The edore Cardinal Innitzer, Archbishop of Vienna, who, during the Nazi regime, was kept under close surveillance, today described to a J.T.A. correspondent the German treatment of Jews as “the most fiendish phase of Nazi barbarism.
“It was as wild beasts that the Nazis behaved toward the Jews,” he said. “And that was supposed to have been the finest flowering of German culture. Those who have not actually seen their deeds of horror find them impossible to believe. During all these last years I have been confined to my home under Gestapo guard. Nevertheless, Jews were smuggled in to see me. They told me first hand of their problems and together we arranged such relief as was possible under the circumstances.
“For example,” he continued, “we established a welfare service which sent hundreds of food packages monthly to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. The Nazis tried to break this up, but the joint work of Jews and Catholics continued. Unfortunately, they were all too few and those who worked with me on the project were seized by the Gestapo. Thank God, that the reign of terror has ended, though you can still see the marks of what we have experienced here,” he concluded.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
