A letter found among the private papers of Pope Pius XII suggests that the Holy See was told in 1942 that up to 6,000 people, “above all Poles and Jews,” were being killed in furnaces every day at Belzec, a Nazi death camp in Poland.
Though news of the atrocities being perpetrated by Hitler was already reaching Pope Pius XII’s ears, this information was especially important because it came from a trusted church source based in Germany, said Giovanni Coco, a Vatican archivist who discovered the letter. The source was “in the heart of the enemy territory,” Mr. Coco said on Saturday.
The document, which was made public this weekend by the Milan newspaper Corriere della Sera, adds to the evidence that some scholars say shows Pius knew about the Holocaust as it happened. Some scholars say Pius did not want to confront or offend Hitler because he feared Communism, believed that the Axis powers would win the war and wanted to avoid alienating millions of German and Nazi-sympathizing Catholics.
Other historians insist that Pius XII remained silent publicly because he was surreptitiously arranging for — or at least allowing — local Catholics to aid and save Jews from the Nazis, and he also feared that the Nazis might come after Catholics. » | Elisabetta Povoledo, Reporting from Rome | Saturday,, September 16, 2023
