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Historical Events

Phillippe Bernardini, Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, and Angelo Rotta: Three Papal Nuncios of the Catholic Church who saved Jews from the Nazis in WWII

 

Three Papal Nuncios of the Catholic Church stand out for their continuous efforts to save Jews during WWII. Phillippe Bernardini in Switzerland was involved in most of the organized efforts to pull Jews out of the holocaust. Angelo Rotta managed to save Jewish lives in Sofia, Bulgaria and then Budapest Hungary. He was recognized in 1997 as Righteous among the Nations by Yad Vashem. Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli worked hard in Turkey to save Jews and would eventually become Pope John XXIII.

(Picture above is of the Apostolic Nunciature in Bern Switzerland of the Holy See – taken in 2009)

Vice Consul Sempo Sugihara saved 6-10,000 Jews from the Holocaust

 

Sempo Sugihara saved about 6-10,000 Jews during the Holocaust. He was guided by his sense of morals and did what he thought what was right. Even when his country's government said otherwise, Sugihara continued to help send Jews far away from the Nazis of World War II Europe. Sugihara acted on his own account. There is no proof that any economic incentive was given or that he took pleasure in danger. Chiune, his nickname, means a thousand lives.

The remarkable Recha and Yitzchak Sternbuch: they fought from Switzerland to save Jews in WWII

 

The Sternbuchs began their rescue activities with the arrival of a stream of refugees from Austria and Germany in 1938. Recha made contact with people in Vienna who directed the refugees in selecting the right means of escape. Then she operated a network of individual citizens, farmers, cab drivers and policemen who led the refugees by secure routes until they made it past the border to San Galen.

Yitzchak Sternbuch was a businessman in Montreux, Switzerland. His wife Recha, though a religious woman with children, and even when pregnant, between the years 1938 and 1942 would spend nights in the forest by the Austrian and French borders to assist thousand of Jewish refugees from Austria and Germany to enter Switzerland illegally. Besides the couple’s direct efforts to save Jewish refugees, they also made their home into the center of activities to save Jews in Europe during WWII.

Abdol Hossein Sardari was an Iranian diplomat who saved Jewish lives during WWII

 

Abdol Hossein Sardari (c. 1895 - 1981) was an Iranian statesman and diplomat to whom thousands of Iranian Jews and their descendants owe their lives in wartime Paris. He is known as the "Schindler of Iran": Oskar Schindler, the German industrialist saved more than 1,000 Jews during the Holocaust by employing them in his factories.

Sardari was an unlikely hero. Sardari trained as a lawyer in Switzerland before becoming a diplomat. In his book In the Lion's Shadow, author Fariborz Mokhtari paints a picture of a bachelor and bon viveur who suddenly found himself head of Iran's legation house, or diplomatic mission, at the start of World War II.

Fr. Edward Flannery fought hatred against Jews until his death in 1998

Fr. Edward Flannery devoted his life to the reconciliation of Christians and Jews, and to the study of anti-Semitism. In an interview in 1967, he said: "The anti-Semite, not the Jew, is the real Christ-killer. He thinks he's religious, but that's a self-delusion. Actually he finds religion so heavy a burden, he develops 'Christophobia.' He's hostile to the faith and has an unconscious hatred of Christ, who is for him, Christ the Repressor. He uses anti-Semitism as a safety valve for this hostility and is really trying to strike out at Christ.”

The blood libel against Jews in Europe began with the death of William of Norwich in 1144

On 25 March, 1144, a boy's corpse showing signs of a violent death was found in Thorpe Wood near Norwich. The body was recognized as that of William, a tanner's apprentice. The grave was opened by William's uncle, the priest Godwin Stuart, the body recognized, the burial Office read, and the grave recovered.

Major-General Ulysses S. Grant expels Jews from his military district on December 17, 1862

Ulysses S. Grant was the 18th President of the United States (1869–1877) as well as military commander during the US Civil War (1861–1865). Under Grant's command, the Union Army defeated the Confederate military and ended the Confederate States of America.

Grant was at the center of one of the most blatant anti-Jewish actions in American history when he issued General Order No. 11 on December 17, 1862. It was an instruction for the expulsion of all Jews in his military district that comprised areas of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky. The order was issued as part of a campaign against a black market in Southern cotton, which Grant thought was being run "mostly by Jews and other unprincipled traders".

Barros Basto: Fighter against Portuguese Hatred towards Jews in the 1920-30’s

Capt. Artur Carlos de Barros Basto (aka Abraham Israel Ben-Rosh) was a courageous figure who stood up for the Jewish people, defying the powers that be to help his brethren. Barros Basto became known as the "Apostle of the Marranos," the title of a short biography by noted historian Cecil Roth who met Basto in 1930 and described him as the most charismatic man that he had ever met.

Barros Basto was born in the Portuguese city of Amarante on December 1887, and was given a Catholic education. He, however, came from a family of Bnei Anusim (whom historians refer to by the derogatory term “Marranos” or Conversos), descendants of Jews whose ancestors had been forced to convert to Catholicism in the 15th century. When he was nine years old his grandfather told him they were descendants of Jews forcibly converted in 1497 and that he wished to die as a Jew.

Georges Picquart fought hatred during the Dreyfus Affair

Lieutenant Colonel Georges Picquart, at a time when Dreyfus had few defenders in the French army, and himself an unapologetic anti-Semite, was the person who found evidence of his innocence, and damaged his army career by fighting for justice for Dreyfus. Alfred Dreyfus, a captain in the French army, had been convicted of treason in a case tainted by anti-Semitism.

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