Publisher's Synopsis
Pope Pius XII did not cause the Holocaust, nor was it within his power to stop it. Why then is he the center of controversy, most recently as ""Hitler's Pope""? For Michael Phayer, casting the spotlight relentlessly on Pius XII has skewed the question surrounding Catholicism and the Holocaust, depriving us of a record of what the entire Church did or did not do. Such a record is provided for the first time in the first half of this book. It reveals that European bishops displayed a shocking disparity in their attitudes toward Jews and in their conduct during the Holocaust. On the positive side, the record of those who tried to help Jews is filled with the names of ordinary people.
The Holocaust ended in 1945 but the Catholic Church did not come to terms with the Shoah until 1965. How this occurred is a story worth telling. Those who perpetrated the Holocaust committed suicide at the end of the war, or were tried and executed after it, or vanished into obscurity. But the men and women who resisted the Holocaust lived on after it to help bring an end to the Church'sequivocal stand on antisemitism.
