Newly discovered correspondence suggests that World War II-era Pope Pius XII had detailed information from a trusted German Jesuit that up to 6000 Jews and Poles were being gassed each day in German-occupied Poland.

The documentation undercuts the Holy See’s argument that it couldn’t verify diplomatic reports of Nazi atrocities to denounce them.

The documentation from the Vatican archives, published this weekend in Italian daily Corriere della Sera, is likely to further fuel the debate about Pius’ legacy and his now-stalled beatification campaign.

Corriere is reproducing a letter dated December 14, 1942, from the German Jesuit priest to Pius’ secretary which is contained in an upcoming book about the newly opened files of Pius’ pontificate by Giovanni Coco, a researcher and archivist in the Vatican’s Apostolic Archives.

Coco told Corriere that the letter was significant because it represented detailed correspondence about the Nazi extermination of Jews, including in ovens, from an informed church source in Germany who was part of the Catholic anti-Hitler resistance that was able to get otherwise secret information to the Vatican.

The letter from the priest, the Reverend Lothar Koenig, to Pius’ secretary, a fellow German Jesuit named the Robert Leiber, is dated December 14, 1942. Written in German, the letter addresses Leiber as “Dear friend,” and goes on to report that the Nazis were killing up to 6000 Jews and Poles daily from Rava Ruska, a town in pre-war Poland that is today located in Ukraine, and transporting them to the Belzec death camp.

‘3000-5000 people were shot on the spot’

According to the Belzec memorial which opened in 2004, a total of 500,000 Jews perished at the camp. The memorial’s website reports that as many as 3500 Jews from Rava Ruska had already been sent to Belzec earlier in 1942 and that from December 7-11, the city’s Jewish ghetto was liquidated.

“About 3000-5000 people were shot on the spot and 2000- 5000 people were taken to Bełżec,” the website says.

The date of Koenig’s letter is significant because it suggests the correspondence from a trusted fellow Jesuit arrived in Pius’ office in the days after the ghetto was emptied, and after Pius had received multiple diplomatic notes and visits from a variety of envoys of foreign governments from August 1942 onwards with reports that up to one million Jews had been killed so far in Poland.

While it can’t be certain that Pius saw the letter, Leiber was Pius’ top aide and had served the pontiff when he was the Vatican’s ambassador to Germany during the 1920s, suggesting a close working relationship especially concerning matters related to Germany.

According to The Pope at War, by Pulitzer Prize-winning anthropologist David Kertzer, Monsignor Domenico Tardini told the British envoy to the Vatican in mid-December that the Pope couldn’t speak out about Nazi atrocities because the Vatican hadn’t been able to verify the information.

“The novelty and importance of this document comes from this fact: that on the Holocaust, there is now the certainty that Pius XII was receiving from the German Catholic Church exact and detailed news about crimes being perpetrated against Jews,” Coco was quoted by Corriere as saying.

-AAP