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 The Chronicle welcomes you online! Please feel free to respond to these editorials or letters to the editor by sending your letters to the editor.

We condense letters; most, as published, won't exceed 300 words. A letter must include the writer's name and city, which will be published, and an address and telephone number for verification, which will not be published. Writers may be limited to one letter every 30 days. Open letters, letters to third parties and poetry are not considered. Letters from people living outside the Chronicle's circulation area usually are not considered.

Contradicts book on 'Hitler's Pope'

Web posted October 25, 1999

Editor, The Chronicle

Recently, The Chronicle published a Washington Times book review of John Cornwell's, Hitler's Pope, in which the newspaper seemed to agree with Mr.Cornwell's conclusion that Pope Pius XII was ``silent'' on the Holocaust. You would think that they would have done a little research on their own before printing that review. To prove Mr. Cornwell wrong, all they had to do was reach into the files of The New York Times which printed many stories concerning the pope's condemnation of the Nazis.

The news blackout which Hitler imposed after his invasion of Poland in September 1939 was broken by the Vatican, according to The Times. The Times gave massive coverage in articles and in its editorial pages to the Vatican's disclosures of Nazi atrocities against Jews and non-Jews in Poland. An editorial, ``Poland's Agony'' on Jan. 24, 1940, said that until the Vatican's disclosures, unofficial reports of horrors in Poland could not be believed.

``But,'' says The Times, ``now that the Vatican has spoken, with authority, that cannot be questioned and has confirmed the worst intimations of terrors which have come out of the Polish darkness.''

Pius XII used Vatican radio and L'Osservatore Romano regularly to denounce the Nazis. He spared no effort in publicizing atrocity reports from the Catholic clergy. On Jan. 29, 1940, a ``Memorandum Presented to the Pope...,'' was a front page Times article. It describes ``Mass Shootings in Poland Laid to Nazis by Cardinal.''...

Virtually a full page with small print and photos was given by The Times to details of a report released by the Pope which gives precise places where Jews and non-Jews were brutalized and killed by the Nazis.

In every year of World War II, Pius XII continued attacks on Nazi policies against the Jewish people and The Times reported them. It is unfortunate that Mr. Cornwell and The Washington Times reviewer seem blissfully unaware of these reports. It is estimated that the efforts of Pius XII resulted in the saving of over 850,000 Jewish lives during World War II.

Some silence.

William J. Kemple, Augusta