Có thù với dân Do Thái

-----

A letter found among the private papers of Pope Pius XII suggests that the Holy See was told in 1942 that up to 6,000 people, “above all Poles and Jews,” were being killed in furnaces (lò nung) every day at Belzec, a Nazi death camp in Poland.

Though news of the atrocities being perpetrated (gây ra) by Hitler was already reaching Pope Pius XII’s ears, this information was especially important because it came from a trusted church source based in Germany, said Giovanni Coco, a Vatican archivist (nhà lưu trữ) who discovered the letter (lá thư). The source was “in the heart of the enemy territory,” Mr. Coco said on Saturday.

The document, which was made public this weekend by the Milan newspaper Corriere della Sera, adds to the evidence (bằng chứng) that some scholars (học giả) say shows Pius knew about the Holocaust as it happened. Some scholars say Pius did not want to confront or offend Hitler because he feared Communism, believed that the Axis powers would win the war and wanted to avoid alienating millions of German and Nazi-sympathizing Catholics.

Other historians (nhà sử học) insist (khăng khăng) that Pius XII remained silent publicly because he was surreptitiously arranging (lén lút sắp xếp) for — or at least allowing — local Catholics to aid and save Jews from the Nazis, and he also feared that the Nazis might come after Catholics.

...Since 2020, scholars have been mining the documents covering Pius’s papacy, which lasted from 1939 to 1958, seeking to better understand the Vatican’s response to Nazism and the Holocaust, as well as the controversial legacy of Pius XII, who was publicly silent (công khai im lặng) as millions of Jews (dân Do Thái) were killed.