Second World War through Jesuit Archives
The case of Europe (1939-1945)
Introduction
This online exhibition accompanies the publication of the first collaborative project by individual European Jesuit archives to promote their holdings within a single volume. Spanning the years 1939–1945, it brings together contributions from Jesuit archives across Europe to provide a comprehensive overview of their collections relating to the Second World War.
The war years were a time of profound disruption for the Society of Jesus, as for the wider world. Many Jesuits were conscripted or volunteered for military service—often as chaplains—while others faced imprisonment, deportation to concentration camps, or execution. Jesuit properties suffered damage, confiscation, or conversion to wartime use, severely limiting the Society’s educational, pastoral, and social justice work. Yet, despite these hardships, the Society’s global membership continued to grow slightly during this period, with Europe remaining central to its mission and identity.​
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Drawing from 17 European Jesuit Archives, including Britain, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lebanon, the Low Countries, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, and Spain, this online exhibition showcases archival documents relating to the period of the Second World War.
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For the best viewing experience, please view the exhibition on a laptop or desktop. To view a mobile friendly version of this exhibtion click here?? ​Clicking on icons on the map will bring up a short description of that document and the archive it originates from??/ ​Click on any image to enter the exhibition. this is a full screen experience. To exit full-screen mode, press 'esc'.
Left: Apostleship of Prayer poster March 1943 (Ref: ARSI, Apostleship of Prayer, Iconographic Section, 1, 1, 39)
Key themes
Across these national contexts, common themes emerge: resistance and collaboration, the trials of occupation, displacement and evacuation, chaplaincy service, and post-war recovery. Some of these are explored below.
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​Most Jesuits, unlike many European men, did not serve as soldiers or rarely lost their homes to the war. Although some faced danger and even death, most were safer and better off than much of Europe’s population.
Imprisonment & Deportation
​​The imprisonment of Jesuits are frequently discussed in the volume, as are the deportations of Jesuits to concentration camps. One example is Adolf Kajpr SJ (1902-59), a journalist and preacher belonging to the Czech Province, was arrested on 20 March 1941 and imprisoned in Mauthausen and then Dachau. Although he survived to the end of the war, he was later imprisoned again under the communist regime and subsequently died in prison. In 2019, a beatification process for Kajpr was begun.
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Accounts of executions and war tragedies abound in the book, such as the deaths of Joseph Dejemeppe SJ (1914–40) and Auguste Ledant SJ (1887–1940), along with young Belgian missionary aspirants from the Apostolic School of Verviers.
Right: Police registration and deregistration card for Provincial WÅ‚adysÅ‚aw Lohn SJ (1889–1961), 29 November 1944 recoding a change of address. (Ref: ASJKr 1438, 180)
Resistance
Jesuit documents attest to the persecution of Jews and other vulnerable populations during the war. In Italy, Jesuits were instrumental in assisting baptized Jews, while in countries like Belgium, Greece, Hungary, and Poland, they actively hid and supported Jews.
An example from Greece is the case of John Maragos SJ (1901-1989), who sheltered a Jewish boy, during the German occupation of Athens by concealing his identity as a fictitious Catholic nephew from Syros. He cared for the child’s physical and educational needs throughout the occupation until the end of the war when he was reunited with his family.
Sixteen Jesuits from various European provinces, including Marangos, were later honoured with the title “Righteous Among the Nations” by the Yad Vashem Institute.
Left: Medal awarded to Pierre Chaillet SJ (1900–72) in 1982 for his resistance work by Yad Vashem. (Ref: Archives Jésuites EOF France, Fonds personnel du Père Pierre Chaillet TCh1.1)
Military Activity
A distinctive role played by some Jesuits war was as military chaplains, whilst in some European countries they were enlisted in the army. For example, in France, most of the Jesuits who joined the French army were called up as soldiers, through conscription. Only a small number enlisted as military chaplains, most of whom were already serving as student chaplains. In Hungary, Jesuit brothers of military age were drafted into the army, with less than half returning to the Society after the war.
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Some Jesuits received medals in recognition for their service, for example the British Richard Worsley SJ (1889–1972) received the Atlantic Star, Italy Star, 1939-1945 Star, and the Defence Medal.
Right: Photograph of Ernesto Domingues SJ (1910–87), military chaplain in East Timor, 1945–46. (Ref: APSI)
Evacuations
In Buxton, in England, the Belgian Jesuits, under leadership of Robert Jourdain SJ (1897–1952) and Edouard Goulet SJ (1881–1965) founded a college for ninety Belgian pupils, both Flemish and Walloon, in preparation for entrance to universities in Belgium after the war. They all came from different schools in Belgium. The Jesuit college was housed at the buildings at The Grange, Park Road, and was subsidised by the Belgian government. The Prime Minister of Belgium, Hubert Pierlot (1883–1963), even sent four of his sons to the Jesuit College in Buxton.
Left: The reading card belonging to Gabriel Povala SJ (1917–88) whilst a student at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Slovak University in Bratislava in 1941. (Ref: ASIS, 5.2/Povala I–III)
Confiscation
Jesuits in various European Provinces had buildings confiscated or requisitioned for war efforts. An example comes from Malta, where the Jesuit College at Birkirkara attracted the attention of the authorities. In June 1940, the college was transformed into a dormitory for patients, hospital wards, and an operating theatre. Later that year, medical students began receiving their lectures in the college. A large underground air-raid shelter began to be excavated and an old building was turned into the hospital’s mortuary.
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Right: Invitation (in English and French) for a gathering of British soldiers at the Catholic Services Club, near Saint-Joseph University, 7 March 1943. (Ref: Series on the Second World War, in the archives in the University of St Joseph (USJ), at the Jesuit Archives of the Near East and North Africa, Lebanon)
Publications
The role of Jesuit publications are also often discussed in the book. For example, the German Stimmen der Zeit [Voices of the time], which had a circulation of around 5,000 copies in the 1930s. It soon came into conflict with the Nazi regime due to its critical examination of contemporary issues, in particular the Myth of the Twentieth Century, the main work of Nazi party ideologist Alfred Rosenberg (1892–1946), which was first published in 1930. As a result, the magazine was repeatedly subjected to censorship and other repressive measures, including the first search of the writers’ house in Munich’s Veterinärstraße, where the editorial office was located, in June 1937.
Left: The Czech magazine Dorost, No. 26, year XXI (25.6.1939), containing an article by Adolf Kajpr SJ (1902–59). (Ref: Czech Province Archives, Collection of periodicals, folder entitled Dorost.)
Pastoral Work
JXXXXXXXX Air raids, evacuation, confiscations resulted in some pastoral work being ended or restricted....DEVELOP!!!
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The personal archives of some Belgian Jesuits contain records for the pastoral care they provided for political war collaborators, for example the personal archives of Maurice Claeys-Bouüaert SJ (1882–1956) contain extensive files concerning his mediation into the cases of victims of persecution and repression for the period 1942–56
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Right: Retreatants at Osterley. (Ref: British Jesuit Archives, CH/......)
Oversea Missions
in 1926, the Jesuit mission to Hong Kong was founded and entrusted to the Irish Province: at the time politically administered by the United Kingdom, in 1939, the Hong Kong area was the base for thirty-four Irish Jesuits, who ran Wah Yan College, Ricci Hall (a Catholic hostel of the University of Hong Kong), and Loyola Language School; Irish Jesuits also ran the Regional Seminary at Aberdeen.
As Ireland was neutral, many Irish Jesuits stayed in Hong Kong during the Japanese occupation (1941–45) (see Document 1). They assisted with the local population and refugees, while some Jesuit scholastics made the journey to inland China and India. Patrick Joy SJ (1892–1970) and Gerard Casey SJ (1905–89) were briefly imprisoned by the Japanese, and military chaplain Richard Kennedy SJ (1906–86) spent three years in prisoner of war camps.
Left: Front cover of the published diary of István Koch SJ (1904–89), on the last two years of the mission and the civil conflict in China (1945–46). The diary’s typewritten copy was made a few years after the events. It was published in Hungary: Vámos, Péter ed.: Bevégeztetett. Koch István naplója a magyar jezsuiták kínai missziójának pusztulásáról [It is finished. István Koch’s diary on the dissolution of the Hungarian Jesuits’ Chinese Mission]. Budapest: Terebess, 1999. (Ref: JTMRL I. 7. b)
Archival activity
Many Eastern European provinces had their archives seized by their governments during the communist era, leaving them with limited material from this period. In other cases, such as in France, the archives now include collections from several former Jesuit provinces that operated under diverse conditions during the Second World War.
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An example of changes to archival activity comes from Spain where archival work was paralysed between 1932 and 1937 due to the expulsion of the Society of Jesus from Spain during the Republican period. The archives suffered due to the destruction of their buildings, and the expropriation and plundering of part of their archival holdings. The Provincial archives were gradually rebuilt after the return of the Society of Jesus to Spain in 1937. Since the unification of the Spanish provinces in 2014, the single archive of the Province of Spain has been located in the city of Alcalá de Henares.​
Right: Photograph of Guglielmo Misserville SJ (1903–65) military chaplain, celebrating a Mass with the troops, undated photograph and unknown location. (Ref: AEMSI, Fondo Provincia Romana, serie fascicoli personali, vol. LXVIII, fasc. 1866)
Avenues for study
The intention when producing the book was not so much to produce a definitive guide to the collections on this subject, as much as to offer a useful overview as the basis for possible starting points and research directions for scholars interested in this topic, and an entry-point for those seeking to explore the archival collections more generally. It is hoped that more research will be undertaken and that researchers will engage with the significant gaps in the current historiography.
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Future scholars may delve deeper into critical topics that deserve further scrutiny such as the relationship between Jesuits and fascism; antisemitism within the Jesuit community and the defence of Jewish populations; the broader role of the Jesuits in wartime resistance movements; the impact of the war on Jesuit educational institutions and pastoral work; Jesuit interactions with totalitarian regimes; colonialism and the role Jesuits played; women and the Church, and as contributors to the Jesuit mission during the war.
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Other themes that provide scope for future research may include comparing the Jesuit experience with the wider war experience. Another intriguing question for possible further exploration is that Jesuits served on both sides of the war, with the Axis powers as well as the Allies (and in neutral territories), raising interesting questions about how despite such division they remained united as one Society.
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The volume has been created with the aim to showcase the ample opportunities for further exploration of the rich materials discussed, and we encourage historians to delve deeper into these resources to investigate archival connections between members of the Society of Jesus and the global conflict.
Book
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