Spielberg Honors Assisi Priest
January 23, 2003


I just read in the paper that Don Aldo Brunacci is in Milan today for the inauguration of the exhibit I Sommersi, I Salvati ("The Supressed, the Saved") sponsored by Steven Spielberg's Survivors of the Shoah, Visual History Foundation. Don Aldo, close to 89 years old, assisted the bishop of Assisi in hiding Jewish refugees in World War II. For this event, Spielberg chose to interview Don Aldo along with three other direct witnesses (out of 400 interviewed by the Foundation in Italy and 50,000 in 57 countries). The event today in Milan will be broadcast on Channel 5, a national network.

I have known Don Aldo since I came to Assisi in 1975. At that time, I had started teaching English to children - as a supplement to our work on the farm (which was giving us great pleasure and satisfaction but no lire! - see article) - but I needed a space in which to conduct my classes. A local travel agent called Don Aldo (who runs a retreat house in Assisi) to ask if he could help out... and I soon had a classroom (at no rent) in the retreat house. That summer, I worked there in the kitchen and cleaning rooms. Years later when our first child was born, Don Aldo baptized him in the retreat house chapel - and the festive lunch afterwards for all the guests was held there, upstairs in the frescoed dining room (the palazzo dates to the 17th c).

Only years later did I come to know how many people in the world were grateful to him. I learned about the "Assisi Underground" bit by bit, through local oral history, by reading, through talks with Don Aldo and my friend Graziella Viterbi, a survivor who was hidden here in Assisi with her family at the age of 18 - and remained. I watched with fascination the 3 hrs of videotaped interview with Don Aldo done by Spielberg's Foundation.

A visit with Don Aldo is a profoundly memorable moment for some of my Assisi tours - as is a stop to see the printing press which was used to falsify the identity documents for the Jews hidden here.

Don Aldo was recognized on a national level on January 19th when he received the Gran Croce dell'Ordine al Merito della Repubblica, one of the highest honors which can be bestowed on an Italian citizen.

© Annesitaly - Anne Robichaud