Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Pope Francis Calls Holocaust A ‘Hell’ In Book On Nazi Medical Experiments

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (JTA) — Pope Francis condemned the Holocaust and the medical experiments conducted by Nazi doctors on Jewish concentration camp inmates.

The pope’s condemnation appears in an introduction he wrote in an upcoming book written by three Argentine doctors about the Nazi medical experiments. His co-author is his longtime Argentine friend Rabbi Abraham Skorka.

“It is an analysis of the human attitude of trying to expel the good of mercy and replace it with evil and destruction,” Skorka told JTA.

Research from the book, “Morality and Legality in Dark Times,” by Beatriz Boo, José Mobilio and David Znajderhaus, will be presented Thursday at the Sociedad Hebraica Argentina, a Jewish community center with a long tradition of cultural and art activities. Skorka will sit on the panel with the authors.

Francis wrote an email to Skorka asking him to greet the authors on his behalf at the presentation.

“Dear brother,” the email begins. “This text will help to bring a testimony of that hell and to prevent humanity from repeating that reality.”

“The human arrogance exposed during the Shoah was the action of people who felt like gods, and shows the aberrant dimension in which we can fall if we forget where we came from and where we are going,” the pope wrote.

In July 2016, Francis visited Auschwitz.

Francis, the former cardinal of Buenos Aires, previously wrote the forward of a book by Rabbi Sergio Bergman, the current Argentine minister of sustainability, and referred to him as “one of my teachers.”

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.