Thousands and thousands of Italian, German, Slovenian, Hungarian, Portuguese and Spanish names and surnames were preserved in the archives with similar stories, desperate and hopeless. Men, women, children, old people. All are persecuted by Nazi persecution and anti-Jewish laws, writes Il Messaggero, citing Rador.

In these yellowed letters, they ask the Vatican for permission to emigrate to Brazil, a recommendation from the Ministry of the Interior to obtain an Aryan license, new documents, places to hide, information about relatives who have disappeared without a trace.

Every day, mountains of files of correspondence from all over Europe arrived at the State Secretariat, and the official wrote down, collected and commented extracts from each case, which then became a file. Many times things went well, documents were provided or useful tools were found to expatriate entire families of Jews or persecuted politicians.

This archive, opened by Pope Francis, can now be viewed by anyone from their own computer, with just one click of the mouse to bring to life the faces of people who have gone missing, to see the horror of a system that has forgotten what humanity means, and others people silently, in a difficult historical context, they did everything they could to help.

“If I am writing to you today, I am doing so to ask you to help me from a distance.” Archival documents express sincere requests. There are students, mothers, teachers, workers, entrepreneurs, artisans, there are cases when Jews ask to be released from custody, and others are waiting for a baptismal certificate to confirm their belonging to Arianism.

Each of these trials ended with the creation of a file that, after processing, was intended to be saved.

The archive contains 2,700 practices. Diplomatic channels have been activated within the Secretary of State to try to offer any assistance possible given the complexity of the political situation on a global scale.