In Assisi, Il Giorno della Memoria (“the Day of Remembrance”) was not just one day this year but many. The city of Assisi put together a veritable portfolio of events to commemorate January 27th, International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
An event had commemorated Don Aldo Brunacci, the priest who provided safe hiding spots for over three hundred Jewish refugees in Assisi 1943-1944.
On another day, the printers who had falsified the identity documents for those hidden, Luigi and Trento Brizi, were commemorated. Like Don Aldo Brunacci, they have been recognized as Righteous Gentiles, honored at Yad Vashem in Israel
At the same ceremony, a tribute was paid to Graziella Viterbi whose profound bond to Assisi started in 1943 when she and her family fled from Padua to Assisi, seeking refuge – and lasted until her death in 2019.
In early February, the just-published notebook of Graziella’s younger sister Mirjam – who was only ten years old when the family took refuge here – was presented by Bishop Domenico Sorrentino at a conference in the Bishop’s palace……
…. attended by many, including middle-school students.
Journalist Domenico Ingrao introduced the event urging “all here today in Assisi, city of San Francesco and of peace, to remember today all victims of the Shoah and those who suffer.” He asked from each “an unequivocal denouncement of violence and intolerance” and reminded the young students, “you youth must spark our conscience.”
The Bishop spoke affectionately to the young people, winking at them when he introduced the notebook of ten-year-old Mirjam, saying, “you use computers now but we all once used just notebooks.” Monsignore Sorrentino talked about the astonishing creativity, optimism and serenity of young Myriam in her story about a castle in the sky, written during her “dark year in hiding.” Perhaps for this reason, he had decided on the subtitle: “A light in the darkness of the Shoah.”
Mayor Stefania Proietti spoke, too and urged a visit to Assisi’s Museo della Memoria, adjacent to the conference room. She also confirmed the honorary citizenship of Assisi to thirteen Holocaust survivors, adding that “we here in the town of San Francesco are committed to diffusing peace as he did in the 13th-century.”
The venue of this gathering – la Sala della Spogliazione (“the room of the disrobing”) in the Vescovado (“bishop’s palace”) – was directly linked to San Francesco himself for in this approximate location in 1206, San Francesco had stripped himself naked, flinging his clothes back at his father, thus symbolically renouncing his earthly patrimony. The bishop embraced and covered Francesco, sheltering him.
An image of the fresco depicting the scene in the Basilica di San Francesco was on a lectern near the students present:
Over eight hundred years after Vescovo Guido had protected and embraced Francesco, another Assisi bishop, Monsignore Placido Niccolini, sheltered Myriam and Graziella Viterbi and their parents. Monsignore Niccolini (also recognized as Righteous Gentile) had asked Don Aldo Brunacci, Canon of the Cathedral of San Rufino, to find secure hiding places for the Viterbi family and over three hundred other Jewish refugees.
Ruth Dureghello, President of the Jewish Committee of Rome, closed the event reminding all present (especially the youth) of the dangers still today of anti-Semitism – and not only. Con passione, she urged uncompromising refusal of hostility towards immigrants, those “different from us” and all social outcasts.
Mirjam – eighty-seven years old – lives in Jerusalem now and could not be present for her day in Assisi but our mayor had asked her on the telephone, “Do you have any message for those in Assisi who will be coming to hear about your book?”
There was a pause and Mirjam answered with the San Francesco blessing, “Pace e bene” (“Peace and good”). Before preaching, Francesco had greeted the people with that greeting in Latin, “Pax et bonum.”
Leaving the Vescovado after the conference, I thought about the Viterbis as I passed the statue of San Francesco in the courtyard.
I remembered years ago having asked Graziella, “Why did your father decide on a Assisi as a place of refuge?” She had replied with a gentle smile, “Papa’ knew we would be safe in the town of San Francesco.”
Read here about the Righteous Among the Nations of Assisi, instrumental in hiding the Jewish refugees –
Read about Graziella Viterbi (Mirjam’s sister) and Assisi’s Museo della Memoria
Read about Don Aldo Brunacci
Click here to read about hiding the refugees in cloistered convents
Read about events in Assisi for the Giorno della Memoria
This was an important message for all, but especially the youth. Let us not forget.
Amen, Janet.