Pius XII's contact point for persecuted Jews and Christians

It is well known that Pope Pius XII had his Secretary of State Luigi Maglione set up a special office - the ‘Ufficio della I Sezione per gli Ebrei’ - to process the petitions of persecuted Jews or persecuted Jews who had converted to the Catholic faith. These files can be viewed in full online in 170 folders. Each folder begins with a list of the persons dealt with in the file in question.

There are around 2800 petitions concerning several thousand mainly non-Italian Jews. It is now much easier to carry out historical research on those Jews or former Jews who directly or indirectly presented their petitions to the Holy See. The documents in question can be very scarce or contain extensive documents.

However, the Ebrei series of the historical archives of the Secretariat of State by no means covers all the documentation on the Holy See's assistance to Jews in distress. Of course, the 2nd Section of the Secretariat of State also received thousands of petitions, most of which concerned Italian people. These files are located in the Apostolic Vatican Archives (formerly the ‘Secret Archives’) and cannot be viewed online.

The fact that the Secretariat of State has put at least a large part of the material online is therefore a sensation and also sets new standards for the other Vatican archives. It is highly recommended that anyone interested should take a direct look at these files and the fates behind them by simply looking at individual files and thus experiencing the hardship of the time in a very concrete way.

serie Ebrei: Posizioni 1-170 

In particular, our RIGG member Dr Johan Ickx, who manages these files as an archivist, has dealt with Pius XII and his commitment to the persecuted. Unfortunately, his book is not yet available in German.

Massimiliano Valente has written a very informative article on the holdings of the Ebrei series.

 

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Category: Roman notes