October 16, 1943: Nazi Germany's Gestapo round up over 1,000 Jews in Rome, and deport them to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. Only 16 of them survive World War II. The public silence of Pope Pius XII, the Bishop of Rome, on this raid casts a shadow over his legacy.
Born on March 2, 1876 in Rome, Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli rose through the ranks of the Vatican before being elected Pope on March 2, 1939 (his 63rd birthday), taking the name Pius XII, as his much-admired immediate predecessor had been Pius XI. Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany was already in Austria and Czechoslovakia, and before the year was out, he had invaded Poland and started World War II.
With Vatican City surrounded by the Metropolitan City of Rome, and thus by Italy, and thus by Benito Mussolini's Fascist government, allied with Hitler, there wasn't much that the Pope could do. The same was true of Communism: Joseph Stalin, the Premier of the Soviet Union, was told by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, at the Tehran Conference, earlier in 1943, that the Pope might be able to help the Allied cause, and responded, "The Pope? How many divisions has he?" As in, army divisions.
Pius maintained the Vatican's neutrality, and refused to denounce the Nazis' persecution of the Jews, before the extent of the horrors of the concentration camps were known to the outside world. As Holocaust survivor, author and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel put it, "We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented." For that reason, some of have called Pius "Hitler's Pope."
This is grossly unfair. He organized relief efforts from Rome, and, through intermediaries in the Church, all over the world, helped get thousands of refugees, Jewish and otherwise, out of Nazi-controlled territories. He continued to lead the Church until his death on October 9, 1958.
The term "ghetto" originated in the limited area into which medieval Rome put Jews, and even in America, the word was used to describe poor Jewish neighborhoods before it was used for poor black ones -- many of which had once been poor Jewish ones. Ruby Goldstein, before becoming one of boxing's best referees, was a lightweight contender from the Lower East Side of Manhattan, nicknamed "The Jewel of the Ghetto."
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October 16, 1943 was a Saturday. Scottish soccer star Tommy Gemmell, once of Celtic Football Club's 1967 "Lisbon Lions," was born on this day. So was Paul Rose, one of the Front de Libération du Québec (FLQ) terrorists who kidnapped Pierre Laporte, Minister of Labour for the Province of Quebec, as part of what became known as the October Crisis. Unlike his brother Jacques, Paul was not with the others when Laporte tried to escape, and the others killed him in the attempt.
Although England had suspended Football League and FA Cup play for the duration of The War, there was competition. The North London team I would one day support, Arsenal, played West London team Brentford to a 3-3 draw. The game was played at White Hart Lane, home of Arsenal's rivals Tottenham Hotspur, because the British government had appropriated the Arsenal Stadium, a.k.a. Highbury, for the war effort.
The baseball season had ended 5 days earlier, with the New York Yankees winning the World Series over the St. Louis Cardinals in 5 games. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. The NHL season started 2 weeks later.
There was football. But with the manpower drain of World War II, many military bases had football teams, and were scheduled against college teams. This also enabled the teams at the service academies to be better than usual. Indeed, Army won the National Championship in 1944 and 1945, almost did so in 1943 and 1946; and Navy finished the season ranked Number 4 in 1943 and '44, and Number 3 in '45.
On October 16, 1943, Army were ranked Number 2, and beat Columbia, 52-0 at Baker Field in Upper Manhattan; while Navy were ranked Number 3, and beat Penn State, 14-6 at Thompson Stadium in Annapolis, Maryland. Among the other games:
* Number 1 Notre Dame beat Wisconsin, 50-0 at Camp Randall Stadium, which had been built on an Army base in Madison, Wisconsin.
* Number 4 University of Pennsylvania beat Lakehurst Naval Air Station, the site of the Hindenburg disaster, 74-6 at Franklin Field in Philadelphia.
* Number 5 Purdue beat Ohio State, 30-7 at Ohio Stadium in Columbus, Ohio.
* Number 6 Duke beat their arch-rivals, North Carolina, 14-7 at Duke Stadium, later renamed Wallace Wade Stadium, in Durham, North Carolina.
* During the war, the University of Iowa was represented by a U.S. Navy Pre-Flight School, and "Iowa Pre-Flight" were ranked Number 7 on this day. They beat Missouri, 21-6 at Memorial Stadium (later Faurot Field) in Columbia, Missouri.
* Number 8 University of Southern California beat the University of San Francisco, 34-0 at Kezar Stadium in San Francisco.
* In New York City, in addition to Columbia's loss, City College of New York (CCNY) beat Brooklyn College, 22-6 at Kingsmen Field in Brooklyn; New York University (NYU) suspended their program for the 1942 and '43 seasons; and Fordham suspended their program for the 1943, '44 and '45 seasons.
* And among New Jersey's teams, Rutgers had trouble scheduling opponents, and did not play their 1st game until October 30; while Princeton lost to Brown, 28-20 at Palmer Stadium in Princeton.
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