The letter showing that Pope Pius XII probably knew about the extermination of the Jews by the Nazis in 1942 (earlier than the Vatican admits)

A recently discovered letter suggests that Pope Pius XII, during the Second World Warreceived detailed information from a trusted German Jesuit that up to 6,000 Jews and Poles were murdered in gas chambers every day in German-occupied Poland.

This is significant because conflicts with the official position that the Holy See has maintained that at that time the information that the Church had about the atrocities that the Nazis committed It was vague and unverified.

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The letter was discovered by the Vatican archivist Giovanni Coco and was published on Sunday in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera with the approval of the officials of the Holy See and with the title “Pius XII knew this.”

Dated December 14, 1942, the epistle was written by Fr. Lother Koeniga Jesuit who was part of the anti-Nazi resistance in Germany, and was addressed to the Pope’s personal secretary at the Vatican, Father Robert Leiber.

The letter refers to three Nazi camps – Belzec, Auschwitz and Dachau – and suggests that there are other letters between Koenig and Leiber that have disappeared or have not yet been found.

For Coco, “the novelty and importance of this document derive from the fact that now We are certain that the Catholic Church in Germany sent Pius XII accurate and detailed news about the crimes that were being perpetrated against the Jews.”. And therefore the Vatican “had information that the labor camps were actually death factories.”

Historian David Kertzer, author of several books about Pope Pius’s ovens every day.”

And on the other hand, it was presented by a Vatican archivist.

“It seems to me that this shows an effort in the Vatican or at least in parts of the Vatican to start accepting this story,” he added.

Pius XII (before becoming Pope) leaving the presidential palace in Berlin in 1927. (GETTY IMAGES).

Declassified documents

The letter was among documents that until recently were kept randomly in the Vatican Secretariat of State, according to Coco.

For Suzanne Brown-Fleming, director of International Academic Programs at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, the release of these files shows that the Vatican was taking seriously Pope Francis’ declaration that “the Church is not afraid of history ”.

Francis ordered the war archives to be opened in 2019.

“There is a desire and support for the documents to be carefully evaluated from a scientific perspective, whether favorable or unfavorable (to the Vatican), is what the documents reveal,” Brown-Fleming added.

“With the opening of the Vatican archives from this period three years ago, we unearthed a variety of documents that show how well informed the Pope was about Nazi attempts to exterminate Europe’s Jews from the moment they were released,” Kertzer told the BBC.

“This is just another piece”, he concludes.

Kertzer adds that, more than what these documents revealed, “what damaged the Vatican’s reputation was its refusal to face this story with clear eyes.”

The dispute over the legacy of Pius XII

In 2009, Pius XII was declared Venerable along with Pope John Paul II. (GET IMAGES).

The document that has just been known will likely fuel debate over the legacy of Pius XII and his controversial beatification campaignwhich is currently stagnant.

His supporters have always insisted that the pontiff worked concretely behind the scenes to help Jews and did not speak out to prevent the situation of Catholics in Nazi-occupied Europe from worsening.

His detractors claim that he at least lacked the courage to disclose the information he possessed, despite direct requests from the Allied powers fighting against Germany.

One of Kertzer’s books also revealed a long and secret negotiation between Hitler and Pius XII to reach a non-aggression agreement.

In the end, the evidence indicates that Pius XII’s role in World War II is ambiguous. Although he considered Nazism to be a pagan political movement that mistreated Catholics, he was not a particularly uncomfortable Pope for the Third Reich.

Nor did he clearly denounce the extermination of the Jews.although perhaps he was aware of the barbarity that was taking place.

Source: Elcomercio