Apparently, I did not do him justice. He did a lot more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gino_Bartali. He is matched by another incredible Italian hero, Giorgio Perlasca, who took over the Spanish embassy in Budapest in the last days of the Nazi occupation, and, under the false character of a Spanish diplomat, managed to save over 5000 Jews - most of them crowded into the Embassy's building. In one case, he literally tore some children from the hands of an SS detail. When the Soviets came, he managed what Raoul Wallenberg did not - he got them to release him, and eventually went back to Italy. Like Bartali, he never told anyone what he had done, until the Israelis (who had been misled by accounts of him as a Spanish diplomat) finally found him and, in 1988, awarded him the title of Righteous among the Goyim. Four years later he died. The interesting thing about Perlasca is that he had been a Fascist, and had gone to Budapest on a mission for the Fascist government, but he had simply seen where justice and humanity lay - and taken his risk.
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