Catholic Martyrs of the Holocaust

by Matthew Bunson

By 1939, more than 10,000 Catholic schools had been closed and the Catholic boys and girls sent to Nazi public schools for indoctrination.

Catholics are constantly confronted with the claims that Pope Pius XII was complicit in the Holocaust, that vast numbers of Catholics collaborated with Hitler's diabolical regime, and that Catholic priests, nuns, and bishops were ardent members of the Nazi Party and supporters of its policies. It is true that many Catholics turned a blind eye to the Holocaust, and others remained silent out of fear for their lives and the safety of their families. There were certainly many ex-Catholic members of the ruling Nazi circles, just as there were Catholics in some numbers who supported the Nazis out of a twisted sense of nationalism, anti-Semitic beliefs, or for pure personal advancement in a corrupt and evil state.

But what many people don't know is that the Church itself was a target of the Nazis. On June 6, 1941, Martin Bormann, head of the Nazi Party Chancellery, private secretary to Adolf Hitler, and one of the most powerful figures in the Third Reich, issued a secret decree for all Gauleiters (or regional party leaders) of the Reich regarding the true intentions of the Nazi regime toward the Christian churches...

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