Pope Pius XII is set in front of a letter sent to the Vatican from a Jew

Vatican Archives Opened; Letters From Jews Revealed

On April 24, 1940, Arthur Pick typed out a letter in crisp black ink and sent it to the Vatican. In the letter, which can now be read on the Vatican library website, he requested help from the pope in securing permission for both him and his wife, Pauline, to flee Italy and enter Brazil. While they were both of the Catholic faith, both had Jewish fathers and were classified as mixed race under Italian law. In his letter (translated from Italian), he writes, “Thanks to the goodness of Reverend Monsignor , I have been given the attached recommendation to which I permit myself to join my deep and devoted prayer in order that Your Excellency may benevolently care to extend to me and my wife His help to make it possible for us to...

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NGO Monitor Responds

By Naftali Balanson, NGO Monitor (From the July/August Issue of Moment) Letty Cottin Pogrebin’s uncritical piece on the Israeli NGO known as Breaking the Silence, or BTS (“The IDF’s Silent Whistle-Blowers,” May/June 2011), omits crucial information about the group. A significant portion of the organization’s activities targets foreign audiences, not Israeli public opinion, while demonizing the Israeli army. Events in Sweden, Ireland and the U.S. (in one case, Pakistani and Egyptian diplomats were in attendance) are part of the BTS contribution to the global de-legitimization campaign. The absurdity of BTS faux-suffering peaked with its nomination for the EU’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. In sharp contradistinction to BTS, the other nominees were real dissidents and opponents of totalitarian regimes, including a Cuban who had conducted 23 hunger strikes and others who had languished in prison. In...

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