Papal Address
In an October 25 communication, the War Refugee Board reverted to the earlier proposal for a papal address by Vatican Radio in which the Holy Father would exhort the Hungarians to aid the Jews by hiding them and otherwise opposing the deportation. Again, however, Pius XII had a different way to the same end. His clue was provided by Rotta, who reported on October 22 that a collection for the refugees would be taken up in all the churches during the following week. On the day before the planned collections, an unusual papal message went by telegram to Cardinal Seredi. It seemed like an ordinary telegram of circumstance, but the Pope began by stating: "...urgent appeals continue to reach us from this nation imploring our intervention for the defense of persons exposed to persecution and violence because of their religious confession, or their race or their political convictions...." The Pope added his support to the call of the Hungarian bishops and concluded, "We form wishes that, in conformity with principles of humanity and justice, sufferings of this redoubtable conflict, already extremely serious, may not become even graver." The primate of Hungary may have been surprised to receive that unsolicited and unprecedented papal telegram, but he could not have missed the meaning of its opening reference to the racial question.
On November 10, the nuncio called on the new Hungarian foreign minister, Kemeny. According to the record of that meeting, discovered by the Allies after the war, Rotta wanted answers to two questions: Why had the Ministry of the Interior, again despite the promises of the prime minister, failed to recognize travel passes and protection letters? And why had there occurred the gravest of atrocities in the areas placed under the protection of the foreign diplomatic missions? Of course, no consistent answers were forthcoming.
The indefatigable nuncio appeared at the government offices again on November 17, this time with Swedish Ambassador Danielson for an audience with Prime Minister Szalasi. Summarizing the meeting and its results in a November 27 report, Rotta said, "No practical result was hoped for, in view of the mentality made up of religious ignorance and fanatical hatred of the Jews among the mass of the Arrow Cross." In that report, the nuncio informed the Vatican that he had issued 13,000 "Letters of Protection" which have "served some purpose at least to prevent for a certain time many Jews and especially baptized Jewish women from being deported." Rotta did not explain to his chiefs in Rome how the Vatican "protection letters" operated, except that they did help. In fact, those documents, like others issued at the same time by the other neutral diplomatic missions, became a sort of habeas corpus for many.
The terrible death march to Hegyeshalom on the Austrian border occurred in the final days of Nazi control of Hungary. On December 8, Rotta sent the Vatican what he described as a "pro-memoria presented to me on this matter by a religious sent by the nunciature as far as the frontiers of Hungary to relieve the sufferings of the wretched deportees and especially the ones protected by the nunciature."