Book One SOULS OF THE JUST The Holocaust in Rome, Italy, during World War II In his Map Room in the bowels of the basement of the White House, President Roosevelt meets surreptitiously in the early days of 1942 with a coterie of his close friends and associates, both Christians and Jews. All are intent on formulating and launching a comprehensive series of actions to save and rescue and preserve the Jews in Europe. Dubbed "The WEJ", they sit dumbfounded as smuggled report after report from inside Nazi-controlled Europe is placed in front of them. Each report details the horrors being inflicted upon European Jewry by Adolf Hitlers minions. The members marvel at the heroic escapades of an anti-Nazi Berlin businessman who risks his life on numerous occasions to bring these reports to neutral Switzerland. To authenticate these reports, Roosevelt enlarges the WEJ throughout Europe and initiates contacts with anti-German government leaders, with members of the Jewish underground, and particularly with Pope Pius XII and the Vatican. It's not until Roosevelt sends America's first ambassador to the Holy See that he learns of how Pius and the Vatican are thoroughly involved and committed to saving the Jews in Rome itself and in Italy, and how Pius agrees with Roosevelt and the WEJ to continue throughout the war and throughout all of Europe to not sit idly by while their brothers in the Jewish faith are in danger. Before and after the SS is ordered into Rome by Hitler in October of 1943 to round up the Jews, Pius and the Italian government and Roosevelt and the WEJ collaborate and secretly conspire, along with the German ambassador, to shelter the Jews and save them from complete and utter annihilation. Leo V. Kanawada, Jr.
