Jewish groups praise Pope Francis on opening of Holocaust archives | JPost | Israel News

This is a long-standing issue, one that I recall being discussed numerous times at each meeting of the International Holocaust Awareness Alliance.

Just as the opening of many of the archives of the former USSR and countries in Eastern Europe shed light on the horrors of Stalin (see Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands), expect that having access to the Vatian archives will help clarify the role of the then Pope Pius and the Vatican, although it will take considerable time for the historians and others to pour through the archives. Finally:

“Opening the archives of the Shoah [Holocaust] seems reasonable,” the future pope wrote. “Let them be opened up and let everything be cleared up. Let it be seen if they could have done something [to help], and until what point they could have helped. If they made a mistake in any aspect of this, we would have to say: ‘We have erred.’ We don’t have to be scared of this — the truth has to be the goal.”

Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial institute, praised Francis’s intention to open the archives, stating that it “would allow researchers to gain a clearer picture of the Vatican and the pope’s behavior during the Holocaust.”

Holocaust survivors also welcomed the news.

Jewish groups praise Pope Francis on opening of Holocaust archives | JPost | Israel News.