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Stories of goodness during darkest of times
Author Elizabeth Bettina to speak in Port Jefferson at Sea-Port Hadassah luncheon
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October 09, 2009 | 11:12 AM
Did you know there were concentration camps in Italy during World War II? Did you know that, despite that fact, approximately 80 percent of Italian Jews survived the Holocaust? It seems other European Jews, fleeing the Nazis, took refuge in Italy as well. Who could have known their chances for survival would be improved by their location?
A new book, written by Elizabeth Bettina, contains the stories of a dozen Jews who survived in southern Italy during World War II. They feel that it was the compassion of the Italian people they encountered who were "just doing the right thing" — refusing to accept Nazi stereotyping of the Jews — that made all the difference. Their stories paint the Italians as kindhearted, benevolent and brave.
Bettina, an Italian-American Catholic who spent her formative years summering with relatives in the tiny mountain village of Campagna, Italy, made a discovery five years ago that launched her on an extraordinary journey. That journey resulted in an audience with Pope Benedict XVI and the subsequent publication of "It Happened in Italy — Untold Stories of How the People of Italy Defied the Horrors of the Holocaust."
On Thursday, Oct. 22, Elizabeth Bettina will be the guest speaker at the Sea-Port Chapter of Hadassah 34th annual Book and Author Luncheon, to be held at Lombardi's on the Sound (at the Port Jefferson Country Club at Harbor Hills) in Port Jefferson. She will be accompanied by Vincent Marmorale, Human Rights Committee chair of the New York State Council for the Social Studies, who played a significant role in the research that led to the writing of this book. The event is a fundraiser for Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America, which supports medical research, education and services in Israel, as well as women's issues in the United States.
Bettina states the story isn't pure goodness. "Yes," she said, "it was completely wrong to put these people in camps; it was completely wrong to take away their freedoms; but the people who were there, not me — the people who were there, say 'Thank God I was in Italy. If I had not been, I would not have survived.'"
Several rescuers are also profiled in the book, including Giovanni Palatucci, who was honored in 1990 by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Israel as a "Righteous Gentile" — a person who rescued Jews at great personal risk. There can be none greater: for helping Jews, Palatucci was arrested and sent to Dachau in September of 1944. He died in the German concentration camp in February of the following year, just months before the camp's liberation. (The Vatican beatified him in 2002, a step toward sainthood.)
It's clear Bettina felt the hand of fate guiding her as she pieced together the story her Jewish friends — including the survivors she met along the way — began to feel she was destined to tell. But where did it begin? It all began on the last night of a special vacation to bring her grandmother back to Campagna — the village of her birth — when Bettina was given a book written by Gianluca Petroni. The book, a doctoral thesis, contained photographs of Campagna in the 1940s. One photo in particular caught her attention. It was of a group of locals, posing on the steps of the Church of San Bartolomeo. It included a policeman, a bishop and a rabbi. A rabbi? In Campagna?
On the flight home, she read the book, which detailed the lives of the mostly foreign Jews who were interned in the former Convent of San Bartolomeo, and included a listing of 272 of the internees. It seemed this Italian concentration camp was quite different from the forced labor and death camps elsewhere in Nazi-occupied Europe. While stripped of rights and privileges accorded others, detainees were treated humanely; they led almost normal lives. In Campagna, Jews were allowed to practice their religion, to make il matzo (unleavened bread) to celebrate Passover. As Bettina wrote, "I wanted to ask the pilot to turn the plane back so I could learn more … Why did the world not know? … How did my Jewish friends not know?"
Once her questions began, serendipity kicked in and each person Bettina found led her to others who could supply new pieces of the puzzle she was now determined to solve. Among the first of her new friends were Walter Wolff, a German Holocaust survivor, who had been interned in Campagna, and Vincent Marmorale, a retired high school history teacher turned Holocaust educator. It was Marmorale who convinced Wolff when they met in 1995 that his story of survival was an important one to tell. Wrote Bettina, "Walter believed there was no story to tell about how he survived the Holocaust, because, as he said, he did not suffer much once he was in Italy … Vince assured Walter that he did have a story to tell — a story of goodness during one of history's darkest moments." Now, thanks to Elizabeth Bettina, the story of the Italians' rescue of Jews during the Holocaust has gained a wider audience.
For information, or to purchase tickets for the luncheon ($50 per person, partly tax-deductible), call 751-8117.
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