Allies ignored extermination of the Jews, claims Vatican

The Vatican has accused Britain and the U.S. of complicity in the Nazi extermination of Jews.



It claims the Allies deliberately did nothing to either rescue Jews or destroy the death camps.



An article in L'Osservatore Romano, the official Vatican newspaper, says Allied governments knew the Nazis were planning to exterminate the Jews as early as 1942.



But instead of bombing the concentration camps and the railways supplying them, they reacted by first suppressing eye-witness reports and then claiming they were exaggerated.

Scenes after the liberation of Belsen in April 1945: The Vatican claims the Allies deliberately did nothing to either rescue Jews or destroy the death camps

Britain opposed offering sanctuary to Jewish refugees, said the article, which will be seen as having the support of the highest Vatican figures.



L'Osservatore Romano draws on the diaries of former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, who said his country's officials 'dodged their grim responsibility, procrastinated when concrete rescue schemes were placed before them, and even suppressed information about atrocities'.



Mr Morgenthau claimed that when the U.S. began to rescue Jews the project met resistance from British officials.



The Foreign Office warned of 'the difficulties of disposing of any considerable number of Jews should they be rescued'.



Mr Morgenthau called this 'a satanic combination of British chill and diplomatic doubletalk, cold and correct and adding up to a sentence of death'.



The article will be seen as part of the Vatican's drive to restore the reputation of the wartime Pope, Pius XII.



