AA/PA = Auswärtiges Amt/Politisches Archiv; ADAP = Akten zur deulschen auswärtigen Polilik; Actes = Acles et documents du Saint Siège relatifs à la Seconds Guerre Mondiale; FRUS = Foreign Relations of the United Stales: diplomatic papers; CZA = Central Zionist Archives; NA RG = National Archives, Record Group; DS = Department of State; AE GR = Ankara Embassy, General Records; WRB = War Refugee Board The author acknowledges gratefully the support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada which made possible some of the research for this article.

¹ Hebblethwaite, Peter, Pope John XXIII: shepherd of the modern world, New York 1985, 141–3, 197Google Scholar.

² Before the peace feelers, Roncalli had met Papen on 2 Aug. 1939, 26 Jan. and 22 Mar. 1940, 12 Aug. and at Christmas 1940, Capovilla, Loris, Giovanni XXIII: Quindici letture, Rome 1970, 572, 574Google Scholar; Sandra Zampa, ‘Cronologia della vita di A. G. Roncalli’, Bologna 1986, lists most, but not all, of Roncalli’s meetings with Papen; Roncalli, Angelo Giuseppe, Letlere ai vescom di Bergamo, Bergamo 1973, 72Google Scholar. There are no reports from Papen on these meetings in the German Foreign Office files in Bonn, AA/PA, letter 9 Sept. 1986. Papen was regarded with deep suspicion in the German hierarchy and in the Vatican. When his accreditation at the Vatican was rumoured in Apr. 1940, Konrad Graf von Preysing, the bishop of Berlin, replied to an inquiry from Pius xn that Papen was ‘a highly placed Catholic National Socialist’, that a papal agrement might lead German Catholics to believe that ‘utterance or silence, action or non-intervention by the Holy Sec were influenced by this personage’s machinations’, Acles, ii, Vatican City 1966, 138–42.

³ When Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop prevented Papen from installing Lersner in the Ankara embassy, Papen brought Lersner to Turkey ‘through the Wehrmacht’, ADAP, D. x, Frankfurt am Main 1963, 230; Papen to Ribbentrop, 11 Mar. 1944: ‘Herr von Lersner ist nie von mir, sondern von der Abwehr besoldet worden’, AA/PA, Akten betreffend Türkei, Bd. 9. Ribbentrop prohibited any peace contacts; Papen to Foreign Office, 17 Nov. 1940, Ribbentrop to diplomatic missions, 18 Nov. 1940, ADAP, D. viii, Baden-Baden-Frankfurt am Main 1961, 327–8, 333–4; Ambassador Ritter to Papen, 26 Sept. 1941, AA/PA, Handakten Ritter 51 betr. Türkei 1941–1942.

⁴ Roncalli to Montini, 8 July 1943, Actes, vii, Vatican City 1973, 474; Roncalli to Montini, 23 Apr. 1942, Actes, v, Vatican City 1969, 549–52.

⁵ Minute by Mgr Domenico Tardini, head of the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, 22 May 1942, Actes, v, 574–7. Lersner’s account of the events in ‘Memoiren’ (typescript), Corum 1944/5, 129, shows that Lersner went to the Vatican on 20 May and made an appointment with Montini to whom Mgr Gustavo Testa (formerly Roncalli’s secretary in Istanbul, now his secretary in Greece) had introduced him just as Montini was leaving his superior, Maglione.

⁶ Lersner,’ op. cit. 129.

⁷ Tardini’s minute, 22 May 1942, Actes, v, 575; Lersner. op. cit. 129. The two accounts agree in all salient points; Lersner’s account contains more detail than Tardini’s.

⁸ Lersner, op. cit. 132, also for the rest of the paragraph.

⁹ For this paragraph, Montini’s minute, ‘Colloquio con il sig. von Lersner’, 22 May 1942, Actes, v. 577; Lersner, op. cit. 132–3.

¹⁰ Cf. Hoffmann, Peter, ‘Peace through coup d’état: the foreign contacts of the German resistance 1933–1944’, Central European History xix (1986), 3–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hans Wilbrandt, ‘Die Aktionen der deutschen Widerstandsbewegung gegen den Nationalsozialismus während des zweiten Weltkrieges in der Türkei’, Deutsch-türkische Gesellschdft e. V. Bonn: Mitleilungen, no. xcv, Dec. 1975, 7–8; Balfour, Michael and Frisby, Julian, Helmuth von Moltke: a leader against Hitler, London (1972), 286–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Peter Hoffmann, Widerstand, Staatsstreich, Attentat: Der Kampf der Opposition gegen Hitler, 4th rev. edn, Munich-Zurich 1985, 275–83.

¹¹ Hoffmann, ‘Peace’, 9–13; Cordell Hull, The Memoirs, 2 vols, New York 1948, i. 701–13, 885–7; cf. FRUS 1342, iii, Washington 1961, 772–800; Bernd Martin, Friedensiniliativen und Machtpolitik im Zweiten Wellkrieg 1939–1942, 2nd edn, Düsseldorf 1976, passim; Martin, Bernd, ‘Verhandlungen über separate Friedcnsschlüsse 1942–1945’, Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen ii (1976), 96–9Google Scholar. See also Roosevelt’s fireside address to the nation on 29 Dec. 1940, The New York Times, 30 Dec. 1940, 6; The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt with a Special Introduction and Explanatory Notes by President Roosevelt, 1940: War-and aid to democracies, comp. and coll. Samuel I. Rosenman, New York 1941, 633–44; the ‘Atlantic Charter’, agreed by President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill on 14 Aug. 1941, with its stipulation in point eight that the disarmament of nations threatening aggression was essential for peace and security, The Times, late London edn, 15 Aug. 1941, 4; FRUS 1941, i, Washington 1958, 367–9.

¹² FRUS 1942, i, Washington 1969, 1–38; FRUS: the conference at Washington, 1941–1942, and Casablanca, 1943, Washington 1968, 362–76Google Scholar.

¹³ Hull, Memoirs, 713–15; Chadwick, Owen, Britain and the Vatican during the Second World War, Cambridge 1986, 213Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Olshausen, Klaus, Zwischenspiel auf dem Balkan: Die deutsche Politik gegcnüber Jugoslawien und Griechenland von März bis Juli 1941, Stuttgart 1973, 246Google Scholar.

¹⁵ Ibid. 246.

¹⁶ ADAP, D. xii, Göttingen 1969, 703–5.

¹⁷ [Franz] Haider, Kriegstagebuch, iii, Stuttgart (1964), 143.

¹⁸ Fleischer, Hagen, Im Kreuzschatten der Mächte: Griechenland 1941–1944 (Okkupation-Resistance- Kollaboration), Frankfurt am Main-Berne-New York 1986, 120Google Scholar. Fleischer’s is the most comprehensive and detailed work on Greece in the war to date.

¹⁹ Ibid. 120.

²⁰ Olshauscn, Zwischenspiet, 247–50; Fleischer, Im Kreuzschallen, 118–19.

²¹ FRUS ig42, ii, Washington 1962, 724–97; W. N. Medlicott, The Economic Blockade, ii, London 1952, 254–67; Fleischer, op. cit. 120–5; cf. Olshausen, op. cit. 246–7.

²² Ibid. 247.

²³ Fleischer, op. cit. 122; Chadwick, Britain and the Vatican, 191.

²⁴ ‘War cabinet 75 (41), conclusions ofa meeting of the war cabinet held at 10 Downing Street, S.W. 1, on Monday, July 28, 1941, at 5 P.M.’, PRO, Cab. 65/19; Fleischer, Im Kreuzschalten, 120–1; Chadwick, op. cit. 190–1.

²⁵ ‘War cabinet’, PRO, Cab. 65/19; Fleischer, op. cit. 120–1; Chadwick, op. cit. 190.

²⁶ Roncalli to Maglione, 24 July 1941, Actes, v. 99–103; Capovilla, Giovanni XXIII, 575.

²⁷ Roncalli to Maglione, 16 Apr. 1942, Roncalli to Montini, 23 Apr. 1942, Actes, v. 541–3, 549–52; Giovanni [xxm] e Paolo [vi], Duepapi: saggio di corrispondenza (1925–1962), ed. Loris Francesco Capovilla, Brescia (1982), 33; cf. ADAP, D. xiii, Gottingen 1970, 183–4; si, Angelo Martini, ‘La fame in Grecia nel 1941 nella testimonianza dei documenti inediti vaticani’, Civilta Cattolica cxviii (1967), 213–27Google Scholar; Roncalli to Maglione, 4 Aug. and 14 Sept. 1941, Actes, v. 128, 210–14; Wolf Keilig, Das deutsche Heer 1939–1945: Gliederung - Einsatz - Stellenbesetzung, loose-leaf edn, Bad Nauheim (1956–70), 211/201.

²⁸ Interview with Margrit and Isabella von Papen, 9 Nov. 1985; Papen, Franz von, Der Wahrheit tine Gasse, Munich (1952), 545Google Scholar; Roncalli to bishop of Bergamo, 15 Sept. 1941, Roncalli, Lettere ai vescovi, 88; Capovilla, Giovanni XXIII, 575; P.Antonio Cairoli OFM (postulator general in the beatification case for Pope John xxm), letter to the author, 28 Jan. 1988.

²⁹ ‘Wehrmachtbefehlshaber Südost (A.O.K. 12) [Saloniki], Tätigkeitsbericht la 1.7.41–31.12.41’, Bundesarchiv/Militärarchiv, RH 20–12/104: ‘19.9.: Empfang des Päpstlichen Delegierten Exz. Roncalli, Erzbischof von Messambria’. Roncalli to Maglione, 2 Oct. 1941, Actes, viii, Vatican City 1974, 297.

³⁰ Roncalli to Maglione, 6 Aug. 1941, Actes, viii. 240–4.

³¹ Roncalli to Maglione from Athens, 25 Nov. 1941, mentions arrivals in Greece of items such as milk, cheese, noodles and rice from Italy, but does not mention quantities, Actes, vii. 726–7; see also memorandum of the Vatican secretariat of state, 1 March 1943, Actes, ix, Vatican City 1975, 144–5, concerning a number of tons of food sent by the Vatican through the nunciatures in Berne and Budapest.

³² Papen, Wahrheit, 545.

³³ Fleischer, Im Kreuzschatten, 118–19; ADAP, D. xiii, 419–20, 554–6.

³⁴ Olshausen, Zwischenspiel, 249; ADAP, D. xiii, 554–6.

³⁵ Fleischer, op. cit. 120, and n. 26, cites several contemporary German military records and Roncalli’s testimony at the trial of Field Marshal List after the war.

³⁶ Chad wick, Britain and the Vatican, 191.

³⁷ Osborne to Vatican secretariat of state, 17 Oct. 1941, a nd Maglione’s minute evidently of the same date, Actes, viii. 313–14; British legation to Vatican secretariat of state, 3 Oct. 1942, Actes, viii. 671–2; Chadwick, op. cit. 191.

³⁸ Vatican secretariat of state to Osborne, 21 Oct. and 24 Nov. 1941, Actes, viii. 319–21, 353–8.

³⁹ Osborne to secretariat of state, 11 Nov. 1941, and Godfrey to Maglione, 14 Nov. 1941, Actes, viii. 343–4, 350; memorandum of the Vatican secretariat of state, 1 Mar. 1943, Actes, ix. 144–5.

⁴⁰ Godfrey to Maglione, 28 Jan. 1942, Osborne to Maglione, 2 Feb. 1942, Actes, viii. 424. 430–1.

⁴¹ Maglione to the nuncio in Berlin, Mgr Cesare Orsenigo, 8 Nov. 1941, Orsenigo to Maglione, 12 Nov. 1941, Actes, viii. 342–3, 347–8.

⁴² Roediger, Conrad, ‘Die internationale Hilfsaktion fur die Bevölkerung Griechenlands im Zweiten Weltkrieg’, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte xi (1963), 58Google Scholar.

⁴³ Roncalli to Maglione, 25 Nov. 1942, Actes, viii. 726–7; Trinchese, Stefano, ‘Roncalli diplomatico in Greciae in Turchia’, in Riccardi, Andrea (ed.), Pio XII, Ban 1984, 236Google Scholar; Hebblethwaite, Pope John XXIII, 180.

⁴⁴ Actes, ix. 145; Trinchese, op. cit. 236, cites this passage with the figure of 6 million drachmas.

⁴⁵ Roncalli to Maglione, 24 Nov. 1942, Actes, viii. 721–2.

⁴⁶ See above n. 31.

⁴⁷ Fleischer, Im Kreuzschatlen, 119.

⁴⁸ Actes, viii. 721; Fleischer, op. cit. 119.

⁴⁹ Ibid. 119–20.

⁵⁰ Actes, viii. 721.

⁵¹ Fleischer, Im Kreuzschatten, 119 and n. 24.

⁵² Olshausen, Zwischenspiel, 246–7, cites, inter alios, Kitsikis, Dimitri, ‘La famine en Grèce (1941–1942): les conséquences politiques’, Revue d’Histoire de la Deuxième Guerre Mondiale ix (1969)Google Scholar, Avril, 17–41, who gives the figure of 360,000.

⁵³ Actes, viii. 721–2.

⁵⁴ Fleischer, Im Kreuzschatten, 117–18; Ravitaillement de la Grèce pendant I’occupation, 1941—1944, et pendant les premiers cinq mois après la libération: rapport final de la commission de gestion pour les secours en Grece sous les auspices du Comité International de la Croix- Rouge, ed. Bengt Helger, Athens 1949, 36–8 (‘Effets de la famine sur la mortalité’) and 598–627 (‘Les resultats obtenus’ with extensive statistical analyses).

⁵⁵ Roediger, ‘Hilfsaktion’, 59–62; Medlicott, Blockade, ii. 268–75; Fleischer, Im Kreuzschatten, 124–5. The wheat was a gift of the Canadian government, ibid. 125.

⁵⁶ CZA, L 15/1 ii; Actes, x, Vatican City 1980, 154, 161; Pinchas Lapide, E., Three Popes and the Jews, New York 1967, 179Google Scholar.

⁵⁷ Barlas, Hayim, Halsalah be-yeme sho’ah, Hakibbutz Hameuchad 1975, 163Google Scholar; Barlas to Roncalli, 8 Mar. 1944, CZA, L 15/1 ii; Barlas to Roncalli, 23 Mar. 1944, Actes, x. 188–9; Barlas to Roncalli, 25 Mar. and 9 Sept. 1944, CZA, L 15/1 ii. In 1957, when Roncalli was patriarch in Venice, the Israeli consul there, Pinchas E. Lapide, thanked him for his help to Jews. ‘“In all these painful matters”, he [Roncalli] said, raising his hand in deprecation, “I referred to the Holy See and afterwards I simply carried out the Pope’s orders: first and foremost to save human lives’“, Lapide, Three Popes, 181. Cf. the statement by Chief Rabbi Herzog’s private secretary, Y. Lipel, in 1963: ‘With the Vatican the Chief Rabbi communicated almost directly in Turkey thanks to Monsignor Roncalli in Istanbul, a true friend of Israel, who saved thousands of Jews’, ibid. 179.

⁵⁸ Maglione to the chargé d’affaires of the apostolic delegation in Egypt (and Palestine), Arthur Hughes, 23 Feb. 1943, Roncalli to Maglione, 4 Sept. 1943, Actes, ix. 137, 469.

⁵⁹ Ibid. 469.

⁶⁰ Roncalli to Montini, 10 Feb. 1943, ibid. 438 n. 3; cf. Trinchese, ‘Roncalli diplomatico’, 236–7.

⁶¹ Roncalli to Maglione, 22 Jan. 1943, Actes, ix. 87.

⁶² Ibid. 87.

⁶³ Ibid. 87–8; Pius XII’s Christmas message in Actes, vii. 161–7.

⁶⁴ Maglione to Hughes, 23 Feb. 1943, Actes, ix. 137. No country was willing to accept Jewish immigrants quickly, unbureaucratically and in great numbers. As late as May 1944 a proposal to give a mere one thousand Jewish and other refugees a temporary haven in the United States got President Roosevelt into political trouble in the Congress, the British White Paper of 17 May 1939, Palestine: statement of policy. Presented by the secretary of stale for the colonies to Parliament by command of His Majesty, May, 1939, Accounts and Papers, xii, State Papers, session 8 November 1938–23 November 1939, vol. xxvii, London 1939, limited Jewish immigration to Palestine to approximately 75,000 for the following five years. In October 1944 registered Jewish immigration to Palestine was still 14,000 short of the total set in the White Paper. The British-American-Russian declaration of 17 Dec. 1942 condemned the massacres and persecutions, and promised retribution, but avoided any suggestion of asylum or relief. See Secretary of State for War Henry L. Stimson to John W. Pehle, executive director of the War Refugee Board, Dept of the Treasury, 31 Mar. 1944, NA RG 59, DS decimal file 840.48, Refugees/5499; David Wyman, S., The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust 1941–1945, New York 1984, 5–6, 260–8Google Scholar; Nicosia, Francis R., The Third Reich and the Palestine Question, Austin 1985, 157, 159, 162–3Google Scholar; Palestine: Statement of Policy; Bernard Wasserstein, Britain and the Jews of Europe 1939–1945, London-Oxford 1979, 17–39, 81–96, 143–55, 169–82; 205, 269, 278, 330–1, 339, 342–3, 352; Barlas, Hatsalah, 214–15, 221, 240–53; The Times, late London edn, 18 Dec. 1942, 4; Hirschmann, Ira, Caution to the Winds, New York 1962, 141–7Google Scholar; The Holocaust, 14: Relief and Rescue of Jews from Nazi Oppression 1943–1945, intro. John Mendelsohn, New York-London 1982, 22–94.

⁶⁵ Actes, ix. 170, 181.

⁶⁶ Barlas, op. cit. 349; Roncalli to Maglione, 13 Mar. 1943, Actes, ix. 185–6. Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, rev. edn, New York-London 1985, 735, estimates 25,000 Jews remaining in Slovakia in March 1943; Roncalli to Barlas, 23 Mar. 1944, Barlas, minute 25 Mar. 1944, Barlas to Roncalli 25 Mar. 1944, CZA S 26/1235–2.

⁶⁷ Barlas, op. cit. 349; in Roncalli’s reference to 1,000 Jewish children in his telegram to Maglione, 13 Mar. 1943, Actes, ix. 185, the figure 1,000 is followed by a question mark, placed apparently by the editors.

⁶⁸ Ibid. 185.

⁶⁹ Ibid. 206–7; cf. 171, 201.

⁷⁰ Minute of Vatican secretariat of state, 1 Apr. 1943, ibid. 217.

⁷¹ Ibid. 233. Almost a year earlier, on 13 July 1942, Tardini had noted:’II guaio è che il presidente della Slovacchia e un sacerdote. Che la S. Sede non possa far stare a posto Hitler, tutti lo capiscono. Ma che non possa tener a freno un sacerdote, chi lo pub capire?’, Actes, viii. 597–8.

⁷² Actes, ix. 275–7.

⁷³ ‘Ripetutamente Santa Sede è intervenuta presso governo slovacco favore non ariani con speciale riguardo gioventu’, ibid. 272.

⁷⁴ Minute of Vatican secretariat of state, i Apr. 1943, Burzio to Maglione, io Apr. 1943, ibid. 216, 245–51; Sister Slachta to Pius xn, 15 May 1943, ibid. 299–300; Hilberg, Destruction, 735–42; cf. Actes, x. 418, 422–4, 433, 436, 454–5, 461, 465–8, 475–8, 480, 491–3. 495–6, 512–13.

⁷⁵ Roncalli to Maglione, 22 May 1943, Actes, ix. 307. Zampa, ‘Cronologia’, does not list an encounter between Roncalli and Barlas, thinking perhaps that Roncalli was not in to see Barlas, which Roncalli’s formulation leaves open: ‘Oggi stesso il segretario della Agenzia Giudaica per la Palestina, signor Ch. Barlas venne a ringraziarmi ed a ringraziare la Santa Sede per il felicissimo successo delle sue pratiche a favore degli israeliti di Slovacchia’. But Barlas’s letter to Roncalli of the same date, 22 May 1943, leaves no doubt: ‘Me référant à l’entretien que vous avez bien voulu m’accorder aujourd’hui’, CZA, L 15/1 ii.

⁷⁶ Roncalli to Maglione, 26 Feb. 1944, Actes, x. 154.

⁷⁷ Maglione to Cassulo, 2 Mar. 1944, Cassulo to Maglione, 16 Mar. 1944, ibid. 167, 179–80.

⁷⁸ Ibid. 283–8; Hilberg, Destruction, 837–8.

⁷⁹ Actes, x. 285–6; Hilberg, op. cit. 838, does not cite this point.

⁸⁰ Actes, x. 328, 349.

⁸¹ ADAP, E. viii, Göttingen 1979, 172; Levai, Eugene, Black Book on the Martyrdom of Hungarian Jews, Zürich-Vienna 1948, 197–216Google Scholar, reproduces some of the protest letters from Rotta and other functionaries of the Church.

⁸² Actes, x. 335.

⁸³ Ibid. 335.

⁸⁴ ADAP, E. viii, 171–3; Actes, x. 351–2; Hilberg, Destruction, 852.

⁸⁵ Roncalli to Barlas, 5 June 1944: ‘Je suis bien heureux de Vous communiquer que les certificats en faveur des Juifs de Hongrie qu’on m’avait confiés, ont pu être envoyés à Budapest par un courriers sur.’ Barlas to Roncalli, 6 June 1944: ‘Je tiens à vous remercier pour votre lettre du 5 crt, et pour le grand service que vous nous avez rendu en envoyant les certificats aux réfugiés en Hongrie, qui grace a ces documents pourront etre sauvées’, CZA, L 15/1 ii.

⁸⁶ Actes, x. 391–3 and 391 n. 6.

⁸⁷ Ibid. 390.

⁸⁸ Commenting on Roncalli’s responses to a list of questions he had invited Hirschmann to submit (cf. below nn. 114–15), the editors state: ‘Dans son livre, Caution to the winds (New York, 1962, pp. 179–185), M. Hirschmann, en se référant à cette même communication du 18 août, faisait parler le délégué apostolique Mgr Roncalli des “certificats de baptême”‘, Acles, x. 390–1 n. 6.

⁸⁹ Hirschmann, op. cit. 181.

⁹⁰ Levai, Black Book, 212–13.

⁹¹ Hirschmann, ‘Report’, 19 Aug. 1944, Exhibit N, NA RG 84, Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State: Turkey: AE GR 1944, box 84.

⁹² Levai, op. cit. 292; Levai, Jenö, Hungarian Jewry and the Papacy: Pope Pius XII did not remain silent: reports, documents and records from church and state archives, London 1968, 17–49Google Scholar; Károly Hetényi Varga, Akiket üldöztek az igazságért: Papi sorsok a horogkereszt e’s nyilaskereszt árnyékában, Budapest 1985, passim; cf. Laszlo, Leslie, ‘The role of the Christian Churches in the rescue of the Budapest Jews’, Hungarian Studies Review xi. 1 (1984), 23–42Google Scholar.

⁹³ Actes, x. 352 n. 6.

⁹⁴ Ibid. 390.

⁹⁵ Pehle to Kalmanowitz, 10 Apr. 1944, Franklin Delano Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York, NA RG 220, records of the WRB, 1944–5, box 26, Union of Orthodox Rabbis.

⁹⁶ Levai, Black Book, 292–3. The Lutheran and Calvinist Churches issued similar statements.

⁹⁷ Charge d’affaires in the US Embassy in Ankara, Robert F. Kelley, to Secretary of State Hull for Pehle, WRB, from Hirschmann, IJA RG 59, DS 840.48 Refugees/8–1244. Hirschmann had this information from Roncalli, Hirschmann, interview with the author, 14 Mar. 1988.

⁹⁸ Hirschmann, ‘Report’, 19 Aug. 1944, 19, NA RG 84, AE GR 1944, box 84.

⁹⁹ Ira Hirschmann, A., Lifeline to a Promised Land, New York 1946Google Scholar; idem. Caution,179—85. Hirschmann’s account of ‘thousands’ of baptisms is vigorously denied by Mgr Gennaro Verolino, who was auditor in the nunciature in Budapest in 1944 and who is the only potential witness among the hierarchy with whom a contact could be established, Verolino to the author, 23 Oct. and 15 Dec. 1987. Mgr Verolino adds that if baptisms took place which were exceptional, as in air-raid shelters, and under a perceived, immediate danger to life, then, ‘if they happened, they must have been very few’, or he should have heard about them. In fact, all that Mgr Verolino can assert is that he did not, and does not, know of cases such as those referred to by Hirschmann.

¹⁰⁰ Hirschmann, ‘Report’, 19 Aug. 1944, 4, NA RG 84, AE GR 1944, box 84; idem, ‘Summary report’, 4 Oct. 1944, 3, NA RG 84, AE GR 1944, box 84; idem, Caution, 153–60, 162–8.

¹⁰¹ Ibid. 179.

¹⁰² Hirschmann, ‘Diary’, 31 July 1944, FDR Library, Ira Hirschmann Papers, box 1, ‘Diary Feb.-Oct. 1944’.

¹⁰³ Ibid. In 1962 Hirschmann’s tribute to Roncalli was undiminished: ‘They [the Hungarian Jews saved with baptismal certificates] must number in the thousands. And all this was due to the kindly intervention of the benevolent Apostolic Delegate to the Middle East. Is it any wonder that I was moved to tears when in 1958 I read the headlines which announced to the world that Angelo Roncalli had been elected Pope, the ruler of the Catholic Church?’, Caution, 185.

¹⁰⁴ Ibid. 181; Hirschmann, interview, 14 Mar. 1988.

¹⁰⁵ Capovilla, Giovanni XXIII, 572–6; Sister Kay MacDonald (Sisters of Sion) to the author, 22 Jan. 1988.

¹⁰⁶ Statement by Sister Katalin Kuczman, 20 Feb. 1988, Nostra Signora di Sion, Rome; Sister Kay MacDonald, 22 Jan. and 30 May 1988; Levai, Black Book, 292; Hilberg cites a Budapest newspaper, Magyar Szo, to the effect ‘that many people had recently advertised the loss of personal and family documents’ and that these persons ‘were Hungarians who had sold their birth certificates to Jews’, Destruction, 840; Pater DrGeorg Kis, letter, 28 Feb. 1988; Dr Kis reports that he and other clergymen and sisters ‘provided hundreds of Jews with baptismal certificates of contemporaries. Then the baptismal certificate was the only document of identity and thus very many Budapest Jews were saved.’

¹⁰⁷ Hetényi Varga, Akiket, 128 n. 2, 524; idem, letter, 23 Sept. 1987; I am indebted to Professor Leslie Laszlo of Concordia University in Montreal for translations from Hetenyi Varga’s work; Dr Joel Berger, rabbi for Wurttemberg, who grew up in Budapest, saw monks (probably Dominicans), coming into the air-raid shelters in the Budapest ghetto in the summer of 1944, appearing to consecrate the shelters, and offering baptism; Dr Berger further relates that baptismal certificates were traded by the thousands, although the Churches refused to sell or hand out blank forms, Berger to the author, 9 Nov. 1987.

¹⁰⁸ Five selected parishes near Jewish residential sections - Krisztina ter (Catholic), Deàk tér (Lutheran), Pozsonyi út (Calvinist), Gorkij fasor (Calvinist) and Belso Lipotvaros (Calvinist) are covered in Victor Karady, ‘Les conversions des juifs de Budapest apres 1945’, Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sodales Ivi (March 1985), 58–9; from 1932 to 1935 and 1945 to 1947, the annual numbers for the same five parishes were below 200, but larger, with significant peaks in the intervening years: 1936 (216), 1938 (1,016), 1939 (636). 1940 (557). 1941 (251), 1942 (439), 1943 (278), 1944 (3.009). S ix further Catholic and two more Calvinist parishes registered 2,553 conversions of Jews for 1944, Karady, letter to the author, 28 Jan. 1988. Karady will have more comprehensive figures soon. Research in parish records will produce evidence only of duly registered conversions but not of those certified through false documents.

¹⁰⁹ Hirschmann to Pehle, 21 Aug. 1944, with copies of Hirschmann’s questionnaire, Hirschmann to Roncalli, 1 Aug. 1944, and Roncalli’s answers, Roncalli to Hirschmann, 18 Aug. 1944, FDR Library, NA RG 220, records of the WRB, 1944–5; box 35, Hungary 7b; see also Roncalli’s answers, with some variations, in Actes, x. 390–3; Kelley to Hull for Pehle WRB from Hirschmann, 7 Aug. 1944, NA RG 59, DS 840.48, Refugees/8–744.

¹¹⁰ Hirschmann to Pehle, 21 Aug. 1944 (n. 109 above); Acles, x. 390–3

¹¹¹ In Actes, x. 391, there follows a sentence not found in the version transmitted by Hirschmann to Pehle (n. 110): ‘It is also willing to recommend particular documents which may be useful.’ This combines parts of the following with parts of the preceding sentence and appears to be a typist’s error.

¹¹² Kelley to Hull, for Pehle WRB, from Hirschmann, 12 Aug. 1944, NA RG 59, DS 840.48/Refugees, 8–1244 (the telegram received in Washington has ‘by means of technical device on conversion’); this is ‘Ankara’s 131’ to which Hirschmann refers in Caution, 183. Hilberg, Destruction, 840, cites a ‘declaration by a representative of the archbishop vicar in Deutsche geitung (Budapest), July 14, 1944, p. 4’ for the statement that, in July 1944, more Jews had been converted to Christianity than in the last fifteen years.

¹¹³ NA RG 84, AE GR 1944, box 84.

¹¹⁴ ADAP, E. viii. 596; Barlas, minute of conversation with Ambassador Lawrence Steinhardt, 1 Mar. 1944, Steinhardt to Barlas, 3 and 26 Apr. 1944, Barlas, Hatsalah, 357–60; Steinhardt and Hirschmann to WRB, 27 Mar. 1944, NA RG 59, DS 840.48, Refugees/5460; Hirschmann, Lifeline, 64–71; Rohwer, Jürgen, Die Versenkung der jüdischen Flüchtlingstransporter Struma und Mejhwre im Schwarzen Meer (Februar 1942, August 1944), Frankfurt am Main 1965, 48Google Scholar.

¹¹⁵ Steinhardt and Hirschmann to Hull, 27 Mar. and 4 Apr. 1944, NA RG 59, DS 840.48, Refugees/5460 and 5537. Hischmann, Lifeline, 68–9, suggested that in March only the German safe-conduct had not been obtained; in fact, the Russian safe-conduct was not obtained until 11 Apr. 1944, Steinhardt to Hull, 11 Apr. 1944, NA RG 59, DS 840.48, Refugees/5586.

¹¹⁴ Steinhardt and Hirschmann to Hull for WRB, 4 Apr. 1944, Hull from WRB to Steinhardt. 5 Apr. 1944, NA RG 59, DS 840.48, Refugees/5537 and 5486.

¹¹⁷ Steinhardt to Hull for Pehle, 12 Apr. 1944, NA RG 59, DS 840.48, Refugees/5606.

¹¹⁸ Hull from WRB to Steinhardt, 17 Apr. 1944, NA RG 59, DS 840.48, Refugees/5606.

¹¹⁹ Steinhardt and Hirschmann to Hull, 27 Mar. 1944, Steinhardt to Hull, u Apr. 1944, NA RG 59, DS 840.48, Refugees/5460 and 5586.

¹²⁰ Steinhardt to Hull, 30 Mar. 1944, Steinhardt and Hirschmann to Hull for WRB, 4 Apr. 1944, NA RG 59, DS 840.48, Refugees/5480 and 5537. When, in January 1944, the Bella Cittá was to take Jews from Constanza to Palestine, the commander of Naval Group South, Admiral K. Fricke, proposed to sink the ship unobserved on the open sea, but Naval High Command turned this down. Other ships brought several hundred Jewish refugees to safety. One of them, however, the Mefkure, was fired on during the night of 5 August with canon and machine guns from a ship; she sank, leaving only five survivors. Rohwer’s investigation established the identity of the vessel, the Soviet submarine SC-215, that sank the Mefkurc. This has since been acknowledged in Soviet Russian publications, Rohwer, Versenkung, 72–5, 87–95; Jurgen Rohwer, ‘Jüdische Flüchtlingsschiffe im Schwarzen Meer - 1934 bis 1944’, in Ursula Büttner (ed.), Das Unrechtsregime: Internationale Forschung über den Nationalsozialismus. Festschrift für Werner Jochmann, 2 vols, Hamburg 1986, ii. 238 and n. 113, 65.

¹²¹ Hull to Steinhardt from WRB, 13 Apr. 1944, NA RG 59, DS 840.48, Refugees/5537.

¹²² Steinhardt and Hirschmann to Hull, 27 Mar. 1944, NA RG 59, DS 840.48, Refugees/5460.

¹²³ Hirschmann, Lifeline, 69.

¹²⁴ Steinhardt to Hull, 8 Apr. 1944, NA RG 59, DS 101.402/31; Hirschmann, ‘Report’, 19 Aug. 1944, 1, NA RG 84, AE GR 1944, box 84; Hirschmann, Caution, 170, gives 8 Apr. 1944 for his departure from Ankara.

¹²⁵ Ibid. 170.

¹²⁶ Steinhardt and Hirschmann to Hull for WRB, 4 Apr. 1944, NA RG 59, DS 840.48, Refugees/5538. Simond to ICRC, 24 Apr. 1944, Principles and Law Department, ICRC, letter, 4 Aug. 1987, called the interview ‘very cordial’; Simond explained to Papen that it was a question, based on humanitarian considerations, of saving 1,350 children and the 150 adults needed to look after them; Papen was very understanding and assured Simond he would telegraph Berlin immediately to request the safe-conduct; Papen apparently did not tell Simond that a similar request had been sent to Berlin on 31 Mar. 1944; ADAP E. viii, 596. Hirschmann quoted Simond: ‘“Don’t worry about the Tari,‘he said. ‘I have seen von Papen and it will be all right’“, Caution, 170. Cf. Hirschmann, Lifeline, 69.

¹²⁷ Ibid. 69.

¹²⁸ Hull to Steinhardt, 17 Apr. 1944, NA RG 59, DS 840.48, Refugees/5606; ICRC, letter, 4 Aug. 1987.

¹²⁹ Jenke to Foreign Office, 9 Apr. 1944, AA/PA, Inl. iig, clxxvi.

¹³⁰ ICRC, letter, 4 Aug. 1987.

¹³¹ This meeting is not listed in Zampa, ‘Cronologia’, where Roncalli is said to have left Ankara on 21 Apr. 1944, but to have returned to Istanbul only on 22 Apr.

¹³² Papen to Foreign Office, telegram, 4 Apr. 1944, AA/PA, Inl. ng, clxxvi; ICRC, letter, 4 Aug. 1987; Steinhardt to Hull for WRB, 22 and 24 Apr. 1944, NA RG 59, DS 840.48, Refugees/5797 and 5812.

¹³³ Actes, x. 242–3, 255. Orsenigo had been instructed to try to obtain the safe conduct, evidently upon a request from the apostolic delegate in Washington, Mgr Amleto Cicognani.

¹³⁴ Steinhardt to Hull for WRB, 24 Apr. 1944, NA RG 59, DS 840.48, Refugees/5812.

¹³⁵ ADAP, E. viii, 596.

¹³⁶ Minister von Altenburg to Legationsrat Eberhard von Thadden (head of Judenrefcrat), 21 Apr. 1944, AA/PA, Inl. ng, clxxvi, equally telegram and written message, Altenburg to Thadden, 21 Apr. 1944, revoking the agreement of the same date, AA/PA, Inl. ng, clxxvi; ADAP, E. viii, 596; Papen to Foreign Office, 21 Apr. 1944, ADAP, E. viii, 653; Steinhardt to Hull, 22 Apr. 1944, NA RG 59, DS 811.20, Defense (M) Turkey/999; The Times, late London edn, 21 Apr. ig44, 4; ibid. 24 Apr. 1944, 4; Hillgruber, Andreas and Hümmelchen, Gerhard, Chronik des Zweiten Weltkrieges, Königstein im Taunus-Diisseldorf 1978, 209Google Scholar; Walther to Foreign Office, 9 May 1944, Thadden to Ribbentrop, 11/13 May ‘944i Thadden to Legation Counsellor von Triitzschler, 13 May 1944, AA/PA, Inl. ng, clxxvi; Ribbentrop instructed Thadden not to inform the German embassy in Ankara of the German refusal of safe conduct for the Tari, hoping to use it as leverage to change the Turkish position. Hirschmann, who was not in Turkey at the time, stated in Caution, 170, that ‘an enraged von Papen gained revenge by refusing safe conduct to 5,000 orphaned children’; cf. idem, Lifeline, 70. This is incorrect in terms of chronology, and in substance, in that Papen was not in a position to grant or refuse a safe-conduct.

¹³⁷ Barlas, Hatsalah, 359–60.

¹³⁸ Actes, x. 242–3.

¹³⁹ ICRC, letter, 4 Aug. 1987.

¹⁴⁰ See Roncalli to Papen, 4 Aug. 1944, Peter, Karl Hcinrich (cd.), Brieje zur Weltgeschichle, Stuttgart (1961), 462–3Google Scholar.

¹⁴¹ Roncalli reckoned that he had been able to save 24,000 Jews - with the assistance of Papen, Hebblethwaite, Pope John XXIII, 196; Giancarlo Zizola, ‘Disse àlzati e io dopo 30 anni mossi le gambe1, Oggi xv. 13 Apr. 1983, 52–6, reporting testimony from the beatification hearings for John xxm on the basis of an interview with P. Antonio Cairoli OFM, the postulator general, now emeritus; Zizola to the author, 19 Mar. 1987. P. Cairoli wrote to the author, 13 July 1987, that many notes and documents of the hearings were still secret because John xxiii’s case had not yet been discussed by the congregation for cases for beatification, but that he could confirm Zizola’s account; this is confirmed also by Mgr Capovilla to the author, 18 Apr. 1987; cf. Trinchese, ‘Roncalli diplomatico’, 246–7, who states that Mgr Capovilla’s archive contained evidence that Roncalli was able to save 30,000 Jews with Papen’s assistance. The chief rabbi of Jerusalem communicating almost directly with the Vatican, Lapide, Three Popes, 179.

¹⁴² Hirschmann, Caution, 181.

¹⁴³ Conceivably, Roncalli meant to indicate Pius xii’s authorisation for these actions, too, when he talked to the Israeli Consul in Venice, Pinchas Lapide.’“In all these painful matters”, he said, raising his hand in deprecation, “I referred to the Holy See and afterwards I simply carried out the Pope’s orders: first and foremost to save human lives”‘, Lapide, op. cit. 181.

¹⁴⁴ Giovanni xxiii, Il Giornale dell’ anima e altri scritti di piela, 9th edn, R ome 1982, 7, 14, 15.

¹⁴⁵ Ibid. 370.

¹⁴⁶ Acla Apostolicae Sedis, 1, 22 Nov. 1958, ser. n, v. xxv, N. 18, 857, 859 - 60; Hebblethwaite, Pope John XXIII, 281.

¹⁴⁷ Cf. La Documentation catholique, lv. 1291, 23 Nov. 1958, col. 1483.

¹⁴⁸ Hebblethwaite, op. cit. 283.

¹⁴⁹ Stacpoole, Alberic, Vatican Il by Those Who Were There, London 1986, 72–3Google Scholar.

¹⁵⁰ Ibid. 73.