Vatican makes public records about aid to Jews during Pius XII’s pontificate

The Vatican, at the request of the pope, made available online to the public, thousands of documents detailing requests for help addressed to Pius XII by Jews persecuted by the Nazis from all over Europe.

“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 in a statement.

The documentary series, pertaining to Pius XII’s pontificate, has been open to researchers since 2 March 2020 but Pope Francis had requested they be accessible to everyone.

The series, titled “Ebrei” (Jews/Jewish people), is part of the Historical Archive of the Secretariat of State, Section for Relations with States and International Organizations (ASRS).

The Vatican's Secretary for Relations with States, Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, in an article for Vatican News, 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, who was baptized in 1938, 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. He finally had the opportunity to join his mother who had fled to America in 1939. 

"In most cases the outcome remains unknown"

Not only is there an autobiography that recounts his memories as a “survivor”, but among the online collections of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, there is even a video with a long interview, in which Barasch tells his story in person, at the age of 82, the archbishop said.

The documents released online details more than 2,700 cases of requests for help from the Vatican, primarily for families, but also for groups of people.

Each petition became a file (or dossier) in the name of the primary applicant(s) and was meant for preservation with the archival classification “Ebrei” (Jews), according to the Vatican statement. 

The petitions, which are sometimes submitted by a mediator, could be for obtaining visas or passports for expatriation, asylum, reunification with a family member, release from detention, transfers from one concentration camp to another, news about a deported person, food or clothing, financial support, and spiritual support, among other things,” it read.

“Unfortunately, as can be seen from documentation, many requests could not be accepted due to various types of problems. Other times, the recovery has been successful, but in most cases the outcome remains unknown,” the statement pointed out.

“Thousands of people persecuted for their membership to the Jewish religion, or for merely having ‘non-Aryan’ ancestry, turned to the Vatican, in the knowledge that others had received help, like the young Werner Barasch himself writes,” Archbishop Gallagher said.

He expressed the hope that the release of the documents will help “descendants of those who asked for help to find traces of their loved ones from any part of the world” and also “allow scholars and anyone interested to freely examine this special archival heritage from a distance”.