A denial by the Vatican that it helped Nazi war criminals escape to South America after World War II has been labeled by the Simon Wiesenthal Center as “a poor attempt to evade the central issue.”
In a statement issued last Friday, a papal spokesman said charges that the Vatican aided top Nazis as part of its fight against communism were “historically false” and denied “Pope Pius XII and the Holy See the merit” for saving Jewish lives during and after the conflict.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Wiesenthal Center, charged that the Vatican statement ignores the real issue: whether the Holy See will open its official archives of the post-war period as they bear on the escape of war criminals from Europe.
On Monday, the director of Vatican Radio replied to the Wiesenthal Center, trouncing “the latest attempt to assign to phantom documents the job of proving the presumed leniency” of the Vatican toward the Nazis.
In a letter sent Feb. 6 to Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican’s secretary of state, the Wiesenthal Center requested access to the documents in order “to gain a better understanding” of how people such as Adolf Eichmann, Josef Mengele, Walter Rauff, Walter Kutschmann, Franz Stangl and Andrija Artukovic “made their way from Rome to freedom in South America.”
If the Vatican considers its statement as a response to the request, the “reaction is absolutely incredible,” Cooper said. The Vatican has not responded directly to the letter.
Cooper pointed to the recent action of Argentine President Carlos Menem in opening Argentina’s files on war criminals, as well as to similar actions by French Catholic Church officials and former East bloc countries.
“If the Vatican has nothing to hide, then it should share its archives with responsible researchers and historians,” Cooper said.
SAYS NAZIS HAD VATICAN ‘PROTECTORS’
Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal joined the controversy in an interview with the Italian newspaper La Repubblica. Wiesenthal was quoted as saying that the Vatican was part of a well-known escape route and that “the Nazis had many protectors in the Vatican.”
The escape route, known as the “rat line,” involved the International Red Cross, which issued passports to millions of legitimate refugees, but also to war criminals, Cooper pointed out.
The Red Cross issued the passports on the recommendation of various humanitarian and religious agencies, including the Vatican.
For instance, Mengele, the infamous “Angle of Death” at the Auschwitz extermination camp, entered Argentina in 1949 on a Red Cross passport. Whether Vatican officials played a part in his escape from Europe “is one of the things we want to find out,” said Cooper.
The role of the Vatican was written up in 1947 by Vincent La Vista, a State Department employee and military attache to the U.S. Embassy in Rome at the time.
In the “top secret” report, La Vista described the “rat line,” which helped, for example, Klaus Barbie, the “Butcher of Lyon,” escape Europe.
The confidential report was obtained by journalists through the Freedom of Information Act and made public in 1983.
It said Barbie’s help was provided by the Vatican, the Red Cross and the U.S. Army’s Counter Intelligence Corps.
The “rat line,” or monastery route, was known to the U.S. Embassy in Rome, which did nothing to stop war criminals from fleeing Europe, the report said.
The escape route was said to begin in Bavaria and the Austrian frontier, through the Italian Alps, to way stations in Italy’s south and, ultimately, departure from Genoa or Naples.
Barbie, for example, is believed to have dressed as a priest or monk and allowed to pass from monastery to monastery. He worked for U.S. intelligence after the war.
The International Red Cross has also refused to open its files.
Cooper expressed the hope that the American Red Cross would exert pressure on its parent body to reverse the policy.
Vatican historians have acknowledged that there were probably isolated Nazi sympathizers at the Holy See, such as Bishop Alois Hudal, but have rejected charges that there was an official policy to help war criminal escape.
There has been for years tremendous controversy over the wartime actions, or lack of such, by Pius XII, the wartime pontiff, who largely kept silent against Nazi atrocities.
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.
