Letter Shows Pope Pius XII Was Told About Holocaust

The New York Times reports:

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.

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.

Read the full article. Gift link here.

Addressed to the pope’s secretary, the letter was written by a German Jesuit, a member of a German resistance movement, who told the secretary about a Nazi death camp in Poland. https://t.co/C9o77rZLvk

— New York Times World (@nytimesworld) September 16, 2023