Vatican publishes letters from persecuted Jews from the Nazi era

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Files in the Vatican: Pope Francis has ordered the publication of 170 volumes of files

Photo: Gregorio Borgia/AP

The Vatican is making part of its archive with documents on the persecution of Jews from the National Socialist era accessible to the public.

Interested parties can now read letters from the pontificate of Pius XII on the Internet.

which contain the pleas of Jewish people in Europe from the time of Nazi persecution.

This was announced by the Holy See.

In the letters, people asked the then head of the Catholic Church (1939 to 1958) for help.

The Italian - whose real name is Eugenio Pacelli - has long been criticized for his reserved approach to Nazi Germany.

He was also accused of remaining silent on the subject of the Holocaust.

The Vatican defended Pius XII.

on the other hand, for a long time on the grounds that the Pope had saved lives through quiet diplomacy.

The collection comes from the Department for Relations with States and International Organizations in the Vatican Secretariat of State.

It is called »Ebrei« (Italian for: Jews) and, according to the Vatican, contains almost 40,000 documents in 170 volumes.

Researchers have had access to the records since March 2020.

They show how people asked the Pope for help, for example with fleeing, family reunions or financial support.

It also shows how the Vatican reacted.

According to the AP news agency, historian David Kertzer suggested in a recent book (»The Pope At War«) about the documents available since 2020 that the Vatican was primarily concerned with Jews who had converted to Christianity.

Public statements against Adolf Hitler or the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini have Pius XII.

according to Kertzer, however, avoided in order not to upset the fascists against the church.

Opening of the archives at the request of Francis

The Holy See opened the archive at the request of Pope Francis, wrote Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, who acts as the foreign minister of the Catholic Church States, in the Vatican newspaper "Osservatore Romano".

More than 2,700 cases of requests are stored in it, which the State Secretariat took care of at the time.

Initially, 70 percent of the entire archive section is available online.

fek/dpa/AP