In February 1945, Israele Zolli, chief rabbi of Rome's ancient
Jewish community, shocked his co-religionists in Italy and
throughout the Jewish world by converting to Catholicism and taking
as his baptismal name, Eugenio, to honor Pope Pius XII (Eugenio
Pacelli) for what Zolli saw as his great humanitarianism toward the
Jews during the Holocaust. Almost a half a century after his
conversion, Zolli still evokes anger and embarrassment in Italy's
Jewish community. This book is the first authoritative treatment of
this astonishing story.
What induced Zolli to embrace Catholicism will probably never be
known. Nonetheless, by painstaking scholarly detective work,
through interviews in Italy and elsewhere, through the unearthing
of private papers not previous known to exist, and through the
study of previous inaccessible archival materials, the authors have
succeeded in explaining why Zolli left the Jewish fold and joined
the Catholic Church.
Like Zolli's rabbinical career, Pius XII's long pontificate
tells us much about the Church of Rome and its relationship to the
Jewish people, particularly with reference to the issue of
conversion. The authors focus on the pontiff's World War II
policies vis-a-vis the Jews, a subject that has been heatedly
debated since Rolf Hochhuth's "The Deputy" was performed in the
early 1960s. What Pacelli knew abut the extermination of the Jews
and when he knew it, what he said and failed to say, are given
special attention in this book. Through the examination of previous
scholarship and primary materials (including Pius XI's encyclical
on race and anti-Semitism, Pacelli's behavior is evaluated to
determine if Zolli accurately gauged the Holy Father's efforts to
save Jews. This saga of the two Eugenios will interest historians
of the Second World War and the Holocaust and students of history
alike.
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