A yellowed, typewritten letter discovered by a Vatican archivist is a sad testimony to the passivity of Pope Pius XII. in the face of Nazi horror. Published this weekend by the Italian newspaper Il Corriere de la Serra, it shows that the wartime pope knew numerous details about the Nazi extermination of Jews as early as 1942, which “contradicts the official position.” “Tradition of the Holy See,” which always claimed that the existing information was “vague and untested.”
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On March 2, 2020, the incumbent Pope Francis ordered the release of documents relating to the pontificate of Pius. Initially, 40,000 digital files were opened online, including 2,700 requests for help from Jewish families and groups, including many baptized Catholics, between 1939 and 1948. Three years ago, the Minister for Relations with States, Paul Richard Gallagher, said the measure of opening the archives was taken to show that “the institution is at the service of the Pope.” [Francisco] “We are constantly working to help Jews in concrete ways.”
In this current context, the educational letter was discovered, which was dated December 14, 1942. It was written by Father Lother Koenig, a Jesuit who took part in the anti-Nazi resistance in Germany. King sent it to Pius XII’s personal secretary. in the Vatican, also German Robert Leiber. But after spending years in the Secretariat of State, the document ended up in the Vatican Archives, where it was found by archivist Giovanni Coco. “The significance of the letter is enormous, a unique case,” Coco told the Italian newspaper.
It says that König confirmed that about 6,000 Poles and Jews were murdered every day in the “SS ovens” in the Belzec camp near Rawa-Ruska, which was then part of Nazi-occupied Poland and is now in the Ukraine is integrated. “The novelty and importance of this document arises from one fact: we now have the certainty that the Catholic Church in Germany Pius XII. provided accurate and detailed news of the crimes committed against the Hebrews,” Coco explained. “Yes, [Pío XII] I knew it, and not just from then on.” The text also refers to two other Nazi camps, Auschwitz, the largest extermination camp of the Third Reich, and Dachau, and suggests that there were further letters between Koenig and Leiber , but they have disappeared or have not been found.
Defenders of Pius His critics, on the other hand, categorically claim that “despite the requests of the Allied powers fighting against Germany, he lacked the courage to speak about the information he had.”
Suzanne Brown-Fleming, director of international academic programs at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, assured Portal that “the Vatican takes seriously Pope Francis’ statement that the Church is not afraid of history.” “There is a desire and support for a careful evaluation of the documents from a scientific perspective, whether positive or negative in what they reveal.”
For his part, David Kertzer, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for the book “The Pope at War,” published in 2022, confirmed that Coco was a “serious and first-class scholar who wants to bring the truth to light.” Brown-Fleming, Coco and Kertzer will attend a major conference on Pius and the Holocaust at the Pontifical Gregorian next month, sponsored by Catholic and Jewish organizations, the U.S. State Department and Israeli and American Holocaust research groups.
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