Father Patrick Desbois was awarded the Lantos Foundation's Human Rights Prize last week for being a "vital voice standing up for the values of decency, dignity, freedom, and justice."

The prize is named after a Holocaust survivor who later became a California congressman.

United States-based Desbois, who teaches at Georgetown University's Programme for Jewish Civilization, is the founder of Yahad-In Unum. This is a Paris-based organisation dedicated to identifying and commemorating Nazi mass-execution sites in Eastern Europe during World War II.

Desbois's research focuses on Jews who were killed in mass shootings by Nazi units in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Moldova and Romania between 1941 and 1944. He found more that one-and-a-half million Jews were murdered like this.

The award also recognises his work in collecting evidence of the Islamic State's genocide of Yezidis, a Kurdish religious minority in Iraq.

Debois has published two books about his work.

The first, "Holocaust by Bullets: A Priest's Journey to Uncover the Truth behind the Murder of 1.5 Million Jews," was published in 2008.

His second book, a memoir on his life as an anti-genocide activist and Holocaust scholar, is due for publication in 2018.

Source

• Crux
• Times of Israel
• Image: Zakhor Online

On Monday, a Catholic bishop apologized in the name of the Catholic Church for their murder, at a ceremony to mark their passing.

"The Catholic Church mourns the death of all those who suffered torture, pain and humiliation, and who died here in vain," Bishop Rafal Markowski said.

Markowski heads the Council for Religious Dialogue and the Committee for Dialogue with Judaism. It was the first time he had attended the annual memorial service.

"At the same time, the church strongly feels the pain of the members of the Polish nation, particularly the Catholics who contributed to this pain, to the humiliation and, ultimately, to death."

Historians have been critical of the wartime Church for not preventing Catholics from participating in the massacre, and for contributing to anti-Semitic incitement against the Jews in the Jedwabne region.

Exactly who planned and executed the massacre is the subject of an ongoing dispute in Poland.

Some say the Germans, rather than the Poles, were responsible for the atrocity. Some claim even mentioning Polish involvement is a libel that is meant to disgrace the proud name of the Polish nation.

On the other hand, Polish-Jewish historians Jan Tomasz Gross and Anna Bikont, say the Poles were wholly responsible for planning and carrying out the atrocity.

Source

• JTA
• Haaretz
• The Ginger Jewish Genealogist

The project first saw the light of day in 1950, but it did not come to fruition because the Reverend Maurice Pirani, the vicar at the time, refused to allow the names of the Catholics to be included in the list of those honoured.

So the plans were shelved and forgotten, hidden away in the church's archives until 2010, when Margaret Blair came across them while she was sorting paperwork.

The heart rimu honours board has been made to the original 1950 design by David Kirkland.

It was funded by Plimmerton's St Theresa's Catholic Church, Porirua RSA, Pauatahanui Residents' Association, and families whose names are on the board.

Ruth Galloway, the daughter of one of the men honoured, said she was immensely proud to see the name of her father, Wallace Galloway, carved into the wood.

"It was very emotional for me and my brothers. I know my dad would have been proud his name was up there."

St Alban's Church,was built in 1898. It was the second church to be built in Pauatahanui.

The building is on the old site of the Matai Paua pa, that was built by Te Rangihaeata, the Ngati Toa leader in 1846.

St Joseph's Catholic Church in Pauatahanui was built in 1878.

Source

• stuff.co.nz
• pauatahanui.org.nz

Image: stuff.co.nz

"Church of Spies: The Pope's Secret War Against Hitler" by intelligence specialist Mark Riebling details actions by Pius to stop Hitler.

The author wrote that Pius cooperated in a variety of plots, initiated by patriotic, anti-Nazi Germans, to assassinate Hitler and replace the National Socialist regime with a government that would make peace with the West.

The Nazis were deeply disturbed by the election of Pius XII in 1939, given Eugenio Pacelli's history.

The Nazis commissioned an assessment of the situation from Albert Hartl, a former Catholic priest, who warned that the Catholic Church would prove a serious threat to the Third Reich.

"The Catholic Church fundamentally claims for itself the right to depose heads of state," Hartl wrote, "and down to the present time it has also achieved this claim several times."

This statement seemed to embolden disaffected German officers who were seeking assistance to overthrow Hitler.

In 1938, several high-ranking German officers began turning against Hitler, for fear he would lead the country into a devastating war.

After the invasion of Poland in 1939, the German military conspirators sought to reach out to their adversaries, especially the British, to seek aid in overthrowing Hitler.

In order to do this, they needed a person who could serve as an intermediary and vouch for their integrity, and so they approached Pius XII, who was highly regarded in Britain.

They asked the pope's top assistants to ask Pius one critical question: Would he be willing to contact the British government and receive guarantees that it would back the German Resistance if Hitler was overthrown?

Pius XII replied that he was willing do so, declaring, "The German Opposition must be heard".

In subsequent efforts to overthrow Hitler, anti-Nazi officers received crucial moral and logistical support from Pius XII, as well as from his closest aides, the book seeks to show.

Sources

• Breitbart
• Image: The Guardian

On December 8, 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbour. This brought Japan into World War II. At that time I was eight years old and living in Manchuria.

My family had moved to Manchuria from Tokyo in 1938 when I was six. There, we lived in Botanko, very close to the Russian border, and my father worked for the army.

As the war progressed, we began to hear about the bombing of Tokyo, Osaka and other industrial cities in Japan. We also heard how people were suffering from shortages of food and other necessities of life.

In Manchuria, however, we were a long way from the battles and did not suffer like that.

But on August 8, 1945, life changed dramatically for my family. At 5:00am I was woken by a terrible noise. People were shouting that Russia had declared war on Japan in Manchuria.

That same day, in the afternoon, Russian B-29s crossed the border and began dropping bombs. That evening, Russian tanks invaded Manchuria and a fierce battle was fought; the Japanese forces were defeated.

Earlier in the day the evacuation of civilians had begun. As we were waiting for cars to take us to the train station, the bombers came over Botanko. At that moment we became refugees: my mother, my younger brother and me.

My elder brother, who had just turned 18, had been called up for military duty along with all male students. It would be some years before we would meet him again. There was no time to say goodbye to friends or teachers; I have never met any of them since. Continue reading

• Good Samaritan Sister Theresia Hiranabe has a background in secondary school teaching, adult faith formation and pastoral work in Japan. Now retired, she lives in Nara and is involved in adult faith formation, catechetics and scripture studies.
• Sister Theresia's article, used with permission, was first published in The Good Oil, the e-magazine of the Good Samaritan Sisters.

They are two of the 733 Polish children who, 70 years ago, arrived in Wellington Harbour as New Zealand's first official refugees.

While the majority were orphans, 13-month-old Halina, now 71, arrived with her mother, one of the 102 caregivers who joined the children.

Eric, a builder, and Halina met again at a dance at Wellington's Empress Ballroom in 1960.

Eric said: "She asked if I was Polish and I said, 'No, I'm Italian,' because New Zealand girls loved Italian men."

"Of course, I didn't realise at the time she was Polish too."

The couple married in 1962 at Our Lady of the Rosary church in Lower Hutt.

They have since been back to Poland three times, the first time in 2000.

Their daughter, Tereska Lepionka-Carroll, is chairwoman 70th reunion of the Pahiatua children, and director of the Celebrating Everything Polish festival, a project with the Museum of Wellington City & Sea.

The celebrations were held on 1 and 2 November.

More photographs

Source

• Facebook
• Stuff.co.nz
• Image: Stuff.co.nz

When Helen Auer, 94, died last week, she was sitting in a chair, and her husband Joe came into the room and knew what had happened.

The Cincinnati Enquirer reported that Joe leaned over, gave her a kiss goodbye and whispered in her ear: "Helen, call me home."

Just 28 hours later, Helen did just that, when Joe Auer died at the age of 100.

His children said their father could manage one night without her, but not two.

On Wednesday, a funeral Mass was celebrated for Joe and Helen in front of the same altar, at St Lawrence's Church in Cincinnati, where they were married in 1941.

The couple met at church and had the first of their 10 children before Joe went off to fight in World War II, when Helen was pregnant with their second child.

Helen was later able to mail him a photo of herself and their first two children, which Joe kept in his wallet for the rest of his life.

He had the photo with him when he landed on Utah Beach in Normandy on D-Day in 1944.

"Dad thought of his children as a gift from God, that was a responsibility for him," his daughter Mary Jo Reiners said.

"He taught us to be servants to God and to be caretakers of his Earth. He was recycling on his last day."

Joe and Helen's marriage survived because they loved each other and because they worked at their marriage and they shared a devout faith, the article stated.

Money was a little tight and 10 children can add stress to any relationship, but they always managed.

Joe used to take two buses each way to his job as an engraver. He bought his first car when he retired.

"They were simple, humble people. They wanted nothing and got everything in return," their son Jerry said.

"If somebody were thinking of getting married, they could do a lot worse than to look at my parents."

Sources

• Cincinnati Enquirer
• Image: The Telegraph

Caritas Internationalis president Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga told a Rome conference on Monday that there are 13 million Syrians in desperate need.

More than four million Iraqis and Syrians are refugees in their own countries, he said.

Gaza has seen 10,000 homes and 70 per cent of its factories destroyed this summer, the cardinal added.

"As part of the humanitarian community, we are confronted with the greatest crisis the world has faced since the Second World War," he said.

Cardinal Maradiaga urged governments to seek a negotiated solution to the conflicts rather than a military one.

He also called for the end of the Israeli blockade of Gaza and a return to the borders recognised in 1967.

He said countries beyond Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey should accept their "fair share" of refugees from Syria and Iraq.

The cardinal said that governments "must agree to a total cessation of arms transfers to the Middle East countries engulfed by conflict," noting that some countries providing arms were even members of the UN Security Council.

Continue reading

During the Second World War, Archbishop Angelo Roncalli's efforts are believed to have helped save thousands of Jews from Nazi death camps

Archbishop Roncalli was elected Pope in 1958 and took the name John XXIII.

His pontificate lasted five years until his death in 1963.

While serving in Istanbul during the war, he distributed documents and papers to Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis and seeking to make their way to Palestine.

Archbishop Roncalli sent thousands of such documents to the Vatican's ambassador in Budapest, Angelo Ratti, who was working with diplomat Raoul Wallenberg and others to save Jews from the Holocaust.

Archbishop Roncalli made available thousands of Baptism certificates without conditions.

He made it clear that this action to save Jews did not make a single Jew a Catholic.

On May 13, Knesset members also praised St John XXIII for laying the groundwork for Vatican II's Nostra Aetate, which was instrumental in improving Jewish and Catholic relationships.

The declaration repudiated former claims against the Jewish people, principally that they were guilty of Jesus' death.

"John XXIII should serve as an example for all men of the need to bring together peoples of different races, faiths and beliefs," former immigration and absorption minister Yair Tzeven said.

Israel's opposition leader Isaac Herzog spoke of the encounters between his grandfather, Rabbi Yitzhak Hertzog, a former Chief Rabbi of Israel, and Archbishop Roncalli.

"When the news from Europe first reached my grandfather, he did everything to save Jews," Mr Herzog said.

"As part of these efforts, he met many times with Roncalli and stated that at these meetings the archbishop wept.

"John XXIII made tremendous efforts to save Jews, and because of him thousands of Jews were indeed saved."

"He helped the Jewish people in every way through a deep feeling of responsibility," Mr Herzog continued.

"He was not afraid of taking responsibility, unlike the pope at the time of the Holocaust."

On April 27, Pope Francis declared Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II to be saints.

Sources

• Jerusalem Post
• Catholic News Agency
• Inside the Vatican
• Image: Eye of the Tiber

At some point, however, the refugees no longer knew what to do next. Where would they be safe? How were the Nazis attempting to find them? There was no refugee center, no leadership, no organization and exasperatingly little reliable information. But what did exist was the art of improvisation and the helpfulness of many Danes, who now had a chance to prove themselves.

Members of the Danish underground movement emerged who could tell the Jews who was to be trusted. There were police officers who not only looked the other way when the refugees turned up in groups, but also warned them about Nazi checkpoints. And there were skippers who were willing to take the refugees across the Baltic Sea to Sweden in their fishing cutters, boats and sailboats.

A Small Country With a Big Heart

Denmark in October 1943 was a small country with a big heart. It had been under Nazi occupation for three-and-a-half years. And although Denmark was too small to have defended itself militarily, it also refused to be subjugated by the Nazis. The Danes negotiated a privileged status that even enabled them to retain their own government. They assessed their options realistically, but they also set limits on how far they were willing to go to cooperate with the Germans.

The small country defended its democracy, while Germany, a large, warmongering country under Hitler, was satisfied with controlling the country from afar and, from then on, viewed Denmark as a "model protectorate." That was the situation until the summer of 1943, when strikes and acts of sabotage began to cause unrest. This prompted the Germans to threaten Denmark with court martials and, in late August, to declare martial law. The Danish government resigned in protest. Continue reading

Sources

• Spiegel Online
• Image: The Jewish Daily Forward

Carmen Artero Kasperbauer was just six years old at the time. She was one of the angels during the Santa Marian Kamalen mass holding a basket of petals. Like the many others who were at church at the time they heard the thunder of planes but thought it was just another Pan-Am flight - they were wrong. Instead, the Japanese were beginning their aerial assault bringing hell on earth to the thousands of Chamorros who suddenly found themselves in the middle of World War II. She said they "tried to leave Agana and everybody was panicking and it was pure chaos; it was terrible."

Source

• Kuam News
• Image: Archdiocese of Agana