Robert Katz (writer)

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Robert Katz (2005)

Robert Katz (born June 27, 1933 in Brooklyn , New York City ; died October 20, 2010 in Montevarchi , Tuscany ) was an American investigative writer and screenwriter .

Life

Robert Katz graduated from Brooklyn College (BA, 1953). He worked in New York City first as an author and photographer for the Jewish aid organization for immigrants Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) until 1957, then for the American Cancer Society and finally at the UN in New York and 1963/64 in Rome .

Since then, Katz has worked as a freelance writer mainly in Italy and on Italian political issues. He lived with his wife and two children in Tuscany in Pieve a Presciano, a district of Pergine Valdarno . Katz wrote a number of scripts, including adaptations of his own books. In 1970 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship and in 1971 a grant from the American Council of Learned Societies . From 1986 to 1992 he was a Fellow at Stevenson College of the University of California in Santa Cruz .

Because in the book Death in Rome about the massacre in the Ardeatine Caves in 1944 he addresses the Vatican's attitude to the German persecution of Jews and the Holocaust and, in the opinion of Pacelli's family, the reputation of the deceased Pope Pius XII. In 1973, Katz was sentenced by an Italian court to fourteen months in prison. The proceedings ended on appeal in 1983 with an acquittal, which, however, did not satisfy Katz. Katz's assertion that Pacelli was already aware of the hostage shootings later proved to be correct in essence after the relevant files were opened in the Vatican archives. The book was made into a film in 1973.

Works (selection)

Novels

  • The Cassandra Crossing , novel. Ballantine, 1976
  • Ziggurat . Novel. Houghton, 1977
  • The Spoils of Ararat . Novel. Houghton, 1978

Non-fiction

  • Death in Rome . Macmillan, New York 1967
    • German: Murder in Rome. Transferred by Norbert Wölfl. Desch, Munich 1968
  • Black Sabbath: A Journey through a Crime against Humanity . Macmillan, 1969 (deals with the deportation of Jews from Rome)
  • The Fall of the House of Savoy . Macmillan, 1971
  • A Giant in the Earth . Stein & Day, 1973
  • Days of Wrath: The Ordeal of Aldo Moro , the Kidnapping, the Execution, the Aftermath . Doubleday, 1980. ( 1981 Pulitzer Prize nomination )
  • with Armenia Balducci and Giuseppe Ferrara : Il caso Moro . Pironti, 1987 (book about the film)
  • Love is Colder than Death: The Life and Times of Rainer Werner Fassbinder , Random House, 1987 ISBN 0-586-08792-3
  • Naked by the Window: The Fatal Marriage of Carl Andre and Ana Mendieta . Atlantic Monthly Press, New York 1990
  • Dossier Priebke , Rizzoli, 1997
  • The Battle for Rome: the Germans, the Allies, the Partisans and the Pope, September 1943 – June 1944 . Simon & Schuster, 2003
    • Rome 1943–1944: occupiers, liberators, partisans and the Pope . Translation of Silja Recknagel. Magnus, Essen 2006, ISBN 978-3-88400-438-8
  • The Möllhausen Telegramm, the Kappler Decodes, and the Deportation of the Jews of Rome: The New CIA-OSS Documents, 2000-2002 . In: Joshua D. Zimmerman (ed.): Jews in Italy under Fascist and Nazi Rule, 1922–1945. CUP, Cambridge 2005, ISBN 978-0-521-84101-6 , pp. 224-242. The book contains a short biography.

Scripts, film dialogues

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Obituary in the NYT, 2010
personal data
SURNAME Katz, Robert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American investigative writer and screenwriter
DATE OF BIRTH June 27, 1933
PLACE OF BIRTH Brooklyn , United States
DATE OF DEATH October 20, 2010
Place of death Montevarchi , Tuscany , Italy