Did the Vatican house Nazi war criminals?

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Marilena

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My younger sister told me today that the Vatican housed Nazi war criminals. She told me she watched it on a documentary in 1991
in England. I’d like to know if there is any basis in truth about this?
 
Maybe your sister is confused. I know the Vatican hid many Jewish refugees hiding from the Nazis:

"Prior to the Nazi invasion, the Pope had been working hard to get Jews out of Italy by emigration; he now was forced to turn his attention to finding them hiding places. “The Pope sent out the order that religious buildings were to give refuge to Jews, even at the price of great personal sacrifice on the part of their occupants; he released monasteries and convents from the cloister rule forbidding entry into these religious houses to all but a few specified outsiders, so that they could be used as hiding places. Thousands of Jews—the figures run from 4,000 to 7,000—were hidden, fed, clothed, and bedded in the 180 known places of refuge in Vatican City, churches and basilicas, Church administrative buildings, and parish houses. Unknown numbers of Jews were sheltered in Castel Gandolfo, the site of the Pope’s summer residence, private homes, hospitals, and nursing institutions; and the Pope took personal responsibility for the care of the children of Jews deported from Italy.”

catholic.com/library/how_pius_xii_protected_jews.asp
 
Here is one article:

srpska-mreza.com/Yugoslavia/views/saving-Nazis.html

“After the war, the Vatican, the OSS, the SS (Schutzstaffel, the elite guard of Nazi intelligence) and the various branches of (name removed by moderator) joined to do battle against the common Soviet enemy-and to help Nazi war criminals escape. In 1945, when the outcome of the war was no longer in doubt, the OSS approached Reinhard Gehlen, who was Hitler’s chief of intelligence on the Eastern Front. The aim was to revamp the Gehlen Organization into ‘an OSS-controlled operation.’ The plan was so successful that “Gehlen Org” was transformed into West Germany’s postwar intelligence agency, the BND, with help and money from the OSS’ successor, the CIA” from link: mosquitonet.com/~prewett/ncrmay890910.html
 
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Marilena:
Here is one article:

srpska-mreza.com/Yugoslavia/views/saving-Nazis.html

“After the war, the Vatican, the OSS, the SS (Schutzstaffel, the elite guard of Nazi intelligence) and the various branches of (name removed by moderator) joined to do battle against the common Soviet enemy-and to help Nazi war criminals escape. In 1945, when the outcome of the war was no longer in doubt, the OSS approached Reinhard Gehlen, who was Hitler’s chief of intelligence on the Eastern Front. The aim was to revamp the Gehlen Organization into ‘an OSS-controlled operation.’ The plan was so successful that “Gehlen Org” was transformed into West Germany’s postwar intelligence agency, the BND, with help and money from the OSS’ successor, the CIA” from link: mosquitonet.com/~prewett/ncrmay890910.html
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Most of the facts that are presented in these article are skewed and inaccurate. This is another attempt by the liberal left to discredit mother church, tell your sister that the Vatican archives say no such thing. And if the Vatican did help Nazi war criminals escape the Pope would have known about it. Your sister is being manipulated by the main stream liberal controlled media. You just have to accept the fact that some folks are just bitter with the Church. It’s because of Hitler’s pope that stuff like this gets out. Nothing will ever be good enough for some people. They know what the Pope did was right during the WWII, but they refuse to acknowledge it, given their stubborness and pridefulness.
 
google.com/search?q=Vatican+housed+Nazi+war+criminals.&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&start=10&sa=N

(Removed link to Serbian anti-Catholic site as per forum rules)
The Sunday Times - London, 13 January 2002
The Great Escape
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THE REAL ODESSA: How Perón brought the Nazi War Criminals to Argentina
by Uki Goñi (Granta £20 pp382)
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Reviewed by John Crossland
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The mass post-war escape of wanted criminals and Nazi collaborators, codenamed Odessa (Organisation der SS Angehoerigen, or Organisation of SS members), has inspired fiction such as Frederick Forsyth’s The Odessa File and the sadomasochistic The Night Porter, but only now does the true story emerge in all its sordid detail.
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It has taken five years’ dogged research by an Argentine journalist, Uki Goñi, to expose the cover-up, which existed on an international scale and involved the Vatican and the Red Cross, as well as the diplomatic corps and police and legal chiefs of several countries.
**
But the real architect of the secret-escape network was Juan Perón, twice dictator of Argentina - from 1943 until 1955, and then briefly in the early 1970s. Uki Goñi’s book forges the last links in a chain of evidence that leads ultimately to the chancellery of the Holy See, if not to the Holy Father, Pius XII, himself.
**
Goñi had to surmount two daunting hurdles: the Vatican’s archives were subject to 80-year closure, and all the files on Perón’s dealings with the Nazis were burnt, bar one, in 1996. His persistence paid off, however. He discovered that the private papers of one of the principal middle men in the Argentine dictator’s transactions had been moved back to Belgium, where he had been the arch collaborator with the Nazi regime. Further details of this sombre picture were filled in from the normally impenetrable Swiss archives and, crucially, American Secret Service papers - proving once again what can be achieved through a Freedom of Information Act that means what it says.
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The author, one feels, has written this book partly as expiation for being a passive observer of another Holocaust - the Argentine militarists’ reign of terror in the late 1970s. The fate of the “Disappeared Ones” (tortured, shot and buried in unmarked graves, or thrown out of aircraft over the South Atlantic) forms a leitmotif throughout the book.
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Apart from interviewing 190 players of varying importance in the Odessa drama, Goñi obtained a tape Perón made secretly in exile in Madrid, in which he confessed to his role in smuggling convicted war criminals out of Europe and offering them sanctuary in South America. They included notorious figures such as Adolf Eichmann, the mastermind of the Final Solution, and Josef Mengele, the Auschwitz “Angel of Death”, and hundreds of the fascist lackeys from all over Europe who had done Hitler’s bidding. Perón confided that the Nuremberg trials had “outraged his sense of military honour” and that he had determined to save as many as possible from Allied justice. He said bluntly, “In Nuremberg at that time something was taking place that I personally considered a disgrace and an unfortunate lesson for the future of humanity.”
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Goñi identifies the nerve centre of the operation as Perón’s Information Bureau, his secret service unit, housed next to his office in the presidential mansion. Its then chief, Rodolfo Freude, refused an interview with Goñi, but the author discovered that a simple letter of reference originating in the bureau, and the use of an alias, could be enough to obtain entry for a Nazi.
…
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Brought to justice
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Although thousands of Nazis found refuge in Argentina after the second world war, not all of them stayed. Many - like Josef Mengele who subsequently moved to Paraguay - fled Argentina in the late 1950s when the military regime that followed Perón handed over government to elected officials. Others were less lucky. In 1960, a Mossad snatch squad kidnapped Adolf Eichmann as he was returning home from work and smuggled him to Israel, where two years later, after a highly charged and very public trial, he was executed. As recently as seven years ago, Erich Priebke long wanted for his part in the massacre of 330 Italians in the Ardeatine Caves, was extradited to Italy, where, 54 years after the crime, he was finally sentenced to life imprisonment.
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ukinet.com/sunday-times.htm

(Removed link to anti-Catholic site as per forum rules) Un verifiable source.

(Removed link to Serbian anti-Catholic site as per forum rules)
 
The link you gave has the following quote:

“He was appalled to learn that the Vatican was considering the beatification of Pius XII. This would be 'a morally inadmissible act. Pius XII sold the soul of the Church to the Nazi Devil.”

The accusations against Pope Pius XII that he was complicit with the Nazis is has been proven to be false in the book by Rabbi David Dalin called “The Myth of Hitler’s Pope”.

Contemporary sources like the New York Times said on December 25th, 1941: “The voice of Pius XII is a lonely voice in the silence and darkness enveloping Europe this Christmas. … He is about the only ruler left on the continent of Europe who dares to raise his voice at all.”

www.buchanan.org/pa-98-0401.html
 
Yes, I agree she doesn’t trust the Vatican. She told me she had seen it on a documentary while she was in England a few years back. I have read the links I posted, as well that the pope helped
the jews. What is the truth of it all though? did the Vatican help
them escape? I also want to know if anyone in england can remember that documentary on tv? If so, who aired it? The BBC?
I cannot think the Vatican would help such people escape.
 
I went to www.bbc.co.uk and put Pope Pius XII in the search. None of the results seem to be about the documentary your sister said she saw 15 years ago. The few entries go only so far as saying the Pope did not do enough to help Jews (hiding thousands is not enough apparently), not that he hid Nazi war criminals.
 
I myself do not believe he housed them, but I think the main thing she was wondering is did the Vatican indeed house them, or help them to escape? She said she seen it on tv, whether or not the BBC was the one to air the documentary, I do not know.
 
Unfortunately, when you have something like this that is said to have been done “in secret”, that leaves a lot of room for fabrication.

Daniel Marsh highlights a section of an article which states that “Uki Goñi’s book forges the last links in a chain of evidence that leads ultimately to the chancellery of the Holy See, if not to the Holy Father, Pius XII, himself.” Cornwell’s book “Hitler’s Pope” (an accusation which he has since retracted) forges links to Pope Pius between Hitler. Because someone writes a book doesn’t mean it’s factual.

Pope Pius XII’s actions before and during WWII were clearly very Christian. I have a hard time believing that after he hid thousands of Jews, he would have helped Nazis escape prosecution.
 
If he later retracted it, why did he bother to write it in the first place??? For money grubbing? It isn’t factual! I never even
knew about this documentary, nor did I even know that there
was book about any of this. I only found out about it today.
 
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Marilena:
If he later retracted it, why did he bother to write it in the first place??? For money grubbing?
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According to Rabbi David Dalin, Cornwell had a gripe with the Church. On Amazon.com someone who read Dalin’s book summarized Dalin’s explanation for why Cornwell wrote his book this way, “these authors have as part of their agenda an attack on the Catholic Church and are using political means to try and foist their liberal agenda on the Church in all sorts of ways: changes in doctrine, changes in Church governance, changes in policy and all to the purpose of bending others to their views.”

Rabbi Dalin makes it very clear that he does not want to allow Cornwell to use the tragedy of the Holocaust to further his own political agenda. The main reason why Rabbi Dalin wrote his refutation, however, is to reverse the slander against someone he concludes to be a great friend to the Jews.
 
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Eden:
According to Rabbi David Dalin, Cornwell had a gripe with the Church. On Amazon.com someone who read Dalin’s book summarized Dalin’s explanation for why Cornwell wrote his book this way, “these authors have as part of their agenda an attack on the Catholic Church and are using political means to try and foist their liberal agenda on the Church in all sorts of ways: changes in doctrine, changes in Church governance, changes in policy and all to the purpose of bending others to their views.”

Rabbi Dalin makes it very clear that he does not want to allow Cornwell to use the tragedy of the Holocaust to further his own political agenda. The main reason why Rabbi Dalin wrote his refutation, however, is to reverse the slander against someone he concludes to be a great friend to the Jews.
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Yes, I agree. There’s another theory according the anti-catholics like Carrol, Hertzberg and others is that Pius XII should have excommunicated Hitler and that would have an affect on the Nazis. Unfortunately, this argument really holds no ground. Hitler while not having rejected the Christian faith categorically, pretty much excommunicated himself from the Catholic Church. Any Catholic organizations, priests and others who were involved in acts of treason were shipped off to Auschwitz and other concentration camps. Catholics were allowed to practice their faith, so as long as they didn’t commit acts of treason. The German Government would take the catholic priests they knew would not obey them, and replaced them with priests who they knew wouldn’t do anything.
 
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Marilena:
My younger sister told me today that the Vatican housed Nazi war criminals. She told me she watched it on a documentary in 1991
in England. I’d like to know if there is any basis in truth about this?
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This is the typical sort of “out of context or perspective” attack by the Protestants. Some German soldiers/officers sought help from the Vatican on the grounds that 1.) the Vatican was neutral during the war, and 2.) that if these German “people” were taken by the Russians, Brits, Americans, French, etc., they would probably be executed out of bias without a fair trial.

To the best of my knowledge, the vatican may have made a “quick” background check on these people, and then decided to help them flee to a country, such as Brasil, where these people would not be subject to what might be called lynching.

As it turned out, some were Nazi war criminals. But it is doubtful that the vatican knew what these people who were seeking sanctuary had done. So you see the pattern of the attack on the vatican…

German “person” seeks sanctuary from possible unfair trial - Vatican aides that person - person, years later, is discovered to be a war criminal - Therefore… The vatican intentionally took in “known” German Nazi war criminals and aided them.

This is the kind of accusation made in hindsight that the devil loves.

Thal59
 
I sincerely doubt that the Vatican housed Nazi war criminals, in fact it was quite the opposite, the Vaticans summer residence, Castle Gondolfo housed over 3000 jews during the holocaust - and I did hear that one on a documentary in England - thus it is so unlikely it will be biased, the presenter was not a Catholic!!😛
 
“Very few of the many recent books about Pius XII and the Holocaust are actually about Pius XII and the Holocaust,” says Rabbi David G. Dalin. In this bitingly perceptive phrase, Dalin sums up the main thrust of The Myth of Hitler’s Pope: How Pius XII Rescued Jews from the Nazis, just released by Regnery Press."

"If John Cornwell’s contentious screed is at all typical (and it most undoubtedly is), then the attacks on Pius XII quickly collapse into a mass of innuendo and crude prevarication. The most damning evidence that Cornwell could come up with, to “prove” that the future pope, Eugenio Pacelli, was pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic is a poor translation of a letter. The letter was written while Pacelli was Papal Nuncio in Munich in 1919. As cited in Hitler’s Pope, the correspondence gives the impression that he viewed all Jews as a vile Communist “rabble.” But given a correct rendering of the Italian, which Dalin provides, the accusation evaporates like early morning dew in the full light of the sun. It turns out that Pacelli’s communication is a factual account of Communist activities in Bavaria after World War I, which in no way betrays anti-Semitic bigotry. Such drivel would hardly be worth commenting on, especially since Cornwell offers a retraction in his latest, and equally silly, book about John Paul II (The Pontiff in Winter). But, as one might expect, his "about-face received only slight notice in the liberal media."

www.seattlecatholic.com/a050813.html
 
Marilena,

So what we have here is a vague accusation that the Vatican did something, with no solid evidence to back it up, and a demand to prove that the Vatican didn’t do it. How do you prove that something didn’t happen? All the evidence that you gather that it didn’t happen will be met with “But there may be something more out there that shows that it did happen.” Your sister needs to get something more solid than a television show from a decade and a half ago.
  • Liberian
 
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Liberian:
Marilena,

So what we have here is a vague accusation that the Vatican did something, with no solid evidence to back it up, and a demand to prove that the Vatican didn’t do it. How do you prove that something didn’t happen? All the evidence that you gather that it didn’t happen will be met with “But there may be something more out there that shows that it did happen.” Your sister needs to get something more solid than a television show from a decade and a half ago.
  • Liberian
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for your information friend my sister told me that as were discussing issues about the church, and she told me I could post it because I wanted to ask the question, she wanted to know what others here have to say about it. so hold your tongue when it comes to MY sister.
 
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