A letter found among Pope Pius .
Although news of the atrocities committed by Hitler had already reached the ears of Pope Pius . The source was “in the heart of enemy territory,” Coco said on Saturday.
The document, made public this weekend by the Milanese newspaper Corriere della Sera, adds to the evidence that some scholars say shows Pius was aware of the Holocaust when it occurred. Some scholars say that 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 maintain that Pius
It is one of the most revealing documents to emerge since Pope Francis ordered the opening of Pius’s archives in 2019, saying that “the church is not afraid of history.”
Mr. Coco said he could not be 100 percent sure that Pius saw the letter, but he was “99 percent sure” because it was given to the pope’s personal secretary, his “right-hand man.” The secretary would have referred the information to the pope “if he had not shown him the documents directly,” Mr. Coco said.
Since 2020, scholars have been examining the documents relating to Pius’ papacy, which lasted from 1939 to 1958, in an effort to better understand the Vatican’s response to Nazism and the Holocaust, as well as Pius XII’s controversial legacy, who remained publicly silent because millions of other Jews were murdered.
The letter was addressed to Pius’ secretary, Rev. Robert Leiber, and was written by a German Jesuit, Rev. Lothar Koenig, who was a member of a German resistance movement. In the letter, dated Dec. 14, 1942, Father Koenig tried to tell the Vatican about “the state of the persecution of the Church in Germany, above all,” said Mr. Coco, who has cataloged Pius’ personal papers at the Vatican.
The letter contained an appendix detailing the number of priests imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp near Munich; mentioned the Auschwitz death camp in Poland in a reference to another, undiscovered report; and told about the thousands of Poles and Jews murdered by the Nazis in Belzec.
Michele Sarfatti, of the Contemporary Jewish Documentation Center in Milan, who has also studied the Pius archives, said the letter was important because it was found in Pius’ personal papers, meaning the pope had kept it “and probably read it ‘. From a historiographical point of view, it was an indication “that the pope was aware of what was going on” and of the enormity of what was happening in various camps, Mr. Sarfatti said.
The Vatican did not respond to requests for comment.
Mr. Coco said he believed Pius was afraid to speak out against Hitler because the Nazis would attack Catholics in retaliation.
“There was concern about what might happen to Catholics in Poland, in Eastern Europe, in the Third Reich, all those areas under Nazi control where it was difficult for the church to intervene,” he said.
The letter urges the Vatican to be careful in making public the information it provides, “because if it were to turn out to have come from the German Church, the persecution in Germany would become more intense than it already was,” said Mr Coco.
Mr. Sarfatti, whose most recent research focuses on documentation from 1942, identified by some scholars as “the bloodiest year of the Holocaust,” said that the Holy See received reports of the atrocities that year from numerous sources: priests who, after their travels, returning to the Vatican, local clergy, papal nuncios, politicians from occupied countries, citizens, Jewish groups and rabbis.
“Many people wrote to the Holy See describing what happened,” Mr Sarfatti said.
In early 1942, few people, including Jews, understood that Hitler wanted to exterminate the Jews. But as the year progressed, “there was an increasing connection in these reports between the words ‘Jew’ and ‘death’ – which in itself should have given some idea of what was going on,” he said.
Mr. Sarfatti, who found two documents referring to gas chambers in the Vatican Apostolic Archives, said the letter was evidence “that we can add to others.”
David Kertzer, a professor at Brown University who has worked in the archives, said the document contains “more details” about “messages the Pope received in the summer of 1942 about the mass murder of the Jews” from various sources, which discussed in his book on Pius XII, ‘The Pope at War’.
Mr. Coco said he believed the letter he found was part of a “much longer correspondence” that preceded and continued after December 1942. Pius felt “particularly close” to the German Jesuits, Mr. Kertzer said, while the Pius’s secretary, Father Leiber, an important example.
“There would be no more credible source for the pope about what was going on there than that of a German Jesuit,” Kertzer said.
The letter will be published next week in a book by Mr Coco about his research into Pius’ personal papers. He said the papers were in disarray when he first started examining them in 2019, and that he found the letter about a year ago. It took time to track down the author: the letter is signed “Your Lothar” and addressed “Dear friend,” Mr. Coco said.
“Organizing the papers,” to better understand them, “was very complicated,” he said.