THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD: POPE PIUS XII, the controversial wartime pontiff, may have saved thousands of Jewish lives by secretly securing visas so they could escape Nazi Germany, a historian says.
Pope Pius, who was labelled ''Hitler's Pope'' because of his silence during the Holocaust, may have arranged the exodus of about 200,000 Jews from Germany just three weeks after Kristallnacht, when thousands of Jews were rounded up and sent to concentration camps.
The claim was made by Dr Michael Hesemann, a German historian carrying out research in the Vatican archives for the Pave the Way Foundation, a US inter-faith group.
He said that Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli - the future Pius XII - wrote to Catholic archbishops around the world to urge them to apply for visas for ''non-Aryan Catholics'' and Jewish converts to Christianity who wanted to leave Germany.
Elliot Hershberg, the chairman of the Pave the Way Foundation, said: ''We believe that many Jews who were successful in leaving Europe may not have had any idea that their visas and travel documents were obtained through these Vatican efforts.
''Everything we have found thus far seems to indicate the known negative perception of Pope Pius XII is wrong.'' >>> Simon Caldwell | Thursday, July 08, 2010
