Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
to enter and remain there for the care of the souls of the non-aryan Catholics.”
An editorial footnote remarks that the story from Holland was false. We remark
in passing that a considerable portion of the Vatican concern for aiding
Jews, in this period, was specifically for the families of Jewish background that
had converted to Catholicism and whose situation was particularly tragic, since it
seemed that nobody wanted them; the Germans considered them Jews, and the
Jews considered them renegades.
The preceding remarks of Orsenigo make it clear that he had heard certain horrid
rumors, although it is not clear what he meant by “massacres” (eccidi in
massa). There were, of course, as we noted in Chapters 5 and 7 (pp. 181, 272),
occasional massacres of Jews during the war, and the reports he had received may
have pertained to them or they might have had their origin in the extermination
propaganda that had recently started coming from Jewish underground organizations
in Poland. It is even possible that he was thinking of some report that
Scavizzi had made at the Berlin Nunciature in connection with the “information”
he transmitted in his letter of May 12, 1942. In any case, the Di Meglio letter of
December 9, 1942, shows that the Nunciature, at that time, had accepted no extermination
claims (except possibly for the story from Romania), if such claims
reached it.
There are just a couple more points worth discussion in relation to the Vatican
documents. During the war, the Vatican representative in Greece and Turkey was
Msgr. Angelo Roncalli, the later Pope John XXIII. On July 8, 1943, he reported to
the Vatican from Istanbul as follows: 467
“1. In accord with my rule of circumspection in my contacts with various
people, even those entitled to special respect, I avoid meetings not strictly necessary
or singularly useful. For example, I saw von Papen [German Ambassador
to Turkey] only once in six months, and only hastily and in passing on the
occasion of my Easter visit to Ankara. At the time there was much talk of the
Katyn affair which, according to von Papen, should have made the Pole reflect
on the advantage of their turning to the Germans. I replied with a sad smile
that it was necessary first of all to make them overlook the millions of Jews
sent to Poland and soppressi there, and that in any case this was a good occasion
for the Reich to improve its treatment of the Poles.
Now that von Papen has returned, as has the entire diplomatic corps, from
Ankara to Istanbul and the Bosphorus, occasions for meetings will not be lacking.
2. Now and then the fine Baron von Lersner comes to see me. […]”
Roncalli then proceeded to discuss matters not relevant to our subject. When
this document was published by the Vatican, the press reported that Roncalli had
remarked on “the millions of Jews sent to Poland and annihilated there,” 468 a fair
enough translation, but a few words on the point of the translation are worthwhile.
The Italian verb sopprimere (whose past participle appears in Roncalli’s note) is
467
468
358
Actes et documents, vol. 7, 473f.
New York Times (Apr. 5, 1973), 1, 5.