Hitler's Final Solution and Vatican Policy

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 som

Related Essays

Vatican's Noninterference Policy for Final Solution .... had the effect of aggravating the impact of the Final Solution. .... the implications of the rise of Hitler" ("Jews" 337 .... Dawidowicz, Lucy S. The War Against the Jews .... (4097 16 )

ADOLF HITLER .... The pursuit of "The Final Solution" was a constant drain of Germany=s resources and .... to the development of modern Europe by Adolf Hitler was what .... (2881 12 )

Oppression of Jews During the Holocaust .... gascar; when that proved impractical, the "final solution" took shape. .... Rabbi Stephen S. Wise announced: "I would as .... if war were to be avoided, Hitler should be .... (2946 12 )

GERMAN INDUSTRY AND THE HOLOCAUST This research p .... the desired final solution of the Jewish Question" (Manchester 465 .... since Bosch made his compact with Hitler to prepare Germany for war IG's descent into .... (3291 13 )

Dickens Hard Times & Swift's Proposal .... Hitler, two centuries later, would use similar irrational logic to .... mass support of his own barbaric "final solution." In exposing .... In Ford, G. and Monod, S. (eds .... (2127 9 )

totalitarianism had nothing to do with the Jews, who had already been ghettoized and brutalized in Germany. Issued weeks after Germany's invasion of Poland, it cited blood of noncombatants in "our dear Poland, for its fidelity to the Church, for its services in the defense of Christian civilization" (qtd. by Cianfarra 199; emphasis added). Cianfarra calls the encyclical a continuation of Pius XI's fight against totalitarian regimes. But in 1938, Pius XI had directly and specifically confronted both Hitler and Mussolini regarding the threatened legal status of Jews in Austria and Italy and had called Mussolini's anti-Jewish laws "a true form of apostasy" (112; 133). Neuvecelle (34) notes Pius XI's uncharacteristic use of German in an encyclical condemning nazism; encyclicals by custom and practice are rendered in Latin. Cianfarra takes the view that Pius XII's fist encyclical answers criticisms that the Vatican had not sufficiently opposed Nazi behavior. But in fact the encyclical specifically and programmatically refers to the Christian (= Catholic) Poland, not the non-Catholic one. As well, Cianfarra himself cites the pope's policy "of neutrality and anti-Bolshevist stand" (206). Additionally, he cites an agenda submitted in 1

Category: Foreign - H