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Author : Degrelle Léon
Title : Letter to the Pope on his visit to Auschwitz
Year : 1979

Link download : Degrelle_Leon_-_Letter_to_the_Pope_on_his_visit_to_Auschwitz.zip

TO HIS HOLINESS POPE JOHN-PAUL 11 The Vatican City. I Most Holy Father. I am Leon Degrelle and I was the Leader of Belgian Rexism (The "Rexist" Movement) before the Second World War. During the War I was the Commander of the Belgian Volunteers on the Eastern Front, and fought in the 28th Walloon Division of the Waffen S.S. This will certainly not be regarded as a recommendation by everyone. I am, however, a Catholic like you, and I believe that I am thus entitled to write to you as a brother in the faith. I am concerned by the announcement in the press that during your coming visit to Poland, from 2nd to 12th June 1979, you are going to concelebrate Mass with all the Polish Bishops at the former concentration camp of Auschwitz. Let me say straightaway that I find it very edifying to pray for the dead, whoever they may be and at any place, even in front of the brand-new crematory ovens with their immaculate firebricks. Even so, I am apprehensive. The fact of being Polish and your adherence to this loyalty ceaselessly reappears in your pontifical behaviour. It is human. You are a patriot who participated very deeply in your youth in a tough bellicose conflict. If old resentments made too strong an impression on you, however, you might be tempted to take part, having now become Pope, in secular quarrels which history has still not sufficiently clarified. What responsibility, for example, did the various belligerents have for the outbreak of the Second World War ? What role did certain instigators play ? Everyone knows that your Prime Minister, Colonel Beck, was a rather dubious individual. Did he act with the requisite degree of level-headedness in 1939 ? Did he not reject, with undue arrogance, certain chances of reaching an accommodation in 1939 with the German Government ? And what about later on ? Was the War really as it has been described ? What were the faults, or even the crimes, of both sides ? Have their respective aims always been evaluated objectively ? Has not enemy doctrine been misrepresented, either through failing to give it proper consideration, or deliberately because propaganda demanded it ? Were not plans attributed to the enemy, and acts assumed to have taken place, whose real existence has never been substantiated ? ...