THIS SUPERB ACCOUNT OF ONE OF CIVILIZATION'S DARKEST HOURS WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN, IF THIS QUOTE FROM PAGE 217 WERE FOLLOWED BY OTHER PEOPLE THROUGHOUT THE WORLD AND HISTORY. "WHAT IS IMPORTANT IS THAT THEY VIEWED THE HOLOCAUST AS ABOVE AND BEYOND POLITICS, THEY UNDERSTOOD THEIR DUTY AS CHILDREN OF GOD, AS ITALIANS, AND AS HUMAN BEINGS, AND THEY HAD THE COURAGE OF THEIR CONVICTIONS." GREAT READING.

I recently saw Susan Zuccotti lecture at Seton Hall University and was very impressed by her scholarship, objectivity and above all, compassion. Being the daughter of an Italian Jew who suffered the humiliation of the racial laws during the late l930's, I was fascinated by the fact that only 15% of Italian Jews perished during the war. Professor Zuccotti presents this fact along with others still contending that while this was a relatively small percent compared with other countries in Europe, the pain and loss suffered must not be minimized. Similarly, she presents a very objective view of Pius XII involvement(or lack therof) in saving the Jews. While she states that there was no evidence of a clear directive from the Pope,she does acknowledge the behind-the-scenes efforts by so many in local churches, convents, monasteries and schools who sheltered Jews under very dangerous circumstances. Again, I have several friends and relatives of my father's generation in Italy and NYC who survived the war under these conditions. I am looking forward to reading her work.

This book is a balanced study of the French efforts to save Jews during the Shoah, but it seems to have a Catholic problem. One of the strongest groups defending the Jews and hiding Jews was the French Catholic conference of bishops. The author seems to have a problem admitting this. She blithely ignores the pastoral letters denouncing racism and anti-Semitism. She also ignores the turning point in the relationship between the Vichy regime and the bishops. It was precisely the anti-Semitic laws of 1942 which moved the bulk of French bishops from cautious support of the Vichy regime to clear opposition to a racist government which they found appalling. The author's Catholic problem mars all of her work in this area.

"The Holocaust, The French, and The Jews" is a book full of stories that we should never forget because they are filled with teachings for all of us.

The powerful capacity that we, human beings, have to bring pain and or sorrow on other human beings is astonishing. The hardships that the Jews had to endure while Hitler was in power was a vivid proof of that. But I don't believe that their suffering was in vain. And I want to learn from their past. I want to remember the ones who died and honor the ones who survived. To learn from their past, I have to know their past and the writer of this book, Susan Zuccotti, helped me do so.

To understand their past, I would have to imagine what it could be to breathe the heavy and dreadful air as the profound anguish rose with the German ordinance that dictated that all Jews must wear the David's star. I supposed that Hitler figured out that if he was going to slaughter the shepperd's sheep, what a better way but to mark them?

To learn about the Jews, I would have to imagine exactly what it could be to be an eight-year-old boy who went home beaten up every day because on the upper left side of his shirt, a six-pronged yellow star with the word "Juif" in the center had been sewn. And to wonder how many people thought that the boy was a dirty "youpine" (foreign Jew). To understand I would have to know what it could be to leave one's childhood at the edge of a bench as one watch a flock of children, women and old people carrying bundles of cloth while being herded to a dark destiny. To hear the sound of their cries reaching all the way to heaven with "All the human pain that both life and death provide"

I would have to know or experience seeing the young worker's face--the one who carried in his wallet the false identity cards and baptismal certificates of his wife and child-- at the news that his family had gotten caught up in a massive roundup at the other side of the city.

"The Holocaust, The French and The Jews" is a book filled with downcast stories like those. In most of these stories, the main character did not live two months after the incident occurred. These stories have helped me understand what it was to be a Jew and what consequences this brought into their lives, the lives of others and the making of history. It has also helped me see, had I been there, that just as during the holocaust each person took a place in history, so I could have taken mine. I could have taken the place of the policeman, the traitor, the helper, the accuser, the guilty, the damned, the indifferent, the youpine or the "Friend of the Jews", the dictator, the orphan, the lost, the hungry, the powerful, the widow, the blind, the hopeless, the saint. And now should another holocaust occur, and after reading this book, I can choose more freely the place I want to take.

This is an indispensable book for anyone interested in this subject. For all of us who think of the holocaust as a fast, furious and random event, Zucotti corrects us in showing a no less devilish but organized, punctilious horror. I am truly in awe of my grandparents, people who always respected the law and wouldn't think of not responding to a summonce, for having the wits and the luck to escape anihilation in occupied france.

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.

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.)

This book is extremely useful as a contribution to the ongoing debate as to the moral imperatives, which existed upon Pope Pius XII to speak out against what remains the most catastrophic occurrence in human memory namely the holocaust. The book primarily focuses on the Italian situation and the relationship between the Vatican and the Italian State during the 1930's as well as the war. Again and again the author points out her view of the Vatican's distinction between racial and religious policies introduced against the Jewish people in Italy. The Fascist government introduced racial laws, which striped the Jewish people of their civil and human rights while the church, in the author's view at least acquiesced these provisions on the basis that they believed that the Jewish People were traditional opponents of Christianity.

Throughout the book the author quotes examples of how the Vatican could have been more forceful in its condemnation not simply of the Holocaust but of the ever-worsening conditions of the Jewish people in Europe from 1935 onwards. The crescendo of criticism reaches its high point in the chapter dealing with the round up of roman Jews in October 1943. The silence of Pius in this instance is the very essence of the authors thesis that the Pope for what ever reason failed the moral test not simply in terms of speaking out but of personally intervening to stop the barbarity Under His Very Windows as it were.

The author does of course place papal defences like for example, the possibility that speaking out would have made the suffering of others worse alongside her own criticisms. However I have to say that the book is quite scathing of Pope Pius's role and attitude throughout the war. This is not to say that the book is biased or of no value it certainly is both in its content and ease of understanding, its just that with any emotive subject of this magnitude those for and against make their own case more strongly and on this subject its difficult not to have or develop a view based on what we believe are moral imperatives.