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What an amazing event! Thank you to all who helped make this so memorable and touching, especially Kari and Corey of the AJC. Meeting the Langnas family was the highlight of the event. Imagine – connections to Campagna and Ferramonti in Detroit! They hosted us in a private dinner where we got to share stories, see pictures and documents and add more pieces to this never ending puzzle.
I will be speaking with Ursula Korn Selig, a Holocaust survivor featured in the book at the:
Holocaust Memorial Center
28123 Orchard Lake Road
Farmington Hills, MI
7:30-9:30 PM
Please RSVP to detroit@ajc.org
248-646-7686
There is a $20 couvert per person
Growing up with my mother and father, survivors of the Holocaust, was a continual refrain about the good-heartedness of the Italian people. In fact, they both counted their lucky stars that they were deported to Italy — my father from Berlin and my mother from Zagreb. Not only was this the only reason for their survival, but without the Italian support, I would not be alive today. They were interned in Ferramonti, a camp in Southern Italy.Not only do I have their stories to support the incredible truth of this, but eleven pages of photos in my family album, showing internees who were well-dressed, reasonably fed, enjoying their ‘time-out’ by playing in a small orchestra, worshipping in synagogue, bicycling in the countryside and generally feeling that they had escaped Hell and landed in something reminiscent of a summer camp.
True, their past had been expunged, their future was completely uncertain, and they would emerge from this chapter stateless and without official identity of any kind. But compared to what was going on in the rest of Europe, this Italian respite was a God-send. And I will be forever grateful for this. I have my life, and there is nothing more precious than that.
When a dear friend told me about Elizabeth Bettina’s book, I finally felt relieved that someone out there would bring this miracle of humanity to the public’s attention, because, truly, it is a very little-known story. After all, there’s plenty of history and news about the atrocities in this world, but hardly any mention of beneficence. There are individuals who stand out, and some who are even documented (Schindler, for example), as rising above the cruelties of humanity, at risk of their own well-being and even lives. But, to my knowledge, there are few if any instances of whole nationalities taking it upon themselves to rescue, protect and provide human balm to those threatened by major holocausts.
This story of Italians, from every echelon of society, from local peasantry to political and religious, is a revelation of the goodness we are all capable of. In a world which has witnessed and studied the nature of groups and mobs to be devastating in their cruelty and destructiveness, it is a genuine relief to read a document that enumerates the opposite: Italians were a shining light of compassion, withstanding the powerful Fascist/Nazi regimes, and giving expression to the best that is in us. According to social psychologists, the tendency of individuals and groups, under authoritarian rule, is to collapse into destructive tendencies. Here we have a beautiful counter-example to that hypothesis. May it be a template for all of us to imitate so that we can stand tall as members of the human race.
In the rich documentation of names and stories, Ms. Bettina has provided a network of human connectivity whereby some survivors and their families and friends can now reach out and connect with each other to fill in the gaps in so many personal histories that were shredded into obscurity by the events of the Second World War.Yvonne Ginsberg
November 10, 2009
Dear Elizabeth,
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!! It is hard to put into words what the stories in your book mean to me and my family. When my friend, Kari sent me an email saying she was bringing in a speaker that may be of interest to my family because it was about the survival of Jews in the Holocaust in Italy, I was of course, interested. The topic was dear to my heart because my father spent his childhood hiding from the Nazis in Italy.
It is because of the generosity and humanitarianism of the Italian people that he and his parents and sister survived the war. And it is because of this that he loved everything about Italy. So much so that growing up I thought he was Italian.
He told us so many times, countless stories of life in Italy during the war, of Ferramonti, convents, help from locals and the liberation by the allies in 1944. He never considered himself a survivor of the Holocaust. When I received your book in the mail I was so excited.
As always, I checked the index first looking for names of my family. As a child of a survivor of the Shoah it has become a habit for me to always look for lists first hoping to find links to my family. You can imagine how flooded I was with emotion saw number 91 in Appendix A, Ignazio Langnas. We had never heard of Campagna from my father – only Ferramonti North or South.
I was shaking and crying at the same time looking to tell the news to my brothers and my mother. Here we were, five years after my father had died and many years since he was cognizant enough to speak with us because of Alzheimer’s disease. It was a thread to a past that we could no longer hear about first hand.
I started to read the book and page after page it was like hearing his voice tell the stories again. The places, the people and the gratitude to the Italian people were the same. I took out the Shoah tapes that my father recorded before he hadAlzheimer’s and listened to him tell the stories again.
I am so grateful to you for weaving this story together. For so many years I have tried to search for names, places, anything to reconnect to my family’s lost history. You did it for me! I can’t wait to meet you. You curiosity has allowed us to paint the picture of our father’s past more clearly so that we can share it with our children, friends and the world.
People need to know what Italy and the Italian people did for us and all of humanity. If not for you and Campagna and a picture, this story would not be told.
Grazie!
Susan
Hi!
I will be speaking on Wednesday at the Half Hollow Hills Library. See you there!
