The documents contain the names of 3,200 Jews whose lives Catholics protected during the occupation.

Rome's Jewish community organisation has verified the listed Jews' identities.

Researchers from the Pontifical Biblical Institute, Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust Research Institute and Rome's Jewish community released the findings at an academic workshop on Thursday.

The documents have not yet been made public however.

It seems many Catholic institutions helped their Jewish neighbours.

The new documents provide names and addresses of dozens of Romans sheltered in Catholic institutions.

They list 4,300 people sheltered in the properties of 100 women's and 55 men's Catholic religious orders.

Of those, 3,600 are identified by name, with 3,200 identified as Jews.

"Of the latter, it is known where they were hidden and, in certain circumstances, where they lived before the persecution.

"The documentation thus significantly increases the information about the history of the rescue of Jews in the context of the Catholic institutions of Rome."

Were the sheltered Jews baptised?

Whether any of the Jews on the list were baptised is unclear.

Recently opened Vatican archives suggest the Vatican worked hardest to save Jews who had converted to Catholicism or had Catholic-Jewish parents.

Claudio Procaccia from Rome's Jewish community says the documentation doesn't provide any baptismal information.

But he says some people pretended to have Jewish last names in order to find shelter in Catholic convents, even if they weren't necessarily Jewish.

Jewish research

Procaccia notes the Roman Jewish community published its own research in 2013 about the fate of Jews during the Nazi occupation.

Over 1,000 of Rome's Jews were rounded up immediately after the Nazi occupation began and deported to Auschwitz.

Yad Vashem's International Institute for Holocaust Research says the new documentation poses new questions.

One is - why did an Italian Jesuit compile the list at the Pontifical Biblical Institute immediately after the liberation of Rome?

"There are many more questions we ask but, while the document lists thousands of Jews who found refuge in religious institutions, it lacks the names of those who were refused assistance ... during the Holocaust."

Source

• AP News
• Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Pius's role - helping or ignoring the plight of Jews during the holocaust - has been much debated.

On the one hand, he has often been criticised by Jews for his apparent silence during the holocaust. On the other, some Catholic leaders say Pius and other Catholic clergy helped European Jews.

They also argue that during the Nazi regime, broad action by the Church could have resulted in severe reprisals against Catholics.

Although the Vatican usually waits until a pontiff has been dead for 70 years before opening the archives, an exception has been made in this case, so the documentation can be seen while holocaust survivors are still alive. Pius died nearly 61 years ago in 1958.

Vatican archivists began preparing the documentation for consultation in 2006, at the orders of German-born Pope emeritus Benedict XVI.

Francis says he hopes opening the archives will allow "serious and objective historical research" to "evaluate, in the proper light and with appropriate criticism, the praiseworthy moments of the Pontiff..."

The archives will also produce information about "moments of serious difficulties, of tormented decisions," he says.

These moments may have seemed to some as "reticence" but were attempts to keep humanitarian initiatives alive.

The documents are expected to include various letters and messages between Pius and other Vatican officials and Catholic clergy throughout Europe.

Noting that opening the archives is "the right thing to do", International Director of Inter-religious Affairs for the American Jewish Committee (AJC), Rabbi David Rosen, says he hopes the documents will provide a clearer picture of Pius's actions.

The AJC has been raising the issue of opening the archives with the Vatican for the past 30 years, Rosen says.

Prefect of the Vatican Secret Archives Bishop Sergio Pagano also reportedly requested time to catalogue the large amount of documents before their release.

Holocaust historian and head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Israel, Dr Efraim Zuroff, say Pius never specifically denounced the Nazi persecution and the mass murder of European Jews. Nor did he ask Catholics to help save Jews from persecution.

Zuroff says "two cardinal questions" needed to be answered about Pius's papacy.

"The first is what information reached the Vatican regarding Holocaust crimes, and the second is when did that information reach Pius XII?"

He says the Vatican's papal nuncios who served as ambassadors were active in many countries where Jews were persecuted and murdered, and that he would have received "accurate information regarding the fate of the Jews… at a relatively early date, most probably before such news reached the Allies."

Source

• Times of Israel
• The Jerusalem Post
• CruxNow
• Image: The Times of Israel

One of these has been returned by Ulrich Gauer, whose grandfather was with the occupying German army in Poland during the second world war.

His late grandfather, a keen photographer, took about 1,400 photos while he was in Poland. Gauer found the stash of photos recently.

Besides showing what life was like in Poland during the German occupation, Gauer found an image of a painting which had hung for decades in his family living room.

Realising it had been stolen, Gauer resolved to return it to its rightful owners.

After contacting the Polish embassy, he made arrangements to return the painting to Nowy Sacz in Southern Poland.

"It's an extraordinary gesture of humanity and it helps to build a bridge between our cultures which are so closely tied" Nowy Sacz Museum director Robert Slusarek says.

"For centuries culture is what brought us together. These experiences of war waken the demons in us. This is a very important gesture towards reconciliation."

Poland was hit hard by wartime plundering. Thousands of artworks with an estimated value of over 10 billion euros are still missing and should be returned to Poland, Slusarek says.

Regional museums also suffered losses, he says.

"I believe these objects are in private hands, but even so we need a dialogue with the cultural institutions that are under the authority of the German government.

"Returning looted art is an essential part of reconciliation and recovering from past tragedies," Gauer says. "I hope that more people will have the same idea and say 'it's high time we gave back these artworks'."

Gauer says he and his wife hope their example will encourage others to follow and return stolen artworks to their rightful owners.

Source

• Deutsche Welle
• MainPost
• Image: Main-Post

Speaking to members of the Forum of Family Associations on Saturday, Francis decried the "fashion" for prenatal testing of an unborn child's health with a view to aborting those that are sick or disabled.

He told the Forum this practice is "the murder of children...to get a peaceful life an innocent [person] is sent away..."

He went on to recall his horror when as a child he heard stories from his teacher about children "thrown from the mountain" if they were born with a malformation.

"Today we do the same thing," he said, before moving on to draw an analogy between the Nazi regime and today's expectation of physical and mental perfection.

"Last century, the whole world was scandalised by what the Nazis did to purify the race. Today, we do the same thing but with white gloves," he said.

The Nazi eugenics programmes saw hundreds of thousands of people forcibly sterilised and tens of thousands killed in an attempt to "clean" the chain of heredity of those with physical or cognitive disabilities.

Pope Francis then went on to urge families to accept children "as God gives them to us."

Throughout his papacy, Francis has often repeated the Church's consistently-held anti-abortion stance and integrated it into his condemnation of what he calls today's "throw-away culture."

In this respect he has frequently pointed out how the sick, the poor, the elderly and the unborn are considered unworthy of protection and dignity by a society that instead prizes individual ability.

Source

• Catholic News Agency
• Crux Now
• Reuters
• Los Angeles Times
• Image: Twitter

The couple sold the artwork to flee the Nazis.

On Monday, France's culture minister, Francoise Nyssen, handed the paintings over to Henrietta Schubert and Chris Bromberg, who are descendants of Herta and Henry Bromberg.

The handover was made during an official ceremony at The Louvre Museum in Paris. Read more

Father Patrick Desbois was awarded the Lantos Foundation's Human Rights Prize last week for being a "vital voice standing up for the values of decency, dignity, freedom, and justice."

The prize is named after a Holocaust survivor who later became a California congressman.

United States-based Desbois, who teaches at Georgetown University's Programme for Jewish Civilization, is the founder of Yahad-In Unum. This is a Paris-based organisation dedicated to identifying and commemorating Nazi mass-execution sites in Eastern Europe during World War II.

Desbois's research focuses on Jews who were killed in mass shootings by Nazi units in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Moldova and Romania between 1941 and 1944. He found more that one-and-a-half million Jews were murdered like this.

The award also recognises his work in collecting evidence of the Islamic State's genocide of Yezidis, a Kurdish religious minority in Iraq.

Debois has published two books about his work.

The first, "Holocaust by Bullets: A Priest's Journey to Uncover the Truth behind the Murder of 1.5 Million Jews," was published in 2008.

His second book, a memoir on his life as an anti-genocide activist and Holocaust scholar, is due for publication in 2018.

Source

• Crux
• Times of Israel
• Image: Zakhor Online

"I know no one ever believes us nowadays — everyone thinks we knew everything. We knew nothing, it was all kept well secret," Pomsel, now 105, says in an interview with The Guardian.

Instead, Pomsel remembers the niceties of the man history knows as a rabid anti-Semite who strongly supported the Holocaust and would poison his six children when the Nazi war machine collapsed in 1945.

"Sometimes, his children came to visit and were so excited to visit daddy at his work. They would come with the family's lovely Airedale.

They were very polite and would curtsy and shake our hands," says Pomsel, who added that Goebbels and his wife Magda "were both very nice to me."

Pomsel told The Guardian that people who nowadays say they would have stood up against the Nazis "are sincere in meaning that, but believe me, most of them wouldn't have …

"The whole country was as if under a kind of a spell … The idealism of youth might easily have led to you having your neck broken."

Now blind, she wants to pass away in "months rather than years" and hopes "the world doesn't turn upside down again as it did then, though there have been some ghastly developments, haven't there?

"I'm relieved I never had any children that I have to worry about."

Source

• Newsmax
• Image: www.truthperfected.com

My wife and I have just returned from a journey to Poland for parents of United Synagogue Youth members.

We visited Warsaw, Krakow, Lodz and Lublin — with pilgrimages to the concentration camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Majdanek and Treblinka.

We visited the Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews, perhaps the greatest Jewish museum in the world. We witnessed the rebirth of Polish Jewry, which gave me a powerful lesson in the meaning of the Jewish prayer that thanks God for the resurrection of the dead.

What does it mean to hear about the Iran deal on the way out of Treblinka?

In the words of my friend, journalist Yossi Klein Halevi: When someone says they want to destroy you, believe it. Because that is precisely what the leaders of Iran have been saying, all along, about Israel.

Mohammad Reza Naqdi, commander of the Basij militia of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, has said that "erasing Israel off the map" is "nonnegotiable."

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has repeatedly called for the destruction of Israel, stating that the "barbaric" Jewish state "has no cure but to be annihilated."

One of his officials has said his government has a "godly ordained right" to annihilate Israel.

Iran's anti-Semitic, anti-Israel obsession is common knowledge. That is why we have every reason to be wary of a deal that allows that regime access to nuclear arms in 15 or 20 years.

The genocidal fantasies of Iran have no expiration date. Their timetable is not our timetable. They are on the apocalyptic clock. They can wait.

Make no mistake: Each Iranian nuclear weapon will be a Treblinka on wings.

But in recent days, the general, non-Jewish press has been silent about this aspect of the Iran issue. As if we would rather not remember.

Some will say this is just Jewish paranoia.

The words of the Iranian leaders are simply hyperbole, intended to arouse the Iranian masses. Continue reading

• Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin is the spiritual leader of Temple Solel in Hollywood, Fla., and the author of numerous books on Jewish spirituality and ethics.

The four Christmas tree baubles, described as "fancy," are red with the Nazi Swastika painted in the centre of a white circle.

For sale on the Czech Republic website Aukro, the seller - who identifies himself as Anti95 and is from the town of Ceske Budejovice in the country's south-west - says they are "original decorations used by SS units over 70 years ago" and are being offered at a starting price of £59.

"I offer Christmas decorations of SS units," he wrote.

"The decorations are authentic and not damaged. Continue reading

The swastika is considered to be a sacred and positive image in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism but is commonly associated with Adolf Hitler and the murderous regime of the Nazi Party.

Also: Swastika adorned giftwrap

At some point, however, the refugees no longer knew what to do next. Where would they be safe? How were the Nazis attempting to find them? There was no refugee center, no leadership, no organization and exasperatingly little reliable information. But what did exist was the art of improvisation and the helpfulness of many Danes, who now had a chance to prove themselves.

Members of the Danish underground movement emerged who could tell the Jews who was to be trusted. There were police officers who not only looked the other way when the refugees turned up in groups, but also warned them about Nazi checkpoints. And there were skippers who were willing to take the refugees across the Baltic Sea to Sweden in their fishing cutters, boats and sailboats.

A Small Country With a Big Heart

Denmark in October 1943 was a small country with a big heart. It had been under Nazi occupation for three-and-a-half years. And although Denmark was too small to have defended itself militarily, it also refused to be subjugated by the Nazis. The Danes negotiated a privileged status that even enabled them to retain their own government. They assessed their options realistically, but they also set limits on how far they were willing to go to cooperate with the Germans.

The small country defended its democracy, while Germany, a large, warmongering country under Hitler, was satisfied with controlling the country from afar and, from then on, viewed Denmark as a "model protectorate." That was the situation until the summer of 1943, when strikes and acts of sabotage began to cause unrest. This prompted the Germans to threaten Denmark with court martials and, in late August, to declare martial law. The Danish government resigned in protest. Continue reading

Sources

• Spiegel Online
• Image: The Jewish Daily Forward

Some 200,000 people who were mentally ill or disabled were killed in Germany during the Nazi era. The cynical name for the extermination program was "euthanasia," which means "beautiful death" in ancient Greek. This horrific past has shaped the way Germany treats the terminally ill and the disabled. Germany's laws on assisted suicide are restrictive, and the country has stricter rules on pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, a form of embryo profiling, than most other European countries.

In 2006, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which Germany ratified in 2009. It calls for a so-called inclusive education system for all children, which means that children with disabilities and behavioral disorders should be allowed to attend mainstream schools. The German city-state of Bremen adopted the inclusion requirement in 2009, and other German states are in the process of implementing it.

Now a debate has unfolded on the pros and cons of inclusion. Proponents say that being different has to become normal. But opponents believe that inclusion comes at the expense of special-needs schools, that teachers are overwhelmed, that better students are short-changed, and that disabled children feel excluded in mainstream classes.

It is a debate in which some are berated as idealists and others as ideologues. But, ultimately, the real issue is how to define the moral standards of coexistence.

Berlin contemporary historian Götz Aly, 65, has a 34-year-old disabled daughter named Karline. In a SPIEGEL interview, he talks about the joys and hardships of everyday life with a disabled child. Aly has spent 32 years studying the issue of euthanasia. His book, "Die Belasteten" ("The Burdened"), was recently published by the S. Fischer publishing house.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Aly, you have studied the murders of the disabled and mentally ill in the Nazi era, or what was then referred to as "euthanasia." Didn't the issue strike a little too close to home for you?

Aly: I know, of course, that my daughter would have been one of the candidates for murder at the time. But Karline's illness 34 years ago was precisely the reason I approached the subject in the first place. Perhaps it was also a way for me to come to terms with it. That's what brought me to study the Nazis. It doesn't bother me when issues affect me personally. On the contrary, it bothers me that many Germans who write about the Nazi period behave as if they have no personal points of reference. I sometimes amuse myself by asking older colleagues: "Now what exactly did your father do in World War II?" Continue reading

Sources

• Spiegel Online
• Image: Deutschland.de

Sarandon called Pope Benedict a Nazi during a public discussion at a U.S. film festival in New York, provoking criticism from both Catholic and Jewish groups.

The movie star, who won an Oscar for her role in the 1995 anti-death penalty film "Dead man Walking", said she had sent a copy of the book on which the movie is based to the pope.

"The last one. Not this Nazi one we have now," she was reported as saying by New York newspaper Newsday.

The remark was made on Saturday in an interview conducted by fellow actor Bob Balaban about Sarandon's career that was part of the Hamptons Film Festival.

Newsday said Balaban gently chided Sarandon for the remark but she repeated it.

Sarandon's Hollywood agent did not respond to calls for comment on Monday.

German born Pope Benedict, was briefly a member of the Hitler Youth in the early 1940s when membership was compulsory, the Vatican has said. He deserted the military during World War Two and has said that as devout Catholics, his parents rejected Nazi ideology.

Sarandon, 65, who was raised in New York as a Roman Catholic, is known for her support of causes ranging from hunger and AIDS to opposing the U.S.-led war in Iraq. The "Thelma and Louise" star was appointed a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador in 1999.

The New York-based Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights called Sarandon's remark "obscene" and said in a Monday statement that her "ignorance is wilful."

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which fights anti-Semitism, called on Sarandon to apologize to the Catholic Community.

"Ms. Sarandon may have her differences with the Catholic Church, but that is no excuse for throwing around Nazi analogies. Such words are hateful, vindictive and only serve to diminish the true history and meaning of the Holocaust," the ADL said in a statement.

Source: The Christian Science Monitor

In "Nazis On The Run: How Hitler's Henchmen Fled Europe" Gerald Steinacher, a research fellow from Harvard University, sheds light on just how thousands of Nazis managed to evade detection and start a new life.

Steinacher based much of his book on unpublished documents held by the Red Cross that revealed a system struggling to cope with the millions of displaced people in post-war Europe, and one that could be exploited by fleeing Nazis.

The historian estimates the some 8,000 SS men managed to escape to Britain and Canada alone using documents issued to them by the Red Cross by mistake.

But most fleeing war criminals either headed to Franco's Spain or South America.

While the Red Cross provided inadvertent help, the Vatican, the book claims, may have provided more considered help for Nazis desperate to avoid prison or the gallows. Owing to a desire to revive a Christian Europe or out of a morbid fear of the Soviet Union, the Vatican, through its refugee commission, said Mr Steinacher, provided leading war criminals with false identity papers.

The Red Cross also depended upon Vatican references where issuing travel documents.

The Vatican has always refused to comment on its wartime activities and has kept its archive closed to the public.

Source

• The Telegraph
• Image: Amazon