Whether those tensions can be relaxed depends in part on one more vexing issue, which focuses on the Vatican's archives and especially its holdings from the reign of Pius XII. As the 21st century arrives, a flood of new archival material has appeared, much of it coming into Western view from Soviet and Eastern European archives that became accessible only at the end of the Cold War. Among the recently available documents, for example, is a calendar/diary that SS leader Heinrich Himmler kept. Portions of self-serving memoirs by Adolf Eichmann also have surfaced. These new archival findings, which are in relatively early stages of scholarly assessment, will further detail and perhaps importantly revise the best understandings of the Holocaust that we have thus far. Be that as it may, the Vatican's Holocaust-era archives have yet to be fully opened to Holocaust scholars. As long as that situation remains, our understanding of Pius XII and Vatican policies during the Nazi period will remain ambiguous at best. How the Vatican's Holocaust-related opportunities--past, present, and future--are assessed, bungled, or put to sensible use will continue to be an area where Holocaust repercussions are sure to be keenly felt.

While no "official" definition exists and not every victim or survivor of the Holocaust was Jewish, Holocaust survivors are primarily those children, women, and men who were defined as Jews by Nazi Germany, lived under the rule or occupation of Nazi Germany and its collaborators, and yet eluded the total annihilation that Nazi policy intended for Jews in Europe and even worldwide. Every Holocaust survivor's experience is distinctive because survival involved different circumstances, times, and places. Some escaped Nazi persecution before World War II began in 1939 or before the "Final Solution" became Nazi Germany's official policy in 1941.