He was a professor at Webster University for nearly three decades, and his circle of friends and collaborators included the American novelist Kurt Vonnegut, Nobel Laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel and sportscaster and humanitarian Bob Costas.
He quit university education four times before finishing his first degree, and he spent several years working odd jobs in factories, bars, restaurants, and trucking in both Michigan and Indiana.
He also spent time in the copper mines of Montana and as an athletic director for a boys' school in New York and wrestling coach in New Jersey before finding his calling as a scholar.
[5] Cargas was first introduced to the subject of the Holocaust when he read an excerpt from Elie Wiesel's biographical work Night in a magazine one evening.
His mission was to bring "historic truth to his Church" and to provoke Catholic leadership to acknowledge both its role in allowing the Holocaust to happen, as well as its inaction and silence during the war.
[4] Cargas labeled himself a "post-Auschwitz Catholic" and cultivated a deep friendship and intellectual partnership with the writer and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel.
[5] Shortly before his death in 1998, Cargas showed his continued dissatisfaction with the Catholic Church's response to its role in the Holocaust by rejecting Vatican statements on Jewish–Catholic reconciliation as simply camouflage.