Reviews

"Without sanctimony or melodrama but with meticulous documentation, David I. Kertzer tells a sickening story. THE POPES AGAINST THE JEWS is at once the calm, patient lesson of a born history teacher and an iron to burn scars in the mind." --Jack Miles, author of GOD: A BIOGRAPHY
"David Kertzer's provocative new book challenges the widely accepted distinction between Catholic anti-Judaism and modern anti-Semitism. He moves beyond recent attacks on the Vatican's record during WWII, indicting not just Pius XII but the entire tradition out of which he emerged. Many will disagree with Kertzer's conclusions, but no one will be able to ignore this disturbing history of the Papacy and the Jews in the modern era." --Brian Porter, Associate Professor of History at the University of Michigan and author of "When Nationalism Began to Hate"
"This is a fascinating study of an important and controversial subject. As well as being both polemical and highly readable it is scholarly and contains a great deal of unfamiliar information from the recently opened Vatican archives." --Denis Mack Smith
"Once again Kertzer has produced impressive evidence of the part played by the papacy in the growth of anti-Semitism in the twentieth century. Painful as his historical narrative may be for Catholics, it is a necessary prelude to a true reconciliation between the Catholic Church and Judaism." --John Cornwell, author of "Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII
""This is a powerful and incisive analysis of the ways in which the Vatican and the Catholic Church helped to nurture and shape the emergence of modern anti-Semitic movements that made the Holocaust possible. With the help of soliddocumentation and clear exposition, Kertzer sweeps away the apologetic myths that have sought to disculpate the church from direct complicity in the tragic fate of European Jewry."
---Professor Robert S. Wistrich, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, author of "Hitler and the Holocaust"