The Assisi Underground: Part 5 of "My Italian Secret"
Transcript
Speaker 1
September 1943 Gino Bartali is summoned to the Duomo by his friend Cardinal de la Costa, Archbishop of Florence. After their meeting, Bartali often leaves home, disappearing on his bicycle for days at a time. He sets off as if he were back in training but never tells anyone where he's going. Not even his wife.
Speaker 1
What’s Bartali doing, where he's going and why remains a secret for most of his life, but years later he tells one person.
Speaker 1
There is no written evidence of his wartime activities, only the testimony of a few witnesses and 50 years later were partly himself, begrudgingly admits to his biographer.
Speaker 4
I put myself to work with my friend Bartali to help Jews flee the country. That's when my travels started to Rome and Assisi.
Speaker 4
My friend Verity gets documents from Cardinal de la Costa and gives them to me to deliver to the Bishop in Assisi. I hide them in the frame of my bicycle. I don't want to know what it's for. In case they catch me.
Speaker 2
Bartali had the special permit to ride all around Tuscany, but there was still danger. When he was riding his bicycle with false documents, if the Nazis found out they will kill him immediately on the spot, not by bringing it to court or something like that. Nothing. They will kill him on the spot.
Speaker 1
One of Bartali’s destinations is the Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi, a center of clandestine activity overseen by the Bishop Joseph Penick Collini. Father Aldo Brunacci and other priests find hiding places for the refugees.
Speaker 4
I found out later that the documents I was carrying were ID cards with false names. They made it possible for Jews in hiding to leave the country and reach the free territories in the South.
Speaker 1
More and more refugees find their way to Assisi. To fulfill the growing demand, the underground recruits Luigi and Trento Blizi, where the printing press in their shop next to the Saint Francis Basilica.
Speaker 1
Bartali also rides to Barnetta, part of an underground network extending from Florence to Genoa and Assisi. It is a complex organization broken into independent cells to avoid betrayal by spies. No one knows the activities of the others. This monastery is a refuge for those fleeing the Nazis, including many Jews were taken in by the monks and then moved to towns in the nearby mountains.
Speaker 1
The Nazis take 150 prisoners, monks, partisans, Italian deserters and two Jews. The SS interrogates, tortures and murders 49 of them. They send the rest to labor camps, where many died, but in the 11 months before the massacre, more than 200 Jews escaped reputation by the Nazis. Thanks to the courage of Father Gabriele Costa, he is among the first to be shot.
Speaker 4
These are terrible times. But a sense of duty and human solidarity keeps us going. We have to be cunning to save our own skin. And others in danger.
Speaker 1
26 monasteries and convents in Tuscany, including many that are supposed to be cloistered or sealed off from the outside world, become part of the clandestine network. They provide hiding places for hundreds of refugees.
Speaker 5
The Jewish kids were hidden almost immediately as soon as the persecution started. And I am one of the children who are saved by the none of the tiano.
Speaker 2
I am sure that a lot of the nuns knew. That we were due, but officially only the mother Superiora knew about the fact that we were Jew. Nazi officers were coming to the convent to look for Jewish children. And they asked the children to stay in lines and seize the Catholic prayers. Maria Paternoster and the Mother Superior, I was staying behind. The German officer saying with her lips. Beats out not loud the prayers in order to ensure that the children will say the right word.