On the basis of Silvano Arieti’s book The Parnas: A Scene from the Holocaust (New York: Basic Books, 1979), some considerations on Judaism and on the tragedy of Shoah are made. The Parnas was Giuseppe Pardo Roques, Head of the Jewish Community of Pisa (Italy), killed in his home in August 1944, together with 11 people of his household, by Nazi soldiers who were never identified. The Parnas suffered of a rare form of persecutory mental disorder, and his illness is seen also as a form or "premonition" of the persecution of Jewish population and of the Holocaust. The Parnas is one of the last books by Silvano Arieti (1914-1981), a psychiatrist who emigrated from Pisa to the United States where he became one of the most influential psychiatrists of the time.
Keywords: Silvano Arieti, Judaism, Shoah, premonition, Holocaust