Catholic Church Officials Dispute Charge of Aiding Eichmann

Charges that agencies of the Roman Catholic hierarchy helped Nazi Adolf Eichmann to flee from the Allies after the collapse of the Hitler regime were challenged this weekend by church officials here.

The charges were made by Simon Wiesenthal, a Polish Jew from Austria, in his memoirs. Wiesenthal, who hunted Eichmann for 15 years and finally traced him to Argentina, said in his memoirs that Eichmann had been helped by Bishop Luigi Hudal, then rector of the Rome German Saint Mary Hospice, and by the Capuchin Friars in Rome.

In a statement in the news magazine Vita, published in Rome, Bishop Hudal admitted that Eichmann could have been one of the countless refugees the Vatican helped to flee to safety. Bishop Hudal, now a consultor in the Vatican’s Congregation of the Holy Office, said Eichmann’s identity was not known, if he was one of those aided.

“I am a priest, not a policeman,” the Bishop said. “My duty as a Christian in those confused years was to rescue those who could be rescued. I can neither confirm nor deny whether among those refugees there was Eichmann because none of them confessed their past and no Eichmann photos were available.

The General Curia of the Capuchin Friars issued a statement on behalf of Fathers Nenedetto and Antonio who were accused of having helped the Nazi, declaring that the Curia “categorically denies that Eichmann was a guest of the International College in Rome’s Via Scilia because the Institute’s discipline prohibits this.”

The statement added that Eichmann might have had contacts with the order but it would have been “under a false name because Father Benedetto worked for the persecuted and had previously extended the same assistance, in agreement with the ecclesiastical authorities, to thousands of Jews.”