“* * * Church leaders were especially persecuted, scores of ministers were imprisoned in concentration camps, among them the General Secretary of the Students’ Christian Movement in Czechoslovakia. One of the Vice-Presidents was executed.
“Protestant Institutions such as the YMCA and YWCA were suppressed throughout the country.
“The leading Theological School for all Evangelical denominations, HUS Faculty in Prague and all other Protestant training schools for the ministry were closed down in November 1939, with the other Czech universities and colleges.
“(d) Czech Orthodox Church.
“The hardest blow was directed against the Czech Orthodox Church. The Orthodox churches in Czechoslovakia were ordered by the Berlin Ministry of Church Affairs to leave the Pontificat of Belgrade and Constantinople respectively and to become subordinate to the Berlin Bishop. The Czech Bishop Gorazd was executed together with two other priests of the Orthodox Church. By a special order of the Protector Daluege, issued in September 1942, the Orthodox Church of Serbian Constantinople jurisdiction was completely dissolved in the Czech lands, its religious activity forbidden and its property confiscated.
“All Evangelical education was handed over to the civil authorities and many Evangelical teachers lost their employment; moreover the State grant to salaries of many Evangelical priests was taken away.” (998-PS)
(3) In Poland. The repressive measures levelled against the Christian Church in Poland where Hans Frank was Governor-General from 1939 to 1945, were even more drastic and sweeping. In protest against the systematic strangulation of religion, the Vatican, on 8 October 1942, addressed a memorandum to the German Embassy accredited to the Holy See in which the Secretariat of State emphasized the fact that despite previous protests to the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Reich, von Ribbentrop, the religious condition of the Catholics in the Warthegau “has become even sadder and more tragic.” This memorandum states:
“For quite a long time the religious situation in the Warthegau gives cause for very grave and ever-increasing anxiety. There, in fact, the Episcopate has been little by little almost completely eliminated; the secular and regular clergy have been reduced to proportions that are absolutely inadequate, because they have been in large part deported and exiled; the education of clerics has been forbidden; the Catholic education of youth is meeting with the greatest opposition; the nuns have been dispersed; insurmountable obstacles have been put in the way of affording people the helps of religions; very many churches have been closed; Catholic intellectual and charitable institutions have been destroyed; ecclesiastical property has been seized.” (3263-PS)
On 18 November 1942 the Papal Secretary of State requested the Archbishop of Breslau, Cardinal Bertram, to use every effort to assist Polish Catholic workers transferred to Germany, who were being deprived of the consolations of religion. In addition, he again appealed for help for the Polish priests detained in various concentration camps, whose death rate was “still on the increase.” (3265-PS). On 7 December 1942 the Cardinal Archbishop of Breslau replied that all possible efforts were being put forward by the German Bishops without success on behalf of the victims of concentration camps and labor battalions, and deplored “the intolerable decrees” against religious ministration to Poles. (3266-PS)
On 2 March 1943, the Cardinal Secretary of State addressed a note to von Ribbentrop, Reichsminister for Foreign Affairs, in which the violations of religious rights and conscience among the civilian population of Poland were set out in detail, and the time, locality, and character of the persecutions were specified. Priests and Ecclesiastics were still being arrested, thrust into concentration camps, and treated with scorn and derision, while many had been summarily executed. Religious instruction was hampered; Catholic schools were closed; the use of the Polish language in sacred functions and even in the Sacrament of Penance was forbidden. Even the natural right of marriage was denied to men of Polish nationality under 28 years of age to women under 25. In the territory called “General Government” similar conditions existed and against these the Holy See vigorously protested. To save the harassed and persecuted leaders of the Catholic Church, the Vatican had petitioned that they be allowed to emigrate to neutral countries of Europe or America. The only concession made was that they would all be collected in one concentration camp—Dachau. (3264-PS)