Sister Giuseppina Demuro will be
recognized as 'Righteous Among the Nations' by Yad Vashem, the
Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, on Tuesday after risking her
life to save Massimo Foa and the spouses Mario Zargani and
Eugenia Tedeschi from deportation during the Second World War,
Jewish information newspaper Shalom reported.
The title, obtained thanks to the interest of the Jewish
Community of Turin, will be awarded to the museum of the Le
Nuove prison in Turin, the place where the nun dedicated herself
to serving prisoners from 1925 to 1965.
Essayist and entrepreneur Massimo Foa, who died 10 years ago,
was just nine months old when, thanks to Sister Giuseppina, he
was smuggled out among the dirty sheets of the prison and
entrusted to Tilde Roda Boggia, who raised him like a son.
His parents Guido Foa and Elena Recanati and his paternal
grandfather Donato were also arrested in Canischio by the
soldiers of the X Mas elite frogmen and Fascist army unit, taken
to the Le Nuove prison and then deported.
His father was probably killed during the Death March, while his
mother miraculously survived the horror of the extermination
camps of Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen.
To save Zargani and Tedeschi, captured in the Biella area and
taken to prison, Sister Giuseppina invented an illness in order
to have them transferred to the hospital and then escape.
Mario Zargani, violinist of the Teatro Regio in Turin and of
Eiar, the predecessor of state broadcaster Rai, was expelled
from the orchestra in 1938 because of the racial laws.
His son Aldo and his brother Roberto found salvation by hiding
in a Salesian convent.
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