Gegen eine Mauer bischöflichen Schweigens

Describes the activities of a committee appointed by the German Bishops' Conference to defend the religious orders against Nazi persecution. Members were Cardinal Freysing of Berlin and anti-Nazi bishops and priests, and it had close ties to the Kreisau Circle and to the 20 July conspirators. Its members went far beyond their mandate, trying, against the opposition of Cardinal Bertram, chairman of the Bishops' Conference, to move the bishops to speak out against Nazi atrocities, especially the abrogation of law and human rights and the murder of the disabled and the Jews. Although Bertram was well informed about all these, inter alia from the reports of Margarete Sommer, head of Preysing's office for aid to non-Aryan Catholics, he refused to act; his only concern was to placate the Nazis. In 1942-43 the Committee proposed that a pastoral letter be issued by the Bishops' Conference and read from the pulpits. It was finally issued in September 1943 in greatly attenuated form, but did condemn the murder of "human beings of foreign race or descent". Notes that the Pope encouraged and praised the German churchmen's defense of human rights.