Vatican 'helped thousands of Nazis escape'...

"Hi, Your Holiness, Eichmann here. Yes, I'm in a spot of bother..."

The Telegraph today reports on something which I only heard two days ago, when I was teaching at the Brighton Unemployed Families Centre Project. I happened to be teaching 'an introduction to blogging' (of all things) to two students.

I met a lovely chap called Dan who already runs a blog (he wanted to learn more about blogging). In fact, if truth be told, I spent a great deal of time discussing with him the excesses of power wielded by the mass media over public opinion and Belloc's essay on the Free Press as well as other issues such as abortion and the empty rhetoric and suit of President Obama.

In Dan, I really felt that I had met a 'kindred spirit'. I'm sure some readers would say that I must therefore have met another nutjob, but that wouldn't be entirely fair. I was a little surprised to how open to the positions of the Church he was, especially concerning abortion, simply because most people today just believe the received wisdom of choice - the 'prevailing orthodoxy', if you will, but Dan knew about Marie Stopes and Margaret Sanger and their eugenic beliefs. He was very clued up.

Dan has produced a documentary called 'Truthers' on the September 11 attacks in New York. On the front he has a great quote from George Orwell: "Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness." I'll watch it when I have a bit more time. Anyway, Dan and I discussed many things, some of them touching on the Catholic Faith.

One thing he discussed with me was the methods by which the Nazis escaped justice and were hidden. I was shocked by the accusation that has already been made before against the Vatican. I was personally already aware just how helpful elements of the US Government were in helping certain individuals, such as Josef Mengele, escape justice and how Mengele was allowed to escape and to continue 'running tests' in South America. I did not know that there was any suspicion falling upon the Vatican for helping people to escape.

Now, according to The Telegraph, a 'new book has revealed how the Red Cross and the Vatican helped thousands of Nazis including men like Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele escape justice after the war. Well, I don't know whether this is true, or not, but while, according to the report, 'the Vatican has always refused to comment on its wartime activities and has kept its archive closed to the public', this is also very true of the CIA.

That wouldn't give the Vatican clean hands in this matter, of course, but I think that while any Vatican involvement in helping unrepentant war criminals flee to South America would be a very bad thing, a 2010 report is far more damning of the CIA.

The Examiner report says...

The strong Nazi history in the United States has been suppressed until the NYT report that states, "Scholars and previous government reports had acknowledged the C.I.A.’s use of Nazis for postwar intelligence purposes. But this report goes further in documenting the level of American complicity and deception in such operations."

The report names some of the most infamous Nazi scientists and doctor responsible for the Jewish holocaust and then brought to the US: Dr. Josef Mengele, the so-called Angel of Death at Auschwitz, Arthur L. Rudolph, and Otto Von Bolschwing, "an associate of Adolph Eichmann who had helped develop the initial plans “to purge Germany of the Jews” and who later worked for the C.I.A."

Got that? Worked for the CIA?! Joseph Mengele didn't get a job at the Vatican, after the war, did he?! No. But he did work for the CIA. Anyway, I am convinced that this new book is black propaganda against Holy Mother Church.

According to my new friend, Dan (I'll stick his blog link up after he's emailed it me), his opinion is that the Vatican was duped into giving identity papers to Nazis wanting to flee justice. I don't know enough about it myself, but that is what my non-Catholic, presumably atheist new friend told me. It may be that there were some Nazis in the Vatican who helped war criminals flee. There are probably some Nazi sympathisers in the Vatican today. I imagine that there are high ranking Cardinals who want to crush the celebration of the Latin Mass, for instance. However, the idea that Pope Pius XII and his key advisers were orchestrating the escape route for Nazi murderers, with a large map and a giant swastika on the wall at Castel Gandolfo is, in my opinion, a rather fantastical notion. The CIA on the other hand? Well, that is another story.

I might add, Nazism, and indeed eugenics, didn't die with Hitler. You want to see a concentration camp? An extermination camp? You don't have to go to Auschwitz. Just go and spend some time outside your local abortion clinic. I'm not sure abortionists are that good at releasing their records and archives either.

Do also read this article on The Catholic Herald's website concerning the pressure allied diplomats exerted upon Pope Pius XII to maintain silence concerning the deportation of Hungarian Jews.