Humanitarian Intervention.
To provide a documentary basis for the scientific study of the Holy See's actions and policies during the Second World War, the late Holy Father Pope Paul VI, authorized publications of the pertinent papers of the Secretariat of State of His Holiness Pope Pius XII. The decision to publish those confidential papers was without precedent. The papers have been edited by a group of Jesuit historians of several nationalities. The first volume, entitled "The Holy See and the War in Europe, March 1939-August 1940", was published in 1965. Other volumes followed, and now volume 10, "The Holy See and the Victims of the War, January 1944 - July 1945", is presented to the general and the scholarly public. It concerns the humanitarian interventions of the Holy See in behalf of a wide variety of the war's victims, both civilian and military, during the final year and a half of the Second World War. In this volume, the term "humanitarian intervention" is intended to exclude other forms of papal intervention or action, for example, on the diplomatic or pastoral planes. The distinction between such categories is of course not always clear, but the differences are sufficient in most instances to justify publication of the Actes in different volumes which, though covering the same chronological period, deal with significantly different classifications of action.
The final year and a half of World War II was the most destructive era in the history of the West. Intransigence and ruthlessness were at their peak as the destructive hours approached. In this conflict of giants, individuals or groups counted for little. "Military necessity" was the first rule, transcending all other considerations. The victims were myriad: wounded soldiers, prisoners of war, civilians subjected to bombardments, individuals taken as hostages or threatened with death reprisals for actions deemed unlawful by a local commander, and whole populations facing starvation. Some of these evils and hardships are classic and are witnessed in any war. But the deportation of countless thousands to an unknown destination on racial grounds alone was a new atrocity of whose existence the documents published in this volume give ample evidence. Many of those same documents also record the efforts of the Holy See to help Jewish communities in the German sphere of occupation. Many of them document the extraordinarily close cooperation and understanding existing between the Holy See and the many Jewish organizations dedicated to the welfare and safety of their co-religionists. Even before the beginning of 1944, the world Jewish organizations had recognized in the Holy See a friend who was willing — and often able — to help in the many situations heavy with tragedy developing in occupied Europe. Through the documents, the synchronization of papal and Jewish action clearly emerges. The concerns of the Jewish organizations were also those of the Holy See. Sometimes, the Holy See acted directly on the appeal of a Jewish organization, well informed as they were on the condition of their own people. At other times, the Holy See acted on the basis of reports received from its own representatives on the scene — in Bratislava, Bucharest, Budapest, Berlin, and elsewhere. The papal representatives were obviously on close terms of confidence with leaders of the local Jewish communities from whom they received timely indications of imminent dangers to the Jews of that particular country. In many instances, the Holy See had already acted upon information received from its own nuncios when appeals from Jewish organizations, themselves informed with some delay, arrived at the Vatican.