Details of the combined efforts to rescue thousands of Jews during World War II by a representative of the Jewish Agency for Palestine and a Catholic cleric, who later became pope, have come to light through a recently published book.Professor Dina Porat of Tel Aviv University, a historian who has written extensively on the Holocaust, gained access to the private papers of Chaim Barlas, who together with Monsignor Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli (Pope John XXIII), used a variety of tactics to rescue thousands of endangered Jews from Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Greece and especially Hungary by enabling them to flee the ongoing Holocaust.
Barlas’ official papers, documents and letters were forwarded to the Zionist Archives in Jerusalem. But his personal records, stored in cardboard boxes and stashed in his family’s Tel Aviv residence, include dramatic accounts of Monsignor Roncalli’s emotional reaction on learning of the horrors described to him of the Auschwitz death camp.“He cried when Barlas showed him the evidence,” said Porat.
According to Michael Berenbaum, a Holocaust scholar and editor of the new Encyclopedia Judaica, “the fact of Monsignor Roncalli’s cooperation was well known, but the specific details and the depth of his personal responses had never before been so well documented.”
The papers include handwritten letters written to Barlas by Monsignor Roncalli in French (their common language) as well as copies of the Vatican diplomat’s correspondence with then-reigning Pope Pius XII in which he beseeched the Holy See to intervene in behalf of the endangered Jews.
Porat describes this material in detail in her book, “Tears, Protocols and Actions in a Wartime Triangle: Pius XII, Roncalli and Barlas.”
The contact in Istanbul between Barlas, who dealt with rescue for the Jewish Agency, and Monsignor Roncalli, a Vatican delegate to Turkey, lasted from early 1943 until late 1944, when the cleric was transferred to newly liberated Paris.
During the time he and Barlas worked together, mostly in Istanbul, Monsignor Roncalli sent to Pope Pius the Auschwitz Protocols, a 32-page document detailing the Nazi extermination efforts based on firsthand reports, revelatory at the time.
By then, pressure was building for a pontifical declaration condemning the Nazi war on the Jews.
The pope did not agree to go that far, though, limiting his rhetoric only to a general opposition to persecuting people because of their race or religion, with no specific mention of the Jews as the main victims of the Nazis.
The Barlas archive contains an account of an urgent meeting with Monsignor Roncalli that took place in March 1943 on the peril facing Slovakia’s Jewishcommunity. Barlas asked his host for help and was promised that a letter would be sent immediately to Slovakia’s anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi president, Father Jozef Tiso, a Roman Catholic priest, asking him to halt the deportations to nearby Auschwitz.
In her book, Porat writes: “Before promising, he prayed softly in Barlas’presence, asking God to have mercy on him and show him the right way, and then he added: ‘so be it, with God’s mercy.’”Bulgaria was another front in which the Barlas-Roncalli campaign to save Jewish lives was waged.
They learned of a Nazi plan to deport the Jews of Thrace and Macedonia, which then were under Bulgarian military occupation (in the context of Bulgaria’s status as an ally of Nazi Germany).
One day after Monsignor Roncalli was apprised of this scheme, he notified Barlas that “the king of Bulgaria promised him not to let the plan materialize.” Porat elaborates: “In May the Jews in Sofia [the Bulgarian capital] faced the same danger and Barlas hurried to Monsignor Roncalli on a Sunday after the morning mass.
“Roncalli himself immediately wrote a cable to King Boris and ordered his secretary to send it right away. On July 8, 1943, Barlas got a hand-written message in French from Roncalli assuring him that the matter had been successfully settled.”
Barlas assumed that Monsignor Roncalli had acted independently without awaiting permission or approval from the Holy See. This was based on the fact that he enjoyed excellent relations with the Bulgarian monarchy, having served for 10 years as a Vatican emissary to Sofia.
He also intervened on behalf of the Jews of Yugoslavia, Italy and Romania, particularly with regard to the Romanian Jews who were deported to Transnistria, a virtual Nazi-type concentration camp set up by the Fascist Romanian regime which also was allied with Nazi Germany. Monsignor Roncalli’s ultimate rescue effort focused on the beleaguered Jews of Budapest, who in 1944 were due to be expelled from Hungary aboard trains bound for Auschwitz.
In light of Monsignor Roncalli’s courageous activity, why has he not been included in the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial’s category of “Righteous Gentiles”? According to the director of its archive, Yaacov Lozowick, Monsignor Roncalli, like many other envoys who had diplomatic immunity, does not qualify on one count: “he did not risk his life to save Jews,” which is an explicit requirement of the Israeli law establishing the designation Righteous Gentile.
Former Knesset Deputy Yair Tsaban, who is familiar with Monsignor Roncalli’s admirable record during the Holocaust years, said there are two alternatives: “the Jewish National Fund could plant a forest in his name and Yad Vashem could devote part of its memorial museum to the effort he made to save Jewish lives.”
The postscript to this story took place in Paris and then in Rome. While serving in Paris, Monsignor Roncalli was asked by the Jewish Agency’s chief representative there, Moshe Sneh, to urge the Latin American countries, which were predominantly Roman Catholic, to vote in favor of the UN General Assembly resolution that was adopted (largely thanks to them),Nov. 29, 1947, on the partition of Palestine into two states, one Jewish and the other Arab.Monsignor Roncalli agreed and in the end, the resolution was carried.
This set the stage for the establishment of the State of Israel, May 15, 1948.Subsequently, as Pope John XXIII, Roncalli invited Jewish scholar Jules Isaac to consult on the role of the Church in fostering anti-Semitism.
The pope set the ecclesiastical stage for the revocation of the belief that the Jews were guilty of Jesus’ death.
The pope’s concepts were endorsed by the Vatican Council in 1965, two years after his term as pontiff had ended with his death.
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