Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Shortly before World War II, Czechoslovakia ceased to exist, swallowed by Nazi expansion. Its territory was divided into the mainly Czech Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia , and the newly declared Slovak Republic , while a considerable part of Czechoslovakia was directly joined to the Third Reich (Hungary and Poland also annexed areas).
The churches, monasteries and convents of Assisi served as a safe haven for several hundred Jews during the German occupation. The Assisi Network was an underground network in Italy established by Catholic clergy to protect Jews during the Nazi Occupation. The churches, monasteries, and convents of Assisi served as a safe haven for several ...
During the Holocaust, some members of the Catholic Church were involved in rescuing Jews from persecution in Nazi Germany.They lobbied Axis officials, provided false documents, and hid people in monasteries, convents schools with sympathetic families, and whithin the institutions of the Vatican itself, members of the Catholic Church saved hundreds of thousands of Jews.
Hitler said in 1942 that he saw the Reichskonkordat as obsolete, intended to abolish it after the war, and hesitated to withdraw Germany's representative from the Vatican only for "military reasons connected with the war" [136] Pope Pius XI issued Mit brennender Sorge, his 1937 encyclical, when Nazi treaty violations escalated to physical ...
At the outbreak of World War Two, Goebbels' Ministry of Propaganda applied intense pressure on the Churches to voice support for the war, and the Gestapo banned Church meetings for a few weeks. In the first few months of the war, the German Churches complied. [66] No denunciations of the invasion of Poland, nor the Blitzkrieg were issued. [67]
[62] Pope Pius XII succeeded Pius XI in March 1939, on the eve of World War II. The new Pope faced the aggressive foreign policy of Nazism, and perceived a threat to Europe and the Church from Soviet Communism, which preached atheism – "each system attacked religion, both denied freedom and the victory of either would be a defeat for the ...
Antoni Zawistowski was tortured and murdered at Dachau in 1942. 1,780 Polish clergy were sent to Dachau, and many are remembered among the 108 Polish Martyrs of World War II. By far the greatest number of priest prisoners came from Poland – in all some 1,748 Polish Catholic clerics, of whom some 868 died in the camp. [ 134 ]
Nazi war actions in 1940 and 1941 similarly prompted the Church to voice its support. The bishops declared that the Church "assents to the just war, especially one designed for the safeguarding of the state and the people" and wants a "peace beneficial to Germany and Europe" and calls the faithful to "fulfill their civil and military virtues."