In 1938 Ben­i­to Mus­soli­ni shocked Italy and the world by turn­ing on the country’s small but ancient Jew­ish minor­i­ty. The country’s new ​“racial laws” threw Jew­ish chil­dren out of their schools, dis­missed Jews from their jobs, and began a ter­ror­iz­ing cam­paign that led many to Europe’s death camps. The Secret Inqui­si­tion tells the dra­mat­ic and pre­vi­ous­ly unknown sto­ry of how Fas­cist Italy attempt­ed to define who was and was not ​“Aryan.” Forced to nav­i­gate the Kafkaesque bureau­cra­cy that deter­mined racial ​“puri­ty,” thou­sands of Italy’s Jews tried to save them­selves and their fam­i­lies by hid­ing their iden­ti­ties or rein­vent­ing their past lives. Based on thou­sands of pre­vi­ous­ly untapped doc­u­ments of the Fas­cist office over­see­ing the anti-Jew­ish cam­paign, as well as recent­ly opened Vat­i­can archives, The Secret Inqui­si­tion trans­forms our under­stand­ing of how the attempt to destroy Europe’s Jew­ish pop­u­la­tion played out in the dai­ly lives of thou­sands of Ital­ians. Filled with shock­ing per­son­al nar­ra­tives and deeply mov­ing sto­ries of courage and cow­ardice, this one-of-a-kind his­to­ry offers pro­found insight into prob­lems of anti­semitism, fas­cism, per­se­cu­tion of minori­ties, and the degra­da­tion that comes from liv­ing under dic­ta­tor­ships, lessons all too rel­e­vant to our world today.

—David I. Kertzer

Using nev­er-before-exam­ined Fas­cist and Vat­i­can archives, The Secret Inqui­si­tion is a shock­ing, ground­break­ing his­to­ry of Italy’s 1938 racial laws and the des­per­ate mea­sures thou­sands of Jew­ish fam­i­lies took to save them­selves before and dur­ing World War II, by David I. Kertzer, win­ner of the Pulitzer Prize for The Pope and Mus­soli­ni and the author of the New York Times best­seller The Pope at War. 

Based on thou­sands of pre­vi­ous­ly unex­am­ined archival files, The Secret Inqui­si­tion focus­es on eleven stun­ning, dra­mat­ic cas­es, includ­ing Mus­solin­i’s long­time Jew­ish lover, Margheri­ta Sar­fat­ti; Nobel Prize-win­ning physi­cist Enri­co Fer­mi and his Jew­ish wife; a young man who befriends Pri­mo Levi at Auschwitz; and the pope’s den­tist, who mis­guid­ed­ly believed his close­ness to the Vat­i­can and Mussolini’s inner cir­cle would pro­tect him. In this unprece­dent­ed work, Kertzer, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his his­to­ry of the rise of fas­cism in Italy, brings his sub­jects’ untold sto­ries to life, shin­ing a light on their hopes, fears, and human dig­ni­ty, while remind­ing us of the dan­gers of fas­cism, lessons all too rel­e­vant for today. In The Secret Inqui­si­tion, Ket­zer returns with a new chap­ter in the com­plex, inter­con­nect­ed saga of Fas­cist Italy, the Vat­i­can, and World War II.

Jew­ish Book Coun­cil’s cov­er reveal this week marks the book’s avail­abil­i­ty for pre­order­ing from retail­ers before its pub­li­ca­tion on Jan­u­ary 19, 2027. Pre­order your copy today. 

Ear­ly praise: 

“[Kertzer is] the most effec­tive exca­va­tor of the Vatican’s hid­den sins, espe­cial­ly those lead­ing up to and dur­ing World War II.”—The New York Times

​“Draws on pre­vi­ous­ly unseen Vat­i­can records to spot­light Jew­ish Ital­ians who under­went a bureau­crat­ic strug­gle to be reclas­si­fied as Aryan to avoid Mussolini’s race laws.”—Pub­lish­ers Week­ly