A new interest in the Holocaust is showing up in social studies curricula across the country. Many universities are offering courses on the Holocaust and text books are being written to furnish more details on this sad chapter in recent history. Along with this new interest is a concerted effort by the Catholic League to influence the way today's students understand the forces behind the slaughter of some 20 million victims. The Vatican has good reason to try to influence how today's students see this bit of history which occurred before most of them were born.

The May, 1985 Catholic League Newsletter describes how League officials influenced the New York state text books and Holocaust course curricula. When a New York state newspaper announced that the state Board of Regents was going to include a separate unit on Holocaust studies in the statewide social studies curriculum, three League officials arranged a meeting with the state director of curriculum studies. As a result of the meeting, one of the League officials, Anthony Mangano, was appointed to sit on a 10-member advisory committee to work with the writers of the Holocaust course texts.

Mangano claims that he spent four years helping the writers "provide an accurate exposition of the Christian and Catholic factors involved." His major concerns were to "foster unity and understanding between Christians and Jews," and dispel the "myth surrounding any Catholic connection in the Holocaust." Of course, any careful student of World War II knows that this "myth" is no myth. The Catholic connection to the Holocaust is supported by hard facts which the Vatican has been trying desperately to cover up since they lost this bloody bid to eliminate the world's Jews, Protestants, Orthodox and other miscellaneous "heretics."

If the new ecumenical strategy of Rome, to sweet talk these heretics back under the power of the Pope, is going to work, the world must forget that the Holocaust was really an Inquisition. This is why today's students must not be taught the truth. They must believe the "myth." Mangano claims that the groundwork for this "myth" was laid in 1963 by a play entitled The Deputy which portrayed Pope Pius XII's involvement in the Holocaust. This involvement was carefully documented by men like Edmond Paris and Avro Manhattan long before the appearance of the play. How desperately the Vatican is trying to draw a line at that date and have the world ignore the facts of history before that time!

Catholic Fifth Columns

In The Secret History of the Jesuits, Paris explains in heavily documented detail how the pope's Jesuits masterminded Mussolini, Franco, and Hitler's rapid rise to power. He describes how they carefully orchestrated Catholic fifth columns inside Austria, Czechoslovakia, Belgium and France causing them to fall to the Nazis almost without a fight. In another book by Paris, "The Vatican Against Europe," he gives an even broader view of both World War I and II. Some excerpts are very enlightening:

Mussolini a great Spiritual Figure

On page 78 Paris quotes Cardinal Schuster, Archbishop of Milan, speaking at the Milan School of Fascist Mysticism on Feb. 26, 1937: "This Benito Mussolini, to whom I say that Jesus Christ, Son of God the Saviour, has granted talents which place him among the great spiritual figures ranging from Augustus to Constantine." Page 108: Franz von Papen, Hitler's ace diplomat and the Vatican's chief agent in bringing Hitler to power, said, "Nazism is a Christian reaction against the spirit of 1789." He was speaking of the French Revolution when the French middle class broke the Vatican's hold on the civil government of France. Von Papen also stated (see page 197), "The Third Reich is the first power in the world, not only to recognize, but also to put into practice, the high principles of the Papacy."

Page 118: "On 3 May 1945, the day Hitler died, [Spanish Dictator Francisco] Franco had his papers publish the following: 'Adolf Hitler, son of the Catholic Church, has died defending Christianity. It is understandable that our pen cannot find words with which to deplore his death, when it was able to find so many to extol his life. Above his mortal remains rises his victorious moral figure. With the crown of martyrdom, God gives to Hitler the laurels of victory.'" The Vatican made sure that Franco, himself, received massive backing from Italy and Germany during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). His mission was the same as Hitler's and Mussolini's: to overthrow a government which refused to bow to control by the pope.

Even in the U.S. a similar fifth column was at work. On page 140, Paris lists a dozen Pro-Hitler organizations in the U.S. with several hundred thousand followers. He quotes U.S. Minister of the Interior Harold Ickes speaking in 1935: "It becomes clearer every day that a criminal movement is plotting, in our country, the substitution of an odious Fascist system for our free American institutions."

Jesuit led U.S. Fifth Column

One of these was the "Christian Front" led by Jesuit Father Coughlin, a well-known pro-Hitlerist. Paris says, "This pious organization wanted for nothing, and was receiving from Berlin a copious supply of propaganda carefully adapted by Goebbels' office. Coughlin spread this propaganda through his newspaper Social Justice and his radio broadcasts in a obvious attempt to "create among American Catholics, as their colleagues were trying to do in Europe, a current of sympathy towards the dictators, proteges of Saint Peter, and thereby prevent the Washington Government from entering the war alongside the Allies. On July 7, 1941, Coughlin stated plainly: German's war is a battle for Christianity." (Paris, page 139.) Page 167: In a declaration on Feb. 6, 1940, Colonel Joseph Beck, Polish Minister of Foreign affairs states: "The Vatican is one of those mainly responsible for my country's tragedy. I realized too late that we had been pursuing our foreign policy in the sole interests of the Catholic Church."

God's Envoy: Hitler

Page 197: "Hitler is an envoy of God," states Archbishop Stepinac, head of the Croatian Hierarchy and member of Ante Pavelitch's Ustashi government. As such he presided over the forced conversion to Catholicism of nearly a quarter million Jewish, Orthodox and other non-Catholics. Some 700,000 others who refused to convert were slaughtered by the Ustashi Army of which Stepinac was the "Supreme Military Apostolic Vicar." (Page 21, Manhattan, The Vatican's Holocaust, Ozark Books, 1986.) These books are only summaries of thousands of documents which surfaced during and after World War II. The proof is there for those who wish to dig them out. As time goes on, however, that proof will become harder and harder to find because of the Vatican's power to rewrite history and dispose of older books which tell the truth. After Mr. Mangano finished with the New York curriculum, his plans were to start all over again with the New Jersey school system.

What does it all mean to the Bible believer?

First of all, it shows why it is so hard to witness to Jews. After 1800 years of persecution by so called "Christians," they want nothing to do with the Gospel. We must first show them that their tormentors were really hypocritical idolators belonging to a priestcraft system with its roots in Babylonian paganism, not in the Bible. As the tract, "Holocaust," points out, "A true Christian would never kill or harm anyone in the name of Jesus." Secondly, the Vatican's string pulling behind the scenes to create two global wars that wiped out tens of millions of her enemies (heretics) proves that she is that "MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS" in Rev. 17. This is the one "drunken with the blood of the saints, and the martyrs of Jesus. . . that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth."

We must warn the precious Catholic people who are caught in this soul-damning idolatry to come out through faith in Jesus alone. We must warn Protestants who are being deceived into marching under the pope's ecumenical banner of love that, though it may feel so right, "the end thereof are the ways of death."