COL. WHEELER: The Altreich is the Old Reich of Germany.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes.
COL. WHEELER: “When the Holy See asked that they should be liberated and be permitted to emigrate to neutral countries of Europe or America (1940), the petition was refused; it was only promised that they should all be collected in the concentration camp at Dachau, that they should be dispensed from too hard labor, and that some should be permitted to say Mass, which the others could hear.
“The treatment of the ecclesiastics interned at Dachau, which, for a certain time in 1941 was in fact somewhat mitigated, worsened again at the end of that year. Particularly sorrowful were the announcements which for many months in 1942 came from that camp of the frequent deaths of priests, even of some young priests among them.”
I pass by two paragraphs.
“Polish Catholics are not allowed to contract marriage in the territory of the Altreich; just as requests for religious instruction or instruction in preparation for confession and Holy Communion for the children of these workers are, in principle, not accepted.”
What happened to complaints—even from the Vatican—as to religious affairs in the overrun territories is disclosed in Document Number 3266-PS, Exhibit Number USA-573, which I now offer in evidence. This is a letter from the Cardinal Archbishop of Breslau to the Papal Secretary of State, dated December 7, 1942. It bears a Vatican authentication similar to those already read.
This letter lays at the door of the Party Chancellery the responsibility for determining the policy and exercising final authority on religious questions in the occupied territories. I quote from Page 1, the first paragraph of this letter, and remind the Court that the Defendant Bormann was at that time Chief of the Nazi Party Chancellery and that the Defendant Kaltenbrunner was the Chief of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, the RSHA. I quote from Document 3266-PS, beginning with the sixth line:
“About some of the gravest injuries inflicted on the Church, I not only protested on each occasion as the individual incident occurred, but I also made a most formal protest about them in globo in a document which, as spokesman of the Hierarchy, I sent to the supreme ruler of the State and to the ministries of the Reich on December 10th, 1941. Not a word by way of answer has been sent to us.