Poem from Anna Krinsky
A few days after Eugenio Pacelli's election as Pope, a French letter to "His Holiness Pius XII" reached the Vatican. The author was a young Jewish woman, Anna Krinsky, who had written the letter on March 18, 1939. She asked for help for her "poor brothers in faith who are treated so unjustly in other countries, persecuted and shamefully driven from their homes." In addition, the woman, who was born in Russia in 1902 and had already emigrated to France before the war began, asked for support for Israel, which would never have "a nobler and more powerful defender" than Pius XII. Anna Krinsky enclosed a six-verse poem with her letter. Handwritten on it in pencil is the note: "N. d. f. Archivio 28 - III - 39" - Niente da fare, nothing is to be done, which led to the filing of the letter. Anna Krinsky did not escape the Shoah: she was deported to Auschwitz on July 27, 1942.