The most surprising discoveries from recently unsealed Vatican documents

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By Olivia B. Waxman

Staff Writer

For Holocaust Remembrance Day on April 18—known as Yom Hashoah in Hebrew––we’ve published articles about how discussions of the Holocaust have evolved. I talked to scholars who are combing through 16 million never-before-seen files unsealed from the Vatican archive in 2020 that they hope will shed light on what the Catholic Church did—and didn’t—do during the Holocaust. Click here to read more .

And in an adapted excerpt from the new book Unearthed: A Lost Actress, a Forbidden Book, and a Search for Life in the Shadow of the Holocaust, author Meryl Frank reflects on what it’s like to be a Jewish parent teaching her children about the Holocaust. As she writes, “Our Jewish communal memory is long, but, unfortunately, we need not look to our ancient past to feel the effects of hatred. It was only 80 years ago that our families were nearly obliterated. That memory is still fresh.” Click here to read the full story.

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FROM THE TIME VAULT

This week in 1964: Lee Iacocca

“From the fertile brains of ‘Lee’ Iacocca (rhymes with try-a-coke-ah) and his staff at Ford have sprung most of the major themes that dominate the U.S. auto industry today: the return to car racing, the intensified appeal to the youth market, the trend to the low-priced sports car. Sold by Iacocca to the top executives of Ford, often over their initial disapproval, these themes have first become Ford policy, then gone on to set the pace of the industry. But so elephantine is the gestation period of Detroit's new models that, in Iacocca's three years as head of the Ford Division, the Mustang is the first car that he can call completely his own, from blueprint through mock-up to production line.” (April 17, 1964)

This week in 1981: Princess Diana

“Center stage right now in history's longest running show is Lady Diana, who entered as an ingénue and was already a star before she got to the footlights. She not only stood up well to the glare, she turned it to good advantage. Hounded by an anxious press, she usually managed to hold her temper and fix her smile. ‘I love working with children, and I have learned to be very patient with them,’ she told Charles with a level [of] coolness that seemed to be much older than 19. ‘I simply treat the press as though they were children.’” (April 20, 1981)

This week in 2003: Saddam Hussein

“The archaeology of liberation began to yield the secrets of the regime. U.S. soldiers moved through the city streets and tunnels, searching for clues that would unravel the mysteries of Saddam's weapons program. Soldiers explored the Old Palace, imagining what it would be like to take a shower in the gold-and-marble bathrooms. It turns out that Saddam favored Colgate toothpaste and French cuffs; Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz read both Henry Kissinger and Danielle Steel. There were skinny lions, cheetahs and bears in pens on the grounds of one palace, which had 64 bathrooms. The Los Angeles Times reported that soldiers found a sheep on the grounds and fed it to the cats.” (April 21, 2003)