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

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

       "On September 1, 1939, Hitler invaded Poland.
       In the early hours of that first day in the month, his bedside telephone woke Luigi Maglione.  The caller sas Archbishop Giulo Pacini, the papal nuncio in Warsaw to report German forces had begun invading Poland by land and air.  Maglione ordered the nuncio to prepare to destroy confidential papers and to 'look after the code book and seek a place less immediately threatened by the advancing German armies.'  The cardinal ended with the benediction, 'May the Lord protect you.'
       Maglione dialed the Vatican switchboard and the night-duty nun connected him to the pope's bedroom.  When Pius heard the news he went to his chapel to pray.  Meanwhile, Pascalina had aroused the other nuns in their rooms on the floor below to join her in the apartment's kitchen and told them 'our world, the whole world, is changing' and asked them to pray.
       Father Leiber was the first to arrive in the apartment having heard the Vatican Radio announcement that war had broken out.  He joined the pope at prayer in the chapel.  Maglione appeared shortly afterward.  He had already sent his aides, Tardini and Montini, to their offices in the secretariat of state to begin telephoning members of the diplomatic corps with the news.
        The secretary of state went with the pope and Father Leiber to the dining room where Pascalina served them breakfast.  While the pope sipped his warm milk he began to issue his first orders.  Maglione was to send a GREEN code message to Pacini to start organizing Poland's Jews into hiding in every available shelter.  A second similarly encoded order was to go to the Istanbul nuncio, Monsignor Angelo Guiseppe Roncali (the future Pope John XXIII) to 'prepare thousands of baptismal certificates to give to Jews which will allow them passage through Turkey to the Holy Land.'
        Other messages were to be sent to all other nuncios and bishops in neutral countries ordering them to increase 'all pressure you can' on their host governments to provide visas for Polish Jews. 
        Pope Pius had also asked Father Leiber to contact the head of the Pallotine fathers in Rome, Father Anton Weber.  The religious order was founded in Rome in 1835 by Vincent Pallotti, an Italian priest, to send missionaries across the world to set up schools and clinics.  A month ago Father Weber had telephoned from the order's General House on Rome's Pettinari Street and asked Pascalina to arrange an audience.  When he explained the reason she had quickly found a place for him on the pope's daily schedule.  Pius had asked Father Leiber to attend.
       The pope's secretary recalled, 'Weber asked His Holiness to approve the Pallotines be allowed to set up a network to bring German Jews to Rome where they would be safe.'  On that September morning Father Leiber had been ordered to tell Weber he should start his clandestine network.
        Two days later Britain and France declared war on Germany.
       In his office in midtown Rome the representative of the Red Cross, Count Alexander de Salis, held a meeting to discuss events with Ugo Foa.  With them was a slim elegantly dressed woman, Princess Enza Pignatelli Cortes, the daughter of one of Rome's Black Nobility families, aristocrats who had supported the Vatican following the seizure of the papal states.  She was respected for organizing fund-raising events for Catholic charities and her friendship with Pius XII dated since he was secretary of state and she had invited him to address the girl's private school where she once was a pupil.  Since then Pius had been a regular guest at her palace near the Arch of Constantine.
        Seated beside Princess Cortes was Dante Almansi.  The barrel-chested forty year old came from modest origins in Trastevere and was the only Jew appointed deputy chief of the Rome police force.  He had been dismissed under the racial laws and Foa had made him his deputy on the Jewish community committee.  Both were very different personalities.  Almansi had not quite lost his streetwise stare that suggested he often did not believe what he heard.  Foa had the self-control of a judge.
       Beside Almansi set Renzo Levi, a short, stocky man who was a wealthy Jewish industrialist.  The group was completed by lawyer Settimio Sorani.  Where Levi was forceful and decisive, Sorani was gentle and persuasive and Foa had appointed him as legal counsel to the community's committee.  He lived with his sister, Rosina, who was Foa's secretary.
         His minutes of the meeting included Foa's figures for 3.5 million Jews living in the Soviet Union;  3 million in Poland;  360,000 in Germany;  500,000 in Hungary;  300,000 in Czechoslovakia;  over 250,000 in France;  almost 200,000 in the Netherlands;  and 100,000 in Belgium.  Including Spain and Portugal and smaller nations like Sweden and Switzerland, Foa said close to 10 million Jews lived on the European continent.  All were now at risk.
       Almansi asked his first question:  What could the Red Cross do to help them?  De Salis explained it would use its influence with all governments to help the Jews.  But the organization must respect the Vatican's neutrality.  The day after the invasion of Poland de Salis said he was telephoned by D'Arcy Osborne.  The diplomat had told him that both himself and Charles-Roux, the French ambassador, had made a joint approach to Cardinal Magione to get the pope to condemn the invasion.  The secretary of state had refused, saying that 'the whole world will condemn the Germans without the Vatican's intervention.' 
       Princess Cortes said she was certain that 'Italy does not want to be in this war.  But His Holiness cannot say much, if anything at all.  Yet his silence must not be misunderstood.  I know he will do everything to help the Jews.'
       
       Pucci's account of the pope fleeing to America had created consternation at the Foreign Office;  its two diplomatic sources of information in Rome were clearly out of kilter.  At Loraine's meeting with Osborne was the local MI6 station chief.  He told Osborne Pucci was a German informer and his story was 'totally untrue and created in Berlin for its man in the Vatican to pass on to Pucci.'  The intelligence officer had asked to see any further information Pucci offered.  A dismayed Osborne has agreed.
        Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, the director of the Abwehr, had spent another weekend in his office at 76/78 Tiritzaufer, two former town houses, overlooking the beautiful chesnut and lime trees in Berlin's Tiergarten.  Since dawn he had read the reports that came from his chiefs of intelligence throughout the world.  That afternoon he had gone for a stroll in the Tiergarten with his deputy, Colonel Hans Oster, walking along the bridle paths where they passed several members of the German general staff taking afternoon rides.  Canaris let his dachshund, Seppel, off its lead, watching the dog run in and of the bushes, as he told Oster that the Abwehr must do nothing to prolong the war by a war by a day, that while a defeat for Germany would be a disaster, a victory for Hitler would be a catastrophe.
        Therefore he was ready to make a new move to once more try and involve Pope Pius XII in the plot to overthrow the fuhrer.  He was sending to Rome Josef Mueller, a Bavarian lawyer, who had joined the Abwehr at the outset of war.  His well-tanned face, reddish-brown hair, and customized black suit was a familiar sight around the Munich diocese in the building's courtrooms.  Mueller's success had given him connections in the Vatican where he was respected in the Holy Office and the secretariat of state for winning cases for the church.
         Canaris has told Mueller that the the first visit first visit to Rome by Colonel Oster and his co-conspirators had failed because they had asked 'too much too soon' in their meeting with the pope's secretary, Robert Leiber.
        Mueller's own brief in Rome would be to try and once more persuade Father Leiber to get the pope to support 'negotiations with Britain and a new and honorable government in Berlin after Hitler had been overthrown.'  Once contact had been made with Father Leiber and he agreed to present the proposal to Pius, the pope should send for D'Arcy Osborne who would act in the intial stage as the go-between with the Holy See and the British government.  If the discussion continued to move forward more senior diplomats would be called in to carry the plan to conclusion--the removal of Hitler.
       His legal skills had taught Mueller to take his time in preparing a brief.  He had studied the Abwehr file on Pope Pius XII and read his speeches. He concluded that the pope shared his own pro-Jewish sentiments.  When the time came he would use that as part of his argument tha a new German government would guarantee that Jews would no longer be persecuted.  He had also decided he would not go to Leiber at once, but approach him through another German in a powerful position in the Vatican.  Monsignor Ludwig Kaas had been a contact of Pius since his days as a nuncio in Germany and Kaas had represented the Catholic Center Party in the Reichstag.  When Hitler came to power Kaas had moved to Rome to become secretary of the congregation in charge of St. Peter's Basilica.
       On May 10, 1940--the day Neville Chamberlain resigned and Winston Churchill became Britain's Prime Minister--Mueller arranged to meet Leiber.  While no record exists of their meeting, later the widow of one of the principal conspirators, Hans von Dohnanyi, revealed that her husband, a lawyer, had drafted articles of peace terms for the pope to review.  According to Frau Dohnanyi, Leiber had taken them to Pope Pius XII, who had told the secretary to inform Osborne that the German opposition to Hitler continued to gather momentum.
       Two days after meeting the pope's secretary,  Mueller had flown to Berlin to brief Canaris.  The spymaster doubted the peace initiative would succeed with Churchill now in office.

       The day after Mussolini delivered his declaration of war the pope asked Father Leiber to find space in his audience schedule for him to see Ugo Foa.  He told his secretary he would meet the Jewish community leader in the papal apartment 'as an old friend.'  It was the signal that Pius wanted no note taker present to keep a record of the meeting.
      It was late afternoon when Foa was escorted into the pope's study.  It would be their first meeting since Mussolini had introduced the Nazi-inspired racial laws.  Since then Rome's Fascist press had continued its attacks on the pope for his criticism of the anti-Semetic legislation.  Foa had brought with him a letter from Dr. Nahum Goldmann, the president of the World Zionist Organization thanking the pope for his 'unflinching support of the Jews.'
       There were now over four thousand Italian Jews--army officers, civil servants, academics, and journalists--who were still unemployed as a result of the racial laws. 
       The pope began by saying that as well as helping them, he had not forgotten his 'near neighbors,'  the Jews of Rome's ghetto.  If any were experiencing problems he had arranged for the papal nuncio to Italy, Monsignor Borgongini Duca to deal with the matter 'loud and clearly' with the Fascist authorities.
       Foa would recall how the pope had spoken with 'quiet passion as he said he would lay to rest any thought he would follow a plan more conciliatory to the totalitarian states than his predecessor.  He made it clear that the safety of the Jews was growing more intense and was one of the gravest of the many other serious problems he now faced.'
       Pius had said he would employ all the weapons in his power:  prayer, liturgy, and international law to confront the Nazis, who for all their technical skill were filled with a spritual emptiness, in what the pope defined as the 'Age of Agnosticism driven by anti-Semitism.'
       In the meantime if any member of the Jewish community wished to leave Rome he had arranged with the Pallotine fathers to assist them in obtaining foreign visas.  It may take a little while to obtain the documents but they would be forthcoming.
       Finally Pius had said he wanted to assure the community that he would continue to attack anti-Semitism and protect the Jews.  He handed Foa a bound copy of Summi Pontificatus , with the words 'where there is a question of saving souls, we feel the courage to deal with the Devil in person.'
       Foa had responded with a Hebrew saying.  'A man is compared to the stars in Heaven and to the dust of the earth.  He can soar to heights.'

       A few months ago the pope had reluctantly received Joachim von Ribbentrop, Hitler's foreign minister, with one purpose.  He was determined to express his condemnation of Nazi atrocities and its anti-Semetic policies.  When von Ribbentrop had tried to dismiss the charges as 'Allied propaganda,' Pius had quoted from a file of reports sent by nuncios and bishops across Europe detailing evidence of atrocities.  The New York Times reported that the foreign minister had left the Vatican looking crestfallen.
       Since then the pope had ordered Vatican Radio to broadcast the evidence and L' Osservatore Romano to continue to publish it.  The New York Times had editorialized, 'The Vatican has spoken with authority that cannot be questioned and has confirmed the worst intimidation on Jews.'
       But the reports of atrocities had increased along with the attacks by Goebbels's propaganda machine on Pius as 'the Jew lover.'  The pope had countered by asking all Catholic bishops in Nazi Germany to sign a protest against the Nazi Pary plan to extend the wearing of the Star of David to include the offspring of mixed marriages.  The Nazi response was to seize convents, Catholic hospitals, and other church property throughout Germany;  Catholic organizations were closed down and religious images removed from schools.  The Pope's Jews  by Gordon Thomas pgs.49-51, 59-61,66-68, and 72