ROME, Italy.
On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the massive deportation of Jews to the concentration camps an exhibit, “October 16 1943, La razzia degli ebrei di Roma was inaugurated in Rome on October 18th. In this exhibit were shown the diaries of the TA which relate the fact that the TA had given lodging to Hebrews during that terrible persecution.
The sample is a portrait of a dramatic page in the history of Rome within the context of the Nazi occupation and World War II. It presents pictures, objects and documents of that Saturday morning of October 16, 1943, in which from 5:15 AM about 300 hundred German soldiers surrounded the Jewish quarter, Rome’s ghetto, and searched house by house. They did the same in other zones of the city. On the whole, they deported one thousand and twenty two Hebrews to the concentration camps. These remained more than 30 hours in the Military School until they were taken to the Tiburtina Station and on October 18, at nine o’clock in the morning, a train with 18 wagons departed, arriving in Auschwitz, Poland, on October 22nd. Only one woman and fifteen men survived. Of the two hundred children taken none returned.
The exhibit, located in the “Complesso del Vittoriano” in the Piazza Venetia, has been organized by the Foundation of the Shoah Museum of Rome. It will remain open to the public until November 30th.
In an effort to reconstruct the history, the organizers had trawled through all kinds of materials and solicited the documentation of those entities that in some way could have participated during those days. Considering such petition, Maite Uribe, President of the TA, delegated the search and preparation of the existing documents to the Italian Professor Anna Doria, a member of the History Archives of the TA.
 Images of the Ghetto in Rome |  Anna Doria in front of the pictures of the victims |
Homage to the victims
At the entrance hall before the exhibit, it is impressive to see a panel of huge dimensions with the one thousand and twenty two names of the victims. The repetition of last names, in some cases more than twenty persons, indicates that whole families were deported.
On the first floor there is a display of photographs and the city map of Rome showing the points where the detentions took place. The reflections of the press and diverse documents are also there. In the center there is a big showing case with valuable books that had been confiscated that day. Likewise, a part of this gallery is dedicated to “the persecutors."
On the second floor there is a large number of portraits of the victims that the organizers gathered with a clear sense of homage. Next, numerous personal objects are displayed. One section presents letters, notebooks and documents of the places and of Catholic institutions that, since that terrible day, offered shelter to the Hebrews that still continued being persecuted. Among them are two diaries of the TA, one open on the 16th and 17th of October, 1943, and the other on the 1st of December, accompanied by an explanatory note. The reading of the documents reflects the climate of confusion and even contradiction concerning the decisions of the ecclesial authorities. The efforts of negotiation and action carried out by the Holy See are well known though, from a historic perspective, they have been judged insufficient. In the note relative to the diaries of the TA the state of confusion is reflected, as well as the s
Diaries of the Teresian Associtaion, vía Gaeta 8, Romauccession of facts:
“It was established in Rome in 1934 and on the successive years extended its presence to various cities in Italy." The journal of the house of via Gaeta in Rome, on the 16th of October, 1943, reads: "The visits continue and we continue sheltering people. Today the petitions increased due to the persecution against the Hebrews and it seems it gets worse as of today. The Vicar has ordered the religious communities not to admit in their houses people of the Hebrew religion. The assistant Pastor has come to our house asking for shelter for a Hebrew family but we had to deny it’." The following day the chronicle continues:
Liliana Serrati and Anna María Donna""As in the preceding days, we receive many visitors of Hebrew families seeking shelter. The notes for the 26th of October read: "Today we have given shelter to a Hebrew woman. We have done a charitable work that we could not deny. God willing, tomorrow she will look for another place’."Four days later the Hebrews are mentioned again: "Monsignor Riberi has come with his secretary, they were here only for a brief moment, not even sitting down, regarding a matter related to the Hebrews." On the 2nd of December, after the ordinance of the Interior Minister ordering the arrest of all Italian Hebrews, we read in the chronicle the last reference to them: "Again the persecution of the Hebrews starts and this complicates a little the situation of the house." According to the historiography in the house of the TA in via Gaeta, during the Nazi occupation, 34 Hebrew found refuge.
Historical keys
Calndar of Dante Caló
Anna Doria remembers the context within which that infamous raid took place: “during World War II the fascist Italy was allied to Nazi Germany until 1943 when circumstances changed. In the night of July 24th to July 25th Mussolini fell from grace by the leaders of the fascist party, and very soon King Victor Manuel removed him from Chief of Government. The new government led by a military, Marshal Bodoglio, soon started to dialogue with the Allies (England and the United States) to reach an armistice which was finally signed on the 3rd of September and published on the 8th. On that day the German soldiers that were in Italy (some divisions had entered between July 25th and September 8th) went from allies to enemies within Italy. The city of Rome that had been declared an "open city' by the Government, that is, that it should remain out of war operations due to the artistic patrimony and the presence of the Vatican, became in fact the object of a most violent occupation on the part of Germany until the day of its liberation.”
““The tragedy for the Hebrews was special”, continues Ana Doria, “already stricken by the racial laws of 1938 which limited their rights and made of them second class citizens, were massively arrested and led in thousands by the SS to the extermination camps from which only 16 came back. The Vatican that is still today being questioned for not having opposed openly and with determination the extermination of the Hebrews, in reality dedicated itself to save the greatest possible number of Jews and opponents of the Nazi/fascism: many convents, parishes, religious houses, Catholic groups and the Vatican itself in the Pontifical Villa of Castel Gandolfo were places where clandestinely a great amount of refugees were sheltered.”
Settimia Spizzichino (1921-2000), lthe only woman who survived“Also the headquarters of the TA, then in via Gaeta, sheltered Hebrew refugees”, remembers Ana Doria: ‘In the diary of the house, sometimes written in a somewhat cryptic manner for reason of prudence, references to this fact are found. Moreover, this piece of information is reported by Dr. Renzo De Felice in her “History of the Italian Hebrew under fascism” of 1961, published in Turin by Einaudi, with an appendix of a list of the Catholic places that offered shelter to the Jews in Rome and there it is written ‘Teresian Ladies (Spanish), via Gaeta 8/ refugees 34 persons."
The same data is found in the appendix of the book of Franco Cuomo, “The Ten” (Italian Scientists that signed the Manifesto of the race edited in Milan in 2005 by the editor Baldini Castoldi Dalai). In the Museum of the Resistance of Via Tasso it is also testified on one of its murals with the title: “The work of the Catholic Church in favor of the Hebrew.”
A teaching and enlightening memory
Survivors of the tragedy
Other commemorative acts have remembered that 16th of October 1943, unforgettable for its horror and meaning. The Jewish Community had a ceremony in the Mayor Temple. In the evening the Community of St. Egidio along with the Hebrew community organized a march from Santa Maria in Trastevere to the Portico D’Ottavia, next to the Military School, with the purpose of walking in the opposite direction the same path the deported Jews walked.
Pope Francis sent a letter to the chief rabbi of Rome, Riccardo di Segni, saying: “It is our duty to bring before our eyes the destine of those deported, to perceive their fear, their pain, their despair so as not to forget them, to keep them alive in our memory and our prayer near their families, relatives and friends that have mourned over their loss and remain fearful before that barbarity which human beings are able to reach.”
"To bring to mind an event does not mean only to remember," explains the Holy Father in his letter, “it means above all to try to understand the message that such event represents for us today, so that the memory of the past can teach the present and become the light hat illumines the path for the future.”
BooksPresence of the Teresian Association
In the opening of the exhibit participated Julia Maria Gonzalez, General Secretary of the TA, Maria Asuncion Ortiz, director of the Historical Archives, Anna Doria, Anna Maria Donnarumma, Laura de Simone, Teresa Re, Roberto and Maura Jori, Gerardo Liliana Donnarumma, Maria Tocci and Caterina Paesani, representing the TA in Rome, and Laura Moreno Marrocos, director of the TA Department of Information.
Laura Moreno M., from Rome