Creators & ContributorsKertzer, David I. (author)
Catholic Church (subject)

Summary"[B]ased 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... 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." —Book jacket

ContentsPart one. Keeping Jews in their place

• A missed opportunity
• Forced baptisms
• The ghetto
• Ritual murder makes a comeback
• The end of an era

Part two. The Church and the rise of modern anti-Semitism

• The Catholic press
• Jewish vampires
• France
• Austria
• Race
• Ritual murder and the Popes in the twentieth century

Part three: On the eve of the Holocaust

• A future Pope in Poland
• Antechamber to the Holocaust

Appendix: Popes and their Secretaries of State

Notes

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 299–344) and index
• "This is a Borzoi Book" —Title page verso