THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: A controversial wartime Pope accused by historians of being too compliant towards Hitler was praised by former Jewish prisoners for preventing their deportation to death camps, documents released from the Vatican's secret archives have revealed.
Pius XII, who was elected in 1939, has been accused of turning a blind eye to the Nazis' extermination of the Jews in Europe, including a round-up by the Gestapo of 2,000 Italian Jews in Rome's Ghetto area in 1943.
They were sent to concentration camps, including Auschwitz, and only a handful survived the war.
The Vatican has until now refused to release any documents from Pius's papacy, despite calls for them to be made available by Jewish groups and historians, who in the past have dubbed the Italian pontiff "Hitler's Pope" and accused him of being anti-Semitic.
But in an historic move, seven documents from the so-called "closed period" went on display this week in an exhibition of 100 historic items from the Vatican Secret Archives.
They suggested that the Pope showed more concern for the plight of Jews during the war than he is often credited with. » | Nick Squires, Rome | Friday, March 02, 2012
