Road to Valour

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Road to Valour Page 31

by Aili McConnon


  33 Change in Gino’s demeanor Author interview with Adriana Bartali, July 17, 2009.

  34 “It was something that we all had to do” Author interview with Father Arturo Paoli, a participant in a Lucca-based Jewish refugee rescue network, February 17, 2007.

  35 November raid described by Niccacci Ramati, The Assisi Underground, 45–47.

  36 “I saw a whole family lined up against a wall” Ibid.

  37 Niccacci’s appearance Author’s review of Rufino Niccacci photos at the Franciscan historical archive in Assisi in February 2007.

  38 Niccacci’s family background Author interview with Rufino Niccacci’s nephew, Alviero Niccacci, October 26, 2009. While some sources identify Niccacci as “Nicacci,” we consulted Niccacci’s family and have used their preferred spelling for their surname.

  39 certain earthly pleasures Ramati, The Assisi Underground, 2.

  40 Niccacci’s work with first group of Jewish refugees in Assisi Ibid., 10–17.

  41 Description of Dalla Costa in his study Ibid., 47, and Casini, Ricordi, 79–80.

  42 Scene and dialogue between Niccacci and Dalla Costa As described by Niccacci in Ramati, The Assisi Underground, 44–50.

  43 Gino prepares Goldenberg apartment Gino left no written record about how he first prepared the Goldenberg apartment. We constructed this scene on the basis that we know Gino regularly gathered foods from farmers he knew to help several people displaced by the war (Paolo Alberati, Gino Bartali: Mille diavoli in corpo [Firenze: Giunti, 2006], 75; Gino Bartali with Mario Pancera, La mia storia (Milano: Stampa Sportiva, 1958), 58. We also drew on Giorgio Goldenberg’s memories of his parents’ time in the apartment (La Vita in Diretta [Rai Uno] segment featuring Giorgio Goldenberg, which aired Thursday, January 27, 2011) and our interviews with Eldad Doron (December 20, 2010, and February 1, 2011), husband of the late Tea Goldenberg, who confirmed that Tea had shared these details.

  CHAPTER 8. THE COUNTERFEITERS’ RING

  Gino never wrote a detailed account of what happened during his bike trips from Florence to Assisi, and spoke about it only in passing with his family and closest friends. Consequently, to create these scenes we relied on the accounts of various other people who either interacted with Gino during this time or witnessed his work in the network.

  In our account of Gino’s time in Assisi, one important source was Alexander Ramati’s The Assisi Underground. As noted earlier, Ramati was a Polish Jewish war journalist who first met Niccacci and Luigi Brizi when he arrived with the Allied soldiers liberating Assisi in June 1944. Vowing to write about the story, he later returned to interview Niccacci in depth, as well as Trento Brizi and several Italian Jews who spent part of World War II hidden in Assisi. When Ramati’s book was first published in 1978, it was generally well received, although some faulted it for focusing narrowly on Niccacci’s perspective of life in wartime Assisi. Ramati, however, deliberately chose to make his book an “as told to” narrative, with all the benefits and limitations of that structure, and to reflect his close collaboration with Niccacci. He was also committed to his reporting. When one journalist raised questions about certain facts in the book, several of the key figures from the book provided written testimonies and notarized affidavits confirming them. These included people who had been saved (Enrico Maionica, Paolo Jozsa, and Paolo Gay), nuns who sheltered Jews in Assisi, and Trento Brizi. We reviewed these documents with Father Marino Bigaroni at the Franciscan historical archive in Assisi in 2007.

  We used Ramati’s book primarily for Niccacci’s direct interactions with Gino and Cardinal Dalla Costa during the war, since Niccacci was the only eyewitness who left an account of these events. Niccacci’s nephew, Alviero Niccacci, provided helpful details about the Niccacci family and his uncle’s personality. We interviewed Padre Pier Damiano, a member of Niccacci’s monastery who directly witnessed Gino’s involvement in this network, who spoke with Niccacci about the network and provided a wealth of information to characterize Niccacci, given his years working closely with him. He also showed us key parts of the San Damiano monastery where Niccacci and Gino interacted. We interviewed Sister Eleonora Bifarini at the San Quirico monastery, who spoke with Gino when he arrived at the convent. The nuns were cloistered, so only one nun, Sister Alfonsina, met Gino face-to-face. Sister Alfonsina is now deceased, but discussed Gino’s involvement with a journalist from the newspaper La Nazione and with an Italian writer, Paolo Alberati, as part of his research for his book Gino Bartali: Mille diavoli in corpo (Firenze: Giunti, 2006).

  In order to further flesh out the Brizis, we drew on a detailed published interview Trento Brizi gave before he died. We also conducted several interviews with Ugo Sciamanna, the grandson of Luigi and the nephew of Trento Brizi. Ugo recalled Ramati interviewing his uncle Trento at length (Luigi was deceased by this point), and he was able to confirm the veracity of details regarding the Brizis. At the time of our interviews, Ugo worked out of his grandfather and uncle’s print shop (now a souvenir store) where all the printing had occurred. Ugo graciously allowed us to inspect the printer that had been used to make the identity documents, and showed us the mechanics of its operation.

  Andrea and Adriana Bartali described Gino’s outlook on the war to us, sharing some of his stories, and what he had thought about some of the daily conditions. Friends and teammates also gave us a sense of him as a man at that moment. One other important source was the extremely detailed testimony given by Enrico Maionica, a key player in the document fabrication network in Assisi, before he died (University of Southern California Shoah Foundation interview with Enrico Maionica by Susanna Segrè, April 30, 1998).

  1 “Don’t wait for me this evening” Author interview with Adriana and Andrea Bartali; Alberati, Mille diavoli, 80–84.

  2 Description of photos We reviewed the false IDs of Renzo Ventura’s mother and grandparents, who learned soon after the war that Gino Bartali had brought documents to Florence through Dalla Costa’s network (author interview, July 27, 2009); false identity documents of Graziella Viterbi made by the Brizi press (author interviews on July 14, 2009, and August 31, 2009).

  3 Pedestrians streamed across sidewalks Alberto Marcolin, Firenze 1943–’45: Anni di terrore e di fame, fascisti e antifascisti (Firenze: Edizioni Medicea, 1994), 11–12, 20.

  4 Description of the German SS Louis Goldman, Friends for Life: The Story of a Holocaust Survivor and His Rescuers (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2008), 71.

  5 “He liked to say everything,” “He never stopped talking” Author interview with Alfredo Martini, July 16, 2009.

  6 “grandfather taken for walks” Gino Bartali with Mario Pancera, La mia storia (Milano: Stampa Sportiva, 1958), 65.

  7 “most fertile years” Ibid.

  8 Gino’s stop at the train station in Terontola Much less is known about this episode because only one direct eyewitness, Ivo Faltoni, is still alive and none of the deceased witnesses left written testimonies. When Faltoni was a young boy in Terontola during the war years, he witnessed Gino’s visits (author interviews, July 18, 2009; September 12 and 13, 2009; September 19, 2010). The son of the tailor who made Gino sandwiches during these visits and the son of another resident, the town taxi driver, also confirmed that their fathers had talked of Gino Bartali’s visits to the town during this period. (Author interview with Luigi Magari, November 5, 2009; author interview with Luciano Batani, November 5, 2009). In 2008, a memorial plaque was mounted in the Terontola train station to honor Gino’s work during the war ferrying documents between Florence and Assisi.

  9 “That’s where one was most likely to get cornered” Goldman, Friends for Life, 116–17.

  10 Life at the Santa Marta boardinghouse To describe Santa Marta and the boys’ daily routine during the war, we drew on our interviews with Giorgio Goldenberg; the testimony of Emanuele Pacifici, who was also sheltered at Santa Marta (USC Shoah Foundation interview by Silvia Antonucci, March 10, 1998), and our interview with Suor Mariana, who was the headmistress in the yea
rs following the war. While she was not there during the war years, she had spoken extensively with her predecessors about this period and the role Santa Marta played sheltering Jews during the war.

  11 “hunger was almost a blessing” Cesare Sacerdoti, 2007 speech given about his memories of being a Jewish child in the Madonna Del Grappa orphanage in Montecatini.

  12 Gino getting dressed in the morning in Perugia Niccacci’s account to Ramati of Gino’s arrival at the monastery describes Gino’s attire and Gino timing his trip to Assisi (Ramati, The Assisi Underground, 57–59). We based our scene on that information and our interviews with Gino’s teammates Giovanni Corrieri and Renzo Soldani, who described how Gino typically started his training rides. In addition, we traveled these roads by car to get a better sense of the landscape.

  13 “warming up the engine” Gino Bartali with Romano Beghelli and Marcello Lazzerini, La leggenda di Bartali (Firenze: Ponte Alle Grazie Editori, 1992), 143.

  14 “You’ll catch a cold, Bartali!” The dialogue between Gino and Niccacci in this scene is drawn from Ramati, Assisi Underground, 57–59.

  15 Description of Gino unscrewing his bike seat and removing photos Ramati, The Assisi Underground, 57–59; author interviews with Padre Pier Damiano (July 29, 2009; December 2, 2009; and December 4, 2010); author interviews with Andrea and Adriana Bartali (July 17, 2009; August 4, 2009; and September 14, 2009).

  16 Niccacci hiding cache, and Niccaci and Gino dialogue in refectory Ramati, The Assisi Underground, 57–59.

  17 Description of refectory Author visit to monastery and refectory, July 29, 2009.

  18 “I’ll be champion again one day” Ramati, Assisi Underground, 57–59.

  19 Padre Pier Damiano sees Gino Author interviews with Padre Pier Damiano, one of Father Niccacci’s students, July 29, 2009; December 2, 2009; and December 4, 2010.

  20 Description of identity documents Viterbi’s false documents; Franchi’s false documents; Giorgina Rietti’s false documents.

  21 Necessity of IDs to everyday life Susan Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows: The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 175.

  22 “A man without identity documents” Author interview with Giorgio Goldenberg, January 25, 2011.

  23 Punishment for false document fabrication “Due falsificatori di tessere annonarie condannati a morte a Berlino,” Il Telegrafo, July 7, 1943: 4. Stories like this continued to appear in newspapers in the later months of the war.

  24 Luigi Brizi, his early life and family background Author interview with Ugo Sciamanna, July 28 and August 31, 2009; photo of Luigi Brizi in the Assisi rescue effort file at the Franciscan Historical Archive.

  25 Brizi printing store Author interview with Ugo Sciamanna, July 27, 2009.

  26 Brizi was an atheist Ibid.

  27 “Luigi Brizi, are you going to help them?” Ramati, The Assisi Underground, 35.

  28 “I will do it” Ibid., 37.

  29 Brizi’s request that his son not know about the counterfeit printing Ibid; Andrea Biavardi, “La straordinaria storia di uno stampatore di Assisi,” Gente, June 15, 1989.

  30 “I fought for three years on the front” Trento Brizi as quoted in Biavardi, Ibid.

  31 Details of Brizis making documents Ibid.

  32 “making prints was like making fritters” Ibid.

  33 “What a scare” and Brizi’s account of speaking with Niccacci Ibid.

  34 Enrico Maionica’s background and arrival in Assisi USC interview with Maionica.

  35 The fabrication of the false identity documents USC interview with Maionica; Biavardi, “La straordinaria storia di uno stampatore di Assisi;” Ramati, The Assisi Underground, 40–42.

  36 “I put three- or four-year-old tags” USC interview with Maionica.

  37 “He would arrive with his bicycle” Sister Alfonsina quoted in Maurizio Naldini, “Cosi Bartali salvo’ gli ebrei, 1943–44,” La Nazione, July 2, 2003.

  38 another nun, Sister Eleonora, also spoke with him Author interview with Sister Eleonara Bifarini at the San Quirico Monastery, July 29, 2009.

  39 Punishment for curfew violation In a tribunal of September 8, 1943, three Florentines were condemned to a year in prison for violating curfew. Marcolin, Firenze 1943–’45, 20.

  40 Episode in Bastia Umbra and “sacrilegious,” Interview with Andrea Bartali in Gaspare di Sclafani, “La Sua Fuga Per I Giusti,” Novella Duemila, October 20, 2005: 77.

  41 “If you are stopped” Marcolin, Firenze 1943–’45, 10. Italics are our emphasis.

  42 dove into a ditch Bartali, La leggenda, 123.

  43 “I was neither hot nor cold about politics” Bartali, La mia storia, 35.

  44 Gino’s checkpoint encounters Although Gino left no written description of the minute details of going through a checkpoint, we know from Father Niccacci’s account in The Assisi Underground that Gino’s face was so well known to the Fascists and “the police at the German checkpoints that they simply waved him on, convinced that he was training”(57–59). We have constructed this scene on the basis of others facing similar experiences at checkpoints. Louis Goldman described seeing a German soldier demand to see his father’s identity documents in occupied Italy in Friends for Life (32). Gino’s friends shared various stories about his capacity to charm strangers. Photos from Gino’s races in the 1940s also reveal how popular he was with soldiers.

  45 Documents handed over to one of the cardinal’s assistants From the Frankenthals, we know that while Gino brought their documents to Florence, a separate intermediary delivered them. This would have been the most effective way to maintain the security of the group, so it would likely have been the normal modus operandi. Some of these intermediaries likely worked for the cardinal, while others would have just been affiliated with the rescue initiative.

  46 Frankenthals who became the Franchis Interview with Renzo Ventura on July 27, 2009. Mr. Ventura’s grandparents were the Frankenthals and became the Franchis.

  47 refugees received their documents Giorgio Goldenberg believes his parents received their false identity documents directly from Gino. Author interview with Goldenberg, January 25, 2011.

  48 Donati story in Lido di Camaiore Author interviews with Giulia Donati, October 24, 2010; January 26 and 28, 2011.

  49 Danger of life in Assisi Author interview with Giorgina Rietti, September 11, 2010. Rietti spent time during this period in both Assisi and Perugia.

  50 The final scene and dialogue featuring Trento Brizi and Niccacci Biavardi, “La straordinaria storia di uno stampatore di Assisi.”

  51 “Yes, the idea of taking part” Ibid.

  CHAPTER 9. FREE FALL

  1 “Germany offers you work” Alberto Marcolin, Firenze 1943–’45: Anni di terrore e di fame, fascisti e antifascisti (Firenze: Edizioni Medicea, 1994), 34–35.

  2 twelve thousand workers went on strike Luciano Casella, The European War of Liberation: Tuscany and the Gothic Line, trans. by Jean M. Ellis D’Alessandro (Florence: La Nuova Europa, 1983), 92.

  3 were executed publicly Ibid., 93–97.

  4 Adriana Bartali discovers she is pregnant Gino Bartali with Mario Pancera, La mia storia (Milano: Stampa Sportiva, 1958), 58. Author interview with Andrea Bartali, September 14, 2009.

  5 Olive oil, soup bones, and bread rations Casella, The European War, 93.

  6 “anxious personality” Author interview with Adriana Bartali, July 17, 2009.

  7 Gino reports on the placement of German checkpoints Ramati, The Assisi Underground, 68, 96.

  8 Gino met some of the human smugglers Ibid., 76–77.

  9 When a German patrol killed one of these smugglers Ibid., 99.

  10 Mamma Cornelia Author interviews with Giorgio Goldenberg; USC Shoah Foundation interview with Emanuele Pacifici by Silvia Antonucci, March 10, 1998.

  11 more than 6,500 Jews Susan Zuccotti, The Italians and the Holocaust: Persecution, Rescue, and Survival (New York: Basic Books, 1987), 190.

  12 Giorgio l
eaves Santa Marta and life in the cantina Author interviews with Giorgio Goldenberg, December 20, 2010; January 25, 2011; and April 4, 2011. Author interviews with Eldad Doron (husband of the late Tea Goldenberg, who shared her war memories with Eldad), December 10, 2010; February 1, 2011.

  13 “What can you do if you are closed in a room” Author interview with Giorgio Goldenberg, January 25, 2011.

  14 the shrill cry of an air-raid alarm Author interviews with Giorgio Goldenberg.

  15 the sound of German jackboots Author interviews with Eldad Doron.

  16 Air raids in Florence Author interviews with Adriana Bartali. Louis Goldman was a young boy in Florence during World War II and described the experience of air raids at the end of the war in great detail in his memoir Friends for Life: The Story of a Holocaust Survivor and His Rescuers (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2008), 84–85, 145–46.

  17 “The air reverberated” Goldman, Friends for Life, 145.

  18 sporadic gunshots Author interview with Adriana Bartali, August 3, 2009.

  19 shells could appear unannounced Goldman, Friends for Life, 202.

  20 The shell that dropped near Adriana Author interview with Adriana Bartali, August 3, 2009.

  21 If it had exploded Ibid.

  22 “Try to line up, day after day” Gino Bartali, Tutto sbagliato, tutto da rifare (Milano: Mondadori, 1979), 76.

  23 “war neurosis” Interview with Dr. Peter Faux, psychiatrist, March 1, 2011.

  24 “Everywhere, I felt like I was being tracked” Gino Bartali, “Mes Memoires,” Bibliotheque France-Soir (Paris: Serie Sport, 1949), 42.

  25 Gino is summoned to Villa Triste Bartali, La mia storia, 57–58; Paolo Alberati, Gino Bartali: Mille diavoli in corpo (Firenze: Giunti, 2006), 20; Leo Turrini, Bartali: L’uomo che salvo l’Italia pedalando (Milan: Arnaldo Mondadori Editore, 2004), 73–74; author interview with Andrea Bartali.

 

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