Translated material
Corriere Della Sera: Pope Pius XII knew about the Holocaust, but kept silence
During the Second World War, the Pope could have detailed information about the persecution of Jews and Poles in the territory of Poland occupied by Germany. This undermines the Vatican argument that the Catholic Church could not check the diplomatic messages about the atrocities of the Nazis.
The letter was found by the archivist of the Vatican Giovanni Coco. The correspondence of the secretary of Pius XII Robert Leiber with the trusted German Jesuit Lotar Koenig is published by the Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera.
In a letter dated December 14, 1942, Koenig addresses Leiber as a friend and reports that the Nazis daily in the Belzhet death camp kill up to six thousand people-Poles and Jews from the city of Rava-Russian. Before the war, the city was in Poland, now it is the Lviv region of Ukraine.
In a letter, Koenig, due to fears for his life and the life of resistance participants, also asks the Holy Thron not to publicize his message.
Corriere Della Sera writes that the document from the archive is likely to exacerbate the discussion about Pie and its suspended campaign for Beatification - the calculation of the blessed church in the Catholic Church. There is no doubt that the Vatican received numerous messages about the atrocities of the Nazis, but the Pope preferred to remain silent or limited to general words, the newspaper writes.
At the same time, supporters of Pius XII believe that he could not decisively oppose the Nazis because of the fears of repression.
Pius XII headed the Catholic Church from March 1939 to October 1958.