Vatican’s Refugee Assistance, Ethnic Germans, and Navigating Identities in the aftermath of world war II

The collections of the Vatican archives on the Pius XII’s pontificate was opened to researchers in 2020. Vatican Apostolic Archive, Vatican City. Source: https://www.vaticannews.va/en/vatican-city/news/2021-03/papal-archives-vatican-open-world-sergio-pagano.html

The newly available records also shed light on the history of post-war reconstruction and the origins of the Cold War. It makes for a watershed moment for the scholars of refugee movements and refugee aid during and after WWII. The history of post-WWII population displacement is typically written with the use of the records of the international organisations (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, or UNRRA, and International Refugee Organization, or IRO) and state archives. The Vatican archives offer, among other things, a new angle for researching individuals and groups on the margins of the refugee regime.

In this blog post, I draw on the sources from the Vatican Apostolic Archive (VAA, named Vatican Secret Archive until 2019) to point out to new research opportunities in the field of post-war population displacement and, through spotlighting on the example of Massimiliano, focus on the case of the Vatican’s assistance to ethnic Germans.

The newly available sources show how the Vatican aimed to fill a gap in aid left by the international organisations and the states, providing help also to those excluded from the main aid programmes. Especially, it filled the gap left by the IRO policies and supported refugees in securing assistance from this organization. Unlike UNRRA and IRO, the Vatican claimed to wish to help all the needy, no matter their nationality or faith. In practice, the Pope and clergymen gave special attention to selected sections of displaced populations and individuals. The ways in which the Vatican and the Church were involved in assistance to individuals and communities who were unable to find assistance elsewhere requires further research.

Ethnic Germans

One such example is the group of ethnic Germans (the Volksdeutsche), or those classified as such at some point. As this section of the population benefited from the Nazi rule, and some of them acted as collaborators, they were explicitly excluded from the international and state aid programmes until at least the late 1940s. The flight and expulsion of more than 12 million ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe left them impoverished, vulnerable, and desperate.

Research on the Vatican’s assistance to the German population and ethnic Germans has been dominated by the issue of their role in the escape of Nazis from justice.  The International Red Cross, backed up in many of their activities by the Vatican, issued travel documents to refugees, among whom were also ethnic Germans and those posing as such. War criminals benefited from this by obtaining fake documents. Klaus Barbie, nicknamed the “butcher of Lyon”,  who escaped to Bolivia passing as “ethnic German”, being a case in point.

In the wartime and post-war years, the requests for help came from individuals and communities from various countries, and the Vatican’s dignitaries weren’t aloof to those sent from persons of ethnic German origins. In some cases, the clergymen offered small financial subsidies or parcels, decided on an individual basis.[2] In others, they helped with resettlement and intervened at the IRO on behalf of refugees they deemed worth helping.

That was the case with Massimiliano and his family. A son of German-speaking parents, classified as a Volksdeustcher, he could not benefit from food and shelter in a refugee camp and assistance in emigrating overseas. In autumn 1949, the Vatican officials advocated for him, describing him and his life in their correspondence in the following way:

He narrates his very painful odyssey which has lasted for years and which makes him very depressed.

A clerk by profession, a trained typist, with a good knowledge of Italian and German, a refugee from Venezia Giulia, where he had to leave his loved ones, during the war he served in the [Italian] Navy and was important to the command as a valuable and much needed interpreter. Then came imprisonment in Germany.

Having returned to Italy, without work, without unemployment benefits, without any assistance, without a home, without the means to live, he took refuge with his mother-in-law in Breguzzo, a poor woman who is struggling to make a living and who is no longer able to provide for him. He complains that he appealed in vain to the IRO to be admitted to the concentration camp [intending Displaced Persons camp] and then emigrated abroad for work purposes; nothing has been done so far.

He begs to be offered employment in Italy, or with the support of the IRO so that his application can be promptly and favorably accepted.

He proves to be a fervent Catholic.[3]

Massimiliano turned to the IRO, as the documents preserved in the Arolsen Archives show.[4] After the appeal to the Pope, in early 1950, Walter Carroll from the Vatican Migration Bureau had personally written to the IRO authorities to recommend his case and asked for assisting him with emigration to a country where he can find a job.[5] In his answer, the Chief of IRO Mission in Italy wrote that Massimiliano as a person of Volksdeutsche origin was part of “the category of refugees [which] cannot receive any assistance from IRO”. He underlined, however, that his status was “in suspense” as “not to prejudice their position with ‘Ineligibility’, in case IRO, Geneva, would change the basic policy excluding Volksdeutsche.” He added: “It does not appear likely that such change will be made.”[6] The Pontifical Aid Commission, the main papal charity, took interest in Massimiliano’s case and tried to help him.

Massimiliano’s case brings our attention to imposed and overlapping identities which translated into bureaucratic categories of the postwar era. As many others, he eluded simple identity classifications, as well as tried to navigate the system to his benefit. Massimiliano was originally from the territories ceded by Italy to Yugoslavia (Istria, Fiume, and Dalmatia). He was fluent in German and Italian and spoke some Greek and “Yugoslav”. Yet, he wasn’t classified as an Italian refugee and only in 1948 he applied for Italian citizenship in Merano, as he had family connections to South Tyrol, a region with German-speaking population. In late 1950, the IRO review board decided he convinced thm that he was “neither an Italian citizen nor a person of German ethnic origin” to be included in the immigration scheme.

Interest in such cases, and more general sympathy for refugees like Massimiliano, was informed by reports and letters on the plight of German and Austrian populations received by the Vatican. Particularly poignant were those coming from Germany, Poland, and Czechoslovakia, which described the sufferings and deprivation suffered by the expellees from Eastern Europe. A note from December 1945, with the annotation “seen by the Pope”, stated:

From eyewitness testimonies it appears that the Germans were subjected to unprecedentedly brutal treatment by the Poles (expulsions in 20 minutes, depredations, violations, beatings, mistreatment of all kinds, transfers in inhuman conditions, torture, etc. etc.), without even mentioning the tragic famine, following which epidemics develop: mortality increases to a frightening extent...

On the other hand, the German expellees from the regions where the Poles settled, all flow into the German zone occupied by the Russians, which finds itself encumbered by millions of human beings whose maintenance it cannot provide for. So illnesses, epidemics, deaths…. Tragic situation, especially in view of winter. The authors of the documents raise an urgent appeal for the swift provision of accommodations for the refugees, so that substantial supplies of food, clothing, medicines are collected in refugee centers (...) The worst consequences are foreseen if this very serious situation is not resolved as soon as possible.[7]

Another report, referring to those coming from Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, Austria, and Yugoslavia, stated that “the evacuees arrive stripped of everything – women in shirts and barefoot, without covers, they will be the prey of autumn rains and winter frosts.”[8]

Cardinal Aloisius Muench, known for his antisemitic views and exculpating Germans from the Nazi crimes, wrote extensively on the needs of the German expellees:

Hardly had the ink dried on the Potsdam Agreement of August 2, 1945, when a flood-tide of expellees, bereft of practically everything except the clothes on their backs, poured into truncated, demolished Germany. The deportation was anything but ‘orderly and humane’ as the Agreement provided. Bombed-out cities could provide no shelter for them, except somewhere in the ruins or possibly in ill-ventilated and ill-lit bunkers.[9]

He highlighted the aid already received from the Vatican: “Aware of the distress among refugees and expellees our Holy Father has sent them during this year tons and tons of foodstuffs, clothing, and medicines.”[10] Various proofs of the moral and material destruction of the war and the need for aid and reconstruction landed on the Pope’s desk, such as for example the photos of the ruins of the cathedral in Cologne.[11]