Second World War tank and anti-aircraft gun found hidden in basement of villa in Germany

By Melanie Hall, Berlin

(The Telegraph) German soldiers grappled for nine hours with an unusual task: trying to remove a Second World War tank found in the cellar of a villa.

Almost 20 soldiers struggled to remove the tank from a villa on Thursday in a wealthy suburb of Kiel in northern Germany, after police searching the property discovered the tank, a torpedo, an anti-aircraft gun and other weapons in the cellar on Wednesday.

Police raided the home in the town of Heikendorf under instructions from prosecutors, who suspected that the villa's 78-year-old owner held the weaponry illegally under a law controlling the possession of instruments of war.

The army was called in to try to remove the 1943-vintage Panther tank, and struggled for nine hours to tow it out using two modern recovery tanks designed to haul damaged battle tanks off the field.

The soldiers ended up having to build their own wooden ramp in order to free to tank.

Ulrich Burchardi, an army spokesman, described the difficult task of removing the tank without damaging the house as “precision work.”

Prosecutors in Kiel were alerted to the existence of the weapons by the authorities in Berlin, who had previously searched the villa for stolen Nazi art around a month earlier, national newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung reported.

But Peter Gramsch, lawyer for the villa’s owner, claimed that the tank and the anti-aircraft gun could no longer fire their weapons and were therefore not breaking any law.

He told the newspaper there was even a note from the responsible district office from 2005 stating that the tank had lost its weapons capability.

Mr Gramsch now wants to take legal action against the seizure and also for compensation for his client.

“I assume that the tank was damaged in the process,“ he said... (continued)

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• Second World War tank and anti-aircraft gun found hidden in basement of villa in Germany

US bomber crew shot down over Japan were dissected while ALIVE in horrific WW2 experiments: Japanese university acknowledges full details of atrocity 70 years on

By Elaine O'flynn For Mailonline

(Daily Mail) A Japanese university has opened a museum acknowledging that its staff dissected downed American airmen while they were still alive during World War Two.

The move is a striking step in a society where war crimes are still taboo and rarely discussed, although the incident has been extensively documented in books and by US officials.

A gruesome display at the newly-opened museum at Kyushu University explains how eight US POWs were taken to the centre’s medical school in Fukuoka after their plane was shot down over the skies of Japan in May 1945.

There, they were subjected to horrific medical experiments - as doctors dissected one soldier’s brain to see if epilepsy could be controlled by surgery, and removed parts of the livers of other prisoners as part of tests to see if they would survive.

Another soldier was injected with seawater, in an experiment to see if it could be used instead of sterile saline solution to help dehydration. All of the soldiers died from their ordeal.

The horrific episode has been described in previous books, one by a Japanese doctor who took part in the experiments, but the museum represents an official acknowledgement of the atrocity

When the incidents came to light during a discussion with professors in March, the university decided to include information about the experiments within their new museum.

About twelve airmen - the exact number is unclear - were aboard Captain Marvin Watkins' B-29 when it took off from Guam on a bombing raid against an airfield in Fukuoka... (continued)

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• US bomber crew shot down over Japan were dissected while ALIVE in horrific WW2 experiments: Japanese university acknowledges full details of atrocity 70 years on

German pilot in WWII spared an American B-17 pilot over Germany only to reunite 40 years later and become fishing buddies

(War History Online) The pilot glanced outside his cockpit and froze. He blinked hard and looked again, hoping it was just a mirage. But his co-pilot stared at the same horrible vision.

“My God, this is a nightmare,” the co-pilot said.

“He’s going to destroy us,” the pilot agreed.

The men were looking at a gray German Messerschmitt fighter hovering just three feet off their wingtip. It was five days before Christmas 1943, and the fighter had closed in on their crippled American B-17 bomber for the kill.

The B-17 pilot, Charles Brown, was a 21-year-old West Virginia farm boy on his first combat mission. His bomber had been shot to pieces by swarming fighters, and his plane was alone in the skies above Germany. Half his crew was wounded, and the tail gunner was dead, his blood frozen in icicles over the machine guns.
But when Brown and his co-pilot, Spencer “Pinky” Luke, looked at the fighter pilot again, something odd happened. The German didn’t pull the trigger. He nodded at Brown instead. What happened next was one of the most remarkable acts of chivalry recorded during World War II. Years later, Brown would track down his would-be executioner for a reunion that reduced both men to tears.

Living by the code

People love to hear war stories about great generals or crack troops such as Seal Team 6, the Navy unit that killed Osama bin Laden. But there is another side of war that’s seldom explored: Why do some soldiers risk their lives to save their enemies and, in some cases, develop a deep bond with them that outlives war?
And are such acts of chivalry obsolete in an age of drone strikes and terrorism?

Charles Brown was on his first combat mission during World War II when he met an enemy unlike any other.

Those are the kinds of questions Brown’s story raises. His encounter with the German fighter pilot is beautifully told in a New York Times best-selling book, “A Higher Call.” The book explains how that aerial encounter reverberated in both men’s lives for more than 50 years.

“The war left them in turmoil,” says Adam Makos, who wrote the book with Larry Alexander. “When they found each other, they found peace.”

Their story is extraordinary, but it’s not unique. Union and Confederate troops risked their lives to aid one another during the Civil War. British and German troops gathered for post-war reunions; some even vacationed together after World War II. One renowned American general traveled back to Vietnam to meet the man who almost wiped out his battalion, and the two men hugged and prayed together.

What is this bond that surfaces between enemies during and after battle?

It’s called the warrior’s code, say soldiers and military scholars. It’s shaped cultures as diverse as the Vikings, the Samurai, the Romans and Native Americans, says Shannon E. French, author of “Code of the Warrior.”

The code is designed to protect the victor, as well as the vanquished, French says.

“People think of the rules of war primarily as a way to protect innocent civilians from being victims of atrocities,” she says. “In a much more profound sense, the rules are there to protect the people doing the actual fighting.”

The code is designed to prevent soldiers from becoming monsters. Butchering civilians, torturing prisoners, desecrating the enemies’ bodies — are all battlefield behaviors that erode a soldier’s humanity, French says.
The code is ancient as civilization itself. In Homer’s epic poem, “The Iliad,” the Greek hero Achilles breaks the code when his thirst for vengeance leads him to desecrate the body of his slain foe, the Trojan hero Hector.

“There is something worse than death, and one of those things is to completely lose your humanity.”Most warrior cultures share one belief, French says:

The code is still needed today, French says.

Thousands of U.S. soldiers returning from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder. Some have seen, and have done, things that are unfathomable.

A study of Vietnam veterans showed that those who felt as if they had participated in dishonorable behavior during the war or saw the Vietnamese as subhuman experienced more post-traumatic stress disorder, French says.

Drone warfare represents a new threat to soldiers’ humanity, French says.

The Pentagon recently announced it would award a new Distinguished Warfare Medal to soldiers who operate drones and launch cyberattacks. The medal would rank above the Bronze Star and Purple Heart, two medals earned in combat.

At least 17,000 people have signed an online petition protesting the medal. The petition says awarding medals to soldiers who wage war via remote control was an “injustice” to those who risked their lives in combat.

Outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta defended the new medal at a February news conference.
“I’ve seen firsthand how modern tools, like remotely piloted platforms and cybersystems, have changed the way wars are fought,” Panetta says. “And they’ve given our men and women the ability to engage the enemy and change the course of battle, even from afar.”

Still, critics ask, is there any honor in killing an enemy by remote control?

French isn’t so sure.

“If [I'm] in the field risking and taking a life, there’s a sense that I’m putting skin in the game,” she says. “I’m taking a risk so it feels more honorable. Someone who kills at a distance — it can make them doubt. Am I truly honorable?”

The German pilot who took mercy

Revenge, not honor, is what drove 2nd Lt. Franz Stigler to jump into his fighter that chilly December day in 1943.

Stigler wasn’t just any fighter pilot. He was an ace. One more kill and he would win The Knight’s Cross, German’s highest award for valor.

Yet Stigler was driven by something deeper than glory. His older brother, August, was a fellow Luftwaffe pilot who had been killed earlier in the war. American pilots had killed Stigler’s comrades and were bombing his country’s cities.

Stigler was standing near his fighter on a German airbase when he heard a bomber’s engine. Looking up, he saw a B-17 flying so low it looked like it was going to land. As the bomber disappeared behind some trees, Stigler tossed his cigarette aside, saluted a ground crewman and took off in pursuit.

As Stigler’s fighter rose to meet the bomber, he decided to attack it from behind. He climbed behind the sputtering bomber, squinted into his gun sight and placed his hand on the trigger. He was about to fire when he hesitated. Stigler was baffled. No one in the bomber fired at him.

He looked closer at the tail gunner. He was still, his white fleece collar soaked with blood. Stigler craned his neck to examine the rest of the bomber. Its skin had been peeled away by shells, its guns knocked out. He could see men huddled inside the plane tending the wounds of other crewmen.

Then he nudged his plane alongside the bomber’s wings and locked eyes with the pilot whose eyes were wide with shock and horror.

Franz Stigler wondered for years what happened to the American pilot he encountered in combat.

Stigler pressed his hand over the rosary he kept in his flight jacket. He eased his index finger off the trigger. He couldn’t shoot. It would be murder.

Stigler wasn’t just motivated by vengeance that day. He also lived by a code. He could trace his family’s ancestry to knights in 16th century Europe. He had once studied to be a priest.

A German pilot who spared the enemy, though, risked death in Nazi Germany. If someone reported him, he would be executed.

Yet Stigler could also hear the voice of his commanding officer, who once told him:

“You follow the rules of war for you — not your enemy. You fight by rules to keep your humanity...”

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• German pilot in WWII spared an American B-17 pilot over Germany only to reunite 40 years later and become fishing buddies

Hitler’s Pope, Nazi Crimes, and The New York Times

By Father Gordon J. MacRae

New evidence unmasks a myth that Pope Pius XII was “Hitler’s Pope:’ and a shocking failure of The New York Times to tell the world of the Holocaust.

These Stone Walls might seem a strange place to be reading this story, but in a way it might make sense. Too many Catholic writers today seem to fear The New York Times and the rest of the mainstream news media.

It’s a subtle fear that I laid out in “The Catholic Press Needs to Get Over Its Father Maciel Syndrome.” There are courageous exceptions, of course, and notable among them are Bill Donohue of The Catholic League and David F. Pierre of The Media Report. Both have repeatedly and forcefully called The New York Times to task for its distortions of news pertaining to the Catholic Church. Nowhere have these distortions been more evident than in the Catholic sex abuse scandal, a drama I have lived every day for the last 18 years. It’s also a drama that leads the late 20th Century litany of anti-Catholic agendas in the news. I gave several examples in a post entitled “Catholic Scandal and the News Media.”

Running a close second in that litany is the story of Pope Pius XII during the Holocaust. You have all read or heard the claims that Pope Pius XII was silent, at best, during the Holocaust, and at worst secured an accommodation with the Third Reich that saved the Catholic Church at the expense of the Jews. It’s not at all true, but the truth has had an uphill climb against the pervasive story, told again and again, that Pope Pius XII failed to confront Hitler during his systematic genocide of over six million European Jews and millions of others. You’ve heard the story of this supposed silence in a slanderous media sound bite that Pope Pius XII was “Hitler’s Pope.” Next to the “pedophile priest” propaganda, it is probably the most often used and abused modern anti-Catholic slur. But simply put, it is a lie.

Newly emerging evidence reveals that the entire story was the result of an organized propaganda effort sponsored by the Soviet KGB to discredit Pope Pius XII and the Catholic Church. It’s a shocking story, the stuff of Tom Clancy novels and wild conspiracy theories, but it’s also true, and I’ll unravel that truth in a few moments... (continued)

Read More at These Stone Walls

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• Hitler’s Pope, Nazi Crimes, and The New York Times

The Twinkie Changed For Good Thanks To World War II

By Dina Spector

(Business Insider) Hostess Brands announced yesterday it was shutting down operations after failing to reach an agreement with thousands of striking bakery workers.

The 82-year-old company manufactured all kinds of confectionery goodies, including Ding Dongs, Sno Balls, and Ho Hos, but is perhaps best known for the iconic vanilla creme-filled Twinkie. The golden sponge cake Americans have come to love, however, is slightly different than gooey snack that was first introduced by James Alexander Dewar in 1930.

That's because the original Twinkie was made with banana filling. Then World War II came along and bananas were rationed. Hostess was forced to come up with a different creme flavor. They settled on vanilla.
And the rest, as they say, is history. The vanilla flavor was an instant hit, once helping to secure Hostess' spot as the largest wholesale baker in the country. That era has now come to an abrupt end. The company plans to sell its snack cakes and other products until supplies run out, sparking Twinkie runs from coast to coast.

Let the hoarding begin!

 Link:

• The Twinkie Changed For Good Thanks To World War II

Three War Veteran Dies, Featured in Movie We Were Soldiers

Actor Sam Elliott played Basil L. Plumley in the film We Were Soldiers

COLUMBUS, Ga. (AP via Boston.com) — Basil L. Plumley, a renowned career soldier whose exploits as an Army infantryman were portrayed in a book and the movie ‘‘We Were Soldiers,’’ has died at 92 — an age his friends are amazed that he lived to see.

Plumley fought in World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam and was awarded a medal for making five parachute jumps into combat. The retired command sergeant major died Wednesday.

Friends said Plumley, who died in hospice care in west Georgia, never told war stories and was known to hang up on people who called to interview him. Still, he was near-legendary in the Army and gained more widespread fame through a 1992 Vietnam War book that was the basis for the 2002 movie starring Mel Gibson. Actor Sam Elliott played Plumley in the film.

Plumley didn’t need a Hollywood portrayal to be revered among soldiers, said Greg Camp, a retired Army colonel and former chief of staff at neighboring Fort Benning who befriended Plumley in his later years.

‘‘He’s iconic in military circles,’’ Camp said. ‘‘Among people who have been in the military, he’s beyond what a movie star would be. ... His legend permeates three generations of soldiers.’’

Debbie Kimble, Plumley’s daughter, said her father died from cancer after spending about nine days at Columbus Hospice. Although the illness seemed to strike suddenly, Kimble said Plumley’s health had been declining since his wife of 63 years, Deurice Plumley, died last May on Memorial Day.

A native of Shady Spring, W.Va., Plumley enlisted in the Army in 1942 and ended up serving 32 years in uniform. In World War II, he fought in the Allied invasion of Italy at Salerno and the D-Day invasion at Normandy. He later fought with the 187th Airborne Infantry Regiment in Korea. In Vietnam, Plumley served as sergeant major — the highest enlisted rank — in the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment.

‘‘That puts him in the rarest of clubs,’’ said journalist Joseph L. Galloway, who met Plumley while covering the Vietnam War for United Press International and remained lifelong friends with him. ‘‘To be combat infantry in those three wars, in the battles he participated in, and to have survived — that is miraculous.’’

It was during Vietnam in November 1965 that Plumley served in the Battle of la Drang, the first major engagement between the U.S. Army and North Vietnamese forces. That battle was the basis for the book ‘‘We Were Soldiers Once ... And Young,’’ written nearly three decades later by Galloway and retired Lt. Gen. Hal G. Moore, who had been Plumley’s battalion commander in Vietnam.

In the 2002 film version, Mel Gibson played Moore and Elliott played Plumley. Galloway said several of Elliott’s gruff one-liners in the movie were things Plumley actually said, such as the scene in which a soldier tells the sergeant major good morning and is told: ‘‘Who made you the (expletive) weather man?’’

‘‘Sam Elliott underplayed him. He was actually tougher than that,’’ Galloway said. ‘‘He was gruff, monosyllabic, an absolute terror when it came to enforcing standards of training.’’

That’s not to say he was mean or inhuman, Galloway said. ‘‘This was a man above all else who had a very big, warm heart that he concealed very well.’’

Plumley retired with the rank command sergeant major in 1974 at Fort Benning, his last duty station. He then took a civilian job doing administrative work for the next 15 years at Martin Army Community Hospital.

Camp said Plumley remained strong until just a few weeks before his death. He helped open the Army’s National Infantry Museum at Fort Benning in 2009. Camp, who now works for the museum’s fundraising foundation, said Plumley helped him get Elliott to come narrate a ceremony dedicating the parade ground outside the museum. When Camp mentioned the actor’s name, Plumley handed him Elliott’s cellphone number.

After Plumley became ill, Galloway mentioned his worsening condition on Facebook. Fans of the retired sergeant major responded with a flood of cards and letters. The day before he died in hospice, Camp said, Plumley received about 160 pieces of mail.

‘‘He was dad to me when I was growing up,’’ said Kimble, Plumley’s daughter. ‘‘We are learning every day about him. He was an inspiration to so many. He was a great person, and will always be remembered.’’

Link:

• Vietnam vet Plumley dies; featured in war movie

On Loudmouthed Tough Guys in the Church

By Ann Barnhardt at Barnhardt.biz:

To open this post I wrote up this whole brilliant allegory about how sometimes you gotta be Paul Scofield, and sometimes you gotta be Ernest Borgnine, and if you put the two together you get Marty, but then I realized that all of three people reading this would have any idea who or what I was talking about, so I skipped it. But trust me, it was brilliant.

Here is Voris, clearly edified and energized by his new digs and new name, ChurchMilitant.tv, knocking it out of the park. I have pasted the key quotations he cites below, in case you want to copy and paste them into a file for future reference.

Since, in order that the deceits of the enemy may be avoided, it is necessary first of all that they be laid bare; since much is to be gained by denouncing these fallacies for the sake of the unwary, even though We prefer not to name these iniquities "as becometh saints," yet for the welfare of souls We cannot remain altogether silent. - Pope Pius XI

We’ve had enough of exhortations to be silent! Cry out with a hundred thousand tongues. I see that the world is rotten because of silence! -  St. Catherine of Siena

If people are scandalized at the Truth, it is better to allow the birth of scandal, than to abandon the Truth.  - Pope St. Gregory the Great

Let me add two more from the Church Fathers:

Everyone who can speak the Truth, yet speaks it not, will be judged by God. - St. Justin Martyr, died A.D. 165

Anyone who conceals the Truth for fear of some authority calls down the wrath of God upon himself, because he fears men more than God... Both are guilty: he who conceals the Truth and he who speaks falsehood, because the former does not wish to make the Truth known and the latter desires not to refute it. -  St. Augustine, died A.D. 430

I have heard a priest relate an anecdote regarding "prudence" that makes my flesh crawl. It goes something like this:

During World War II, the priests and bishops in Italy kept fairly quiet, and did not preach with fire and zeal against Mussolini or Hitler - their efforts against the Axis were more clandestine and underground. In the Netherlands (correction here: I originally said Denmark - I was wrong), by comparison, the priests and bishops were vociferous in their preaching against the Reich. As a result, nearly the entire Jewish population of the Netherlands was exterminated, while a far higher percentage of the Jews in Italy survived the war.

This argument is specious. It sounds good on the surface, but it is terribly flawed. The Dutch clergy did the right thing - they were the truly PRUDENT actors. They did what was right in those circumstances, which is to preach the Truth without hesitation, and with as much zeal and fire as they could muster. The failing in prudence was on the part of the other clergy in Europe. Had the clergy of the entire Church stood tall and railed without ceasing against Hitler, Mussolini, and the rest of the players, had they made clear that ANY cooperation with these governments was a mortal sin, and thus laetae sententiae excommunication, which means automatic by virtue of committing the sinful action itself, and not requiring any official juridical action of a bishop; if they had told the people of Europe that it was either friendship with Christ, which meant the total rejection of the Reich and the Fascist Italian regime, or eternal hellfire, perhaps a war which killed 70 million human beings could have been avoided, or drastically reduced in scale. Comparing survival rates of Jews in one country versus another makes the terrible assumption that the situation in Europe could not have been any better, and could ONLY have been worse. Considering that 70 million people were killed in World War II, it is lunacy to argue that "it couldn't possibly have been any better."

This is why I am doing what I am doing now with regards to Obama. I have, for my entire life, marveled at the people of Germany, in particular. Why didn't anyone say anything? Why didn't anyone do anything? If you had the chance and ability to rhetorically destroy Adolf Hitler in the early 1930s, if you had the capacity to reveal Hitler's insanity, homosexuality and unspeakable fetishes and perversions, and also the lies of National Socialism, wouldn't you do it? Wouldn't you do everything you could to rhetorically destroy Adolf Hitler? Wouldn't you expose his depraved homosexuality in order to utterly discredit him in the eyes of the German people so that they would never come to regard him as some sort of savior in the first place? Wouldn't you try to derail the train before it caused a war that killed tens of millions of human beings?
If not, WHY NOT?

How is NOT speaking the truth in any way prudent, much less charitable?

Expect God's wrath all you who fear MEN more than you fear God, and thus willfully conceal and stifle the Truth through silence and passivity. And don't you dare call it prudence.

Links:

• On Loudmouthed Tough Guys in the Church 
• ChurchMilitant.tv

Why Just Execution is a Truly Merciful Act

Posted by Ann Barnhardt - April 17, AD 2012 8:20 PM MST

Fr. Z over at WDTPRS.com (What Does the Prayer Really Say) posted this on Sunday in honor of Divine Mercy Sunday.

In a nutshell, Rudolf Hoess, the Nazi butcher, was raised Catholic but formally renounced the Church as a young man and eventually became a Nazi and then the Commandant of Auschwitz.

After the war, Hoess was captured and tried in Poland. He was hanged immediately adjacent to the Auschwitz crematory on April 16, 1947.

While in his cell in Krakow, shortly before his execution, Hoess could hear the bells of the nearby convent and he remembered the faith of his youth. He asked to see a priest. He partook of the Sacrament of Confession, was reconciled to Christ and His Church, and received the Eucharist.

Let's assume that Hoess' penitence was sincere. Debating his sincerity really isn't a worthwhile activity because we simply cannot know. Only Christ knows Hoess' heart. You can't bee-ess Our Lord.

So, here's the point. Would Hoess have been contrite and sought the Divine Mercy of Our Lord had he NOT been within days of being executed? Was it the fact and full knowledge of his forthcoming death that moved him to repent? Had he been still on the loose, had he "gotten away" would he have had the same conversion of heart? If he had lived to old age, would the passage of time have dulled his recollection of what he had done, and thus even if facing a quiet, natural death as an old man, would he have been moved to repent?
Obviously, the answer to these questions is "no". It was the fact of Hoess' execution itself that acted as the earthly conduit of God's grace. The full, swift application of justice is essential to any civilized society.

Execution can be the most profound act of mercy and charity in a society, and has the power to literally save SOULS. And yes, a man can be forgiven, but still justly executed. Execution is not mathematically opposed to the Lord's Prayer.

But, of course, you'll never hear any sort of discussion like this in today's superfun rockband church, or even in the infiltrated and desperately stupid Catholic parishes - which are trying to be superfun rockband church. And the key word there is STUPID. The Marxist infiltration of Christianity has as its prime tactic the "stupidification" of the liturgy and theology. Superfun rockband church is STUPID. It is INSIPID. It is DIM-WITTED. It is OBTUSE. It is MORONIC.

Think. Think about Hoess and the possibility of the Infinite Mercy of Christ being applied even to him. Think about true justice, and how it must be present in order for there to be true charity.

Link:

• Why Just Execution is a Truly Merciful Act

Related:

• The Mercy of God: A truth for some uncomfortable, even offensive

Hitler's top secret stealth bomber

Posted on June 26, 2009, 1:32 PM | Brian Saint-Paul

(Inside Catholic) Surprising to most, the U.S. military's space-age B-2 Spirit was not the world's first stealth bomber. That honor belongs to the Horton 2-29, an experimental jet created by Nazi Germany at the tail end of World War II. However, because it was never in wide use during the conflict, the 2-29's stealth capabilities were never given much of a test. That is, until now.

Researchers hired by National Geographic studied the last remaining 2-29 in existence -- locked away in a U.S. government hangar -- and built a replica. They then tested the plane's resistance to the kinds of radar active during the Second World War.

Radar tests on the replica show that the plane's radical, smooth design would indeed have given it a significant advantage against radar, according to Tom Dobrenz, a Northrop Grumman expert in stealth, or "low observable," technology, who led the Horten replica project.

In short: The Horten 2-29 looks to have been the world's first stealth fighter.

Here's a brief video of the researchers at work. Fascinating stuff. We can marvel at the genius of the German design, while being grateful that it came too late to help the Nazis.

• Link to Original
• Explore the Aircraft
  

Vatican planned to move to Portugal if Nazis captured wartime Pope

Secret plans were drawn up by the Vatican to elect a new Pope and flee to a friendly country should Hitler have carried out his threat to kidnap the wartime Pontiff, it was claimed yesterday.

By Nick Squires in Rome and Simon Caldwell
Last Updated: 3:25AM BST 22 Apr 2009

Pope Pius XII told senior bishops that should he be arrested by the Nazis, his resignation would become effective immediately, paving the way for a successor, according to documents in the Vatican's Secret Archives.

The bishops would then be expected to flee to a safe country – probably neutral Portugal – where they would re-establish the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church and appoint a new Pontiff.

That Hitler considered kidnapping the Pope has been documented before, but this is the first time that details have emerged of the Vatican's strategy should the Nazis carry out the plan.

"Pius said 'if they want to arrest me they will have to drag me from the Vatican'," said Peter Gumpel, the German Jesuit priest who is in charge of researching whether Pius should be made a saint, and therefore has access to secret Vatican archives.

Pius, who was Pope throughout the war, told his advisers "the person who would leave the under these conditions would not be Pius XII but Eugenio Pacelli" – his name before he was elected Pontiff – thus giving permission for a new Pope to be elected.

"It would have been disastrous if the Church had been left without an authoritative leader," said Father Gumpel.

"Pius wouldn't leave voluntarily. He had been invited repeatedly to go to Portugal or Spain or the United States but he felt he could not leave his diocese under these severe and tragic circumstances." Vatican documents, which still remain secret, are believed to show that Pius was aware of a plan formulated by Hitler in July 1943 to occupy the Vatican and arrest him and his senior cardinals...

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Holocaust Survivors Visit Benedict XVI

Express Gratitude for Role of Church in Saving Their Lives

By Jesús Colina

VATICAN CITY, JUNE 18, 2008 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI received in audience a group of four Holocaust survivors who wanted to express their gratitude to the Church for saving their lives during World War II.

The visit, which took place after today's general audience, was sponsored by the Pave the Way Foundation.

Gary Krupp, president of that foundation, told ZENIT: "The Jewish survivors were all very grateful for the opportunity to greet the Pope in German and Italian and to thank him for the intervention of the Roman Catholic Church for saving their lives during World War II."

One of the survivors, Ursala Selig, was saved by Monsignor Beniamino Schivo, in those years rector of a seminary in Città di Castello, Italia, and now 97 years old. The monsignor saved Selig along with her mother and father, by shuttling them around to keep them safe, Krupp recounted.

"She spoke of her and her mother dressing like nuns and staying in a convent," Krupp said. "Her father was protected on a little farm eight hours away. She still speaks to Monsignor Schivo twice a week. He was supposed to come but is too frail."

Krupp also presented Benedict XVI with the symposium on the papacy of Pius XII the foundation is preparing for September.

The symposium, he said, aims to reveal "the true hidden story of the dark days of the Holocaust."

• Link

Holocaust Survivors to Thank Pope

Foundation Events Aim to Shine Light on Historical Facts

NEW YORK, JUNE 9, 2008 (Zenit.org).- A New York-based organization will bring a group of Jewish Holocaust survivors to visit Benedict XVI next week. They want to personally thank the Pope for the Church's intervention in saving their lives during the war.

The Pave the Way foundation is bringing the group to visit the German Pontiff on June 18. It is just one initiative the foundation has undertaken to clear up misunderstandings about the Church and its role during the Holocaust.

Another initiative is a September symposium on the papacy of Pope Pius XII.

The Pave the Way foundation partnered with TV News Agency Rome Reports to videotape eye witness testimony. They uncovered secret activities of the Pope and members of the papal household to save the lives of Jews during the war.

The foundation consulted various experts who will be panelists at the symposium. The audience will be over 100 mostly Jewish religious, educational and community leaders from around the world.

The participants will be presented with historical newspaper accounts, documents and eye witness testimony from those who are still alive.

The purpose of the symposium will be to analyze what is known to date, while Vatican archivists continue to prepare thousands of documents to be opened.

The foundation clarified that the symposium does not aim to give a scholarly review of archived manuscripts.

"This event will be almost like a jury, where events of the day and actual witnesses can help the group reach a reasonable conclusion today, which will be subject to historical confirmation when the archives have been opened," a statement from the foundation explained.

The symposium participants will also get a chance to visit Benedict XVI.

• Link