article in which he tried to justify why America had killed its own president.  He called Oswald and Ruby 'rightist crackpots,' but put the real blame on the 'warlike Administration' of the United States, that was trying to sell Europe a 'nuclear monstrosity.'  Stone was another paid KGB agent who a few months later joined in the attack on Pius XII.  As noted in an earlier chapter, on March 9, 1964, Stone signed an article in his own weekly publication that praised Hochhuth's play The Deputy and attacked Pius XII as having been 'friendly to Hitler' and to Mussolini.  That same month, Stone's sister, Judy Stone, published a friendly interview with Hochhuth in Ramparts which, as will be seen below, would play a significant role in promoting the KGB disinformation connected with the Kennedy assassination as well.
       So again we see the KGB rounding up the 'usual suspects,' both in order to smear Pius XII as pro-Hitler and to blame the CIA and other American targets for the death of President Kennedy.
        Joachim Joesten dedicated his book Oswald:Assassin or Fall Guy? to Mark Lane, an American leftist who in 1966 produced the bestseller Rush to Judgment, alleging Kennedy was assassinated by a right-wing American group.  Documents in the Mitrokhin Archive show that the KGB indirectly sent Mark Lane money ($2,000), and that KGB operative, Genrikh Borovik, was in regular contact with him.  Another KGB defector, Colonel Oleg Gordievsky (former KGB station chief in London), has identified Borovik as the brother-in-law of Col. General Vladimir Kryuchkov, who in 1974 became the head of KGB foreign intelligence, in 1988 chairman of the KGB, and in August 1991 led the anti-glasnost coup in Moscow.
        The year 1967 saw the publication of two more books attributed to Joesten:  The Case Against Lyndon Johnson in the Assassination of President Kennedy and Oswald:  The Truth.  Both books insinuated that President Johnson and his CIA had killed Kennedy.  They were soon followed by Mark Lane's A Citizen's Dissent (1968).  According to assassination researcher Vincent Bugliosi, Mark Lane has been 'by far the most persistent and audible single voice' in making Americans believe that reactionary elements in the United States killed Kennedy.  Lane has also intensively traveled abroad to preach that America is an 'FBI police state' that killed its own president.
       Mark Lane helped New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison arrest a local man (Clay Shaw), whom Garrison accused of conspiring with elements of U.S. intelligence to murder Kennedy in order to stop the latter's efforts to end the Cold War.  Garrison's book On the Trail of the Assassin, inspired Oliver Stone's movie JFK, which, as I mentioned prior, claims the assassination of President Kennedy was the result of a conspiracy at the highest level of the U.S. government.

       Soon after launching Operation 'SIG,' Andropov unleashed Operation 'Tayfun' (Russian for typhoon), aimed at expanding international terrorism into Western Europe.  As was usual for such international terrorism into Western Europe.  As was usual for such international operations, the KGB established another 'socialist division of labor' to mobilize the entire bloc intelligence community in support of its extended terrorist war.  The Soviet Union would assume the most difficult tasks, those of creating new terrorist organizations, indoctrinating their members, and providing intelligence, money, and political support for terrorist operations--which Andropov called 'armed struggle.'
       The Czechoslavakian foreign intelligence service was charged with supplying terrorists with an odorless plastic explosive (Semtex-H) that could not be detected by sniffer dogs at airports.  In 1990, Czechoslovakian president Vaclav Havel acknowledged that the communist regime of his country had secretly shipped a thousand tons of this odorless plastic explosive to Palestinian and Libyan terrorists.  According to Havel, a mere two hundred grams was enough to blow up a commercial plane in flight.  'World terrorism has supplies of Semtex to last 150 years,' Havel estimated.
        The East Germans had to provide the terrorists with arms and ammunition.  According to secret documents found after the fall of the Berlin Wall in the archives of the East German Minstry for State Security, colloquially known as the Stasi, in 1983 alone its foreign intelligence service provided the PLO with $1,877,600 worth of AK-47 ammunition.
        The Cubans mass-produced concealment devices for transporting the plastic explosive and weapons into the target countries.  In 1972, I spent a 'working vacation' in Havana as the guest of Raul Castro, at that time head of Cuba's military and security forces, and visited what proved to be the Soviet bloc's largest factory for manufacturing double-walled suitcases and other concealment devices for use in secretly transporting weapons.  General Sergio del Valle Jimenez, Cuba's minister of interior, told me that smuggling arms to 'anti-Zionist terrorist organizations' was one of his main jobs.
       Romania's task in that joint venture was to produce false Western passports needed by Andropov's 'freedom fighters.'  During my last six years in Romania, the DIE became the Soviet bloc's main manufacturer of forged West German, Austrian, French, British, Italian, and Spanish passports, which were regularly provided to international terrorist organizations and groups.  The DIE also handcrafted a large collection of entrance visa stamps from all around the world, needed by terrorists to travel to their target countries.
        In the mid-1970s, a wave of terrorism inundated Western Europe.  Tayfun's first major accomplishment was the assassination of Richard Welch, the CIA station chief in Athens, on December 23, 1975.  That was followed by:  a bomb attack on Gen. Alexander Haig, commander of NATO in Brussels, who was not injured although his armored Mercedes limosine was damaged beyond repair;  a rocket attack against Gen. Frederick J. Kroesen, commander of U.S. forces in Europe, who also escaped alive;  a grenade attack against Alfred Herrhausen, the pro-American chairman of the Deutsche Bank, who was killed;  and an assassination attempt on Hans Neusel, a pro-American state secretary at the West German Ministry of Interior responsible for internal security affairs, who was wounded.
       When the Soviet bloc collapsed in December 1989, those terrorist operations went poof!  and scores of KGB-sponsored terrorists were arrested in the former East Germany.  Peter Michael Diestel, who became East Germany's interior minister after the fall of its communist government, acknowledged in 1990 that Schoenfeld Airport in East Berlin had for years been 'a turntable for terrorists of all kinds.'  Christian Lochte,  a senior official in the West German counterintelligence service, stated that the KGB and the Stasi had done 'everything possible to destabilize this country and the rest of Western Europe as well.'  Moreover, the West German government uncovered evidence that the Stasi had also trained Palestinian terrorist groups in East Germany and in southern Yemen and that it had been involved in the 1986 Libyan bombing of the La Belle discotheque in West Berlin, which killed two American soldiers and wounded 229 other people." Disinformation by Ion Pacepa and Ronald J. Rychlak p.242-5 and 263-5.

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.

Crimes Against History

       "It was the sound of boots running toward the palazzo front door which had first warned Princess Pallavicini.  She was alone:  having sent her cook and maid south to her country home, together with her chauffeur and gardener.  She knew that if she was discovered forging documents they would be imprisoned--or even executed as collaborators.
       Already her friend, Princess Virginia Agnelli, the widow of Edoardo Agnelli, the Turin Fiat heir, was imprisoned in the San Gregorio Convent;  in spite of the Lateran Treaty, the building had been turned by the Fascists into a prison for the ladies of the Black Nobility.  Virginia had smuggled out a message to Nina that she was 'reasonably comfortable and I can use the chapel.' 
       The kicking of boots against the front door and shouts in German sent Nina racing to the back of the palace to jump out of a ground floor window.  Knowing the penalty of death faced her when her illegal wireless was discovered she ran through the streets to the only person and place she knew would provide sanctuary--Monsignor O'Flaherty in the German college.
        That night O'Flaherty found her a bedroom in the nun's quarters.  Hours later Radio Rome broadcast that she was to be arrested on sight for using an illegal radio and working for the enemy.  A substantial reward was announced for her capture.  O'Flaherty told Nina he had obtained permission for her to stay in the college for the forseeable future where she would continue to produce her documents until the Allies arrived.  Nina worked from a basement room and the special paper and equipment she had left behind in the palazzo was replaced by an old friend of O'Flaherty's, Count Guisseppe Dalla Torre, the editor of L'Osservatore Romano. 

       From her office window in the synagogue Rosina {Sorani} watched the approaching freight cars.  She knew why they were there and did not know what to do.  Apart from the caretaker she was the only person in the building.
        Rosina had hardly slept in the small apartment Settimio had found them.  They discussed late into the night what Father Weber had told her brother after she helped to burn the documents Settimio had brought from his office.
        The priest had assured him he would take care of the remaining refugees in Delasem's care, mostly women and children.  Settimio had given him a list of their names and addresses.  He had begun to worry about the Germans finding it.  She had tried to reassure him, though she herself had become increasingly uneasy:  First Almansi and now Foa and Rabbi Zolli had disappeared.  There had still been no reply as she had continued to call the numbers of the president and the chief rabbi into the early hours.  She knew there was no point in calling Almansi.  He had said he would never answer the phone in his hiding place, instead he would call the synagogue and leave a message where he could be found at a different place every evening in the city 'in order to deal with matters relavant to carrying out my duties.'
        The freight cars were now parked outside the synagogue and she recognized the three officers from the ERR who had descended from the car and were leading the overalled men into the synagogue.
         The younger of the officers, who had spoken to her in Hebrew the first time he came into the synagogue, politely asked her to lead them to the library.  Rosina had said it was locked.  The officer who had threatened her ordered her to open it.  Rosina said she did not have the key.  He motioned to one of the soldiers to follow him and moments later there was the sound of the library door being forced open.  The looting of the library was about to start.
       A crowd had begun to form in the street below.  Among them was Umberto di Veroli, who had come out from his shop opposite the synagogue to see what was happening.  The soldiers had formed a line to hold back people.
       As the removal men emerged with books the ERR men supervised their storage in the freight cars.  Sheets of corrugated paper were placed between the books to protect them.  Slowly and carefully the piles of irreplaceable literature filled each car to its roof.  A total of 26,568 volumes were ready for their long train journey to Germany.  It was early evening when the work was finished.
        The Hebrew-speaking officer thanked Rosina for her 'patience and understanding.'  She told him it was not appropriate to thank her for what had been done.  He gave her a Heil Hitler salute and joined the others in the car.  As the freight cars trundled back up the road Umberto di Veroli handed her a sheet of paper on which he had written the stenciled numbers on the freight cars;  saying he hoped that one day they could help to trace the stolen library.  Close to tears he called it a crime against history.
        Four years would pass until in October 1947 an officer in the monuments, fine arts, and archives section of the Allied military government in West Germany was assigned to discover the fate of the books.  Major Seymour J. Pomerenze, a former archivist at the National Archives in Washington, found they had been shipped to the ERR Institute der NSDP fuer Erforschung der Judenfrage in the small village of Hungen.  From there Pomeranze traced them to the Rothschild Library in Frankfurt and they were shipped back to Rome.  Like so many books they had survived being sacrificed as a burnt offering to racial hatred in Nazi Germany.
       On that Wednesday evening when the freight cars had departed, Foa arrived at the synagogue with its caretaker.  Rosina was waiting for them and together they went to the Treasury, the repository of the gold articles used in religious sermons.  They carried them down to the synagogue's mikvah, the ritual bath.  While Rosina stood guard at the entrance the men began to place the precious pieces in the tank of holy water which supplied the bath.  That night back in his hiding place, Foa wrote, 'With the help of God they are saved and kept intact.'  But the fate of many of those who used them was drawing closer.
       Sister Pascalina had taken upon herself the task of keeping track of the number of Jews who had been rescued by the Vatican since October 1942, when Italy's leading Fascist newspaper, Regime Fascista, had reminded its readers that 'we should not forget that in the long run the pope is a greater enemy of National Socialism than Churchill or Roosevelt.  It is incomprehensible that the Catholic clergy should today support so many protests against the elimination of the Jews.'
        Pascalina's own record keeping would include details of a secret letter the pope wrote to the Catholic bishops of Europe in 1942 after the Wannsee Conference.  Headed Opere et caritate (by work and charity), it asked them to 'save the Jews and other victims of persecution.'  Pius requested his letter remain secret 'for the same reason the International Red Cross and the World Council of Churches had avoided making any public statement which would increase the suffering of Jews.'
        Pascalina's records also showed that in the late summer of 1943 over two thousand Jews in Hungary were given documents by the Vatican which identified them as baptized Catholics.  The cardinal of Genoa had been told to have his priests issue baptism certificates to eight hundred Jews hidden in the city.  In every city, town, and village where Jews were hidden, Pius had sanctioned priests to provide the certificates and, in some cases, make Jews citizens of the Vatican.  All told, there were over four thousand Jews hidden in convents and monasteries across Italy.
       In Rome the number of Jewish families being sheltered had increased since Father Weber had brought those on the Delasem list to convents.  Many arrived in the ambulance driven by Monsignor Patrick Carroll-Abbing.  The vehicle now bore Vatican license plates to protect it from being stopped by German police.
        Nevertheless, a different problem had arisen one October morning when Father Patrick arrived at the convent of Our Lady of Sion and found a group of Jewish families he had earlier brought to the convent in an uproar.  The mother superior had told them their menfolk could not stay in the convent because the order's rule forbid it.  Father Patrick asked the nun to keep the men until he returned.  He had driven to the Vatican and explained the situation to Father Leiber.  He had immediately telephoned the mother superior to say she was absolved from the order's rule as the Holy Father had decreed that 'given the grave situation, nuns are allowed to give hospitality in their convent to Jewish men as well as their families.'  By the end of the day over a hundred and fifty mother superiors had been contacted and given the same ruling.
        By the second week of October O'Flaherty's organization had found secure hiding places for close to five hundred Allied soldiers.  The number would have been greater but for the number of escapees caught on the streets by the Koch or Black Panther gangs who were incarcerated in an old palace near the Pantheon.
        Derry told O'Flaherty it was time the escapees in hiding were reminded they 'are under British military discipline and not to damn well go wandering through the streets like tourists.  They need to understand that feeding, clothing, and finding them hiding places is a dangerous game.'
       O'Flaherty suggested that Derry should visit the safe houses.
       His ID card in his suit pocket and escorted by Father Owen Sneddon--the New Zealand priest who had chosen 'Horace' as his code name--Derry's tour of the safe houses gave him an insight into the courage of Romans risking their lives to help escapees.  Before he left each safe house Derry firmly impressed on the soldiers they were in a position of great responsibility to ensure their helpers were not caught.
       After once more installing his family in the apartment his wife's gynecologist had loaned them, Zolli had gone to see Father Borsarelli, the abbot of the Sacred Heart monastery in Rome.  The priest had become a confidant of the chief rabbi after Zolli visited the monastery to see its small but important collection of religious paintings.  After several visits Zolli had eventually told Borsarelli of his spiritual journey through prayer and meditation which had brought him from devout Judaism to wishing to convert to Catholicism.
        Now, the abbot had asked hism to wait while he went to make a telephone call.  When he returned he told Zolli they would go and collect his wife and children and take them to the Vatican where they could stay with the full blessing of the pope.  The abbot told Zolli that among the pope's favorite saints was Saint Neri, 'who had always prayed for the Hebrews and so intense was his desire to see the Jews united to Christ that at the sight of one of them still outside the fold, he would weep.'
      It was dusk when the monastery's old car drove into the Vatican.  Inside its walls the chief rabbi and his family would become the latest of three hundred Jews who had so far been given sanctuary.  The Pope's Jews, by Gordon Thomas pgs.185-86, and 195-199.

The Roundup, Part Two

       "Realizing that the broadcast had provided an opportunity to abandon the plot.  Wolff had flown to see Hitler and told him that the whole of Catholic Italy would defend the Vatican to protect the pope.
       Warming to his argument, Wolff went on to tell Hitler that to deal with mass civil unrest would require German troops to be withdrawn from the southern front where they were engaged trying to hold back the advancing Allies.
       The atmosphere in Hitler's office was captured in Wolff's account preserved in the Jesuit Curia library at the Borgo Santo Spirito in Rome:'Hitler, his hand trembling, stood at his office window staring out at the fir trees, the look on his face one when he received bad news.'  Wolff told him he had asked Bishop Alois Hudal to 'persuade' Pius to leave the Vatican voluntarily.  It emerged that Hudal actually went through the motions of exploring the idea with fellow Nazi sympathizers in the Vatican.  But no doubt awed by the responsibility stemming from their mere knowledge of the proposal, they refused to take it any further.  Only then had Hudal abandoned the idea.
       Wolff recalled how Hitler had finally turned from his office window and cancelled the plot, 'the madness in his eyes all too evident.'

       Hauptsturmfuhrer Theodor Dannecker arrived in Rome by train on the evening of October 8, 1943.  He was thirty years old, a slim, lantern-jawed bachelor and his height, six feet three inches tall, did nothing to compensate for his poorly coordinated body movements, which included a tic that continually flicked his head to one side.
       Early that year he had carried out deportations from Bulgaria, Greece, and Yugoslavia of over eleven thousand Jews to Aushwitz and Treblenka.  Previously he had performed similar operations in France, Poland, Belgium, and Holland.  In all, Dannecker had sent several hundred thousand Jews to their deaths.  Ironically his first girlfriend, Lisbeth Stern, had been Jewish.
       As usual Eichmann's office had arranged for him to travel alone in a reserved compartment to give him time to think how he would plan his latest mission.  On the train he had read the dispatches Kappler had sent:  his call for more troops to conduct the roundup and his concern about the Rome Resistance.  Dannecker understood why Eichmann had decided Kappler was not capable of conducting a successful Judenaktion.  Perhaps living in Rome had made him soft.  Dannecker had seen that happen before when a local police chief in Belgrade had refused to carry out executions.  Danneker, then a member of the SS Verfuegungstruppe, a specialist combat support force, had shot him.  After Eichmann selected him to head the Judenreferat, the Jewish department, Dannecker summed up his work in the words of his hobby.  'Over the years I have learnt which hook to use for which fish.'
       In his finely tailored SS uniform and polished boots he embodied someone to be feared and hated;  a brutal, mean, crude man.
        Following his usual custom of remaining unobtrusive on a mission Dannecker stayed in a small hotel on Via Po.  The accomodation had been arranged for him by one of the Judennaktion officers who had arrived in Rome earlier;  he had worked with Dannecker for a year and knew his habits.
       Dannecker had changed out of his uniform into a suit and eaten alone at a nearby restaurant;  the quality of the food was indifferent but it was still better than that offered in Berlin.  Afterward he had walked around Rome, studying the solid marble statues and the sarcophagi.  The city, he decided, was even more impressive than Paris.  Rome had its priests in black, white and purple robes and the Latin Mass which came from a church he passed.  And, of course, there were the Romans:  children sitting on the marble edges of fountains;  the young women, their hair often the color of flame;  old men and women sitting at their tables in pavement cafes.  How many of those he had seen were Jews?  How many would die under his orders?

       Pope Pius continued to receive reports from the network.
       In the monastery founded by Saint Francis of Assisi a synagogue had been opened in the basement where close to a hundred Jews in hiding could worship while the monks prayed above in the chapel.  The Vatican information office, where Sister Luke worked, had opened a special unit to deal with overseas Jews seeking news of their relatives.  By October 1943, the unit had answered twenty thousand inquiries in a month.  The pope had appointed his own liason with Delasem, the Capucine Father Bourg D're.  He had been given a 'start-up' sum of five million lire to provide food, clothing, and medicine for Jewish refugees arriving in Rome.
       The pope's response to every report contained the reminder that as well as saving Jews, every effort must be made to save the contents of synagogues and cultural centers, especially the libraries.  'For Jewish people their history is as important to be protected as ours,' Pius wrote.
       On that October morning Rosina Sorani sat at her desk sorting through Foa's mail when she heard footsteps coming up the stairs from the ground floor.  The tread was too heavy for Foa and he usually called up to have his coffee ready.  A stocky, barrel-chested, middle-aged man stood in the doorway.  He gave her a snaggletoothed smile and introduced himself as a photographer from the ERR who had come to inspect numerous texts in the library.  He handed her a typed sheet.
       Rosina looked at the paper and saw it listed the rarest works in the library:  books from the famous Soncino publishing house dating from the fifteenth century;  original texts from sixteenth-century Constantinople and Salonika;  manuscripts which were histories of the literary and intellectual life of Rome;  a record of how the kabala came to replace already existing philosophy;  a thirteenth-century mathematics text and an extremely rare Hebrew-Italian-Arabic vocabulary published in Naples in 1488.  Finally there were twenty-one Talmudic tracts.
       Rosina hesistated.  The precious texts were kept in a locked area at the back of the library and though she had a key to open it she wondered if she needed Foa's permission to admit a stranger.  The officer said she should accompany him to the library and reassure herself that he'd handle the manuscripts and books with proper care.  Foa had not arrived and she decided he would probably have no objection;  besides, in the past she had allowed Rabbi Zolli and one or two of the senior students at the rabinnical college to look at some of the books to research papers they were writing.  She led the way to the library, gave the officer a pair of white cotton gloves, and unlocked the door to the room where the books were kept.
       She saw he was an expert, in the way he opened a book, softly touching the paper and leafing through the pages, the way she had seen Rabbi Zolli do.  The man had the same attention to touch, running a gloved hand down a page, stopping at a special point of interest to him before moving on to another page.  At times he would smile at Rosina as she handed him a document, identifying it as a codex or a palimpsest.  He would stand there, sometimes moving a hand above the page as if he was giving it some sort of benediction.
       Much of what he asked to see was written in obscure alphabets.  She had asked him about one and he told her it was Armenian, a branch of the old Christian church.  But mostly he remained silent, his eyes fixed on a page, his eyes widening and brightening.  Occasionally he would breathe in, the way Rabbi Zolli did when he seemed to know where to look for a particular text.
       Finally he finished.  Rosina locked the door behind them and walked him back to her desk;  he turned to her and delivered a terrifying sentence.  'You will please inform your president that the library is under sequester and if any books are missing you will have to pay with your life.'
       He turned and walked down the stairs.
When Foa arrived later that morning she told him about the latest visit of the ERR official.
       He dictated four letters for her to type.  The first was to General Stahel;  the others were to the neo-Fascist city administration:  the minister of interior, the minister of education, and the director general of public safety.  Each had the same text:  an account of the ERR visits;  the sequestering of the library;  its unique value.  It concluded by asking that immediate and appropriate action be taken to protect the library.  After signing the letters Foa told Rosina to hand deliver them to the various addresses.  He would never receive a reply.

       Dannecker's hope that his mission would remain secret failed through a regulation General Stahel had introduced.  Like every hotel guest in Rome, Dannecker had to register.  As a serving officer he was only required to provide his name, rank, and unit on the form which was routinely collected and brought to the Stadtkommandant's headquarters at the Hotel Flora.  There it was checked against a list of names of expected military officers arriving in the city;  they were usually on leave or on their way to another posting.
       But Dannecker's name was not listed.  Its absence might had been ignored in some other headquarters, but Stahel from the outset of his appointment as Stadtkommandant had ordered that any oversight was to be tracked down and rectified.  One of his staff officers was ordered to call Berlin and was told Dannecker was in Rome on the order of Obersturmbannfuhrer Eichmann and his presence was to remain secret, a classification approved by Reichfuhrer Himmler.
       Stahel was furious.  For him no one could come to Rome on even a secret mission without him being told its purpose.  It had been infuriating to learn over the radio and newspapers of a plot to kidnap the pope of which he had known nothing beforehand and which had caused such an outcry.  But now to find that Eichmann--a man Stahel strongly disliked--had somehow enlisted Himmler's backing for some secret mission was too much;  Stahel's instinct told him it could only bring trouble for him.  He had called Kesselring at his headquarters in Frascati.  The commander-in-chief had been firm:  Dannecker's mission must remain Geheime Reichssache--a secret affair of the Reich."  The Pope's Jews by Gordon Thomas pgs162-165, 167-168,173-175, and175-176

The Roundup, Part One

       "In the warmth of early afternoon Rosina Sorani was replacing a book on its shelf in the synagogue library after noting its title and subject matter in her notebook when she realized she was not alone.  Standing in the doorway were two men in gray suits.  One was bald and wore spectacles.  His companion was younger with a brush mustache who apologized if they had startled her.  The older man said they were looking for President Foa.  Rosina explained he was not there, but could she help?  The men stepped into the library and said they would like to look around.  Rosina asked if there was any particular book or subject they would like to see, remembring Foa had told her that in 1939, Fascists in Turin had forced their way into the Jewish community library, seized almost all its collection, and used the books to fuel a bonfire in the city's Piazza Carlina.
       Perhaps, sensing her concern, the older man said they were professors from the Einsatzstab Rosenberg Institute, ERR, claiming it was linked to the great universities of Europe, including the Sorbonne in Paris.  The ERR was dedicated to the study of academic fields which until now had not been fully exploited.   They were in Rome purely to assess the role the synagogue library could have as part of that program.  The younger man added that under no circumstances was she to confuse them with the SS or any other military organization.
       Somewhat reassured Rosina escorted them around the library, pointing out books produced by the earliest printers and documents handed down through the centuries.  She decided their polite questions were those of cultured men who had spent their lives in scholarly pursuits, and far removed from the coarse-voiced soldiers who walked the streets of Rome.  The older man revealed he was an Orientalist and had spent time in libraries in Palestine and other Middle East countries.  His colleague said he was a specialist in Jewish literature and his language teacher had been a rabbi in Berlin before the war.  He had spoken to Rosina in Hebrew and she was impressed.  From time to time as she pointed out a book the two men spoke to each other in German.
       After shaking her hand they left.
       The ERR was a specialist unit formed in July 1940 by the official theoritician of the Nazi Party, Alfred Rosenberg, to assemble a library for the new educational and research institute for the party, the Hohe Schule, to be located at the Chiemsee in Bavaria.  It would contain half a million volumes and would have an auditorium for three thousand people.
       Rosenberg had laid down a rule for what ERR acquired for the institute:  'If the desired object belongs to foreign 'Aryans' the owners are compelled to sell it;  if it belongs to Jews it is confiscated.  Material of no use is to be destroyed.'
       The Jewish library at Lublin in Poland was one of the first to be burnt;  Joseph Goebbels had sent a journalist from the Ministry of Propaganda to report the event.
       'We brought the books to the marketplace where we set fire to them.  The fire lasted twenty hours.  The Jews assembled around wept bitterly, almost silencing us with their cries.  We summoned the military band and with joyful shouts the soldiers drowned out the sounds of the Jewish cries.'
       A different fate had been earmarked for the Rome ghetto synagogue library.\
       In London, Simonds's report on Hitler's threat to kidnap the pope reached Stewart Menzies.  The MI6 chief sent for Sefton Delmer.  The former foreign correspondent for Lord Beaverbrook's Daily Express had interviewed Hitler before the war and had developed important connections across Europe.  In his office on Fleet Street he had written newsbreaking stories few other reporters could equal.  He spoke several languages and Beaverbrook called him 'my source in the world.'
       He had arranged in 1942 for Delmer to join the Foreign Office political warfare department.  It was there that Delmer picked up his first news of a plot to overthrow Hitler.  It had been leaked to him by a long-standing source, who Delmer suspected was an opponent of the Nazi regime.  In his diary Delmer would write:  'Whether successful or not, even the suspicion of an anti-Hitler coup would help to hasten his defeat.'
       The story normally would have guaranteed Delmer the front page of the Daily Express.  But he was told by Beaverbrook that he should hold it for a 'more opportune time.'
       By October 1943 Delmer knew that moment had come, when he had been transferred from the Foreign Office to MI6.  Menzies told him his new task 'is to foment the maximum suspicion between Hitler and his generals.'
       Delmer was to head a unique intelligence operation.  Using his journalistic skills he produced radio programs that supposedly originated from an undercover station in Germany.  In reality they came from a country house outside London.  Delmer had picked his team of German-speaking broadcasters with care.  He described each one as a 'loyal German dedicated to the fatherland but disturbed by the fanatical policies of Hitler.'  A number were Jews who had fled to England before the war.  Others were students from German universities.  All were told their broadcasts were not designed to attack Britain but to provide their listeners with news not broadcast to German audiences.  To emphasize its role Delmer called the station Free Fascist Republican Radio (FFRR).
       Menzies had shown Simonds's report to Delmer and told him to create a broadcast aimed at the Third Reich's Catholic populations.
       On October 7, the station announced that 'quarters have been prepared in Germany for Pope Pius where he will be taken and remain.'
       Pius was quoted as telling Secretary of State Maglione that 'I was placed by the will of God here and therefore shall not leave.  THey would have to tie me up and carry me out because I intend to remain here!'  The words were written by Sefton Delmer.  The threat to the pope and his response was published in newspapers around the world, creating outrage in Catholic countries.  Hitler's plot, which he had intended to remain secret until the last moment, was now in the public domain."  The Pope's Jews by Gordon Thomas pgs. 162-164
      

Kidnapping the Pope

       "O'Flaherty had put together the Vatican network with the speed and skill for which he was known.  He had first spoken to Irish priests working in the Vatican to check their Gaelic language skills.  Priests who spoke their native language had played an important role in those harsh years in Irish history in the 1920s when they had used it to help Republicans fight the English Black and Tans who were seen by Catholics as 'terrorists of the King.'  O'Flaherty said the priests he chose would use Gaelic to outwit the Germans.
       Among the first recruits was Father Sean Quinlan, whose family were neighbors of the O'Flahertys in County Kerry.  Another was Monsignor Thomas Ryan who said, 'It's going to be more fun than saying morning Mass.'  Father Owen Sneddon worked for Vatican Radio.  O'Flaherty already knew he frequently slipped in messages during his broadcasts for families of Allied prisoners.
       Within days a dozen other priests had been recruited and Sneddon--a lover of spy stories--suggested they should all have code names.  O'Flaherty became 'Golf;' Sneddon chose to be known by his father's name, 'Horace;' Quinlan 'Kerry;'  and Ryan 'Rinso.'  Others were assigned names which could have come from one of the prison camp stage reviews O'Flaherty had watched.  There was 'Eyerish,'  'Fanny,' 'Emma,' and 'Whitebows,'  a priest in the De La Salle teaching order.
       All were graduates of Ireland's Maynooth seminary, the largest in the Catholic world.  They would act as couriers between safe houses.  For the most part he had decided they would be convents.  But on Princess Pallavicini's suggestion he had agreed she should negotiate for apartments to rent whose occupants had fled.  They could be used to hide Allied soldiers who might find it 'a little uncomfortable being tucked away in a convent of nuns,' she had told him.
       One of his recruit's tasks would be to provide details of the network to rural priests who had parishes close to prisoner-of-war camps from where Allied prisoners had escaped and were heading for Rome.
       O'Flaherty had made several visits over the years to the ghetto, attracted by its history and lifestyle.  There was a poverty of centuries of difficult times but also a strong sense of spirituality that centered on the tempio magiore, the synagogue.  He had learned that their culture was as deeply rooted as that of Ireland's.  His latest visit had been to meet Settimio Sorani, an introduction effected by Father Weber who had said after O'Flaherty had been appointed by the pope to head the Vatican network it would be good if it worked with Delasem.
       Settimio had shown him evidence Delasem had received which confirmed the latest reports from nuncios of Nazi atrocities.  They included grainy photographs of roundups in Lithuania, Latvia, and the Ukraine.
       Through Rosina, O'Flaherty had met with Ugo Foa, Dante Almansi, Renzo Levi, and Israel Zolli.
       It was the first time he had been inside a synagogue and Foa had shown him around, taking him to the library and explaining its importance in Jewish history before leading him to his office where the others were waiting.  They greeted O'Flaherty warmly and listened intently when he told them of the pope's plans to help the Jews of Rome.  O'Flaherty noticed everyone except Zolli expressed their satisfaction after O'Flaherty finished outlining Pius's intentions.  The chief rabbi said if the Allies did not arrive there soon there would be a bloodbath.  According to Zolli, Almansi said to him, 'How can a mind as clear as yours make such a prediction which can only disrupt the lives of our people?  The Germans have not shown any sign yet of making a move against us!'  The chief rabbi had shrugged and took no further part in the conversation.

       The pope sent his congratulations to O'Flaherty when he learned the Vatican network had begun to work closely with Delasem and the Pallotine fathers to help the refugees.  Pius arranged for Settimio Sorani to use church buildings to set up secret offices in towns and cities across Italy which operated with the support of archbishops in Genoa, Turin, Florence, and Milan.  He ordered diocese bank accounts to be used to distribute money Delasem received from Jewish relief organizations in the United States to provide documents and clothes for the fugitive Jews.  Clearly identified Vatican trucks supplied food to convents and monasteries where the refugees sheltered.
       Delasem had started to send small groups of Jews across the border into Switzerland.  Some of the priests who had volunteered to act as guides were Pallotine fathers, and carried Vatican-stamped papers to show the Swiss border guards they were escorting home pilgrims from Rome.  Jewish men were dressed with robes provided by religious orders.  The women wore nun's habits and the children were listed as orphans from a Catholic home.  If the guards suspected anything an envelope of money settled matters.  Sorani had already arranged for members of the Swiss branch of Delasem to be waiting at the nearest border town to organize new lives in a neutral country for the refugees.  Pius had sent several nuns and priests to Switzerland to assist with the resettlement.
       Many of those waiting to make the journey there were moved from one religious house to another.  Gisela Birach would remember that 'nuns were kind, but they expected us to follow their work ethics.  We had to wash and wax the corridor floors and our men would work in the fields.  In some convents they had long periods of silence during which we had to remain in our rooms and not talk.'
       Ester Braunstein worked in a convent kitchen.  'I was in charge of peeling potatoes and everyone was counted.  Hunger defined our existence.  While the sisters shared with us, there was never enough to meet our hunger.  Unless you have chewed potato peel or radish leaves you don't know what hunger is.'

Since the fuhrer ranted in July 1943 that he intended to go into the Vatican and 'clean out that gang of swine,' he had remained obsessed with kidnapping the pope and bringing him to Germany.  It was fuelled by his belief that Pius had been responsible for persuading King Victor Emmanuel III and Badoglio to abandon the Axis and join the Allies.
       Hitler also believed the abduction would enable him to persuade Britain and the United States they were fighting the wrong war;  that together they should join Germany and defeat the Soviet Union.
       By September 13, Hitler's plot to kidnap the pope had reached the stage he decided it should be implemented.  He had summoned to his headquarters--the Wolfsschanze, the Wolf's Lair near Rastenburg in East Prussia--General Karl Friedrich Otto Wolff.  The steel-eyed and handsome forty-three-year-old had served as Himmler's chief of staff before becoming the SS liason officer to Hitler.  His anti-Semetic credentials were gilt-edged and he had played his part in ensuring that the SS dealt efficiently with the Jews.  A month ago Hitler had bestowed on Wolff a unique title--general of the Waffen SS, and police leader of all Italy.  Within the paranoid inner circle at the Wolf's Lair Hitler trusted Wolff completely.
       But there was another side to the smiling, courteous, heel-clicking, and confident-sounding Wolff.  He knew the war was lost.  He had seen it on the faces of Hitler's top military advisers:  Field Marshal Alfred Jodl and General Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel.  Even bombastic Luftwaffe minister, Hermann Goering, could not quite conceal that defeat was only a matter of time.  His air force could do little to stop the Allies from bombing Germany day and night and the Red Army was racing westward and threatening to communize all of Europe. 
       But none of this was to be discussed on that Monday morning in Hitler's office.  He had stood behind his desk, palms pressed down on its top, and told Wolff why he had sent for him.  The general would later write in his diary the conversation which followed:
                                    Wolff, I have a special mission for you.  It will be your duty not to discuss it 
                                     with anyone before I give you permission to do so.  I want you and your troops
                                      to occupy Vatican City as soon as possible, secure its files and art treasures,
                                      and bring the pope to Germany.  I do not want him to fall into the hands of
                                     the Allies, or to be under their political pressure and influence.  When is the
                                     earliest you think you will be able to fulfill this mission?
       Wolff sat stunned into silence as his mind raced.  He had renounced his Protestant faith upon joining the SS and his knowledge about Catholicism had been confined to listening to the ravings of Himmler.  But what he did know was that the pope was the most powerful religious leader in the world.  Wolff realized the kidnapping would guarantee he would be condemned for posterity.  But to even give so much as a hint of refusal to Hitler would be fatal.
       Wolff's response was calm.  He could fulfill the mission--but he needed time to prepare it.  Hitler asked how long Wolff needed.  Wolff said four to six weeks.
       The fuhrer's eyes stared into Wolff's face.  'Too long,' he rasped.
       Wolff's voice grew in confidence.  He would need additional SS and police units transferred to Rome.  Specialists in identifying precious art treasures.  Translators in Latin and Greek to authenticate the documents in the Secret Archives of the Vatican.
       Hitler had stopped Wolff with a wave of his hand.  He could have whatever he wanted but the mission must be completed in a month.
       Wolff stood up, clicked his heels, saluted, and left the office.
       By the time he reached his headquarters on Lake Garda in the Alps Wolff saw what he must do.
       Until now he would have carried out any order for Hitler;  if he had been told to devise a plan to murder Stalin in Moscow or kill Churchill in London, he would have done so.  That was his strength:  The impossible was possible he had learned at military school.  But kidnapping the pope and looting the Vatican was madness beyond anything he had envisaged.
       From that conclusion he began to see how he could use the mission to win the gratitude of the pope and save his own life when the Allies won the war.  It would mean delaying and sabotaging the kidnapping plan.  To do so would have to involve the German ambassador to the Holy See, Baron Ernst von Weizsacker.

        Days after he had met Hitler, General Wolff flew to Rome in a Luftwaffe transport.  During the flight he had devised a plan to show Hitler how he would kidnap the pope.
       It called for two thousand Waffen SS soldiers to arrive in Rome and seal off the Vatican.  A squad would then occupy Vatican Radio and take it off the air.  Other squads would enter the Apostolic Palace and arrest the pope and his entourage.  They would be taken to Rome's airport and flown to Munich.  In the meantime another unit of experts would assess the Vatican's paintings and sculptures.  Truckloads of books and documents would be removed from the Secret Archives.  Together with the treasures they would be sent to Germany.
       Wolff knew the plan would satisfy, even excite Hitler, but was determined it would never happen.  The Waffen SS was already committed on all fronts and to find experts to evaluate the Vatican treasures would take considerable time to locate.  By then the Allies could be close to Rome, forcing the Germans to withdraw and leaving the Vatican safe.  To the Catholics he would be a hero and the Jews would see how sabotaging the plot helped to save the lives of those in Rome. 
       Wolff would give Hitler sufficient details to convince him preparations were underway and sent a coded message to that effect from the German embassy.  Then he went to the Villa Napoleon to see Weizsacker.
       He had already studied the ambassador's file.  He came from a prominent Wurttemberg family who included Ribbentrop in its circle.  The foreign minister had found a place in his office for Weizsacker and guided his career up through the ministry.  Wolff also knew of the ambassador's growing relationship with Admiral Canaris.  Since Hitler's rages that he was surrounded by traitors, Wolff had come to wonder if they included the head of the Abwehr.  If so, could Weizsacker have been sent to Rome to become involved in his machinations?  Was that why Hitler wanted the pope kidnapped--to use him as a weapon against his enemies?  Wolff later admitted those were the questions which still preoccupy him as he walked into Weizsacker's office.
       The ambassador and Kessel, his deputy, were waiting and Wolff sensed their tension.  Weizsacker wasted no time in explaining why.  He had seen a copy of Kappler's Judenaktion order and asked if that was why Wolff was in Rome.  If so, he should be aware that the pope was bound to protest and that could be the prelude to a popular uprising led by the Resistance, one possibly supported by the Allied escaped prisoners of war hiding in the city.
       Wolff had not hesitated:  He told the two diplomats of Hitler's order to kidnap the pope--and of his own intention to stop it.
       Weizsacker had thanked him.  Wolff explained he must continue with its preparation so as not to arouse Hitler's suspicion.
       Weizsacker pressed, 'But what if you fail?'
       Wolff replied, 'Then we are all finished.'  The Pope's Jews by Gordon Thomas pgs. 129-30, 146-48, and 150-51.
                   

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.