In October 1943 the Nazis began the systematic plunder of Rome’s Jewish ghetto located within a mile of the Vatican, which ignored what was happening. In the process, they stole two of the most priceless artifacts of all their looting raids across Europe - the contents of two libraries, Biblioteca della Comunita Israel, the library of the Jewish Community and the Biblioteca del Collegio. Rabbinico, the Italian Rabbinical College library, both of which contained unique books and manuscripts dating from before the birth of Christ, from the time of the Caesars, the Emperor‘s and the early Popes. Over 12,000 to 15,000 books in total. After the war, a small number of these books were recovered and returned. The majority however, were never found.
All of this occurred within the view from Pope Pius XII’s window. There’s little doubt that he knew about the libraries being emptied, but did nothing about it.
The Jewish quarter was originally created in a papal bull by Pope Paul VI in July 1555 and was established as the only residential area for Rome’s 2000 Jews and Adalio became angry when telling us it was only in the late 1800s that the gates of the last Jewish ghetto were finally closed in Italy
The area was walled off and it’s two gates were locked each night. It’s construction had to be paid for by the Jews, so in effect, they were confined in their own prison. They were also made to attend Catholic services. Whenever Jews went outside, they had to wear a yellow cloth – the same colour worn by Rome‘s prostitutes.
In response to my question, he thought they were only about 30,000 Jews left in all of Italy today out of a total population of 60 million. He took much pride in saying he was neither Ashkenazi or Sephardic but a native Italian Jew.
After pausing to finish his glass of wine, he turned to the war years and at this point, we realized there was no way we could leave. Not that we wanted to.
He said his parents had owned a grocery store when the Nazis came to power with the Fascists in the 1940s and while they were concerned, they refused to leave. Instead, they brought him to the vineyard we were now at which had been owned by family friends, Maria and Giuseppe Mennetti, who had a young daughter Gina. They told him he would have to change his name and behave as if he was their child and act as if he was Catholic and attend church services with them. Whenever the vineyards were visited by Nazi troops, anxious to confiscate cases of wine, he was told to hide in empty wine barrels for fear he would be discovered.
The Mennettis also insisted that his feet be stained purple, as if he had been walking on grapes in the large vats that produced the wine. Nazis would never believe that a Jew would perform such menial labor. He started to remove his shoes to show us that his feet were still discolored, but Julio assured him it was not necessary we believed him.
