The Whole Story: : A Journey Into the 20th Century

The Whole Story is the account of the author's wild goose chase to the USSR in 1970, behind the Iron Curtain, in search of his aunt, a woman he had met only in letters she had written to his father, her brother. He knew she had gone through revolution, expulsion, and two World Wars, suffering bitterly under the Lithuanians and Germans during World War Two and under the Russian Communists afterward. But he did not know where she might be living or if, in fact, she was still alive. The book tells why he went to find her, how he found her, and how he managed to get her and her surviving family out of the prison that was the Soviet Union. It is the account of his personal, unlikely encounter with History through the discoveries he made pursuing her own encounter with History. It is a story full of stories: his, hers, theirs--and the context in which they occurred.

To provide these stories and The Whole Story with their background, their proper context and necessary perspective, the author defines the Holocaust, explores the implications of the definition, and considers the place the Holocaust has held on the agenda of the Catholic Church, the Vatican, and especially Pope John Paul II. In this light the author calls into question Pope John Paul's reputation for having advanced Catholic-Jewish relations with respect to dialogue and reconciliation and faults those Jews and Christians who uncritically accept this reputation at face value.

The Whole Story illuminates the recent history of Catholic-Jewish relations for those Christians and Jews who do not know it and for those who for a long time to come will want to know it and have to know it. In many respects The Whole Story is more timely and relevant now than when it was written.

*Compiler and editor of Against Silence: The Voice and Vision of Elie Wiesel. 3 vols.
N.Y.: Holocaust Library, 1985.