BBC Europe wrote:German Church admits aiding Nazis
By Paul Legg
Europe Editor, BBC News
Cardinal Karl Lehmann, file picture from 2000
Cardinal Lehmann said the Church had been "blind for too long"
Germany's Roman Catholic Church has acknowledged the extent of its involvement in the use of forced labour during World War II.
A 700-page report says 1,000 prisoners of war and some 5,000 civilians were forced to work for the Nazis in support of the German war effort.
They were drafted from 800 Catholic-run institutions across the country.
The Church had previously paid $2m in compensation to foreign workers who the Nazis had used for forced labour.
"It should not be concealed that the Catholic Church was blind for too long to the fate and suffering of men, women and children from the whole of Europe who were carted off to Germany as forced labourers," said Cardinal Karl Lehmann, the bishop of Mainz.
The cardinal - who stood down in January as head of the German bishops' conference - noted that the number of forced labourers used by the Church was a small fraction of the estimated 13m compelled to work by the Nazis.
At the televised launch of the report in Mainz, the cardinal said the conditions in which people had been forced to work in Catholic institutions - such as hospitals, homes and monastery gardens - had not been as bad as elsewhere.
The Protestant Church in Germany has admitted a similar use of forced labour during the Nazi era.
A number of leading German companies, such as Deutsche Bank, Volkswagen and Siemens have, in recent years, commissioned reports into their own dubious involvement.
That's what was said on the BBC International News. BBC Russian mentioned a few more detailes:
BBC Russian wrote:The report details that the Germans used forced labour of citizens of many nations, mainly USSR and Poland, in military plants and hospitals. Near war's end, enslaved POWs constituted around 1/4th of the German workforce
Last edited by K. A. Pital on 2008-04-09 10:10am, edited 1 time in total.
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If any bitch goes "no! not true christians helped the nazis! they hid jews in their attics!" I will SLAP THEM with this. Utterly ram it up theirs like that Mandoa's club. Thank you Stas, for providing yet more material to show those self-righteous pricks how much shit is smeared in their own laundry.
And they have the fucking nerve to call themselves the Church of the Martyrs (they do!). They have the nerve to feel so righteous because a thousand years ago, their saints got crucified or martyred or murdered. Well, I guess 'cause of that, the Shroud of Turin is a miracle - how the stains of premature ejaculation can create an immaculate image of their Lord and Savior on a filthy diseased rag.
"DO YOU WORSHIP HOMOSEXUALS?" - Curtis Saxton (source) shroom is a lovely boy and i wont hear a bad word against him - LUSY-CHAN! Shit! Man, I didn't think of that! It took Shroom to properly interpret the screams of dying people - PeZook Shroom, I read out the stuff you write about us. You are an endless supply of morale down here. :p - an OWS street medic Pink Sugar Heart Attack!
What I find incredible if you are talking them having nerve, is dragging one of the most brilliant women of the time, call her a witch, burn her and torture her and even possibly rape her, burn her life work, burn the greatest testament of knowledge in the age and then declare the guy who did it a saint.
Oh, and Stas? Link please?
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Shroom Man 777 wrote:If any bitch goes "no! not true christians helped the nazis! they hid jews in their attics!" I will SLAP THEM with this. Utterly ram it up theirs like that Mandoa's club. Thank you Stas, for providing yet more material to show those self-righteous pricks how much shit is smeared in their own laundry.
And they have the fucking nerve to call themselves the Church of the Martyrs (they do!). They have the nerve to feel so righteous because a thousand years ago, their saints got crucified or martyred or murdered. Well, I guess 'cause of that, the Shroud of Turin is a miracle - how the stains of premature ejaculation can create an immaculate image of their Lord and Savior on a filthy diseased rag.
First off
1. Turin is a fake, even the catholic church declared it a fake back when it was first found,it was not until the 1800's that anyone took it seriously again, and the church now refuses to comment on it but it's found to be a fake time and again by everyone except the un-scientific.
2. You already had better than this, the Catholic church opened it's genology books to the Nazi's despite knowing that people ID in said books were being sent to camps(Not yet death camps) but forced labor camps and did it anyway.
"A cult is a religion with no political power." -Tom Wolfe Pardon me for sounding like a dick, but I'm playing the tiniest violin in the world right now-Dalton
Shroom Man 777 wrote:If any bitch goes "no! not true christians helped the nazis! they hid jews in their attics!" I will SLAP THEM with this. Utterly ram it up theirs like that Mandoa's club. Thank you Stas, for providing yet more material to show those self-righteous pricks how much shit is smeared in their own laundry.
Of course, you'll always have the Christians that go "Hey, Catholics aren't true Christians!"
"It's you Americans. There's something about nipples you hate. If this were Germany, we'd be romping around naked on the stage here."
Zixinus wrote:What I find incredible if you are talking them having nerve, is dragging one of the most brilliant women of the time, call her a witch, burn her and torture her and even possibly rape her, burn her life work, burn the greatest testament of knowledge in the age and then declare the guy who did it a saint.
Oh, and Stas? Link please?
Who are you referring to?
Amateurs study Logistics, Professionals study Economics.
Dale Cozort (slightly out of context quote)
2. You already had better than this, the Catholic church opened it's genology books to the Nazi's despite knowing that people ID in said books were being sent to camps(Not yet death camps) but forced labor camps and did it anyway.
Wait. I didn't know that. They opened their genology books that... contained records of who was Jewish, undesirable and stuff? They had those (that's some kind of intelligence)? Do you have a link or something? I could use some reprehensive reading material.
"DO YOU WORSHIP HOMOSEXUALS?" - Curtis Saxton (source) shroom is a lovely boy and i wont hear a bad word against him - LUSY-CHAN! Shit! Man, I didn't think of that! It took Shroom to properly interpret the screams of dying people - PeZook Shroom, I read out the stuff you write about us. You are an endless supply of morale down here. :p - an OWS street medic Pink Sugar Heart Attack!
General Zod wrote:
Of course, you'll always have the Christians that go "Hey, Catholics aren't true Christians!"
The protestant church supported hitler too and protestant chirstians were among the first NSDAP supporters. Just read what Martin Luther writes about about Jews.
I don't see why one would need to name any specific examples of early anti-Pagan persecution anyway. Constantine ordered anti-Pagan persecution; there is no serious dispute about this and Constantine certainly made no attempt to hide it. Christians know that there is no doubt about this happening, which is why they tend to just pretend it happened so long ago that it doesn't matter (as if nobody will ask why we should trust the authority of a Bible for whom the Christians of this era acted as editors).
"It's not evil for God to do it. Or for someone to do it at God's command."- Jonathan Boyd on baby-killing
"you guys are fascinated with the use of those "rules of logic" to the extent that you don't really want to discussus anything."- GC
"I do not believe Russian Roulette is a stupid act" - Embracer of Darkness
"Viagra commercials appear to save lives" - tharkûn on US health care.
You know, it was perfectly was legal to use POWs as labor during the laws in force in WW2, as long as it wasn’t work directly supporting a war effort, and working in a church hospital certainly would NOT count as war work. The British and US put Nazi POWs to work, mostly growing food, by the hundreds of thousands if not a million plus. What’s more it was legal to compel said POWs to do the work; basically if they wouldn’t work then you didn’t have to feed them.
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
Sea Skimmer wrote:You know, it was perfectly was legal to use POWs as labor during the laws in force in WW2, as long as it wasn’t work directly supporting a war effort, and working in a church hospital certainly would NOT count as war work.
I think this was mentioned in one of the classes I attended when I was in the Army, where a sergeant first class explained what kind of tasks you can make a POW do. (Note: he specifically said you CANNOT ask a POW to dig trenches and foxholes for you.) Does anyone have a copy of the Geneva Conventions handy, so we can see whether or not the subject of the article was in violation of it?
Those gun nuts do not understand the meaning of "overkill," and will simply use weapon after weapon of mass destruction (WMD) until the monster is dead, or until they run out of weapons.
They have more WMD than there are monsters for us to fight. (More insanity here.)
Well, Germany was kinda different from other nations, including allies, because it used not only POWs but enslaved civilians for forced labour; large swathes of Eastern european civilian citizenry were moved to Germany to work as slaves.
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He wasn't a Nazi, but he did serve in the Nazi Army IIRC, if only as a more or less innocent youngster. Though even living in Nazi Germany at the time meant a good deal of xenophobia injected into you.
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So out of 13 million about 6000 were used as forced labor by the church? Rather unsurprising given the times.
Also using civilians as forced labor is not really something that only the Nazis did. The soviets used about 160.000 germans as well as forced labor although this is admittedly a very small number with regards to 13 million. Note that this does not mitigate Nazi crimes in any way.
And Ratzinger served as an anit-aircraft auxillary, "Flakhelfer", which meant that he as a young boy he had to fetch and carry for an anti-aircraft battery. Not quite like service in the army.
Whoever says "education does not matter" can try ignorance
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A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then, it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient, to look the other way. Well, the answer to that is 'survival as what'? A country isn't a rock. It's not an extension of one's self. It's what it stands for. It's what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult! - Chief Judge Haywood
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Hmm.... Oscar Schindler used slave labor, but he's hailed as a good guy, even by the people who he used. Of course, since the alternative for those people was certain death maybe that's excusable...?
LOTS of organizations/companies/entities used forced labor in WWII. Why should the Catholic church be an exception? I'd be interested to know how they treated these laborers - were they given adequate food, clothing, and shelter? If so, they were much better off than many POW's and civilians forced into servitude at the time. Which, of course, does not automatically make everything OK, but in the context of the war that wouldn't be the worst evil perpetuated.
Honestly, I don't know much about the Catholic church's dealing with the Nazis, so the next question may sound dumb to those who do know more: were these people handed over to forced labor as an official policy from the Vatican, or was it more piecemeal, individual priests and bishops throwing some groups to the wolves?
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Thanas wrote:
And Ratzinger served as an anit-aircraft auxillary, "Flakhelfer", which meant that he as a young boy he had to fetch and carry for an anti-aircraft battery. Not quite like service in the army.
Actually he was drafted into the Flakhelfer for a time, but was then allowed to return to into civilian life for a very short period when he turned 17, before being formally drafted into the heer. He served the heer only in a training unit in the rear areas. Near the end of the war he deserted at the first opportunity, before being captured some time later by the American Army while civilian cloths. Given the overall situation in Nazi Germany, you really cannot damn someone for life for what his service amounted to, it very absurdly easily could have been a thousand times worse.
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
"
- PeZook
