Vatican’s silence

FOUR years after Pope Francis gave orders to open the Vatican’s wartime archives, while asserting that ‘the Church is not afraid of history’, a newly discovered letter dated December 14, 1942, suggests that World War II-era Pope Pius XII had reliable information about the extermination of Jews by the Nazis in German-occupied Poland. The letter, written by Lother Koenig, a Jesuit who was in the anti-Nazi resistance in Germany, was addressed to the Pope’s personal secretary, Robert Leiber. Koenig wrote that the Nazis were killing up to 6,000 Jews and Poles daily in ‘SS furnaces’ at the Belzec camp near Rava-Ruska, a town which was then in Poland and is now in western Ukraine.

The letter weakens the Catholic Church’s claim that it was not able to denounce Nazi atrocities as it could not verify reports sent by British and Polish envoys to the Vatican. It is apparent now that Pius XII chose to remain silent despite having received a detailed report from a relatively trustworthy source. Giovanni Coco, a Vatican archivist, is certain that Pius XII either read the letter himself or was informed about its contents by his ‘right-hand man’, Leiber.

Why did the powerful Pope remain a mute spectator to the colossal atrocities? Probably, he feared that the Nazis would target Catholics if he spoke up. It’s also likely that he believed that the Axis powers would win the war. Or maybe, he simply feared for his own life. In any case, his silence emboldened the Nazis to brazenly perpetrate their horrendous crimes against humanity. German pastor Martin Niemöller aptly underlined the culpability of those who kept mum: ‘…Then they came for the Jews/And I did not speak out/Because I was not a Jew/Then they came for me/And there was no one left/To speak out for me.’ It’s time for the Vatican to candidly and dispassionately scrutinise Pius XII’s conduct during the Holocaust. The truth, no matter how unpalatable, should come out.

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