Pius XII Embraced Idea That Jews 'Exaggerate'

Researchers combing through recently-opened wartime records of the Vatican have discovered that a senior papal adviser, Angelo Dell’Acqua, told Pius XII in 1942 that reports of the slaughter of European Jews were unreliable because Jews “easily exaggerate.” Despite numerous other reports that Pius XII had received, which amply documented the atrocities, he chose to embrace Dell’Acqua’s perspective.

This new evidence dovetails with an episode that emerged from declassified U.S. government files many years ago. Those documents revealed that in January 1943, the American ambassador to the Vatican, Harold Tittman Jr., asked the Pope why his recent Christmas message, in which he mentioned the persecution of innocent people in Europe, did not mention either the Jews or the Nazis.