BOOKS: The Pope’s Jews: The Vatican’s Secret Plan to Save Jews From the Nazis

Pius XII, Lifesaver

BY BILL LOUGHLIN 

The Nazi slaughter of the Jews in Poland, Germany and Czechoslovakia was well under way in February 1939, when Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli assumed the papacy, taking the name Pius XII. Horrified as he surely was by what was happening throughout Europe, it was his judgment that public denunciation of the persecution “would inevitably provoke further reprisals against the Jews,” according to Gordon Thomas in The Pope’s Jews.

The furor over Pius’ alleged “silence” that has occupied the public’s attention for decades has overshadowed the success of his efforts to save the lives of millions of Jews, as well as thousands of Allied troops who escaped from German imprisonment.

The Pope’s Jews offers an extraordinarily well-researched account of those efforts, as well as a magnificent portrait of the refugees, the residents of Rome’s ghetto and Rome’s Catholic community, who formed the infrastructure of the papal plan. In doing so, Thomas has provided a most welcome addition in the fight to preserve Pius’ good name.

(You can also have access to several documents, including videos in

http://prudentiapolitica.blogspot.com.ar/2010/01/n-9-enero-2010-numero-dedicado-pio-xii.html)

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Read more: www.ncregister.com

The Pope’s Jews
The Vatican’s Secret Plan to Save Jews From the Nazis
By Gordon Thomas
Thomas Dunne Books, 2012
320 pages, $26.99
To order: us.macmillan.com