- Paperback: 408 pages
- Publisher: Yale University Press (6 Feb 2002)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0300093101
- ISBN-13: 978-0300093100
- Product Dimensions: 19.7 x 12.8 x 2.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,183,243 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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"The silence of Pius XII. The Catholic rescue of much of Italian Jewry. Susan Zuccotti reconciles the contradiction between the two in a subtle, many-layered history of heroism, cowardice, and tragically, often culpably missed opportunities." Jack Miles, author of God: A Biography "One of the boldest contributions to the history of the Holocaust in the last decade... Stunning." Kirkus Reviews "A convincing analysis of a tragic history. Zuccotti's work honours Catholic heroes while making the broad failure of Catholic leaders irrefutably clear. This book sets a new standard, changes the debate, moves this painful question closer to resolution." James Carroll, author of Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews "Rigorously researched, judiciously argued, and lucidly composed." Paul Breines, Washington Post Book World "An authoritative, balanced and, in the end, devastating indictment of moral failure on the part of the Church as an institution." Publishers Weekly
Kirkus Reviews
"One of the boldest contributions to the history of the Holocaust in the last decade ... Stunning."
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is an extremely well researched and scrupulously fairly argued account of the attitude shown by Pope Pius XII immediately before and during the war towards the Holocaust in Italy and to some extent more widely. Reading this, the reader is left in little general doubt that Pius XII could have said and done very much more to express the Vatican's disapproval and to set a tone of opposition to persecution of Jews and creation of an atmosphere whereby they might be more easily helped to evade that persecution.
The cause of his reluctance to do so stems from a number of factors. The Catholic Church hierarchy of the time still largely held the view that Jews were hostile to Christianity because of the death of Christ and that they were therefore as a group damaging the Christian religion. So they were opposed to Jews on religious grounds, albeit that Pius XII and his predecessor Pius XI (who died in early 1939) rejected the notion that Jews or anyone else should be regarded as inferior races. Condemnation by members of the Church hierarchy of anti-Jewish laws focussed on the marriage laws as they affected Jews married to Christians and those Jews who converted to Catholicism, rather than the broad mass of Jewish people. Throughout the war statements made were few and far between and couched in very general and rather coldly bureaucratic language. The author identifies a number of factors for this as well as the historical attitude towards Judaism as a religion. There was an ethos of self-deception and an unwillingness to believe that the repressions could be as bad as some were reporting (this attitude was, of course, by no means restricted to the Catholic Church). There was a to some extent genuine fear that reprisals might take place against Catholics or Jews baptised into the Catholic faith if the Church spoke out in strong terms against the Holocaust. There were even fears the Germans might invade the Vatican City itself. But I think the main reason she identifies was a restricted moral vision by many members of the hierarchy, an exclusivist attitude towards the concerns of Catholics that in such a desperate situation was a wholly inadequate moral response to genocide of another racial/religious group, coupled by Pius XII's own sheltered life and lack of direct experience of human suffering.
His attitude can be contrasted with that of many local Catholic bishops and priests, monks and nuns who did selflessly protect Jews by hiding them in religious institutions or helping them to escape (some were even sheltered in the Vatican by lower members of the hierarchy). These Catholics did have experience of suffering and reached out to help the Jews and are a credit to their faith and to human dignity in general. But there is no evidence that their efforts were as a result of a direction from the Pope or any other Vatican official, even though after the war Pius XII was praised by many Jews and others for saving them, largely because he was of course seen as the embodiment of the Church and it was assumed he must have directed it. But he did not. And his silence, while some of the individual reasons for it have some validity, was in the end, I think, an overall failure of moral courage for which he must be criticised - even more so as he continued his silence even after Rome was liberated and the German threat to the Vatican was lifted. He was not "Hitler's Pope" as some have called him - he was not a Nazi sympathiser or believer in racialist policies, but his stance was a stain on his office and a stark contrast to the moral courage of many ordinary Catholic and others.
The cause of his reluctance to do so stems from a number of factors. The Catholic Church hierarchy of the time still largely held the view that Jews were hostile to Christianity because of the death of Christ and that they were therefore as a group damaging the Christian religion. So they were opposed to Jews on religious grounds, albeit that Pius XII and his predecessor Pius XI (who died in early 1939) rejected the notion that Jews or anyone else should be regarded as inferior races. Condemnation by members of the Church hierarchy of anti-Jewish laws focussed on the marriage laws as they affected Jews married to Christians and those Jews who converted to Catholicism, rather than the broad mass of Jewish people. Throughout the war statements made were few and far between and couched in very general and rather coldly bureaucratic language. The author identifies a number of factors for this as well as the historical attitude towards Judaism as a religion. There was an ethos of self-deception and an unwillingness to believe that the repressions could be as bad as some were reporting (this attitude was, of course, by no means restricted to the Catholic Church). There was a to some extent genuine fear that reprisals might take place against Catholics or Jews baptised into the Catholic faith if the Church spoke out in strong terms against the Holocaust. There were even fears the Germans might invade the Vatican City itself. But I think the main reason she identifies was a restricted moral vision by many members of the hierarchy, an exclusivist attitude towards the concerns of Catholics that in such a desperate situation was a wholly inadequate moral response to genocide of another racial/religious group, coupled by Pius XII's own sheltered life and lack of direct experience of human suffering.
His attitude can be contrasted with that of many local Catholic bishops and priests, monks and nuns who did selflessly protect Jews by hiding them in religious institutions or helping them to escape (some were even sheltered in the Vatican by lower members of the hierarchy). These Catholics did have experience of suffering and reached out to help the Jews and are a credit to their faith and to human dignity in general. But there is no evidence that their efforts were as a result of a direction from the Pope or any other Vatican official, even though after the war Pius XII was praised by many Jews and others for saving them, largely because he was of course seen as the embodiment of the Church and it was assumed he must have directed it. But he did not. And his silence, while some of the individual reasons for it have some validity, was in the end, I think, an overall failure of moral courage for which he must be criticised - even more so as he continued his silence even after Rome was liberated and the German threat to the Vatican was lifted. He was not "Hitler's Pope" as some have called him - he was not a Nazi sympathiser or believer in racialist policies, but his stance was a stain on his office and a stark contrast to the moral courage of many ordinary Catholic and others.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
12 reviews
26 of 37 people found the following review helpful
Hard Truth, Hard Words
6 Mar 2001
Format:Hardcover
This is a tough book. Zuccotti presents tough arguments and asks equally tough questions about the role of the Vatican in Italy during the Holocaust. Her research work and her piecing together the intricate jigsaw puzzle of doucuments has created a text that is difficult to refute and damning in its conclusions. Zuccotti demonstrates convincingly that Pope Pius XII and many within the heirarchy of the Catholic Church were, at best, passive in the face of the rescue work done by so many Italian Catholics, or, at worst, hostile to rescue work. At the same time she suggests, again, with considerable force of documentation and testimony, that the Vatican was quite content to be seen as the inspiration of rescue when in fact the historical record demonstrates otherwise. Trawling through the Vatican's published archival material and linking it up with diocesean archives, Jewish communal sources as well as memoirs and published testimonies of the persecuted, the perpetrators and the rescuers, Zuccotti has given historians a valuable guide to understand some of the complex "why's" of the Vatican's silence and lack of activity during the Holocaust. It is precisely her dispassionate narrative and allowing the sources to speak for themselves that gives this book so much power. The defenders of Pius XII and the Vatican bureaucracy need to either demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt their claims that Pius did all he could or end what has become a re-hashing of old and tired chestnuts that rely on innuendo, suggestion and a mish-mash of attributed quotes. If Pius, or one of his subordinates directed the convents and monasteries of Rome to lift cloister, please show us. If he instructed bishops, even verbally, to assist efforts in rescuing Jews, please provide the references - surely someone must remember them. Zuccotti has done the academic world a great service in this fine scholarly work. For Catholics, and indeed for all Christians, this work is another challenge to seek the truth - even if that truth is unpalatable. Only then can the present Pope's words about reconciliation between Jews and Christians have the full force they deserve. (For the record the reviewer is a believing and practicing Catholic.)
22 of 36 people found the following review helpful
Worse Than Hitler's Pope!
13 Aug 2005
Format:Paperback
I read this book as part of my Honours research project into the Vatican's diplomacy with Nazi Germany. I was told that John Cornwell's "Hitler's Pope", despite the accolades and the best seller status, was a poor piece of academic work, a thesis which Cornwell himself eventually recanted (See the reference in The Economist, http://www.economist.com/books/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3471137).
Indeed it was so poorly researched that even critics of Pius XII did not take the book seriously.
Zucotti's work, the other hand, is a somewhat more valuable resource, as she has rather detailed references to primary documents in her endnotes. Indeed some have their contents spelled out quite extensively in the body.
However, such referencing, buttressed by her award winning status as a holocaust author, creates a veneer of credibility, a smokescreen behind which Zucotti expresses her obvious contempt for Pius XII. This is largely done through her highly selective use of quotes from the primary sources.
Zucotti commits the Cardinal (no pun intended) sin for all historians, begin with a conclusion, use the documents that prove that conclusion right, and either ignore or dismiss the rest. Such an approach runs right through the book.
Where a quote is used that is or can be construed to be critical of Pius XII, she would quote it to the fullest. Where primary documents mention the opposite (and my research showed there were plenty of them), she automatically dismisses the authors of said documents, many of which were eyewitnesses to the things that Zucotti keeps asserting Pius XII did not do, without any justification whatsoever. She uses absolute pearlers in dismissing those authors, such as the classic "He (the eyewitness) should have known better".
Zucotti also uses an artifically narrow criteria to determine the credibility of certain hypotheses put forward by defenders. She demands that documentary evidence be availabe, otherwise it did not happen. Normally it would be a fair criterion, but in the context of an occupation by the most deadly war-machine in the world, the existence of such documents would have placed the possessor and/or author of those documents, and anyone associated with them, in grave danger.
Does Zucotti accept this? Instead she demands that someone with the intelligence to forsee that decades ahead, someone would question the reputation of Pius XII, and accordingly safekeep any written instructions from him. This retrospective projection is by far, the most unreasonable claim for any Historian to make.
In sum, I would say, use Zucotti for her references (for they are quite good), but never subscribe to her silly dismissals, her retrospection and outrageous thesis. For something more balanced on the critical side of this debate see Guenter Lewy's "The Catholic Church and the Holocaust". For the contra, see Ronald Rychlak's "Hitler, the War and the Pope".
Indeed it was so poorly researched that even critics of Pius XII did not take the book seriously.
Zucotti's work, the other hand, is a somewhat more valuable resource, as she has rather detailed references to primary documents in her endnotes. Indeed some have their contents spelled out quite extensively in the body.
However, such referencing, buttressed by her award winning status as a holocaust author, creates a veneer of credibility, a smokescreen behind which Zucotti expresses her obvious contempt for Pius XII. This is largely done through her highly selective use of quotes from the primary sources.
Zucotti commits the Cardinal (no pun intended) sin for all historians, begin with a conclusion, use the documents that prove that conclusion right, and either ignore or dismiss the rest. Such an approach runs right through the book.
Where a quote is used that is or can be construed to be critical of Pius XII, she would quote it to the fullest. Where primary documents mention the opposite (and my research showed there were plenty of them), she automatically dismisses the authors of said documents, many of which were eyewitnesses to the things that Zucotti keeps asserting Pius XII did not do, without any justification whatsoever. She uses absolute pearlers in dismissing those authors, such as the classic "He (the eyewitness) should have known better".
Zucotti also uses an artifically narrow criteria to determine the credibility of certain hypotheses put forward by defenders. She demands that documentary evidence be availabe, otherwise it did not happen. Normally it would be a fair criterion, but in the context of an occupation by the most deadly war-machine in the world, the existence of such documents would have placed the possessor and/or author of those documents, and anyone associated with them, in grave danger.
Does Zucotti accept this? Instead she demands that someone with the intelligence to forsee that decades ahead, someone would question the reputation of Pius XII, and accordingly safekeep any written instructions from him. This retrospective projection is by far, the most unreasonable claim for any Historian to make.
In sum, I would say, use Zucotti for her references (for they are quite good), but never subscribe to her silly dismissals, her retrospection and outrageous thesis. For something more balanced on the critical side of this debate see Guenter Lewy's "The Catholic Church and the Holocaust". For the contra, see Ronald Rychlak's "Hitler, the War and the Pope".
22 of 36 people found the following review helpful
A meticulously-researched and balanced account
11 April 2001
Format:Hardcover
Pope Pius XII has often been criticized for his silence during the extermination of European Jewry during World War II. In his defense, some have alleged that the pope was doing a great deal to help the Jews but that his efforts were necessarily behind the scenes. This meticulously researched and balanced book examines exactly what the pope, his advisers, and his assistants at the Vatican Secretariat of State did to help the Jews of Italy. It finds that they did very little.The book begins by discussing prewar Vatican and Jesuit publications, in which Zuccotti uncovers a hitherto little-known prevalence of anti-Jewish sentiment. These publications, along with archival documents, indicate that Vatican protests against Italian anti-Jewish laws were limited to measures affecting converts and Jews in mixed marriages with Catholics, as was help with emigration; the papal nuncio's visits to foreign Jews in Italian internment camps did not differ from those to non-Jews and in no way eased their material discomfort; and interventions by diplomats of the Holy See for Jews threatened with deportation were rare, always polite, and seldom decisive. Above all, Zuccotti finds no evidence of a papal directive to church institutions to shelter Jews and much evidence to suggest that the pope remained uninvolved. The notion that Pius XII was outstandingly benevolent and helpful to Jews behind the scenes proves to be a myth.
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