WARTIME Pope Pius XII knew details about the Nazi attempt to exterminate Jews in the Holocaust as early as 1942, according to a letter found in the Vatican archives that conflicts with the Holy See`s official position at the time that the information it had was vague and unverified.

The yellowed, typewritten letter, reproduced in Italy`s Corriere della Sera on Sunday, is highly significant because it was discovered by an in-house Vatican archivist and made public with the encouragement of Holy See officials.

The letter, dated Dec 14, 1942, was written by Father Lother Koenig, a Jesuit who was in the anti-Naziresistance in Germany, and addressed to the pope`s personal secretary at the Vatican, Father Robert Leiber, also a German.

Vatican archivist Giovanni Coco told the Corriere that the importance of the letter was `enormous, a unique case` because it showed the Vatican had information that labour camps were actually death factories.

In the letter, Koenig tells Leiber that sources had confirmed that about 6,000 Poles and Jews a day were being killed in `SS-furnaces` at the Belzec camp near Rava-Ruska, which was then part of Germanoccupied Poland and is now in western Ukraine.-Reuters