generalspeaking

Saving Jewish Lives

"If you're good at a sport, they attach the medals to your shirts and then they shine in some museum.  That which is earned by doing good deeds is attached to the soul and shines elsewhere."  Italy's Gino Bartali, champion cyclist, 1914 - 2000

Despite Mussolini's fascist laws during the Second World War, and his accord with Nazi Germany, Italians in general were not fascist by nature, nor were they given to celebrating and pursuing anti-Semitism in comparison with the European populations in countries like Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, Hungary, France and others.

Two writers, brother and sister Aili and Andres McConnon have written a book documenting and detailing what they were able to unearth about the activities of a celebrated Italian cyclist, a young man who won both the 1938 and the 1948 Tour de France.  Their book, Road to Valour: A True Story of Second World War Italy, the Nazis, and the Cyclist who Inspired a Nation, has just been published.

Gino Barteli never himself wanted to shine a spotlight on his activities.  His was the spirit of true courageous altruism.  He did what he possibly could manage to in support of Italian Jews escaping the wide net set out to snare them to slavery, death camps and the grave.  He used his sport and his acclaim to good purpose, but told no one of what he did, not even his wife.

He used the excuse of long training sessions, cycling over the countryside in preparation for various competitive events, as a reason for his absences.  And he used the frame of his bicycle to store counterfeit documents of falsified identities to smuggle them to those who would use them to save the lives of countless Jews.

He devised a strategy to use his fame to divert attention from Jews trying to escape their fate by train, arriving at a transfer station just as trains pulled in on Italy's north-south rail lines.  Soldiers recognizing him, asking for autographs distracted them from seeking out the presence of Jews on the train.

He owned a 'spare' apartment close to his own home just outside Florence, where he hid a family of four Jews, parents and two young children.  When he could no longer keep them safe from detection there, he arranged for them to be moved to an underground cellar of a nearby house, where they waited for deliverance from the Nazi nightmare.

And he worked with Rufino Niccacci, a Franciscan monk living in Assisi operating a counterfeit centre where Luigi Brizi printed authentic-looking IDs, and who was inspired to continue when he realized that the famous Gino Bartali was acting as part of their conspiracy to save the lives of Jews destined to death. 

The archbishop of Florence was responsible for co-ordinating the resistance effort.

Gino Bartali was a hero of the times he lived in.  He never wanted to be seen as nor acknowledged as a hero.  "I don't want to appear to be a hero", he once informed his son.  He did what he felt he had to do.  To be able to live with himself.

Labels: Heritage, Holocaust, Human Relations, Italy

posted by Pieface @ Sunday, July 29, 2012