Article 29

Catholic members of a non-German ethnic minority living within the German Reich, as regards their mother tongue in Church services [sermons], religious education and Church societies, will be accorded no less favourable treatment than that accorded by law and in practice to members of German origin and speech living within the boundaries of the corresponding foreign states.

a) Students of philosophy and theology at Church institutions who are preparing themselves for the priesthood are to be freed from military service and the preparatory drills for it, except in the case of a general mobilisation.

b) In the case of a general mobilization clerics who are employed in the diocese administration or the military chaplaincy are freed from reporting for duty. This applies to ordinaries, members of the ordinariate, provosts of seminaries and Church residences for seminarians, professors at the seminaries, parish priests, curates, rectors, coadjucators and the clerics who provide a church with worship services on a continuing basis.

c) The remaining clerics, insofar as they are considered suitable, are to join the armed forces of the state in order to devote themselves to pastoral care for the troops under the Church jurisdiction of the military bishops, if they are not inducted into the medical unit.

d) The remaining clergy in sacris or members of orders, who are not yet priests are to be assigned to the medical unit. The same shall apply when possible to the candidates for the priesthood mentioned in a) who have not yet taken their final vows.

- Israel Zolli, Chief Rabbi of Rome, "What the Vatican did will be indelibly and eternally engraved in our hearts...priests and even higher prelates did things that will forever be an honor to Catholicism."

- Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, Isaac Herzog, sent Pius XII a personal message of thanks on February 28, 1944: "The people of Israel will never forget what His Holiness and his illustrious delegates, inspired by the eternal principles of religion which form the very foundation of true civilization, are doing for us unfortunate brothers and sisters in the most tragic hour of our history, which is living proof of Divine Providence in this world."

- Einstein, Time magazine, December 23, 1940, pg. 38: "Being a lover of freedom, when the revolution came to Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but, no, the universities were immediately silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom; but then, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks...Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone had had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly."

- In a March 6, 1939 editorial, "Leadership for Peace," the Palestine Post in Jerusalem said: "Pius XII has clearly shown that he intends to carry on the late Pope's [Pius XI] work for freedom and peace... we remember that he must have had a large part to play in the recent Papal opposition to pernicious race theories and certain aspects of totalitarianism..."

- In 2001 New York Rabbi David Dalin has proposed that Pope Pius XII be proclaimed "Righteous Among the Nations," the highest award given by the state of Israel to persons outstanding in assisting persecuted Jews during World War II: "More than any other 20th century leader, Pius XII fulfilled this Talmudic tradition, when the fate of European Jewry was at stake. No other Pope had been so widely praised by Jews, and they were not mistaken. Their gratitutde, as well as that of the entire generation of holocaust survivors, testifies that Pius XII was, genuinely and profoundly, a righteous gentile.... Pius XII was not Hitler's pope, but the closest Jews had come to having a papal supporter, and at the moment when it mattered most."

-  David Herstig concludes his book on the subject thus:

"Those rescued by Pius are today living all over the world. There went to Israel alone from Romania 360,000 to the year 1965."

- The vindication of Pius XII has been established principally by Jewish writers and from Israeli archives. It is now established that the Pope supervised a rescue network which saved 860,000 Jewish lives - more than all the international agencies put together.

- Because of his close contact with Romania's Chief Rabbi Safran throughout the war, Archbishop Cassulo kept himself and the Vatican informed about the condition of Romanian Jews, especially those interned in concentration camps beyond the Dnieper. In 1942 and 1943, prompted by Pope Pius XII, the nuncio visited numbers of camps, taking with him considerable sums of money sent by the Pope for distribution among the prisoners. Following the 1943 visit, the Archbishop presented a ten-point request to Rado Lecca, the government official in charge of Jewish affairs, to alleviate the misery in the camps; by June, 1943, Rabbi Safran was able to report to him that conditions had improved noticeably as a result.

Marcus Melchior, the former Chief Rabbi of Denmark, who attests that “if the Pope had spoken out, Hitler would probably have massacred more than six million Jews and perhaps ten times ten million Catholics, if he had the power to do so.”