MAJOR CREDIT FOR THE RESCUE OF ITALY'S JEWS
GOES TO CATHOLIC CLERGY, YAD VASHEM SAYS
Although the Vatican was justifiably criticized for its deafening silence during the Nazi deportation of Jews, a loud chorus of refugee assistance resonated in its monasteries, convents and churches. A large number of priests, monks and nuns sheltered and fed desperate Jewish men, women and children, a chapter in the Holocaust that too many historians have over-looked or minimized.
In Italy, the clergy played a major role in rescue activity, according to Mordecai Paldiel, research chief of Israel’s Yad Vashem, which uses stringent standards to honor Holocaust heroes. Paldiel, who himself was hidden as a child by Father Simon Gallay of France, says that much of the credit for the rescue of most of Italy’s 45,000 Jews is due to the clergy.
"There can be little doubt that the rescue of 85 percent of Italy’s Jews," he says, "can be safely attributed to the massive support extended to fleeing Jews by the overwhelming majority of the Catholic clergy (without in most cases even waiting for clearance by their superiors) as well as of persons from all walks of life, even of officials and militiamen within the more intensely Fascist Salo regime."
These are powerful words of recognition and support from an authority with impeccable credentials, and a revelation that should have inspired a mini-series, if not a mega-series, on TV. And is even worthy of a major motion picture by Hollywood. But so far their response has been as deafening as Vatican’s reported silence.
Despite the Vatican’s official aloofness from the Holocaust question, many were surprised to learn after the war that 450 Jews were hidden in its vast enclaves during the Nazi occupation. And hundreds of priests and bishops throughout the Italian peninsula put their lives in jeopardy to shelter, feed and clothe the countless refugees.
One of the earliest organized rescue efforts unfolded in Assisi, the birthplace of St. Francis, the founder of the Franciscan order. Shortly after the Nazis occupied Italy, Padre Ruffino Niccacci of the Damiano monastery received an unusual assignment from his bishop: Find homes and hiding places for more than 300 Jews who just arrived from Trieste.
Padre Niccacci, a peasant turned priest, managed to have many of the refugees sheltered in buildings on the monastery grounds and dressed them as monks and nuns to hide their true identities during frequent Nazi searches. Others were placed in parishioners’ homes and blended into the community. He also provided them with false credentials to speed their journey to other monasteries and convents, where it been reported the nuns prepared kosher meals for their Jewish guests. Not a single refugee was captured while staying at Assisi.
Maria Benedetto (known as Father Marie Benoit when he was in Marseilles) transformed his monastery in Rome into a way station and rescue center to aid hundreds of Jewish and anti-Nazi refugees. When Delasem (Delegazione Assistenza Emigranti Ebrei), the highly-efficient Jewish service agency, had to go underground during the Nazi occupation, it carried out operations from Father Benedetto’s monastery. Here, Delasem stored its archives, held meetings, processed refugees and provided hiding places. In just 12 months, the number of refugees receiving shelter and meals at the monastery swelled from a few hundred to over 4,000.
In the strategically located city of Turin, Monsignor Vincenzo Barale conducted rescue activity for Jews streaming into Italy from France. The refugees received food and money and were assisted by priests from surrounding villages. However, one refugee who had received aid, informed on him. Monsignor Barale was arrested and thrown into jail.
High level Catholic officials as well as ordinary clerics extended a helping hand. Monsignor Quadraroli, a secretary at the Vatican, issued countless false IDs to refugees and sent them to the convent on Via Cicerone to be fed and sheltered. And in northern Italy, Abraham Cohen, on the run from the Nazis, recalled the assistance he received from unknown clerics: "The Catholic Church helped me a lot. They found a place for me to stay and a priest went with me from Ivrea to Azeglio on a bicycle. . . There we found another priest who arranged a place for me to hide."
Susan Zuccotti, Holocaust historian, gives a very balanced view in assessing the overall picture: "When the Germans finally retreated from Rome after nine months of occupation, at least 1,700 Jews arrested in Rome had been deported. Over 10,000 had survived. Every survivor owed his life to one, and usually to several, heroic non-Jewish supporters. But except for those caught in that first, unexpected roundup in October, most deportees could also trace their tragedy to non-Jews who had, in the last analysis, failed to provide support."
However, there’s no denying that the network of Catholic institutions played a significant role in providing asylum for Jewish refugees.
"In no other occupied Catholic country," says Paldiel of Yad Vashem, "were monasteries, convents, shrines, and religious houses opened to the fleeing Jews, and their needs attended to, without any overt intention to steer them away from their ancient faith, solely to abide by the preeminent religious command of the sanctity of life. Through this, they epitomized the best and most elevated form of religious faith and human fidelity."
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