The Open Question

I am astonished at the acrimony, lingering echoes of bygone quarrels, which marked your review (Peter Wells, April 25) of my book on The Pope’s Jews. In order to mount such a fusillade Mr. Wells must have scraped all the available theological arsenals for ancient grapeshot. One would think that I had written some eighteenth century pamphlet in the spirit of Voltaire, or some nineteenth century tome in the spirit of Darwin. Actually, my book is a rather broad historical canvas, depicting the survival of the Jews of Rome over some twenty centuries from Caesar to the tragic years of Mussolini and Hitler. Mr. Wells’s fury apparently derives from his response only to the last chapters, which deal with the era of Pope Pius XII. He evidently feels that I should write history in accordance with the edict of papal infallibility.

I am indeed critical of the Pope’s policy of non-intervention as millions of Jews were exterminated during World War II. My book presents the facts of history, including some new and hitherto unpublished material. Mr. Wells is on very uncertain ground in trying to challenge the documentary record. He argues that the Pope did intervene, at least verbally, in his Christmas speech of 1942: “this . . . clear rebuke moved the Nazi leader Heydrich to say that the Pope was accusing the German people and becoming the mouthpiece of Jewish war criminals.” But by Christmas 1942, Heydrich the “Hangman” was already dead (killed by a bomb in Prague on May 29), and hardly in a position to give testimony on this matter.

SW

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Sam Waagenaar

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I am astonished at the acrimony, lingering echoes of bygone quarrels, which marked your review (Peter Wells, April 25) of my book on The Pope’s Jews. In order to mount such a fusillade Mr. Wells must have scraped all the available theological arsenals for ancient grapeshot. One would think that I had written some eighteenth century pamphlet in the spirit of Voltaire, or some nineteenth century tome in the spirit of Darwin. Actually, my book is a rather broad historical canvas, depicting the survival of the Jews of Rome over some twenty centuries from Caesar to the tragic years of Mussolini and Hitler. Mr. Wells’s fury apparently derives from his response only to the last chapters, which deal with the era of Pope Pius XII. He evidently feels that I should write history in accordance with the edict of papal infallibility.

I am indeed critical of the Pope’s policy of non-intervention as millions of Jews were exterminated during World War II. My book presents the facts of history, including some new and hitherto unpublished material. Mr. Wells is on very uncertain ground in trying to challenge the documentary record. He argues that the Pope did intervene, at least verbally, in his Christmas speech of 1942: “this . . . clear rebuke moved the Nazi leader Heydrich to say that the Pope was accusing the German people and becoming the mouthpiece of Jewish war criminals.” But by Christmas 1942, Heydrich the “Hangman” was already dead (killed by a bomb in Prague on May 29), and hardly in a position to give testimony on this matter.