The purpose of this research is to examine the Vatican's noninterference policy in the face of Hitler's Final Solution, the name given to the Nazi policy of extermination of the Jews. The plan of the research will be to set forth the historical context in which the question of Vatican culpability in the Holocaust arises, in particular the first-century origins of Christian-Jewish schism, and then to discuss Catholic dogma within the Synagogue-Church division with a view toward determining whether a causal connection can be discerned between such dogma, the institutional divisions, and the policies pursued by the Vatican during World War II.
The Nuremberg Laws were the most far-reaching of the measures enacted specifically to strip Jews of their legal status in Germany, and in country after country that Hitler invaded as the war loomed. The Reich Citizenship Act deprived Jews of citizenship, making them subjects with alien status, and the German Blood Protection Act deprived them of contact with fellow Aryan citizens. The effect of these laws was to strip Jews of their membership in the political system on one hand, and of membership in the human community on the other. Once this was achieved, the stage was set for virtually any action the Reich deemed necessary to enforce the inferior status of Jews. Krausnick comments on "Hitler's real intentions" toward the Jews with the Nuremberg laws: "Out with them from all the professions and into the ghetto with them; fence them in somewhere where they can perish as they deserve while the German people look on, the way people stare at wild animals" (Krausnick 34). In due course, Jews were denied education, the right to practice the professions, the right to "Christian" names, access to the public streets, communication with the non-Jewish population (Hilberg 5). At the same time they were compelled to call attention to their "Jewishness" by carrying specially marked passports and ID cards, ma...