Was the Nazis and the Roman Catholic Church together in the holocaust?

The Catholic Church firmly opposed Hitler both in Words and in actions.

We would not be able to provide a better testimony than that of the people who experienced the tragedy of those days.

When cardinal Pacelli was elected as Pope Pius XII, the official newspaper of the Nazi party wrote: "the election of cardinal Pacelli is not accepted with favor in Germany because he has always opposed Nazism."

In his encyclical letter Mit brennender Sorge (written not in Latin but in German, and addressed not to all Bishops but to the Bishops of Germany) Pope Pius XII wrote:

"We cannot consider a believer in God [...] whoever, following a pre-cristian understanding of ancient germanism, puts in place of the personal God the impersonal fate, renegating the divine wisdom and His providence; such a man cannot pretend to be accounted amidst the true believers. [...] Only superficial souls can fall in the error of speaking of a national God, of a national religion, and undertake the insane attempt of trapping within the boundaries of one nation, in the ethnic restriction of one race alone, God, Creator of the world, king and legislator of the peoples, in front of whom all nations are as small as droplets in a bucket of water. [...] We did not want, with an inopportune silence, to be guilty of not having clarified the situation, nor with an excessive rigor of having hardened the hearts of those who, being subject to our pastoral responsibility, are not less object of our love solely because they walk on the ways of error and have walked away from the Church." Hitler personally ordered all copies to be destroyed.

Major efforts were undertaken through private channels, diplomatic means, and secret initiatives to counteract Hitler's works of evil. Baptism certificates were given to Hebrews to save their lives. Shelter was also offered. Many religious men and women, as well as priests and bishops, suffered persecution and even death. Two famous examples are St. Edith Stain and St. Maximilian Kolbe.

In 1940, Albert Einstein wrote: "only the Catholic Church fully blocks the path of Hitler's campaign for the suppression of truth. Before I had no particular interest for the Church, but now I feel great affection and admiration for Her, because only the Church had the courage and perseverance to stand on the side of intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am thus forced to admit that what I once deprecated, now I appreciate without any reservation."

On December 25, 1941 the New York Times wrote in its editorial: "The voice of Pius XII is a lonely voice...He is about the only ruler left on the continent of Europe who dares to raise his voice"

In an emergency private directive issued in 1943, Pope Pius XII explicitly ordered: "give refuge to all jews persecuted by the nazi in all religious institutes, open the institutes and even the catacombs. " Chaim Weizmann (who in 1949 would become the first president of Israel) wrote: "The Holy See is giving her powerful help wherever she can to attenuate the fate of my co-religious under persecution." At the same time, Hitler told General Wolff, SS chief in Italy: "Woff, at what stage is the project to capture the Pope? I must take him immediately. Be ready to depart to Rome. I must occupy the Vatican immediately. We will apologize later."

Gary Krupp, president of Pave the Way Foundation, would later state: "On October 1943 in Rome there were 12,428 Hebrews. The direct action of Pope Pius XII saved the life of over 11,400."

In 1944, Isaac Herzog, Chief Rabbi of the British Mandate of Palestine (later Israel) said: "the people of Israel will not forget the help given to their persecuted brothers and sisters by His Holiness [the Pope] and His Eminent Delegates in one of the saddest moments of our history". In the same year, the Jewish News would report: "the Hebrew were kept safe within the walls of the Vatican during the German occupation of Rome."

In 1958, Golda Meir said: "during the decade of the Nazi terror, our people suffered a terrible martyrdom. The voice of the Pope was raised to condemn the persecutors and to invoke mercy for the victims."

In 1961, Gideon Hausner, Israeli chief prosecutor against Eichmann, would say: "the Italian clergy helped many Israelites and hid them in the monasteries and the Pope personally intervened on behalf of those arrested by the Nazi."

I invite you to see with your own eyes and hear with your own ears through, for instance, the documentary "A Hand of Peace: Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust". Please see the trailer at the link below.