The true story of twenty Jewish girls saved by some nuns and a parish priest during the German occupation of Rome mixes with that of fantasy, of the crisis of a man ordered priest without a real vocation, but for the choice of one Mother who remained widow with four mouths to feed. The story narrated in the book ‘The cloak of Rut’, of Paolo Rodaribut human and personal research of how to live Christianity and what sacrifices it is right to do for love are still strictly current. Just as the contradictions related to what the author defines the “ambivalent behavior” of the Church of Pius XII in front of the Roman Shoah are still to be resolved.
The story of the twenty Jewish girls saved in the church of the Madonna dei Monti, Rodari, today on the radio-TV of Italian Switzerland but at the Vaticanist time of the newspaper ‘La Repubblica’, learned it in 2007 by an article by the Osservatore Romano: “They had been saved in the college of catechumens by some nuns with the approval of the parish priest of the adjacent church, that of the Madonna dei Monti, who was also the rector of the college. At that time, several orphans have been welcomed for some time and during the German occupation of Rome, from September ’43 to June ’44, there were also twenty Jewish girls hidden. During the raids – explains Rodari conversando with Ansa – The girls, through an internal courtyard that connects the college to the church, were made to climb through a spiral staircase present in the sacristy to the dome of the church where there was a hidden room; If the Germans made more pods or feared the worst went up with a bricklayer scale in a kind of even higher attic. There are still drawings that the girls made on the walls while they were hidden, it is all remaining like eighty years ago ». And the fact that they were saved is documented as “the paradox that this happened in the college where in the previous centuries, until the unification of Italy, the forced conversions of the Jews took place” observes Rodari.
If The parish priest who saved the small ones with the nuns “really existed, the one I describe in the novel – continues the author – is invented: To portray him I was inspired by priests that I met in my Vatican Work, to more stories that I crossed and from which I took the appearance of the priesthood when he goes into crisis ». In the book, the meeting with Rachele, a young Jewish mother who will entrust him with his daughter Aida, also launches the certainties of Don Remo. And it is a long letter to the girl who saved decades after their meeting that contains the narration of ‘The rut cloak’, which in the Bible evokes loyalty and protection.
On the day of remembrance why is it right to remember? “First of all, I believe that it always needs to continue to memory – says Rodari – because these facts do not repeat themselves, then in particular the book wants to show the unicum that it was the holocaust in the city of Rome for the presence of the Vatican. The silence of the Pope: It is true that many Jews have been saved from exponents of the church, this is in the documents, but the tragic silence of the pontiff must still be studied in front of the train that led to the fields to the fields in Germany from the Tiburtina station. The ambivalent behavior of the Church was not fully implemented and remedied by the Jewish community itself “.
«After the events of 7 October – continues the author – for a journalistic service I spoke to the rabbi of Rome of signs and with many other people and I have verified that this is still experienced as a great offense. It is true that the archives on the pontificate of Pius XII have recently been opened and historians have yet to study them thoroughly to fully light; Certainly if there is no black legend on the work of Pius XII you cannot even sweeten what happened including the responsibilities of the Vatican. From a political and diplomatic point of view – concludes Rodari – silence has its reasons, but from a moral point of view it remains and weighs ».