Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Vatican newspaper accuses US, Britain of holocaust inaction

A L'Osservatore Romano article says the US and British governments knew in detail of Hitler's plan to exterminate European Jews during World War II but failed to act for many months and even suppressed reports on the extent of the Holocaust.

The paper contrasted Allied inaction with the quiet efforts undertaken by Pope Pius XII to save as many Jews as possible through clandestine assistance, Catholic News Service reports.

The article reviewed historical information in support of an argument frequently made by Vatican experts: While critics have focused on Pope Pius' supposed "silence" on the Holocaust, little attention has been given to documented evidence that the US and British governments ignored or minimised reports of extermination plans.

The article quotes heavily from the diary of Henry Morgenthau Jr., US secretary of the treasury during the war, who said that as early as August 1942 administration officials "knew that the Nazis were planning to exterminate all the Jews of Europe."

Morgenthau cited a telegram dated August 24, 1942, and passed on to the State Department, that relayed a report of Hitler's plan to kill between 3.5 million and 4 million Jews, possibly using cyanide poison. The Vatican newspaper reproduced a copy of the telegram.

Eventually, in early 1944, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt set up the War Refugee Board that was credited with saving tens of thousands of Jewish lives.

But for 18 months before then, despite increasingly alarming reports, US officials "dodged their grim responsibility, procrastinated when concrete rescue schemes were placed before them, and even suppressed information about atrocities," Morgenthau wrote.

The Vatican newspaper article also cited a series of State Department orders apparently aimed at preventing reports on Nazi atrocities from reaching the public, which would have increased pressure on the administration for action.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Disclaimer

No responsibility or liability shall attach itself to us or to the blogspot ‘Clerical Whispers’ for any or all of the articles placed here.

The placing of an article hereupon does not necessarily imply that we agree or accept the contents of the article as being necessarily factual in theology, dogma or otherwise.

SIC: CTHN