Dr. Stanislao Pugliese, professor of History at Hofstra University, will speak about “The Vatican and the Holocaust,” on Wednesday, April 18 at 4 p.m. in The Robert A. Scott Student Center (Alumni Lounges, SC 157-158) under the auspices of  the Gross Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the Italian Club of Ramapo College. The Morton and Clara Richmond Endowment will support the program. It is free and open to the public.

A spate of new books and scholarship has re-opened the debate on the role of Pope Pius XII and the Vatican as the Holocaust unfolded in Italy. Dr. Pugliese’s lecture will examine the historical context of anti-Semitism in Italy, the rise of fascism, internment camps, the anti-fascist Jewish Resistance and the Holocaust in the shadow of the Vatican.

A specialist on modern Italy, the anti-fascist Resistance and Italian Jews, Dr. Pugliese is the author, editor or translator of a dozen books on Italian and Italian American history. His first book, Carlo Rosselli: Socialist Heretic and Antifascist Exile (Harvard University Press, 1999) has been translated into Italian, Russian and Romanian. His essays on Italian and Italian-American history and culture regularly appear in academic and popular journals, and he is the editor of the Italian and Italian American Studies series published by Palgrave Macmillan.