Vatican Makes Archives Detailing Aid to Jews Available Online

Catholic News Service ^ | 6/23/22

[marshmallow]

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Thousands of records detailing requests to the Vatican made by Jewish people persecuted by the Nazis will be made available online to the public, the Vatican announced.

In a statement released June 23, the Vatican said universal access to the documentation, which has been available to researchers since March 2020, was made “at the request of the Holy Father.”

The documentation, titled “Ebrei” (“Jews”), aims “to preserve the petitions for help from Jewish people all over Europe, received by (Pope Pius XII) during the Nazi-Fascist persecutions,” the statement said.

“The archival series consists of a total of 170 volumes, equivalent to nearly 40,000 digital files. An initial 70% of the complete material will be made available initially, before being integrated with the final volumes that are currently being worked on,” the Vatican said.

While the Vatican made no direct link, the decision to make the documents available online closely follows controversy over a new book by historian David I. Kertzer.

In his book, “The Pope at War,” Kertzer suggested that Pope Pius remained silent out of fear of the Nazis and that the Vatican prioritized saving Jewish converts to Catholicism from persecution.

In an article for the Vatican newspaper, Archbishop Paul R. Gallagher, Vatican foreign minister, highlighted the case of Werner Barasch, a Jewish university student from Germany who was held at a concentration camp in Miranda de Ebro, Spain.

Barasch wrote a letter in 1942 to an Italian friend and asked that Pope Pius send the apostolic nuncio in Madrid to secure his release so he could travel to the United States and be reunited with his mother.

Archbishop Gallagher said that while two documents revealed that the Vatican Secretariat of State had intervened, no other paperwork existed that revealed the young man’s fate.

[T Ruth]

The book Disinformation recounts how the falsehoods that Pope Pius XII was passive and inactive against National Socialism were created and disseminated by the Soviets.

Disinformation: Former Spy Chief Reveals Secret Strategies for Undermining Freedom, Attacking Religion, and Promoting Terrorism is a 2015 non-fiction book about disinformation tactics and history rooted in information warfare. It was written by former general in the Securitate, the secret police of Socialist Republic of Romania, Ion Mihai Pacepa, and law professor Ronald J. Rychlak. It was published in 2013 along with a companion film, Disinformation: The Secret Strategy to Destroy the West.

Disinformation

[unclebankster]

The biggest disinformation wasn’t from the Soviets, it was from Anglo-American publishing houses and shoddy documentaries in the AngloSphere.

Another highly organized group was also involved in blaming the Catholic Church, but this group gets to “pop off” about “everything everywhere” while remaining an eternal victim of persecution.

The Soviets were horrible towards the Christian religion but they weren’t the primary “story tellers” on this specific issue, that belongs to the West.

[Albion Wilde]

The documentation, titled “Ebrei” (“Jews”)...

Translated literally, "Ebrei" denotes "Hebrews."

There is no separate word for Hebrews and Jews in Italian, IIRC.