Date:  April 11, 2006

BLOOMSBURG— Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania will be filled with accounts of the Holocaust and the plight of Italian Jews as the Provost’s Lecture Series continues with “The Vatican and the Holocaust” on Tuesday, April 25, at 7 p.m. in the Kehr Union, Multipurpose A and B.

Author Susan Zuccotti will present the lecture, which is free and open to the public. She will focus on the results of her research on relations between the Vatican and the Jews living in Rome during the Holocaust years, 1939 to 1945. In “The Vatican and the Holocaust,” Zuccotti will discuss what she considers to be Pope Pius XII’s ambiguous responses to the plight of Jews even though they were “under his very windows.” He served as pope from 1939 to 1958.

Zuccotti received her doctorial degree in modern European history from Columbia University. She won the National Jewish Book Award for Holocaust Studies for her book, “Italians and the Holocaust: Persecution, Rescue and Survival.” Her publication, “Under His Very Windows: The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy,” received the National Jewish Book Award for Jewish-Christian Relations and the German Studies Association’s Sybil Halpern Milton Memorial Prize. Along with her publications, Zuccotti has taught at Barnard College in New York and Trinity College in Connecticut. 

For more information, contact BU’s history department at (570) 389-4156.

Bloomsburg University is one of 14 universities in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education. The university serves approximately 8,000 students and offers 65 bachelor’s, 18 master’s and one doctoral degree.

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