The Holocaust: A Warning From History

Early in June 1943, Pope Pius XII addressed the Sacred College of Cardinals on the extermination of the Jews. "Every word We address to the competent authority on this subject, and all our public utterances," he said in explanation of his reluctance to express more open condemnation, "have to be carefully weighed and measured by Us in the interests of the victims themselves, lest, contrary to Our intentions, We make their situation worse and harder to bear." He did not add that another reason for proceeding cautiously was that he regarded Bolshevism as a far greater danger than Nazism. The position of the Holy See was deplorable but it was an offense of omission rather than commission. The Church, under the Pope's guidance, had already saved the lives of more Jews than all other churches, religious institutions and rescue organization combined, and was presently hiding thousands of Jews in monasteries, convents and Vatican City itself. The record of the Allies w...

Photo: Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Henry Morgenthau, Jr. Excerpts from FDR by Jean Edward Smith: From the beginning of his presidency Franklin Roosevelt had been sympathetic to the plight of the Jews. Yet he faced insurmountable obstacles. The immigration Act of 1924 was unyielding, and the Seventy-eighth Congress was in no mood to consider changes. Public opinion, always susceptible to nativist appeals, was at best indifferent. Church leaders for the most part remained silent, and the intellectual community, with few exceptions, took little notice. The State Department's striped-pants set (particularly those charged with immigration matters) was permeated with genteel anti-Semitism. The War Department -- from Stimson and McCloy to Marshall and Eisenhower -- resisted any diversion of military resources from the central effort to defeat Germany. And at the time the American Jewish community itself was divided. Members of the old-school Jewish establishment, primarily German in ori...

On the last day of September 1942, Adolf Hitler addressed Winter Relief Rally in the Sportpalast in Berlin. It was a short, uninspired speech delivered without the usual sparkle. It struck many foreign listeners as pure bombast of no import, but they missed the implications of the anti-Semitic remarks that accompanied Hitler's pledge to take Stalingrad. Perhaps it was because his words about the Jews had been so oft repeated. For the third time that year he reiterated his prediction that if the Jews instigated "an international war to exterminate the Aryan peoples it would not be the Aryan peoples that would be annihilated but Jewry itself." The motivation for this repetition was obscure except to those privy to the secret of the Final Solution. Each mention was a public acknowledgement of his program of extermination; each gave reassurance and authority to the elite charged with the task of mass murder. Noteworthy, too, was his repetition of the false date of the origin...

"One believes but can never fully comprehend." -- David Max Eichorn. On January 20, 1943, Himmler wrote to the Reich Minister of Transport about "the removal of Jews" from every area to which German rule or authority then extended. To complete this task, Himmler explained, "I need your help and support. If I am to wind things up quickly, I must have more trains for transport." Himmler's wish was the Transport Minister's command. Not that there had been any relaxation of deportations that winter. On the day after Himmler wrote his letter, a deportation train left Holland carrying all 1,100 adults from the Jewish mental home at Apeldoorn, and 74 boys and 24 girls from the nearby home for seriously physically and mentally handicapped children. There destination was Auschwitz; their fate was to be sent to the gas chambers on arrival. Fifty nurses accompanied the patients. They were put in a separate carriage at one end of the train and offered the choi...

In 1931, Heinrich Himmler began setting up a counterintelligence division of the SS. Acting on the advice of his associate Karl von Eberstein, Himmler agreed to interview Reinhard Heydrich, but cancelled their appointment at the last minute. Heydrich's wife ignored the cancellation message, packed Heydrich's suitcase, and sent him to Munich. Eberstein met Heydrich at the railway station and took him to see Himmler. Himmler asked Heydrich to convey his ideas for developing an SS intelligence service. Himmler was so impressed that he hired Heydrich immediately. Heydrich decided to take the job because his wife's family supported the Nazi movement, and the quasi-military and revolutionary nature of the post appealed to him. On 1 August 1931, Heydrich began his job as chief of the new 'Ic Service' (intelligence service). He set up office at the Brown House, the Nazi Party headquarters in Munich. By October he had created a network of spies and informers for intelligence...

The eighteenth century Austro-Hungarian town of Theresienstadt, part of Czechoslovakia since 1918, was known as Terezin in Czech. In October 1941, the 3,700 Czech inhabitants of the town were ordered to leave by the Germans, who turned it into a ghetto. More than 96,000 Jews were brought there from all over Europe. Conditions were harsh, dominated by overcrowding and hunger. More than 33,000 Jews died in the ghetto, mostly of starvation. Among those deported to Theresienstadt were artists, writers, musicians, scholars and teachers. Under Jewish leadership, several orchestras were founded there, as well as an operatic and theatrical troupe. Lectures were organized, and a library of 60,000 volumes opened. Jewish studies played a major part in cultural activities. Classes were held for the children, who had to carry their benches into the classroom under the protective eye of Jewish guardians, who, like all adults in the ghetto, were obliged to wear the yellow star. From January 1942, the...