Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
and expressed the judgment that He [Orsenigo] is too timorous and not interested
in such grave matters.
The anti-Jewish campaign is implacable and constantly grows worse, with
deportations and even mass executions.
The massacre of the Jews in the Ukraine is already complete. In Poland
and Germany they also intend to carry it to completion, with a system of mass
killings.”
Even if Innitzer had held such views, it is ludicrous in the extreme to imagine
that he would have confided them to Scavizzi, even for Scavizzi’s personal information,
not to mention for transmission to the Pope via Scavizzi. One is now entitled
to raise suspicions regarding Scavizzi’s reliability.
Scavizzi next appears on October 7, 1942, when he wrote a “report on the
situation in Poland” that managed to get into the Vatican files: 463
“The Jews: The elimination of the Jews, with mass killings, without regard
for children or even for babies, is almost total. As for the remainder of them,
who are all marked by white armbands, civilized life is impossible. They are
not permitted to shop, enter business establishments, take streetcars or taxis,
attend spectacles or frequent non-Jewish homes. Before being deported or
killed, they are condemned to forced hard labor, even if they are of the cultivated
class. The few remaining Jews appear serene, almost ostentatiously
proud. It is said that more than two million Jews have been killed.”
At this point, one develops a second suspicion, namely that the Vatican took as
knowledge what we have set forth as our first suspicion about Scavizzi: that little
weight should be attached to Scavizzi’s statements. They had such material from
Scavizzi in their files but did not consider it as confirming the claims of the Zionist
organizations, as is made clear above.
Possibly because the Vatican wartime documents are still in the process of editing
for publication at the time this is being written, Scavizzi makes no more appearances
in them. However, in 1964 (he died around 1967) he claimed in an Italian
magazine that the Pope had confided to him, Pirro Scavizzi, during the war on
the apparently negative implications of a proposed excommunication of Hitler (a
nominal Catholic) for his exterminations of Jews! 464 That does it. Scavizzi was
obviously a weaver of self-inflating tall tales designed to make him appear rather
more important than his humble station in riding the hospital trains would have
suggested. It therefore becomes clear that our second suspicion must be correct:
Scavizzi was considered by the Vatican to be a harmless nut who could be trusted
to administer last rites and even to deliver messages, but not to keep facts straight.
It is mildly humorous that, judging from their editorial comments, the editors of
Actes et documents seem to take Scavizzi seriously. However, because the interpretation
of Scavizzi as a teller of tall tales fairly leaps out at the reader from the
documents, it is possible that the editors have other thoughts on the subject of
Scavizzi that they have not expressed.
There is, however, one point of not negligible importance in connection with
463
464
356
Actes et documents, vol. 8, 669n.
Rhodes, 345; Waagenaar, 431.