Case Histories of Jewish Populations in , Denmark and Bulgaria during

Most Reverend Philip Wilson Archbishop of Adelaide Catholic Archdiocese of Adelaide

The Abraham Institute, Adelaide

7 July 2013

Ladies and Gentlemen, I want to thank the Abraham Institute for inviting me to address you and for your all turning out this evening to do me the honour of listening to what I have to say. I look forward to your questions, comments and some discussion following the speech.

I also acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which we are meeting. I pay my respects to their Elders, past and present, and the Elders from other communities who may be here today.

History is naturally a contested area but in speaking tonight I will try to draw from generally accepted themes.

It is said that Bulgaria, Denmark and Italy were the places in Europe where Jewish people received the best treatment during the Second World War. But the standard at the time was set very low, so I think it is much better to examine the actual behaviour for what it was so we can then draw our own conclusions on the levels of human failure and prejudice.

I think it is often tempting in times of great human failure to look for the good stories to confirm our hopes for the best. No one wants to dwell too much in the failings we suspect may also be in our own hearts. But we learn so much more by being honest about the very real nature of human brokenness and we can pray to God that we be spared such failings.

The story of the Holocaust - the Shoah, or 'calamity' in Hebrew - is one of great shame and tragedy. These are stories of evil, but also of fear and failure.

I will give a summary of events in Bulgaria, Denmark and Italy including some reflections from people who lived the events. Given my role as Archbishop of Adelaide, I want to look at some of the good and bad aspects of how the Church as an institution and the members of the reacted to the Shoah, then draw some themes and conclusions.

Bulgaria

Bulgaria has been lauded for saving almost 50,000 of its Jewish citizens from the death camps, which is surely a major achievement for a country that was a member of the Axis Pact with Germany (Vassilev, 2010)

But like most things, the story is more complicated than that. Academics have described Bulgaria as having three roles during the Shoah, as rescuer, persecutor and collaborator (Berenbaum et al, 2013). 2

Bulgaria's comprised less than one percent of the population, but appeared to be accepted as members of the community.

One of the first attacks on the status of Jewish people was the imposition of the Law for the Protection of the Nation in October 1940. A former Bulgarian Jewish resident of Sofia, Beatriz Rosanes de Samuilov, has written of her memories of the time and asks "From whom did [Bulgaria] have to defend itself? From the malevolent Jews, of course.” (de Samuilov, 2002).

Following the approach of Germany, they put a number of restrictions on Jewish people, including on their right to vote and hold public office, own property, live where they wished, marry ethnic Bulgarians and serve in the military (Vassilev, 2010). Later there would be a curfew on Jews and they would be banned from walking on certain main streets (de Samuilov, 2002), they would be required to wear the yellow Star of David on their clothes, houses and businesses. Many lost their jobs, homes, businesses and other possessions and had to pay signficant new taxes. (Vassilev, 2010)

Just five months later, the position of the Jewish people became more precarious when Bulgaria joined the Axis Pact in March 1941 with Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan and others, with a key aim to recover territory lost in the Second Balkan War and in .

De Samuilov recalls: "through the streets of Sofia could be seen strolling blond men and women with blue eyes. People murmured, 'They must be of the fifth column.' On the first of March, the Bulgarian prime Minister, Bodgan Filov, proudly signed the 'non aggression pact with the Berlin- axis.' On the following day, the blue-eyed blonds changed their civilian clothes for the brand new uniforms of the German army." (de Samuilov, 2002)

The Axis Pact did indeed help Bulgaria recover territory. In April 1941 Bulgaria gained responsibility for what became known as greater Bulgaria, which included Macedonia, Aegean Thrace and the town of Pirot in Serbia. All the residents were declared Bulgarian, except for the Jewish residents. This exclusion of Jewish people was to have greater significance later on (Vassilev, 2010).

In January 1943, the Bulgarian cabinet agreed to the deportation of Jews in greater Bulgaria - from those territories that Bulgaria had only recently acquired (Berenbaum et al, 2013). By March 1943, more than 11,000 Jews from the new Bulgarian territories had been sent to Auschwitz and Treblinka, where only 12 survived (Vassilev, 2010).

There had been protests. Transport of the Thracian and Macedonian Jews led to protests from senior Orthodox clergy and some parliamentary deputies from the governing parties. We are told that "Archbishop Stefan of Sofia, who had by chance come upon a sealed boxcar carrying Thracian Jews in the most horrific conditions, sent several urgent telegrams and personal appeals to the monarch, expressing his shock and in vain pleading with him to stop the deportations." (Vassilev, 2010)

Protests about the deportation of Jewish people from the new territories of Bulgaria were unsuccessful. But when police started to assemble Jews from prewar Bulgaria for deportation, widespread public opposition stopped the government. (Vassilev, 2010) 3

So the deportation of Bulgaria's Jews was not averted because of the virtues of King Boris III or the government, but political pragmatism.

Rossen Vassilev, a former Bulgarian diplomat to the United Nations and academic, tells us that "following the government majority's open rebellion in the Assembly and amidst a rising tide of public concern and indignation, on May 20 the king ordered the evacuation of Sofia's 20,000 Jews and their internment in the countryside which was the first step in transporting them out of the country ... The monarch postponed for the time being any new deportations to Poland, but never cancelled them. All able-bodied Jewish men were conscripted and sent to forced labour camps throughout Bulgaria where they were organised in slave-like working gangs. Now Boris could simply tell the Germans that he needed his Jews to build and maintain Bulgaria's roads and railways (whether he believed him or not, there was not much that Hitler -- beset with a succession of military calamities on the Russian front -- could do)." (Vassilev, 2010).

The Jews in forced labour camps faced very poor conditions, but knew they were faring better than others when they witnessed trains full of Greek Jews going through Bulgaria on the way to the concentration camps. (de Samuilov, 2002).

Historian Michael Berenbaum said of the Bulgarian labour camp authorities, "they were willing to torture, maim, persecute, harass - not kill. They had a red line. In the context of , that was a virtue. In the context of anything else, that was a horror." (Lipman, 2004).

The cabinet revoked the Law for the Protection of the Nation in August 1944 in the days before the Soviets took control of the country. After the war as many as 45,000 of the 48,000 Jews in Bulgaria emigrated to Palestine (Vassilev, 2010).

In 2008, Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov spoke in Jerusalem saying “When we express justifiable pride at what we have done to save Jews, we do not forget that at the same time there was an antisemitic regime in Bulgaria and we do not shirk our responsibility for the fate of more than 11,000 Jews who were deported from Thrace and Macedonia to death camps." (Berenbaum, 2013)

Tzvetan Todorov, a Franco-Bulgarian philosopher in his book "The Fragility of Goodness: Why Bulgaria's Jews Survived the Holocaust", says: “Looking back and reflecting on the rescue of the Bulgarian Jews, one comes to realise that no one individual or single factor could have brought it about….Men of conscience and courage…would have struggled in vain if the king had not decided to take their side; and they themselves would not have acted as they had if they had not felt that the Bulgarian citizens, with some few exceptions, stood behind them in their efforts….All this was necessary for good to triumph, in a certain place and at a certain time; any break in the chain and their efforts might well have failed. It seems that, once introduced into public life, evil easily perpetuates itself, whereas good is always difficult, rare, and fragile. And yet possible” (Todorov, p. 40).

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Denmark

Having earlier stated that Bulgaria was said to have had three roles with regard to the Jews during World War II, that of rescuer, persecutor and collaborator, Denmark has been criticised in similar terms as rescuer, expeller and collaborator (Vilhjalmsson and Bluudnikow, 2006).

The Danish government pursued what has been called a 'cooperation policy' with the Germans during the Second World War, though its critics have called it a collaboration policy.

Denmark has a good reputation as having saved the almost 8,000 Danish Jews in October 1943, when they were helped to cross the narrow strip of water between Denmark and Sweden. But it is less well known for having expelled 21 stateless Jews to Germany in the years 1940-43. The expulsions were not requested by Germany. Those people later died in concentration camps. (Vilhjalmsson and Bludnikow, 2006; Rittner et al, 2000)

The situation of Jewish refugees was precarious both before and after the war began. Anne Atsmon was a German Jewish refugee with her mother in Copenhagen: “In January 1937 we got a notice that we had to go back to Germany. The 3 months tourist visa had expired. If not [for representations] to the Foreign Office to plead our case, we would have been expelled to Germany. At this time many refugees were sent back to Germany. My mother witnessed how a family she knew, was sent back to Poland just before the war broke out. This was a very traumatic incident. We had to have our visa renewed every 3 months, and it always required help from influential Danes. To obtain a working permit was of course out of the question, one of the reasons being the great number of unemployed at that time.” (Atsmon, ??)

The Germans occupied Denmark in April 1940 after little resistance from the Danish armed forces. The Danish government had not deployed its forces to defend Denmark, for fear of provoking the Germans. This softly softly approach led to the Danish policy of cooperation where the Danes controlled much of their internal affairs while allowing the German military to move through the country. (Yahil, 1977)

The Germans were favourably disposed towards the Danes as they thought of them as part of the new Aryan Europe. (Yahil, 1977)

Control of internal affairs meant the Danish Jews were not required to wear a yellow Star of David and did not suffer the same policies as in much of the rest of Europe where property was confiscated, jobs lost and people segregated. (Rittner et al, 2000)

Anne Atsmon again comments on life in occupied Denmark: “All in all, the German occupation from 1940 until August 1943 was quite mild. There was not much Danish resistance, the Germans used Denmark as a larder, shipping all the butter, cheese, eggs and bacon to Germany, while we had rationing. We also had blackout, there were air raids, and sometimes we had to stay in the shelters, although often we did not bother to go down from the fifth floor. But it was not so difficult." (Atsmon, ??)

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Vilhjalmsson reports that "On November 25, 1941 when Foreign Minister Erik Scavenius visited Berlin he met Hermann Goring. Goring mentioned that Denmark in the long run could not avoid the issue of solving the 'Jewish question'. Scavenius responded, 'There is no Jewish question in Denmark'. The government as well as most members of the Danish parliament backed this position."

But the policy of cooperation made things difficult for the leadership of the Danish Jews because they too did not want to provoke the Germans by organising any resistance or escapes to other countries. (Yahil, 1977)

Life also became increasingly difficult for the Danes as Germans increased their demands to the point the Danes were less willing to cooperate. Support for the resistance increased and by mid- 1943 there were strikes and unrest in the streets.

In August 1943 the German occupiers declared a state of emergency, imposing a curfew, banning strikes, banning gatherings of more than five people and censoring the press.

In September 1943 word was leaked that the Germans were planning to round up all the Jews in the country for deportation. This led to a now famous response of the Danish people, many of whom hid their fellow Danes in convents, churches, homes and hospitals. (Rittner et al, 2000).

The Jews were then smuggled across the water to Sweden and there was no guarantee Sweden would let them stay. It is this moment where ordinary Danish people were willing to risk their lives to help their neighbours escape to safety that has deservedly won the Danish nation high praise.

One author commented that rather than anti-semitism being reinforced during the war as in many countries, in Denmark it seems the opposite happened. (Yahil, 1977)

Rittner et al commented that "unlike so many in Nazi-occupied Europe, most Danes saw themselves as human beings linked to others through a shared humanity, not as individuals inhabiting a world divided into 'us' and 'them'." (Rittner et al, 2000)

In 2005 the Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen made an official apology to the Jewish people for the expulsions in 1940-3, saying: "... Danish authorities in some instances were involved in expelling people to suffering and death in the concentration camps. There were persons who sought safe haven in this country from the Nazi persecutors of the Jewish people. The Danish authorities expelled these people to the Nazis." (Vilhjalmsson and Bludnikow, 2006)

Radek Sikorski, now the Polish Minister for Foreign Affairs, commented "No nations were totally innocent. Good things happened and bad things happened, and it is wise and instructive to admit one's errors. But the total Danish effort to rescue Jews to safety is still a great achievement in your history." (Vilhjalmsson and Bludnikow, 2006)

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Italy

Italy was blessed with a history of relative tolerance towards Jewish people, by the standards of the time. Although Jews made up just 0.1% of the population, they were assimilated into the community with a high proportion of mixed marriages and with a Jewish Italian Prime Minister, Luigi Luzzatti, elected in 1910.

The Fascists had been in power in Italy since 1922 and up until their policy turned anti-semitic in 1938, more than one in three Jews were members of the party. (Brownfield, 2003).

About eight in ten Italian Jews survived the war, which means Italian Jews had the third highest rate of survival after Denmark and Bulgaria. (Zimmerman, 2005).

Italy has tended to be looked on favourably with regards to its treatment of Jewish people, but Zimmerman (2005) argues this is because historians tend to measure Italy against Nazi Germany, which is a very low standard indeed.

In 1938 Italy’s Council of Ministers passed a new decree called “Laws for the Defence of the Race”, which covered a wide range of measures including: • Banning intermarriage between Aryans and non-Aryans • Banning Jews from military service • Banning Jews from state employment • Banning Jews from owning or managing businesses with more than 100 employees • Revoking citizenship from Jews who became citizens after 1919.

Jewish people could even lose custody of their children if the children belonged to a different religion and the parents did not educate their children according to the principles of the child’s religion or to what was called the “national purpose”.

In 1939 further restrictions were introduced to ban Jews from the professions including lawyers, doctors, journalists and so on. They were not allowed to be listed in telephone books or go into some public buildings.

As a result, about one quarter of Jews either converted to Catholicism or emigrated. (Zimmerman, 2005).

Gastone Orefice from Livorno remembers the new laws coming in: “The problem first came to me in 1938, when I was told I couldn’t go any further in the public school ... At the same time my grandfather was very worried because he was not permitted to run his pharmacy. It was the most important pharmacy in the town and had been in the family for a hundred years. My father, meanwhile was having so much trouble conducting his business that he decided to leave for Corsica, where he had some clients. ... My mother, brother and I had a lot of new ideas to consider. First there was no school. Friends didn’t call us anymore. We belonged to a beach club but the panel that said ‘Dogs Not Admitted’ was changed to read ‘Dogs and Jews not Admitted’. I had to look for a job but it was illegal to give jobs to Jews.” (Rothchild, 1981).

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Ora Kohn from Turin: “In 1938 it was as if we were struck by lightning – it was so different from anything that had ever happened to us. I don’t want to talk about the material things. Of course the routine of life changed. But the really traumatic change was that you suddenly saw that you didn’t know what tomorrow was going to be like ... that it is bad today but it can get a lot worse ... that what your heard about in Germany is coming ... is here.”

Ora Kohn continues: “Toward the end of 1938 Jews were excluded from public school, from having a business and having a maid, and then the Catholic church got busy. There was a provision that said that if you had converted to Catholicism before September 1, 1938 you were okay if one- fourth of your blood was not Jewish. ... My brother and I had lots of discussions from every point of view and we said we couldn’t. ... It was a personal decision; we didn’t resent the relatives who made a different one, and eventually they learned to accept the way we felt. They were able to keep their money and had more time to make arrangements. When the time came and we all had to run away they got to Switzerland and didn’t live in refugee camps, they lived in hotels.”

Despite the suffocating laws enforced on Jewish people – the neighbours of many Italians - one author noted that “when the racial laws were passed, the most common reaction among Italians was one of indifference, not outrage.” (Brownfield, 2003)

Maryks (2010) points out that “… anyone born of parents who both were of the Jewish race, even though professing a religion other than Judaism, was deemed to be Jewish. Consequently, the racial laws affected not only those Italians who considered themselves Jewish, whether secular or religious, but also a significant number of Catholics whose ancestors had been Jewish (“Catholic Jews”) …”.

For example, Italian novelist Giani Stuparich was detained along with his wife and mother in August 1944 in north east Italian city of , in preparation for deportation. He had already lost his job as a teacher under the racial laws as his mother was a Jew and he had married a Jew. He was only released after the intervention of the bishop of Trieste, Antonio Santin. (Stara, ??)

Trieste had the misfortune to be the base for a unit of SS troops, commanded by Trieste-born Odilio Lotario Globocnik, who had helped organise the killing in Poland of more than 2.5 million Jews. More than 700 Jews were deported from Trieste to extermination camps and less than 20 returned. ()

Bishop Santin had also written to the German authorities protesting the treatment of the Jews (Zimmerman, 2005: p. 248).

In October 1943 as the of Jews in Trieste began, Bishop Antonio Santin gave a spirited sermon in the Basilica of San Giusto to people who included Nazi and Fascist collaborators: "San Giusto signifies the heroic love of Christ and the love of our fellow men and women. Thus, charity, goodness, humanity toward all ... In the common misfortune, may every hand offer to help, not hide a dagger. As pastor of this diocese, I am asking for this law of humanity in the name of Christ, also for the sons and daughters of that people from whose womb He came as a man and in whose midst He lived and died." (Zuccotti, 282)

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Despite the racial laws of 1938 and 1939, the Italian authorities and the Italian people were reluctant to be involved in deporting Jews to concentration camps.

When the Germans moved to round up Jews in Rome in October 1943, the sent a report to Berlin: “All available forces of the [German] security and police forces put to use. Participation of the Italian police, considering their unreliability in this affair, was not possible. ... The behaviour of the Italian people was outright passive resistance.... As the German police were breaking into some homes, attempts to hide Jews in nearby apartments were observed, and it is believed that in many cases they were successful. The anti-Semitic part of the population was nowhere to be seen during the action, only a great mass of people who in some individual cases even tried to cut off the police from the Jews.” (Brownfield, 2003)

The “unreliability” of Italian authorities is again demonstrated in Gastone Orefice’s escape from deportation. He recounts: “And when we were moving on we were in a train station and a group of SS and four or five Fascists started checking identity papers. First of all they could see we were not in uniform – people of our age were soldiers. ... But it was very obvious that we were frightened. The Italian Fascist looked at our papers and looked at our faces and told the Germans it was okay. He saved our lives. That Fascist in uniform was a nice guy.” (Rothchild, 1981)

So in Italy there was a confusing mix of anti-Semitic laws and indifference, through to resistance and opposition to the German authorities.

It is estimated there were about 40,000 Italian and 10,000 foreign Jews in Italy before the Second World War. Out of these people, as many as 9,000 were deported with few ever to return. While Italian authorities did not carry out the , their marginalisation of Jewish people made it possible. (Brownfield, 2003)

The Catholic Church

There has been a longstanding controversy over the role of the Catholic Church and in particular the Vatican in the plight of Jewish people in Italy and further afield.

Italian historian Liliana Piciotto Fargion writes, “Certainly the extant documents give the impression of a Vatican policy merely concerned with not irritating the Germans, and that it was inclined towards a policy of non-intervention. On the other hand, it is fair to record that, in contrast to the official position taken by Vatican diplomacy, there were many high-ranking prelates and individual priests, as well as convents, who gave considerable assistance to the Jews in hiding, of which the pope must have been aware.” (Brownfield, 2003)

In 1998 Australia’s Cardinal Edward Cassidy presented a new publication of the Holy See’s Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, called “We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah”.

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The Commission acknowledged that “while bearing their unique witness to the Holy One of Israel and to the Torah, the Jewish people have suffered much at different times and in many places. But the Shoah was certainly the worst suffering of all. The inhumanity with which the Jews were persecuted and massacred during this century is beyond the capacity of words to convey. All this was done to them for the sole reason that they were Jews.”

“The fact that the Shoah took place in Europe, that is, in countries of long-standing Christian civilization, raises the question of the relation between the Nazi persecution and the attitudes down the centuries of Christians towards the Jews.”

“Pope Pius XI too condemned Nazi racism in a solemn way in his Encyclical Letter Mit brennender Sorge,(12) which was read in German churches on Passion Sunday 1937, a step which resulted in attacks and sanctions against members of the clergy. Addressing a group of Belgian pilgrims on 6 September 1938, Pius XI asserted: "Anti-Semitism is unacceptable. Spiritually, we are all Semites".(13) Pius XII, in his very first Encyclical, Summi Pontificatus,(14) of 20 October 1939, warned against theories which denied the unity of the human race and against the deification of the State, all of which he saw as leading to a real "hour of darkness".”

“In the lands where the Nazis undertook mass deportations, the brutality which surrounded these forced movements of helpless people should have led to suspect the worst. Did Christians give every possible assistance to those being persecuted, and in particular to the persecuted Jews? “Many did, but others did not. Those who did help to save Jewish lives as much as was in their power, even to the point of placing their own lives in danger, must not be forgotten. During and after the war, Jewish communities and Jewish leaders expressed their thanks for all that had been done for them, including what Pope Pius XII did personally or through his representatives to save hundreds of thousands of Jewish lives.(16) Many Catholic bishops, priests, religious and laity have been honoured for this reason by the State of Israel.” (Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, 1998)

Conclusion

The three case studies of Bulgaria, Denmark and Italy contain stories of great evil and human failings, and yet often too of great courage and solidarity.

I am particularly struck by the story of Italian woman Ora Kohn and her comment that the most traumatic thing was realising you did not know what tomorrow might bring. The old certainties of life, that people would treat each other with respect and humanity had been swept away. How vulnerable we are when the accepted norms of how we treat each other as human beings are overturned. How vulnerable we are when our neighbours turn on us or treat us with indifference.

These are stories of how prejudices within us can stop us remembering that human beings are created in God’s image and likeness and remind us how we must never lose sight of that fact. Christians and Jews share a common heritage – a heritage that should have prevented the Shoah. And yet Christians turned away from God’s ways. Occasions such as this speech give us an important opportunity to reflect again on the tragedy of the Holocaust in the hope that it is not forgotten and so may never happen again. 10

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