The Polish Ambassador to the Holy See and the Holocaust

 

Archival research can be like looking for a needle in a haystack. But, along the way, you find some fascinating and even disturbing things of great significance, which you we not seeking.  My field of research is Ukrainian oriented, but Ukraine's story is part of a larger narrative and is interconnected with Polish, Austrian, Russian, and German history. A better understanding of the former can only be had by grasping its context upon the backdrop of the others.

 I used to wonder what the fuss was about in Poland about Auschwitz and why it was considered a memorial for Poles as well as for Jews. Although these reports have an indirect connection to Ukrainian history (there were several Ukrainians at Auschwitz), and perhaps are already published elsewhere, I felt compelled, as a witness before history, to post them. Tragically, the cycle of racial hatred and violence introduced and maintained by the Germans continued, later in the war, between Ukrainians and Poles.

Kazimierz or Casimir Papée (1889–1979), served as Ambassador of Poland to the Holy See from 1939 to 1958. He was born in Lemberg or Lwów, which is Lviv in modern day Ukraine. The majority of the city's population were Poles and in 1919 it became part of the Second Polish Republic. Lwów also had a large Jewish population which exceeded Ukrainians in number. Papée was appointed Ambassador in June 1939, only a few months before the onset of the Second World War. It was a time of high tension between the authoritarian "Regime of the Colonels" in Poland and the Holy See, and the post had remained vacant for two years after the death of long-time ambassador Władyslaw Skrzyński. 

Papée bombarded the Vatican with reports throughout the war. He was one of the strongest voices pressuring the Holy See to speak out against the Holocaust and became a thorn in the side of the papal Secretariat of State (Section for political affairs). He continued to maintain the embassy for the Polish Government in Exile after 1939. Even though his ambassadorial rank was revoked by John XXIII in 1958, he headed the Legation of the Government-in-Exile until his death, in 1979.

Below are English translations of two of Papée's French-language reports to the Vatican Secretariat of State concerning Auschwitz and the Shoah:

Vatican, November 21, 1941 

The situation in occupied Poland

 

[…] III Prison camp in Oświęcim

It is reported from reliable sources that Gestapo agents recently carried out a terrible massacre among those they had locked up in the Oświęcim Camp. It is said that 3,000 inmates were killed there during a single day in October. We still don't know their names.

The Oświęcim Camp – (the Germans gave this locality the name “Auschwitz”) – has existed since the spring of 1940. It was installed in the former barracks of the 73rd Polish Infantry Regiment. The number of prisoners – which can be determined by comparing the numbers that each of them wears sewn into their clothes – comes to 17,000; there would be among them more than 12,000 Poles and more than 4,000 Germans. – It must be emphasized that the vast majority of detainees in this Camp are subject to simple administrative provisions, without any court, in which they could have defended themselves, having ruled against them, and without any accusation made against them: the Gestapo arbitrarily sends there all those who seem dangerous or simply undesirable.

The Camp is surrounded by recently constructed walls, barbed wire and high voltage electrical wires. Surveillance is entrusted to a detachment of the Gestapo, which at its command – a strong military troop of SS men and numerous police dogs. The Camp depends on a higher office of the Gestapo, based in Katowice.

In order to isolate the Camp as far as possible from any contact with the population, last march, the Gestapo deported the inhabitants of the entire two kilometre zone around the barracks. For this purpose, the entire population of 3 neighbouring villages, as well as 80 % of the inhabitants of the town of Oświęcim, were deported. After these expulsions, approximately 5,000 prisoners from the Camp were often employed in work outside the barracks, always under the very strict supervision of the agents. The others never come out.

Recently, 19 prisoners were released. Those who have seen them say that they are almost mad, that several of them have broken limbs and that they are terrible to see. Those who have seen them note, with the deepest emotion, that the very appearance of the prisoners is terrible proof of a cruelty which cries to heaven for vengeance.

Stefan Petekycky from Auschwitz

There are children from 16 months old, and old people over 60 years old. The cold, the hunger, the bodily and moral tortures, to which they are subjected night and day, exterminate them. A crematorium, set up in the middle of the Camp, consumed no less than 10 corpses per day in summer, and up to 60 corpses in winter. Almost none of those who were locked up in the Camp in March 1940 have survived to date. The dead are replaced by new victims who are arrested throughout the country. They are, for the most part, intellectuals, and there are many priests and religious people. Recently, His Excellency Monsignor Wetmański, Auxiliary Bishop of Płock, also joined them.

The women from around Oświęcim, despite the terrible danger to which they were exposed, managed to come to the aid of the prisoners by smuggling them food. The poverty which reigns everywhere restricts these women’s Christian heroic activity to a minimum. No more than 300 prisoners are able to obtain additional food through these clandestine channels, which allows them to survive for some time to come.

Recently, in Warsaw, on the square in front of the central station, a film was shown entitled: “Europe on the front lines against the Bolsheviks”. After speaking about this “crusade”, the loudspeaker asked the question: “Where are you, Poles?” Voices immediately rang out from the entire crowd in response: “In Oświęcim!” - The show had to be suspended and various people were arrested. The word “Oświęcim” is written, like the “V” [Victory] on the walls and palisades, despite the Germans.

One of the Germans, a collaborator of the head of the Gestapo, publicly announced that “the Oświęcim Camp is one of Himmler’s glories”. They call this Camp “Todeslager” [Death camp].

Vatican, November 23, 1942

We are informed from Warsaw...  “[…] Mass executions of Jews continued. In Warsaw, Lwów, Wilno, Lublin, Przemyśl, Przeworsk, Tarnów – the number of Jews killed is calculated by many tens of thousands for each of these cities, not to mention all the others. They are killed by means of asphyxiating gas in rooms specially prepared for this purpose (and often in wagons), and by means of machine-gunning, after which the dead and the half-dead are covered with earth together. There are frequent cases of collective suicides of Jewish families; Jewish mothers throw themselves out of high-story windows with their children. In Lublin, the Germans themselves threw Jewish children onto the streets. In Przeworsk, a crowd of desperate Jews gathered around a cross, invoking the pity of Christ. We see everywhere convoys of Jews being led to death. Rumours circulated about the Germans using their corpses in chemical factories (soap factories).

It is already foreseen that the extermination of the Jews in Poland will soon end and that the special detachments, trained for this work, unable to stop shedding blood every day, will have a pressing need for other victims. Already in Eastern Little Poland [Eastern Galicia], men and women beggars have been hunted down and killed. It is feared that a general suppression of the elderly will soon be ordered. All these measures are taken because the aim is to reduce the number of mouths to feed. The sight of these deeds has immense repercussions on the mentality of the Poles: feelings of hatred continue to grow. [...]

Karol Wojtyła appears in Vatican Archives

Karol Wojtyła (1920–2005) is arguably the most famous Pole in history but he also made a major impact on Ukrainian history, especially on the fate of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church. Even before his election to the papacy as John Paul II in October 1978, Wojytła had become a pivotal pubic figure in his homeland where, as Archbishop of Kraków, he held the highest offices in the Church, second only to that of Polish Primate. A few days ago, I stumbled upon a letter written in September 1946, which might represent the first time he was brought to the attention of the Vatican.*

Wojytła’s path to leadership was anything but standard, and is perhaps better described by the old Christian proverb “The ways of Providence are infinite.” To be sure, his call to priestly service came about during a period of wartime terror, where millions were slated for destruction by racial hatred and totalitarian dictatorships.    

The Nazis not only sought to destroy the body, they also sought to destroy the soul. While the Jewish people were their particular focus, they also targeted others for destruction, and among the first victims of Hitler’s racist plan was Poland. Hypothetically, it would be interesting to observe the reaction of a Holocaust denier faced with the mountain of testimonies in Vatican archives. Combing through the Foreign Affairs section of the Archive of the Secretariat of State, a researcher is overwhelmed by reports from diplomats, military chaplains, church and civic leaders, many of which were eyewitnesses to the genocides and ethnic cleansings being perpetuated in the name of the Third Reich.

From 1942, reports began to observe that German atrocities against the Jews pointed towards an intention to bring about their complete annihilation. But Hitler’s eventual plans for the Slavic peoples were not entirely dissimilar. While the Catholic Church was barely tolerated in western Europe, in the east it was being destroyed. Polish bishops, clergy, and religious were imprisoned and killed, seminaries and universities were shut. Church leaders had to find creative ways to provide ministry to their suffering flocks. The Archbishop of  Kraków, Adam Sapieha, demonstrated fearless strength in dealing with the occupiers, who were perhaps a little in awe of a man who held the rank of prince of the Holy Roman Empire.

Unlike like his protégé Wojtyła, who was of humble origins, Sapieha came from an ancient noble line and was groomed for the highest offices in the Church from an early age. He studied in Vienna, Kraków, Lwów (Lviv), Innsbruck, and Rome. From 1905 to 1911, he worked in the Roman Curia as consultant on Polish affairs. In November 1911, he succeeded Cardinal Jan Puzyna, as Prince-Bishop of Kraków. In the normal course of things, the Austrian Emperor would have asked the pope to name Sapieha a cardinal (as per the imperial prerogative). Then came the First World War, the fall of Austria-Hungary and Polish Independence. Together with his friend Archbishop Teodorowicz, Sapieha went against Vatican’s plans for the Polish Church and opposed the papal nuncio, Achille Ratti. After Ratti was elected Pope Pius XI, in February 1922, Teodorowicz and Sapieha were forced to resign their seats as senators, and remained under a partial cloud, as far as Rome was concerned, until the end of the pontificate. The two prelates were also in opposition to the Piłsudski dictatorship and Sapieha had his windows broken by devotes of the late dictator, when he moved the latter’s tomb to a less prominent part of the Wawel cathedral crypt. In 1939, Pius XI and his successor Pius XII refused Sapieha’s resignation. Then, the outbreak of the Second World War changed everything. 

The Archbishop of Warsaw had died in 1938 and the Primate, Cardinal Hlond, was prevented from returning from abroad. Sapieha remained the senior churchmen with the burden of acting as the leader of the bishops within the country. This brought him up against German authorities, who had slated his church and his people for destruction. His reputation quickly changed from unpopular or unpatriotic to being considered a national hero.

On 2 November 1942, Sapieha appealed directly to the governor of German-occupied Poland, Doctor Frank and, the following year, convinced the bishops still at liberty to join him in a second appeal. In the name of humanity, the episcopate decried the killings, arrests, and restrictions on church ministry. They asked for Roman Catholic seminaries to be allowed to reopen, but a response from Berlin was not forthcoming. Their pleas were heard by Pius XII, who first instructed his nuncio in Berlin to submit a diplomatic protest to the German Government but the note was sent back. Further messages elicited a dismissive reply from Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German Foreign Minister.

Having failed to influence the German government directly, Pius XII protested on behalf of the Church in Poland in an allocution to the College of Cardinals in June 1943. Translated into Polish, it was read from the pulpit in Warsaw Cathedral. His messages received effusive thanks from the episcopate, from Prime Minister Sikorski, and President Raczkiewicz, who declared himself “profoundly moved by Your Holiness’s words.”

In the meantime, imprisoned and murdered priests had to be replaced, Sapieha opened a clandestine seminary and informed Rome of the situation. When Pius XII learned of the seminary, he instructed the Secretariat of State to send the following message to the Archbishop: “The August Pontiff, with good wishes and fervent prayer, supports this initiative, which is so important for the future of the Church in those regions.” Little did the pontiff know how important the underground seminary would become for the entire world it was already preparing his successor in the Chair of Peter.

No sooner had the Nazis been defeated when Poland, abandoned by the European Allies, was forced by the victorious Soviets to accept another totalitarian regime. Adam Sapieha was finally created cardinal in February 1946 and, undeterred, remained at his post until his death, in 1951. In the meantime, he began to prepare the Polish Church to bring forth new laborers for the spiritual harvest.

On 22 September 1946, Sapieha sent the following letter to Monsignor Domenico Tardini, head of the Secretariat of State’s section for Extraordinary (Diplomatic) Affairs: 

 

Most Illustrious Monsignor,

You will easily understand that we very much want to send our seminarians to Roman universities in order to give them the possibility to perfect their studies and to live, for a time, in the capital of the Church. However, in order to enter Italy, it is necessary to have permission from the Italian Government and to be provided for financially. Wherefore, I am asking if, in some way, You could obtain this permission for us. As to being looked after, they would stay at a College that would provide for them. 

For the moment, we hope to be able to obtain passport for two students, that is, Karol Wojtyła and Stanisław Starowiejski, students of Kraków Diocesan Seminary. I apologize, Monsignor, for disturbing You, but it was necessary to take advantage of the occasion. 

(translated from the Italian original)

 

With the two seminarians' curricula vitae enclosed, Cardinal Sapieha’s letter arrived at the Vatican on 1 October 1946, although the official charged with the correspondence , Monsignor Antonio Samoré [future Cardinal Archivist and Librarian of he Holy Roman Church] was at a loss to explain how it had been delivered. On 4 October, Tardini presented a nota verbale to the Italian Ambassador to the Holy See, asking for his assistance and mentioning the names of the two students. 

For a seminarian to be ‘mentioned in dispatches’ by name is a rare thing. And this letter might well represent the first mention of Wojtyła in correspondence with the Apostolic See, contained in Vatican archival collections.* Sapieha had not specified but, in fact, neither seminarian had yet been ordained. Wojtyła was to receive minor orders and subdiaconate on 13 October, diaconate on 20 October, and priestly orders on 1 November. He was already in Rome on 15 November and registered at the Pontifical Athenaeum (later University) of Saint Thomas Aquinas (known as the Angelicum) on 26 November. This author, who studied Philosophy and Theology at the same university, was privileged to have been present in 1994, when John Paul II came to the Angelicum’s aula magna, which had been renamed in his honour.

* Update  (28.10.2020): The director of the Archive of the Second Section of the Secretariat of State, Dr Johan Ickx, has recently released his new book: Le Bureau: Les Juifs de Pie XII. Upon acquiring a copy today, I discovered that the correspondence pertaining to Wojtyła is mentioned. Ickx also reproduces a photo of the cv sent to Rome but does not provide the text of Sapieha's letter, as I have above, nor mention some of the other details, regarding the incident, mentioned here in this blogpost. The book had not been released at the time I published my findings.

On 27 October 2020, John Burger published an article about this post on Aleteia.

The Vatican and Events in Soviet Ukraine

Next month, I will be presenting an overview on post 1939 Vatican sources pertaining the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, in a conference organized by the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv. Much of this information comes from a book I am publishing about Metropolitan Sheptytsky and from recently opened archives.

During the Second World War, the Holy See (the Vatican) struggled to obtain reliable information about the situation of the local Churches in war-torn Europe. This was particularly difficult in areas under the control of Soviet forces, which did not permit communication with the rest of the world.

  Soon after the Nazis and Soviets partitioned Poland, in September 1939, rumours began circulating in the west that Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky, Greek-Catholic primate and Archbishop of Lviv-Halych, had been arrested, deported, or killed by the Soviet invaders. Indeed, Sheptytsky himself had been expecting such a scenario, since the Imperial Russian authorities had deported and imprisoned him in 1914. But no such orders were issued, neither in September 1939 nor when the Soviets returned to Lviv in the summer of 1944, following a German interregnum. Kyr Andrey’s moral authority had become too great and Stalin preferred to wait for his imminent demise before setting in motion his plans to suppress and merge the Greek-Catholic Church with his own state-controlled entity, staffed (especially in Ukraine) by clerics working for the Soviet secret services.

            Having endured most of the Second World War, following a long and painful illness, Metropolitan Andrey finally succumbed on 1 November 1944. His brother, Hieromonk Klymentiy, wrote a note to their other brother, General Stanisław, which read: “This very day, at a quarter-to-two in the afternoon, our dear Metropolitan fell asleep in the Lord.” Four days later, news of the venerable prelate’s death was already appearing in the European press, and the Polish Ambassador to the Holy See informed the Papal Secretariat of State of the fact on 12 November. A brief notice was published on the front page of the Vatican newspaper Osservatore Romano on 14 November followed, the next day, by a longer panegyric containing laudatory declarations from the Cabinet of Ministers of the Polish Government in London. The Government-in-Exile also ordered a solemn requiem Mass to be said by the Polish Military Ordinary on 2 December, at the Church of Saint Stanislaw in Rome.

Confirmation of Sheptytsky’s death from Lviv was not forthcoming for three months. On 6 March 1945, a letter arrived from Sheptytsky’s successor, Metropolitan Yosyf Slipyi, addressed to Pope Pius XII and dated 19 November 1944. Cardinal Eugène Tisserant, head of the Congregation for the Eastern Church (Oriental Congregation), presented the letter to the Pope when he was next received in audience, on 10 March.

News of Slipyi’s succession presented a problem for the Vatican. According to the Concordat between the Holy See and the Second Polish Republic, episcopal appointments required a nihil obstat from the Polish President. But Slipyi had been appointed secretly as coadjutor-successor to Sheptytsky in November 1939, shortly after the Soviet takeover. The Vatican foreign ministry (a section of the Secretariat of State) chose to keep the appointment secret until the end of the war, in order to avoid an inevitable clash with the exiled government. After news arrived that Slipyi succeeded to the post, this became unavoidable.

Monsignor Domenico Tardini, head of the Vatican foreign office, informed Polish Ambassador Casimir Papée that Yosyf Slipyi had succeeded Andrey Sheptytsky in the primatial Lviv-Halych See. Papée had no choice but to issue a diplomatic protest, but his government was in a precarious position. In July 1945, the United States followed by the Allied Governments gave in to Stalin and transferred diplomatic recognition from London to Lublin, where the Soviet occupiers had set up a supposed coalition which was really a Communist regime. Although Papée tried everything to countermand the appointment, in the end diplomatic notes were exchanged stating that it was an exception to the rule, made under wartime conditions. Rather than the exception, it became the new norm: No further placets would be solicited from London, and the Polish People's Republic declared the concordat to be void.

Unbeknown to either party, three days before the Holy See and the Government-in-exile resolved the theoretical conundrum, the entire Greek-Catholic hierarchy, including Slipyi, was arrested and deported by the Soviet secret police. The first news of their arrest reached the Vatican three months later from a Greek-Catholic priest of Polish origins, Count Piotr Rzewuski (later known as Bronsisław Kreuza). He had been a eyewitness to Sheptytsky’s death and the events that followed. As a Pole, he was permitted to leave Soviet Ukraine on 15 June and immediately made his way to Rome. 

After checking his story with the exiled auxiliary-bishop of Lviv, Ivan Buchko, Cardinal Tisserant informed Pius XII on 11 August 1945. At the audience’s conclusion, the Pope kept the typed agenda (foglio di udienza), containing the details, among his own papers. Tisserant’s second in command, Bishop Antonio Arata, sent official notification to the Secretariat of State on 17 September. A week later, further details arrived, via Bishop Buchko, from five sources that had contact with Ukraine via underground agents. The sources specified the exact date of the hierarchs arrest, 11 April 1945, and confirmed their deportation to Kiev, the capital of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. In October, Rzewuski would be allowed to present to the pontiff the homage of the loyal Ukrainian clergy, who had been “deprived of their shepherd.” In December, the Pope issued an encyclical letter, Orientales omnes, decrying their imprisonment only days after the Russian Patriarch issued a call to Greek-Catholics to join his fold (a call which would be implemented by force by the NKVD at a fake synod, the following year).

No concrete news of the Ukrainian Catholic bishops’ condition would be be forthcoming for a decade. False reports were published announcing Slipyi’s demise, the first of these appearing in January 1945 in the British Catholic paper, The Tablet. Following the hierarchs’ condemnation by a Soviet military tribunal, on 3 June 1946, the Holy See assumed that Slipyi had died, and Tardini said as much to the peeved Polish ambassador. It was only after Stalin’s death, and the release of some of the bishops and clergy from the gulag, that news to the contrary reached Vatican City. In January 1954, Buchko (now Archbishop), reported that Slipyi was still alive and in prison. The news prompted an elderly and ailing Pius XII to include Slipyi’s name at the top of hierarchs to which he addrressed his encyclical Novimus nos in May 1956. The following December, he sent a formal apostolic letter to Slipyi on the occasion of the latter’s seventieth birthday, congratulating him on his fidelity. We know that a copy of the papal message reached the imprisoned metropolitan. Pius XII did not live to greet Slipyi upon his arrival in Rome seven years later, in January 1963. Negotiations for the longsuffering prelate’s release were carried out by curial officials of Pius’ successor, Pope John XXIII.

Polish Government-in-Exile Mourns Metropolitan Sheptytsky

The following statement from Minister of Religion and Education, Monsignor Zygmunt Kaczyński, appeared on the front page of Dziennik Polski and L'Osservatore Romano, respectively the principal news organs of the Polish Government-in-Exile in London and of the Holy Apostolic See:

"The loss of Metropolitan Sheptytsky is grave as much for Poles as for the Ukrainian peoples of Poland. The deceased combined in his person the eminent qualities of pastor of souls and patriot. Throughout forty-years of intense activity, he efficaciously contributed to the development of the religious and cultural life of the entire [Polish] nation and, understanding the absolute necessity, he constantly strove to bring Ukrainians to Poles closer together, on the frontiers of the their common homeland. During the occupation, Metropolitan Sheptytsky maintained his constant line of conduct, concerned as always for so many suffering people. In his pastoral letters, he always encouraged the faithful and his fellow citizens to maintain cohesion, deploring their fratricidal conflicts. We unite, the minister concluded, with the Ruthenian [Ukrainian] Catholics of the district of Lwów, who have been left orphaned of their Shepherd, and we mourn the loss of such an eminent personality and pray ardently for the repose of this chosen soul."

— “Per la Morte di Mons. Szeptyckyj,” in Osservatore Romano (15 November 1944), p.1. cfr. "Minister ks. Kaczyński o śp. Metr. Szeptickim," in Dziennik Polski i Dziennik Zołniera (10 November 1944), p. 1.

Monsignor Kaczyński later returned to Poland, was arrested by the Communists in 1948 and 1951, and was executed in prison on 13 May 1953.