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The Roman Catholic Church - through lobbying of Axis officials, provision of false documents, and hiding of people in monasteries, convents, schools, among families and the institutions of the Vatican itself - saved hundreds of thousands of Jews from being murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust. The Catholic Church itself faced persecution in Hitler's Germany, and institutional German Catholic resistance to Nazism was largely concerned with defending the Church's own rights and institutions. Broader resistance tended to be fragmented and led by individual effort in Germany - but in every country under German occupation, priests played a major part in rescuing Jews. Aiding Jews met with severe penalty and many rescuers and would-be rescuers were killed - as with St Maximillian Kolbe, Giuseppe Girotti and Bernard Lichtenberg who were sent to the Concentration Camps. In the prelude to the Holocaust, Popes Pius XI and Pius XII preached against racism and war in encyclicals such as ''Mit brennender Sorge'' (1937) and ''Summi Pontificatus'' (1939). Pius XI condemned ''Kristallnacht'' and rejected the Nazi claim of racial superiority, saying instead there was only "a single human race". His successor Pius XII employed diplomacy to aid the Jews, and directed his Church to provide discreet aid. While the overall caution of his approach has been criticised by some, his 1942 Christmas radio address denounced the murder of "hundreds of thousands" of innocent people on the basis of "nationality or race" and he intervened to attempt to block Nazi deportations of Jews in various countries. When the Nazis came for Italy's Jews, some 4715 of the 5715 Jews of Rome found shelter in 150 Church institutions - 477 in the Vatican itself and he opened his Castel Gandolfo residence, which took in thousands. Catholic bishops in Germany sometimes spoke out on human rights issues - but protests against anti-Jewish policies tended to be by way of private lobbying of government ministers. After Pius XII's 1943 ''Mystici corporis Christi'' encyclical (which condemned the killing of the disabled amid the ongoing Nazi euthanasia program), a joint declaration from the German bishops denounced the killing of "innocent and defenceless mentally handicapped, incurably infirm and fatally wounded, innocent hostages, and disarmed prisoners of war and criminal offenders, people of a foreign race or descent".〔Richard J. Evans; ''The Third Reich at War''; 2008 pp. 529–30〕 Resistor priests active in rescuing Jews include the martyrs Bernard Lichtenberg and Alfred Delp, and laywomen Gertrud Luckner and Margarete Sommer used Catholic agencies to aid German Jews, under the protection of Bishops such as Konrad von Preysing. In Italy, the popes lobbied Mussolini against anti-Semitic policies, while Vatican diplomats - among them Giuseppe Burzio in Slovakia, Fillipo Bernardini in Switzerland and Angelo Roncalli in Turkey rescued thousands. The nuncio to Budapest, Angelo Rotta, and Bucharest, Andrea Cassulo, have been recognised by Yad Vashem. The Church played an important role in the defence of Jews in Belgium, France, and the Netherlands, encouraged by the protests of leaders such as Cardinal Jozef-Ernest van Roey, Archbishop Jules-Géraud Saliège, and Johannes de Jong. From his Vatican office, Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty, operated an escape operation for Jews and Allied escapees. Priests and nuns of orders like the Jesuits, Franciscans and Benedictines hid children in monasteries, convents and schools.〔Martin Gilbert; ''The Righteous: the Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust''; Holt Paperback; New York; 2004; Preface〕 Margit Slachta's Hungarian Social Service Sisterhood saved thousands. In Poland, the unique Zegota organisation also rescued thousands and Mother Matylda Getter's Franciscan Sisters sheltered hundreds of Jewish children who escaped the Warsaw Ghetto. In France, Belgium, and Italy, Catholic underground networks were particularly active and saved thousands of Jews - particularly in northern Italy where groups like the Assisi Network were active, and in southern France.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Rescue )〕 ==Inside the Third Reich== While the Catholic Church in Germany was one of the few organizations that offerempd organised, systematic resistance to some policies of the Third Reich;〔Theodore S. Hamerow; On the Road to the Wolf's Lair - German Resistance to Hitler; Belknap Press of Harvard University Press; 1997; ISBN 0-674-63680-5; p.210〕 the considerable energies expended by the German church in opposing government interference in the church was not matched in public by protests against the anti-Jewish policies of regime.〔Ian Kershaw; The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation; 4th Edn; Oxford University Press; New York; 2000"; pp. 210–11〕 According to Ian Kershaw, while the "detestation of Nazism was overwhelming within the Catholic Church", traditional Christian anti-Judaism was "no bulwark" against Nazi biological antisemitism.〔Ian Kershaw; ''The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation; 4th Edn; Oxford University Press; New York; 2000; p.211-12〕 The Church in Germany was itself facing Nazi persecution.〔Theodore S. Hamerow; On the Road to the Wolf's Lair - German Resistance to Hitler; Belknap Press of Harvard University Press; 1997; ISBN 0-674-63680-5; p. 136〕 German bishops feared protests against the anti-Jewish policies of the regime would invite retaliation against Catholics.〔Hamerow, 1997, p. 138〕 Such protests as were made tended to be private letters to government ministers.〔Ian Kershaw; The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation; 4th Edn; Oxford University Press; New York; 2000"; pp. 210–11〕 The relationship of the Church to Jews had a chequered history, entailing both suspicion and respect. Geoffrey Blainey wrote, "Christianity could not escape some indirect blame for Holocaust. The Jews and Christians were rivals, sometimes enemies, for a long period of history. Furthermore, it was traditional for Christians to blame Jewish leaders for the crucifixion of Christ... At the same time, Christians showed devotion and respect. They were conscious of their debt to the Jews. Jesus and all the disciples and all the authors of the gospels were of the Jewish race. Christians viewed the Old Testament, the holy book of the synagogues, as equally a holy book for them...".〔Blainey, 2011, pp. 499–502〕 Hamerow writes that sympathy for the Jews was common among Catholics in the German Resistance, who saw both Catholics and Jews as religious minorities exposed to bigotry on the part of the majority. This sympathy led some lay and clergy resistors to speak publicly against the persecution of the Jews, as with the priest who wrote in a periodical in 1934 that it was a sacred task of the church to oppose "sinful racial pride and blind hatred of the Jews". The leadership of the Catholic Church in Germany, whoever, was generally hesitant to speak out specifically on behalf of the Jews.〔Hamerow, 1997, p. 74〕 Church resistance to the Holocaust in Germany was generally left to fragmented and largely individual efforts.〔 German bishops such as Konrad von Preysing and Joseph Frings were notable exceptions for the energy and consistency of their criticism of the government's treatment of Jews.〔Phayer, Michael. 2000. The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–1965. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-33725-9; p 77〕 Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber gained an early reputation as a critic of the Nazi movement.〔Encyclopedia Britannica Online: ''Michael von Faulhaber''; web Apr. 2013.〕 Soon after the Nazi takeover, his three Advent sermons of 1933, entitled ''Judaism, Christianity, and Germany'', affirmed the Jewish origins of the Christian religion, the continuity of the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, and the importance of the Christian tradition to Germany.〔 Though Faulhaber's words were cautiously framed as a discussion of ''historical'' Judaism, his sermons denounced the Nazi extremists who were calling for the Bible to be purged of the "Jewish" Old Testament as a grave threat to Christianity: in seeking to adhere to the central tenet of Nazism, "The anti-Semitic zealots..." wrote Hamerow, were also undermining "the basis of Catholicism. Neither accommodation, nor acquiescence was possible any longer; the cardinal had to face the enemy head on."〔Theodore S. Hamerow; On the Road to the Wolf's Lair - German Resistance to Hitler; Belknap Press of Harvard University Press; 1997; ISBN 0-674-63680-5; p. 140〕 During the 1938 ''Kristallnacht'' pogrom, Faulhaber supplied a truck to rabbi of the Ohel Yaakov Synagogue, to rescue sacred objects before the building was torn down. Following mass demonstrations against Jews and Catholics, a Nazi mob attacked Faulhaber's palace, and smashed its windows.〔Martin Gilbert; ''Kristallnacht - Prelude to Disaster''; HarperPress; 2006; p.143〕 The Bishop of Munster, August von Galen, though a German conservative and nationalist, criticised Nazi racial policy in a sermon in January 1934, and in subsequent homilies spoke against Hitler's theory of the purity of German blood.〔Anton Gill; An Honourable Defeat; A History of the German Resistance to Hitler; Heinemann; London; 1994; p.59〕 When in 1933, the Nazi school superintendent of Munster issued a decree that religious instruction be combined with discussion of the "demoralising power" of the "people of Israel", Galen refused, writing that such interference in curriculum was a breach of the Reich concordat and that he feared children would be confused as to their "obligation to act with charity to all men" and as to the historical mission of the people of Israel.〔Theodore S. Hamerow; On the Road to the Wolf's Lair - German Resistance to Hitler; Belknap Press of Harvard University Press; 1997; ISBN 0-674-63680-5; p. 139〕 In 1941, with the Wehrmacht still marching on Moscow, Galen denounced the lawlessness of the Gestapo and the cruel program of Nazi euthanasia and went further than just defending the church by speaking of a moral danger to Germany from the regime's violations of basic human rights: "the right to life , to inviolability, and to freedom is an indispensable part of any moral social order", he said - and any government that punishes without court proceedings "undermines its own authority and respect for its sovereignty within the conscience of its citizens".〔Theodore S. Hamerow; On the Road to the Wolf's Lair - German Resistance to Hitler; Belknap Press of Harvard University Press; 1997; ISBN 0-674-63680-5; p. 289–90〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Rescue of Jews by Catholics during the Holocaust」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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