BRITISH diplomats feared wartime Pope Pius XII was not doing enough to speak out against the Holocaust, according to secret documents unearthed by historians. Pius has been a controversial figure in recent weeks after the Vatican announced it had put him on the road to sainthood, despite strong objections from Jewish leaders.
Italian historians unearthed significant documents during research at Britain’s public record office in Kew. In November 1944, the British ambassador to the Holy See, D’Arcy Osborne, wrote a letter to the Foreign Office in London after having a meeting with Pius at the Vatican.

He described how they had discussed the recent massacre of 400,000 Jews in Hungary by the Nazis and he had suggested that perhaps the Pope should “speak out about the mistreatment of Hungarian Jews”. However, the Pope said to him he was “more concerned about the treatment and violence towards the peoples of the Baltic states and Poland at the hands of the Russians.”

The diary of the notorious Josef Mengele is set to be auctioned off in the United States.

Nazi memorabilia collectors vying for the artifact belonging to the Nazi doctor known at Auschwitz as the “Angel of Death” are expected to pay about $64,000, according to the Daily Mail.

The owner of the diary acquired the volume in Brazil after Mengele died there in 1979, the newspaper said. The historical artifacts house Alexander Autographs in Connecticut told the newspaper that the owner is a source close to the Mengele family.

The diary begins in May 1960, when Mengele was 49.

At Auschwitz, Mengele determined who would live and die, and he conducted horrific, quasi-medical experiments, including on twins.

News of the auction has prompted anger and revulsion among Holocaust survivors and their families, according to a statement released Monday by The American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants.

“This is a cynical act of exploitation aimed at profiting from the writings of one of the most heinous Nazi criminals,” the statement said. “If the auction house will not halt the sale, we are calling on Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal to determine if he has the means to do so.”

By Editor on Nov 28, 2009 in Armenia

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Growing up in Leechburg, 30 miles or so north of Pittsburgh, Ruth Reidbord watched her mother struggle unsuccessfully to save family trapped in Poland during World War II.

Reidbord, who was 14 when the war ended, witnessed the creation of Israel and remembers seeing postings in Jewish newspapers as people searched for missing family.

“But there wasn’t anything about the Holocaust,” she said. “No one was talking about it.”

Many postwar Jews have similar memories about the decade after the Holocaust: that the rawness of the wounds kept people from talking about it or memorializing it.

In this narrative, it took the tumult of the 1960s — including the broadcast of the Eichmann Trial and the Israeli victory in the Six Day War — to make the discussion public, starting the process of grand memorializing and teaching so prevalent today.

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