A groundbreaking historical study based on documents previously locked in the Vatican's secret archives: The Popes Against the Jews graphically shows how the Catholic Church helped make the Holocaust possible. Pope John Paul II, as part of his effort to improve Catholic-Jewish relations, has himself called for a clear-eyed historical investigation into any possible link be-tween the Church and the Holocaust. An important sign of his commitment was the recent decision to allow the distinguished historian David I. Kertzer, a specialist in Italian history, to be one of the first scholars given access to long-sealed Vatican archives. The result is a book filled with shocking revelations. It traces the Vatican's role in the development of modern anti-Semitism from the nineteenth century up to the outbreak of the Second World War. Kertzer shows why all the recent attention given to Pope Pius XII's failure to publicly protest the slaughter of Europe's Jews in the war misses a far more important point. What made the Holocaust possible was groundwork laid over a period of decades. In this campaign of demonization of the Jews--identifying them as traitors to their countries, enemies of all that was good, relentlessly pursuing world domination--the Vatican itself played a key role, as is shown here for the first time. Despite its focus, this is not an anti-Catholic book. It seeks a balanced judgment and an understanding of the historical forces that led the Church along the path it took. Inevitably controversial, written with devastating clarity and dispassionate authority, The Popes Against the Jews is a book of the greatest importance.
The Vatican's 1998 report "We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah" purportedly exonerated the Church of complicity in the Holocaust. In The Popes Against the Jews, David I. Kertzer argues that the report is "not the product of a Church that wants to confront its history." Kertzer's book refutes the Church's thesis that the Holocaust grew out of "an anti-Judaism that was essentially more sociological and political than religious." In fact, Kertzer asserts, those dimensions of European anti-Semitism developed "in no small part due to the efforts of the Roman Catholic Church itself." The racial laws of fascist Italy and the Nuremberg Laws of 1930s Germany, for example, were directly modeled on the Church's own rules governing treatment of Jews: until the collapse of the Papal States in the late 19th century, Jews living in these territories were forced to wear yellow badges and live in ghettos. Kertzer's arguments make for compelling reading because they're presented in story form, based on the actions of the popes themselves. Access to long-sealed Church archives allowed Kertzer to reconstruct some of the most shocking, secret conversations that occurred in the Vatican in the decades leading up to World War II. --Michael Joseph Gross
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0
slightly misleading title, but interesting:
In 1998, the Vatican issued a report in which it denied responsibility for the Holocaust. The report argued that the Church's own anti-Semitism was religious rather than racial, and in any event that Catholic anti-Semitism had diminished over the centuries. This book attacks that argument. Kertzner points out that Catholic media (including newspapers fairly close to the Vatican) aggressively slandered Jews, using the same arguments as racial anti-Semites. Just as racial anti-Semites argued that... more info
Old Bigotries Never Die....:
...but unlike "old soldiers", they seldom fade away. Instead they are refurbished, recycled and reapplied. It's the similarities that I note, between the rise of pre-Shoah anti-Semitism and the new anti-Semitism of Mark Steyn and his ilk - remembering that Arabs are Semitic also - which has led me to re-read this book from 2001 with a new perspective. Before Steyn's "Eurabia", there was the Jewropa of anti-Semitic Catholics such as Father Giuseppe Oreglia, editor of Civiltá Catolica, and Eduard... more info
Christian Antisemitism:
Gregory IX, Innocent IV, Clement IV and Clement IX are among the popes known as protectors of the Jewish people. Another one was Alexander VI who welcomed those who sought refuge in Rome after the 1492 expulsion from Spain; he also allowed the immigration of those expelled from Portugal in 1497 and from Provence in 1498. The author makes it clear that this meticulously researched work is not intended as an attack on the church. He never criticizes Christian theology and takes into account the extenuating... more info
Absolutely alarming -- but are we doing it again?:
David Kertzer's research in recently opened sections of the Vatican archives exposes a religious dimension to the rise of modern anti-Semitism. He reviews decisions and statements on the "Jewish problem", by clerics, the popes, and Christian political activists, mainly from the French Revolution to the Final Solution. The account he compiles is a calm, unflinching witness to the rising chorus of alarming accusations against a despised ethnic minority. And the accusations sound almost boringly familiar.more info
