Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
he well knew, had not been specifically endorsed by the Vatican despite Allied
pressures.
Another letter we encounter in the Vatican documents was written to Pope
Pius in August 1942 by the Ukrainian Roman Catholic Archbishop André Szeptyczkyi.
The letter dwells at great length on supposed German atrocities, and the
reader will be very puzzled, especially in regard to motivation, until the last lines
are read and Szeptyczkyi finally comes to the whole point of his letter. He remarks
on his failures over a three year period to obtain from the Pope an Apostolic
Benediction (i.e. a papal endorsement, most important in religious politics)
and then points out that his sufferings and strivings under “evil” Germans should
certainly be adequate grounds for granting one at last. 469
That the few passages appearing in the Vatican documents and bearing on exterminations
of Jews merely reflect the evolution of the propaganda, as analyzed
in this book, is very clear. In Chapter 3 (p. 128) we noted that Burzio passed on to
the Vatican, from Slovakia, tales about soap factories, when such tales were a feature
of the propaganda. Another example is a set of notes made by Maglione on
May 5, 1943, recording extermination stories. The occasion for composing the
notes is not clear, i.e. the reader cannot tell from what has been published whether
Maglione was recording his own impressions or merely allegations made by
somebody else (other documents written by Maglione around that time do not
suggest that he believed the extermination stories). In any case, gas chamber exterminations
at Treblinka and near Brest-Litovsk are noted. The editors of Actes et
documents, obviously puzzled, remark: 470
“The information, probably delivered by an Italian official, would seem
quite old, since it mentions neither Birkenau nor Auschwitz, where the greater
part of the exterminations were concentrated at the time.”
Further on this theme, the editors remark that in 1943 471
“[…] the Allied propaganda, which dwelled abundantly on the German
atrocities, was completely silent on Auschwitz, for reasons which have never
been satisfactorily analyzed.”
Just as it was inevitable that some of the propaganda would manifest itself in
the Vatican’s documents, it was also inevitable that some of the truth, in regard to
the matters we are concerned with here, would find its way into that part of the
Vatican archives selected for publication. Thus, the documents suggest that the
Vatican did after all have some access to Jews in Poland, not only Polish Jews but
also Italian Jews who were deported after the German occupation of Rome on
September 8, 1943. 472 Also, the editors of volume 9 of Actes et documents (on the
subject of war victims in 1943) note that friends and relatives of deported Jews
were known to have later received mail from them, that the members of the Dutch
resistance who were “in constant contact with the Jews of their country [reported]
simply that the deportees were enlisted for work in the camps, while the aged
469
470
471
472
360
Actes et documents, vol. 3, 625-629.
Actes et documents, vol. 9, 39, 274.
Actes et documents, vol. 9, 42.
Actes et documents, vol. 9, 493, 499, 632-636.