Sacred Betrayal
How the French Catholic Church Broke Its Pledge to Protect Jews During the Holocaust
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Harvard University Press
Publishing:25th Sep '26
£29.95
This title is due to be published on 25th September, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
A searing account of the French Catholic Church’s complicity in the Holocaust, revealing how the nation’s most influential bishops shaped the course of Nazi persecution through closed-door negotiations and hollow promises.
When German occupiers rolled into Paris in June 1940, they arrived wary of the French Catholic Church. In a country where more than 80 percent of citizens were Catholic, bishops held enormous moral sway. During the 1930s, many used their positions to forcefully condemn the rise of Nazism. But as the persecution of Jews escalated during the Occupation, every bishop in France maintained a deafening silence. In fact, the Church stood publicly alongside Marshal Pétain’s collaborationist Vichy regime. Even when bishops famously broke silence to protest the deportation of Jews in 1942—a moment long remembered as one of moral awakening—they quickly retreated, discouraging further defiance.
The French Church’s public silence during the Holocaust is no secret. But as Aliza Luft shows, private interactions between bishops, French Jewish leaders, and Vichy officials were just as consequential. Turning to letters, diaries, and records of private conversations, Luft traces the moral dilemmas and calculated choices that shaped these hidden negotiations. As Jewish leaders turned to the Church for information and protection, bishops repeatedly assured them of the Church’s sympathy and support. These guarantees from the nation’s highest moral authorities, combined with the false promises of Vichy officials, encouraged French Jews to place their faith in relationships and republican ideals that proved tragically hollow.
Drawing on years of archival research, Sacred Betrayal is a harrowing account of how genocide unfolds day by day—not only through spectacular violence, but also through misleading assurances, quiet capitulations, and broken promises.
Uncovering the interpersonal ties that linked the Catholic Church and Jewish organizations in wartime France, Aliza Luft reveals how bishops not only accommodated the Vichy regime but also shaped French Jews' perceptions of risk. Sacred Betrayal is a powerful reminder that, in contexts of extreme violence, institutions matter. A historiographical tour de force. -- Claire Zalc, author of Denaturalized
A necessary and compelling examination of how the French Catholic Church failed to protect Jews during the Holocaust. Deftly handling the sources, Luft traces how local bishops collaborated with the Vichy regime while also misleading French Jews with false gestures and promises of protection. This important book sheds new light on the troubling reality of misplaced faith in religious institutions and on the incremental radicalization that became the Holocaust in France. -- Wendy Lower, author of Hitler’s Furies
A compelling and damning history of the French Catholic Church’s complicity in the Holocaust. From its heartrending first pages, Sacred Betrayal shows how the Church assured Jewish citizens of its continued adherence to French republicanism—while at the same time, allying itself with the Vichy regime and abandoning the nation’s unifying values of liberté, égalité, fraternité. -- Christopher C. Gorham, author of Matisse at War
A powerful account of how the French Catholic Church’s silence and selective interventions during the Holocaust shaped Jewish leaders’ perceptions, decisions, and ultimately survival. This is a major contribution to Holocaust studies and sociology, showing how institutions can generate misguided hope, distort risk, and inhibit collective action. -- Geneviève Zubrzycki, author of Resurrecting the Jew
In this persuasive and sophisticated study, Aliza Luft shows how the Catholic Church falsely reassured French Jews amid Vichy and Nazi persecution—even as the bishops themselves drifted from silence to sporadic protest to complicity. Withits account of appeals to moral authority, wavering resolve, and the choices behind public silence, Sacred Betrayal complicates the easy binary between resistance and collaboration. -- Anna Grzymała-Busse, author of Sacred Foundations
ISBN: 9780674251045
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
416 pages