World Report

PARIS (JTA) -- A French Nazi collaborator jailed last month after he fled to Switzerland was moved from a prison hospital to an ordinary cell. The lawyer for Maurice Papon said he has appealed to prison authorities to move Papon back to a hospital room.

Papon was sentenced to a 10-year term last year after he was found guilty of helping deport some 1,500 Jews to Nazi death camps during World War II.

Pope thought Nazis might win the war

NEW YORK (JTA) -- A newly discovered document may help explain why Pope Pius XII did not condemn the Holocaust. The U.S. envoy to the Vatican, Harold Tittmann, wrote in the document that a highly placed Vatican official said the pope did not believe the Allies "were in a position to win" the war.

The document was discovered by Richard Chesnoff, author of the new book "Pack of Thieves." The document is excerpted in this week's edition of U.S. News & World Report.

The magazine's article also states that a soon-to-be-released Argentine government report confirms that the Vatican was active in seeking Latin American visas for fleeing Nazis.

Renovations begin at Auschwitz shul

BERLIN (JTA) -- A ceremony marked the start of renovations at the only remaining synagogue near the site of the Auschwitz death camp.

Monday's event, attended by several Holocaust survivors, coincided with the 61st anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Nov. 9-10 pogrom in Germany and Austria.

The decaying Lomdei Mishnayot Synagogue is the last of a dozen that served more than 7,000 Jews in the area before World War II.